Cookbook review: Jamie's Italy

By Tom Mentzer
Scripps Howard News Service
Dec. 25, 2006

A Brit teaching Americans how to cook traditional Italian food? Globalization at its best, or at least its tastiest.

Chef and general food entrepreneur Jamie Oliver, known as the Naked Chef to Food Network fans, recently released his sixth cookbook, "Jamie's Italy" (Hyperion, $34.95).

The volume is as much travelogue and culinary manifesto as cookbook, chronicling Oliver's travels through Europe's boot and offering a healthy dose of his trademark passion for quality eating.

Oliver has a particular style, an endearing mix of garbled English and bouncy enthusiasm combined with an amazing knack for making complicated dishes look easy. And this style somehow works as effectively on paper as it does on television.

This isn't your typical cookbook. Even recipes that follow the traditional ingredient/instruction format are fraught with Oliverisms. Spaghetti with squid calls for "glugs of olive oil," a flavored salt is "zingy," a Florentine rice tart "a real bloody treat to eat!"

Other recipes seem almost stream-of-consciousness, as if he were explaining the dish over the telephone. Readers will either love or hate the folksy style.

The same goes for Oliver's heart-on-the-sleeve sermons. A self-described "visually gritty" chapter on meat is a prime example, complete with a lecture on the evils of corporate farming and the need for more free-range, organic meat.

Once you get used to Oliver's looming presence (it's often difficult to pinpoint where he ends and Italy begins), the collection of recipes is quite impressive. From street food, salads and pizza to pastas, main courses and desserts, Oliver does an impressive job capturing the cuisine.

Two especially strong sections offer basic recipes for pizza dough and risotto, then present a handful of excellent variations of each. The book also does a great job balancing simple recipes with more involved projects.

Most flavors aren't the Italian-American familiar to U.S. cooks. Tomato and cream sauces are represented, but there are also a fair number of more delicate dishes, where the only saucing comes from some veg and a splash of wine. And while the ingredients aren't overly exotic, many recipes will open new doors for home cooks.

Oliver's goofy expressions are sometimes over the top, but his zeal for Italian food--and food in general--is clear throughout the book, a good example for many.