When it comes to selecting cookbooks, I tend to avoid celebrity chefs. I find they tend towards the artistic ‘clever’ kind of cooking instead of the ‘stick to your ribs’, everyday foods the rest of us eat. However, after some prevarication, I did buy the 1989 revision of Delia Smiths’s classic ‘Complete Cookery Course’… posibly because it had been marked down to ten punds… but still find it quite useful occasionally.
I’m hoping the same can be said of my latest acquisition… Jamie Oliver’s 1999 epistle “The Naked Chef”. I’m sitting looking at the cover and this very boyish face is looking back at me clearly with no inkling of how hectic his life was to become.
Inside? Well it’s actually pretty damn good with lots of down to earth recipes that look the part as well as seem available for the everyday cook to master.
One of the attributes of a good cookbook is that when you thumb through it you can *taste* the recipes inside without having to have cooked them first and, with Jamie’s book, I found myself going through an intense gastronomic experience.
Ok maybe this had something to do with being ravenous after months without proper food… but even so it was enough to make me buy the book. I already have this weeks menus sorted but some of his will no doubt be appearing in coming weeks… though I doubt the live lobster will feature heavily.
The Eclectic Interweb 