Jamie’s Ministry of Food: Anyone Can Learn to Cook in 24 Hours
£20.40£24.70 (-17%)
Jamie Oliver will teach you to cook from scratch in the Ministry of Food
We need to learn from the past. We need to look back at the way our grandmothers and great-grandmothers cooked – wholesome, tasty food that was simple and quick to prepare. If you’re a complete beginner in the kitchen, Jamie Oliver’s promise to you is that you’ll be making some great dinners within hours of reading his book. A little knowledge and a few basic tools can go a long way, and Jamie’s Ministry of Food is your first step …
Whether you are starting out and want to gain confidence in the kitchen or a seasoned cook looking to perfect classic dishes, Jamie’s Ministry of Food is for you. Jamie shares tips and tricks for the ultimate curry, roast dinner and stir-fry along with many more of his favourite traditional recipes. If that wasn’t enough, he also lets you in on delicious meals that you can make in just 20 minutes, including Salmon Tikka with fresh Cucumber Yoghurt and a hearty Chicken and Leek Stroganoff.
‘There is only one Jamie Oliver. Great to watch. Great to cook’ Delia Smith
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Additional information
| Publisher | 1st edition (3 Oct. 2008), Michael Joseph |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Hardcover | 360 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 9780718148621 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0718148621 |
| Dimensions | 19.51 x 1.91 x 25.4 cm |
by Evonne
Suitable for for beginners to experts
by Harris
This book was recommended to me. Being what I consider a limited cook I was keen to give it a try. I have over 30 other cook books (all in an attempt to broaden my range) but my friends said this one was different. They were right. My husband was working away for 5 months, so my children and I made Friday ‘Jamie Oliver Night’. I would choose the meat and they would choose which untried recipe we would be having. Afterwards we would mark it out of 10. Obviously they had a few low marks but the number of 10/10’s amazed me. This meant I had a new bank of recipes I could use by the time my husband had returned. Even my dinner party guests were hankering after my salmon en croute recipe – after all if I could make it then it must be easy! I have now encouraged lots of other friends to give it a try and they too think it is by far his best book. Jamie’s other cook books are good but this one is outstanding. I particularly love the step by step lay out. Do all the bits up to the red dot before moving to the next phase. This is all backed up by the pictures of stages on the opposite side. That way you know you are doing it right. You also know he has actually done every recipe – so often chefs include recipes they haven’t even tried or simply written out of order (Gary Rhodes Best of British being a fine example of that).
So Jamie Oliver’s ministry of food is perfect for someone like me who has 2 hungry sons and a hungry husband who like a good hearty meal at the end of the day. Once you’ve tried it the way he does it you become more confident to vary the recipes to fit what you have in the cupboard. My spice rack is used loads – at last. These recipes are all the sort you will use daily.
Some may say it’s too basic but I think if you have this and Delia’s Complete Cookery Course you probably don’t need another recipe book ever again.
Oh and a final point is to say I never enjoyed cooking much until Jamie’s book gave me the confidence.
by JH
This is, in my opinion, the best book that Jamie has come out with. It is very accessible and the end results are delicious with very little effort involved.
I’m a below average cook (at least I was until purchasing this book!) who would rather eat cheese on toast every night than deal with washing a heap of saucepans and dishes and still ending up with mediocre results. I have lots of cookbooks that I love to flick through and look at the pictures, but everything seems too complicated except the really simple things which usually come out bland and tasteless. But there is something about this book that just appeals to me, maybe because it isn’t fancy restaurant-type food but ordinary things that I actually want to eat, like curry or meatloaf.
The quality of the book is top notch and there are lots of photos of the preparation stage for each recipe as well as the end result. This is very helpful as I feel like I’m doing things right. The first thing that I tried was chicken korma, and Jamie’s description made it seem so straightforward that I even made my own curry paste. It was so easy and tasted so good that I will never buy curry sauce in a jar again! Everyone who tried the food thought it was great and personally I thought it was restaurant quality.
Several weeks after getting this book I am still trying new recipes from it, and every one has been a winner. At the weekend I made the spring vegetable and bean soup, which finally persuaded me that cauliflower is not the devil incarnate, and right now I have a big pot of chilli con carne simmering on the hob. My husband can’t believe how much cooking I have been doing recently, and how adventurous I have become!
My ONLY gripe with this book is that most of the pages don’t have page numbers on them. This makes it hard to find the right page based on a page number from the index! I’ve resorted to putting PostIt notes here and there so I can find things quickly. But if that’s the trade-off for having so many beautiful photos of the food preparation steps then I can certainly live with it.
by M. C. Morrison
Although I enjoyed good food as a child (we had cooks in our family-owned hotel), my mother was completely disinterested in cooking, to the point that she could literally get it wrong trying to microwave a curry ready meal (“oh Mum, how do you manage to get the rice so crispy?”). When I left home for uni aged 17, I was able to make a pot of soup, but that was it – I didn’t even know how to cook macaroni and cheese… fast forward several years of living off ready meals or jars of cook-in sauces… Then, back in 2008 I saw a copy of this book in Sainsbury’s, and although I hadn’t watched any of Jamie Oliver’s TV programmes, I bought the book on impulse.
The first recipe I tried, the bacon and pea conchiglietti, was extremely quick and easy – and delightfully fresh and delicious! I was hooked on cooking from that moment, and still remember my delight when I made chicken chow mein the following evening, and it, too turned out perfect! Utterly excited, I roped in my partner to tackle some of the more involved meals, and within a fortnight, we were cooking perfect roast dinners, with delicious home-made gravy, light and crispy yorkshire puddings, perfect roast potatoes, juicy carrots in a bag, and green beans with sticky, stringy parmesan – what a delight after decades of ready meals and lacklustre cook-in sauces!
This book also triggered a love of gardening, as I quickly discovered that it wasn’t possible to rely on the supermarket to have the desired herbs in stock when needed – even a window box would be useful if you don’t have a garden.
From this first cookbook, I have become an avid cook, these days making my own pasta, cooking curries from scratch, grinding my own spices, and an avid follower of Gordon Ramsey and his more sophisticated recipes. This has become extremely important to me since discovering that I am gluten-intolerant, and have effortlessly been able to adapt recipes to suit a gluten-free diet. I would never have been able to do any of this had it not been for this wonderful book. Thank you Jamie!
Since then, I have bought copies for my brother and a young friend who left home and needed some recipes – both very well received, and also made a huge difference to the quality of their diets.
To the person who was complaining that some of the recipes are for 4 or 6 people, most of the recipes store well in the fridge, and are also suitable for freezing too. When my partner’s elderly parents became unable to cook for themselves, I would spend one day a month in the kitchen cooking a month’s worth of dinners for them, filling the freezer with a variety of tasty meals that they could simply reheat without any trouble. The more you use this cookbook, the more you will want to share your skills by cooking for friends and family. Just do it!