Lottie Lomme
Jamie Oliver, I think the whole of the Netherlands has a cookbook on it. You can go anywhere with it: fast, slow, all parts of the world, superfood. Jamie knows what to do with it. He has an empire. Like the Italians used to have a Roman empire, only in a different way. Restaurants, cookbooks, TV shows, skillets. His civic struggle for better school meals and healthy eating among British families. And now there is Jamie cooks Italy, a new Italian cookbook from Jamie, dedicated to Antonio Carluccio, who passed away this year. (Want to know more about Carluccio? Read his reviews pasta cookbook And his vegetable cookbook. Un Mito!)
careless cooking
Jamie cooks Italy is a beautiful book with delicious recipes and photos. In the book you also see many pictures of Jamie carelessly cooking together some delicious and fantastic dish on a deserted meadow with a wood fire.
I then think: how does he do that? I wouldn't even start the fire, don't know where to put my pan and let the food burn in my own garden. But Jamie can. He also always gives many tips on how to cook without any hesitation: cut the celery pieces into 1 cm pieces, it says, but it doesn't have to be too precise, it can also be nice and skewed. So it doesn't matter!
Difficult ingredients
Unfortunately, the art of delicious Italian food is partly in hard-to-find ingredients. Especially for someone like me, who lives in a deprived area twenty minutes from the highway.
There are no scarcely stocked specialty stores here where you can buy purple small artichokes, baby zucchini, salted ricotta, sourdough bread, lard, scamorza or even find octopus. I don't have a vegetable garden and mainly get my food from a supermarket chain that I won't mention by name.
And even if I've knocked on a frozen octopus twice (literally, I have to to make it tender), I just can't seem to get it to taste as good as in Italy.
In that regard, Jamie also sells a bit of an illusion. We can't all drive an octopus in the refrigerated compartment of your Volkswagen van through the hinterland of the Abruzzo and stop there in a goat wool sweater at a stream where you make a campfire and take out your octopus. And then of course roasting that fantastic dish on a wood fire.
Metter Alla Prova
So this week I only tried two dishes in my own standard kitchen in that small Vinex district of Schoonhoven. A vegetarian lasagna with leek, fennel and cheese. Easy to prepare and super tasty.
And with the borlotti or lapwing beans as a side dish, which were also very tasty and easy, but not at all photogenic. Except in Jamie's book.
I always find that interesting: can I cook the recipe in such a way that it resembles the picture in the book? But when I take a picture of my kidney beans, it usually isn't appetizing, to be honest.
I am therefore not Food Photographer but an Italian teacher. I assume that you sometimes take a picture of your food, but just like me, don't take out an exposure set for that.
Nonne
What I do find very sympathetic is that Jamie calls by name and surname all grannies (and grandparents) from whom he has received his recipes and records them in the book with photos.
I have the feeling that a lot of Italian cookbooks prosper in getting recipes from the older generation of Italians. Italians who themselves are less adept at marketing and expanding their cooking empire.
That's just the way it is, but it's nice that you come out honestly and pay tribute to all those old ladies. Then they can show Jamie's cookbook with their photos to the neighbors and their grandchildren. Then it is also a bit of their cookbook.
Jamie cooks Italy (preview copy)
From the heart of Italian cuisine
by: Jamie Oliver
€ 29,99
Kosmos Publishers, August 2018
ISBN 9789021569598
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