Customer Reviews

Happy Days with the Naked Chef

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sadly, I think a lot of people pass off Jamie Oliver as a goofball celeb chef and never give his cookbooks a fair try. I found his previous works to be a little silly, a little wordy and maybe overly cutesy, but Happy Days with the Naked Chef is a fine, clever cookbook with a pile of challenging, fun recipes.

The writing is a lot sharper and more focused this time and the recipes read more like traditional recipes. True, there are some bizarre Britishisms that you have to wade through, but I think Oliver did a much better job of internationalizing his chatty prose in order to clarify his thoughts. That effort is definitely appreciated when you get into the depths of a complex recipe like Beef with Morels and Marsala. If you're a fan of the show, you'll already have your own mental lexicon of Oliverisms to get you through. Non-viewers might need to visit his web site to uncover the meaning of some of the more extreme terms.

Regardless of whether you watch Oliver's Twist on a regular basis, this is a genuinely engaging book. It's a great read, and has enough really inventive recipes to keep you busy for a year's worth of Saturday nights. Highly recommended!

In every way imaginable, this third Jamie Oliver cookbook proclaims that he has arrived as a celebrity chef, husband, father, and all around swell lad made good. His name on the cover is about three times the size of the book's title, `Happy Days with the Naked Chef', the book is dedicated to his two children, Little Henners and Jakey Bakey, and photos his nibs with his wife, Jools appear throughout the book. On top of all this, there is a much broader representation of international flavors in these recipes based on trips to the Orient, echoing the influence of Japan on the culinary thinking of Joel Robuchon.

At the risk of laying it on just a little too thick, I really believe Oliver shows the kind of passion about good food and cooking which I have seen in very few other TV culinary personalities. Stopping short of a comparison with Julia Child, as Saint Julia did say she couldn't quite understand him most of the time, I would compare his enthusiasm with that of Mario Batali and Jacques Pepin, although he does not have the depth of technique of Jaques or the extensive knowledge of local Italian cuisines as Mario.

Oliver does not simply dedicate to his children for schmaltz value as he devotes a sizable section of the book on the value and attitudes to use when cooking with your kids. These few pages alone are worth the price of the book. Emeril just published a whole book on techniques for cooking with your kids, and as good a job as he did in telling you how to do it, Jamie does a much better job of telling you why you do it and what benefits will arise from the effort. Jamie also gives a few insights into his cooking with Jools as well when he says that once upon a time, every little suggestion on Jools' cooking from world famous chef Jamie was taken as a criticism and tended to dampen her enthusiasm for doing something she did not especially enjoy anyway. The whole picture changed when Jamie simply praised everything Jools did in the kitchen. The quality of her cooking and her attitude improved dramatically. I can think of a few of my relatives I would love to feed the wisdom in this book.

In reviews of Oliver's other books, I have warned that while Jamie preaches simplicity, this is not the same as quick or easy. Jamie does lean a bit toward quicker and easier in some chapters in this book, keeping to the cooking with the kids theme. He has a chapter on `Quick Fixes' and `Comfort Grub' plus `More Simple Salads'. And, he leaves out any recipes for homemade pasta, with all pasta dishes being based on dried pasta, which he always says is not inferior to fresh, just different. There is also a very short chapter just after the introduction on using fresh herbs, which for the entire world sounds like a sermon from Pastor Oliver exhorting you to use fresh herbs. This homily is understandable if you recall that Jamie Oliver's writing and televising about food is all about lifestyle, not just how to cook. His lesson is that fresh herbs are necessary to good cooking.

As always, Oliver's most appealing recipes are for salads, pasta dishes, and seafood. I sometimes wish that all of his books would be reissued collecting all like chapters into individual volumes and I would buy the salad and pasta volumes simply to have all these recipes together. They are by far the most original of his dishes, although there is one pasta dish Jamie attributes to Mario Batali and there are a few in his books that are attributed to his experiences at the River Café.

Bread is one of my favorite culinary subjects and Jamie is one of the very few superstar chefs who gives special emphasis to bread baking. His basic bread recipe is a classic fast method he probably got from Gennaro, as Contaldo uses a very similar recipe in his book `Passione'. The recipe violates the recommendation from experts like Peter Reinhart who promote little yeast and long rise times, but I have made Jamie's bread and I find it just fine, especially as a medium for rolling in savory additions such as onions and salami. To atone for his fast yeast bread, Jamie adds a recipe for artisinal sourdough bread with natural yeast and a classic Italian bega. Read this recipe very carefully before starting, as it takes a FULL WEEK to complete. If you are serious about bread, check out books by Reinhart, Joe Ortiz, or Nancy Silverton, but you could do a lot worse than getting your first taste of bread baking from Sir Jamie.

When someone has an engaging TV personality, I fear their enthusiasm may not transfer to a skill with the written word, especially with Jamie, as I have heard him say he dictates all his books into a tape recorder, as he never really learned to write properly in school. Let me assure you here that even his chapters with low culinary interest such as his chapters on mixed drinks are a joy to read.

Jamie has a habit of labeling certain recipes as `the best ever'. Well, I have made his `best ever' recipes and I agree with him. They have all become standards in my repertoire. He continues to match or exceed the very high quality of recipes you will find from the River Café or even from Signoir Batali himself.

