JAMIE OLIVER AT HOME
Jamie at Home from 7 August on Channel 4
With his projects ranging from tackling youth unemployment to improving school dinners, it's sometimes difficult to remember that Jamie Oliver started out as a chef rather than a campaigner. His latest Channel 4 series, Jamie At Home, marks a mouth-watering return to his roots, as he steps off the soapbox and back into the kitchen.
But Jamie being Jamie, he's not content just to cook up a range of delicious, fresh ingredients - he wants to grow them too. With the help of gardener Brian, he has turned the garden of his Essex house into a cornucopia of earthly delights, a grocer's dream. With tips for growing fabulous fruit and luscious legumes, and using them in his characteristically delicious recipes, it’s the indispensable guide to food from plot to plate.
In a rare moment where he's not being a chef, businessman, philanthropist, father or husband, Oliver reveals some of his kitchen secrets.
Were you interested in food as a kid?
Yeah, I grew up surrounded by it. I never fell in love with it 'til later on, but I lived above a pub for 16 years, one of the original gastropubs in the country [The Cricketers in Clavering, Essex]. You know, venison coming in, live crabs and lobsters, shrimps and scallops, food all over the place.
My old man was a bit of a Hitler, so I always had a job, mopping or sweeping up fag butts, or washing and peeling vegetables, from the age of seven or eight. So I was around food all the time, which made a real difference.
You've got this love affair with food, and you're around it all the time. How come you're not 32-stone?
Well, I think I've had my best 30 years. I've got to do more exercise now, but it's easier said than done sometimes. Some chefs do eat a lot, but to be honest, a lot of chefs in the modern day are so bloody busy, and it's so hot in the kitchen, that they don't put on the weight.
Have you passed on your love of food to your kids?
I think passing on your love of food to your kids is quite a romantic way of looking at it. Without doubt my kids can eat loads of stuff, they're really good. Are they a pain in the arse reasonably regularly? Yes. Do they hate some things? Yes. But they change and develop, and you find different ways of getting them to try things - certainly getting them involved in cooking or especially growing ingredients is a great way of doing that.
It sounds daft, but when I see my kids eating a bowl of salad, or a bit of salad with some fish, somehow it makes me feel better too. They're pretty good, though. My wife feeds them Monday to Friday, I'm breakfast and weekend boy, really.
What's Jools like in the kitchen?
Yeah, she's not bad at cooking. She's got better. I'd be a liar if I said she was an absolute natural, but she's a really good cook for the kids, actually. She can rattle off really good, exciting food quickly, and healthily. It's quite impressive, actually. When she makes an effort, it's bloody good, her cooking, but she really has to make an effort. But that's pretty normal, really.
The new series, Jamie At Home, is all filmed at your country house. How long have you had it?
About six years. It was a derelict site for quite a long time, it was all overgrown with stinging nettles, so we sort of saved the old garden and started from scratch again. It was a labour of love. Three years ago was my first attempt at growing vegetables, and it was chaos, to be honest.
It was just a case of having a go, just bunging it all in the soil and seeing what happened. We’ve got a great gardener now, but even that first year, when I didn't know what I was doing, was a bloody good year, and we got loads of grub out of it.
So what I've tried to do in this series is to do with basic gardening what I did with food in the naked chef, really, which is strip it down and take some of the mystery out of it. I just want to show people how easy it is, just to get them to have a go.
It's a new direction for you, isn't it? Gardening as well as cookery.
Yeah. I get all types of people, young and old, from all types of backgrounds, watching my shows, and I want to let people know that it doesn't matter where you live, you can still grow your own stuff. It's about having a go. It can be in a bucket or a boot, a window box, a small garden or a big garden.
I think some of the worst problems we've had in cooking, not just in terms of health, but in the flavour, have been about being disconnected from where our food comes from. It sounds rather worthy, but just put a packet of seeds in the ground, grow it into something, and you will just love it. It connects you with the ground. I know I sound like a hippy, but growing stuff has completely changed the way I think about food and cooking.
Your style of cooking is very laid back, not massively fiddly and precise. Is that an intentional thing, keeping it simple?
I think it's a thing in chefs, particularly blokes, to be pretentious and show off, and do all this clever crap that we learn ourselves. But since day one of Naked Chef, if I want to be flashy and complex and do all of that whole business, I can do that in a restaurant or in the privacy of my own home.
At the end of the day the shows that I do are about trying to get people to have a go at cooking even if they think they can't stand it. It's got to look delicious, it's got to be quick, it's got to be simple. It's all about cooking in your own home, cooking for family and friends, doing simple food, that sort of thing. So that's the inspiration behind every dish that I do. If it's not easy, it normally won't get into the book.
Do you have one ingredient that you couldn't do without?
It changes from month to month, really. I go through funny little phases of being obsessed by certain things. Certainly chilli is an obsession of mine. Actually I don't think it's an obsession, I think it's a bit of an addiction. Chillis are fantastic, dried, smoked or fresh. It's fantastic with so many things. And I go through little things of doing stuff with lime, or using fennel seeds, or particular herbs. I like to experiment.
So are you still learning your trade?
Yeah totally. Every single day. Every hour. You're weighing things up, trying new things. It's kind of like the Holy Grail, really: you're always chasing the best bread, the best salad, the best dressing. It's a bit of an obsession, to be honest, but I try and calm it down as much as possible. If you really saw me going bonkers about food, I think I'd probably get locked up.
Do you have a favourite food?
Not really. I love everything, really. Indian, Japanese, Thai, British, you name it, I like it. If you're passionate about food in general, it's probably a good idea not to put all your eggs in one basket, really.
There must be foods that you don't like.
No. I think I have managed to make most things taste good in some way, shape or form. I have to be honest, I'm not so keen on eating bollocks, spleen, that sort of thing. I'm just a bit off those, really. But I'll eat pretty much everything.
If you could pass on one key cooking tip to the British people as a whole, what would it be?
Don't show off. Concentrate on the things that you're good at, and try and expand them by using better produce, or tweaking things a bit. Don't take it too seriously - it's not a test, it's not an exam. Most of cooking is just basic common sense really. Most of the best cooks that I've known in my life have been mothers, really, be it in England, Italy or France. Most chef stuff is quite irrelevant in the home. Which is sort of the point of this series.
You're incredibly busy, you've always got loads of projects on the go. How do you relax?
To be honest, I'm going to bore the shit out of you now, because you won't believe me, but being at home, having put the little monkeys to bed, nice glass of wine, and cooking a fantastic meal, especially on the barbecue, on a nice day. With good friends and family. That's it, that's perfection. I don't need to go to nightclubs, or flashy places. That's just perfect.
Do you watch any of the other TV chefs?
No. I don't watch much TV at all. If I’m home, my wife normally gets me watching some reality show, some-model-catwalk-Lets-Come-Dancing thing. Don't get me wrong, I'll watch it, and it'll make me chuckle, but it's a small repertoire of things that she does like. We all like to keep the missus happy, so I let her watch it. But if you asked her what would happen if I was in charge of the control, she'd probably say 'He'd be on the history channel or watching some documentary about mining in the 1950s'. She'd probably say I was bloody boring.
Jamie At Home is on Channel 4 on Tuesdays at 8pm from 7th August.
