Oliver's recipes are truly irresistible and this book might well be his best ever--both in quantity (100 recipes) and quality. The Channel Four series associated with the book will focus on his experience of setting up a restaurant school to turn unemployed kids into professional chefs. While Jamie's Kitchen isn't a course book per se, he takes home cooks through kitchen essentials including poaching, boiling, steaming, stewing, frying, roasting, grilling and baking--all in a no-nonsense style.

He proves to be a terrific pupil of his own culinary education, spun in true-to-form Jamie style by the results of his experiments. He has learnt his lessons well from his time at the River Cafe with recipes such as spring minestrone, pasta and risottos to dream about and a focus on the quality and seasonality of produce. Rick Stein's style of pedagogy also works very well here with sections on basic chef skills such as chopping, boning and filleting. Jamie also helpfully includes easy recipes to some of the basics of French and Mediterranean cookery such as pesto and aioli. But he's also extended his playful ways with oriental cuisine--tempting us with dim sum delights such as steamed pork buns. He also finds room to skirt the borders of increasingly popular Spanish and Middle Eastern flavours with sweet roasted garlic soup and Lebanese lemon chicken respectively, and makes sure to throw in some dinner party dynamite with headliners such as fresh mackerel cooked in pomegranate, lime juice and tequila, and a baked chocolate pudding that's almost too good to share..

Will you be able to get or give a better cookbook than Jamie's Kitchen? You could try, but we wouldn't bet on it. --Fiona Buckland

Upon recieving this big and heavy book, I thought this is going to be great, indepth information on his show, the students as well as great recipes.
After reading through the first set of pages, it was quite interesting, but later it was just recipes, and not very good ones to be honest- for a price book I was expecting much much more. This has been a disappointment, If your wanting information on the show- the only advice is to look elsewhere, if you want recipes then Jamie has some other great books out there.
I would have given this book better marks if it was cheaper.


One great Book   July 25, 2003
 13 out of 16 found this review helpful

As a chef myself the recipes and pictures are wonderful. I use all of Jamies books almost everyweek to get ideas for my menus. His food style is awesome and this book reflects it. I special ordered this book from the UK since it is not available in Canada, and I don't regret the extra that I paid for this book. It is his best yet.


Too much fish   May 3, 2003
 9 out of 27 found this review helpful

I have bought the book as i enjoy cooking but dont eat fish. the books contents are over three quaters about fish and recipes using unknown herbs and spices. ihave recently exchaned the book for his previous one.