On the remote chance that Hyperion editors read this review for constructive criticism, I will point out that the layout of ingredient lists makes reading the recipes a bit annoying, as does the absence of ingredient lists from some of the simpler recipes.

If one wishes to get more out of their cooking, they could not do much better than to work their way through Jamie Oliver's cookbooks.

this is a really fun cookbook and there is something for everyone here. For those who like Jamie Oliver's first two books, this is more of the same nice stuff - good rustic recipes that are tasty and some of which are very fast and easy to make. The recipes are a mixture of Italian, British fare from Jamie's childhood days, and a mixture of a few other cuisines. What is nice about this book is that there is also a section about cooking with kids and getting kids interested in helping with food preparation and to make meals more interesting and interactive for them (and you!). Also, at the end there is a section of drinks as well, some alcoholic (like the sidecar) and some non-alcoholic (like mango lassi). All in all this is a really nice book and it will make you realize that making your own bread, soups, tarts, etc is not really hard, and is really rewarding and fun. And... as a wife who cooks every day, it has given me a lot of fresh ideas for new meals. check it out!

I love to cook and eat, and can make very complex things that take a couple of days or longer to put together, but I also have a small child and a lot of other things to do, and I love this guy's food!! Getting an excellent dinner on the table without too much effort (or even extreme expense) is his whole focus.

I have gotten more useful ideas from him on making fast heavenly healthy dishes with not too many ingredients. His food is heavy on fresh ingredients, olive oil, and fresh herbs. If you love to cook fine food and want more quick food ideas, or if you have no clue how to cook and want to start, this is a wonderful book.

The first two recipes I tried from this (a roast of lamb, and a beef stew, both with plenty of vegetables) were simple to understand and prepare, had longer cooking times than prep times, and were the best recipes of their kind that I had ever tried, and I have a very large and very good cookbook collection! I look forward to cooking my way through the rest of it.

I also love the pictures - usually a book with such beautiful food photography has turned out to either have mediocre or ridiculously complicated recipes! Neither is the case here. I must also say that the dishes I turned out looked wonderful as well as tasting wonderful, with no special effort on my part.

I also have to praise him for his ongoing support and promotion of organic meat and vegetables!

Jamie Oliver is a cooking sensation. Believe it or not, despite all of the amazing press that he has had in Canada and the USA, he is still nowhere near the level that he has reached in his native Britain. It's really incredible to watch his star rise. It's especially incredible to see him rise and continue to release such wonderful cookbooks.

Happy Days With the Naked Chef is Jamie's third book. In the new book, Jamie explores much of the same territory he has introduced us to in the first two. The food is easy to prepare, not too cheffy (as he likes to say) and super tasty. but what sets Happy Days apart from the other two is the section for kids. It's great to see Jamie's Kids Club incorporated into a book. The section isn't so much recipes for kids as it is a handbook of sorts (as only Jamie could write) to help parents get kids interested in cooking. It's a really great chapter.

But really, we all come to Jamie for the recipes...which, as usual, are amazing. They're easy to make, fun to serve and cover all varieties of diet (even the salads are amazing).

For a good, basic cookbook that is high on attitude and low on pretention, Happy Days is it.

This is absolutely the best cookbook I have ever owned. Usually I own a cookbook and prepare maybe one or two recipes before it sits of the shelf and begins to collect dust.

Happy Days is chock full of simple, low fuss recipes that taste as though hours of work have been spent in the kitchen. Simple, accessible ingredients and winning combinations. A recipe has yet to disappoint me. For someone who's life is too busy for long hours in the kitchen and want flavorful recipes with flair and originality - this is the book for you!

This is truly an amazing cookbook--beautiful pictures to accompany the straightforward and no-frills (i.e. "naked") recipes from Jamie. He has a very approachable and non-intimidating writing style and even if you don't cook everything in here, you'd definitely want to read everything! Jamie writes with the same kind of energetic, youthful verve and charm he displays in his cooking shows. Kudos!

Most of the recipes are very do-able for single-folk with little time, as well as dinner parties, both formal and informal. He also includes a wide variety of foods from breads to kids' treats, drinks to desserts, meats to veggies. There are recipes for those who are on the go and only have time to throw a bunch of things together on the fly; there are recipes for the foodie, who is willing to be adventurous, try something new, and be fancy.

The pasta section is particularly incredible: some truly ingenious ideas and twists on classics. The Spaghetti with Salami, Fennel and Tomatoes is a meaty, fresh and tasty original pasta treat. And it only took me less than 30 mins to cook it with phenomenal results. His salads are spectacular as well--I cannot think of one so-so recipe. They are all delicious.

This book is even better than The Naked Chef takes off, which was also excellent. And if you are not much of a cook, you'd want to have it just for the mouth-watering pictures alone. You can share it with friends who might just be inspired to cook from it, for you. :-)

This recipe book is very aptly named and will certainly bring you happy days with recipes that are really great and totally simple. As Jamie Oliver has previously done in his other cookbooks, he has enchanted readers with delicious recipes, excellent photographs, funny stories, and enough Cockney to make you feel like a Brit.

This is a cookbook for people who like to cook, but aren't necessarily technically skilled. I find this book very entertaining and interesting. Jamie offers information on how to prepare and store different types of foods. I like that this book teaches you to become a more creative and less exact cook. Thumbs up!

This book is inspiration in the kitchen. Beautiful pictures. Easy to prepare recipes. Cute stories. Everything a cookbook should be is here.