Jamie's America

Okay, I get Oliver is writing for a non-American audience but the feeling I got from most of this book is an urge to scream "tourist!".
After he leaves New York he travels to just a few regions to sample the cuisine. As a resident of one of those areas (Arizona and New Mexico) I really just stared in disbelief at some of these recipes. His alterations of traditional dishes of these regions would result in something so far from the originals that I am truly wondering about the rest of the book.

library book read 5/11/2024

The famous and adorable chef travels across America, meeting people and learning how to cook the local specialties. You would expect him to hit the foodie cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco, maybe throw in some New England too. New York is covered, with recipes from Chinatown and the Lower East Side, but throughout the rest of the book he's covering the places and foods that other cookbooks don't- to the Navajos sheep ranchers of Arizona, the alligator hunters of Louisiana, the soul food cooks of Atlanta and the cowboys of the Wyoming.
There are so many recipes here that I'll be trying out. They look delicious! I have several of Oliver's books and a couple of his recipes have become regulars for me. They tend to be easy and show more you don't need special equipment, which is great because I have no room to store another gadget.
Lots of the recipes have ingredients I'd never thought of adding to a dish, like thyme and oregano in a blackened catfish rub, but if you tried it, it's probably good. This is going on the shelf near the kitchen so I can grab it. show less

I had some mixed feelings about the book. First, the positive. The photography in the book is excellent. The recipes overall do look pretty good an appetizing, and Jamie's short essay segments are pretty good to read. The negative? This is not a book for those who need to or want to follow a healthy diet. I think that it is a bit of a sharp contrast to Jamie's more recent healthy eating campaign (just look up his TED talk to get an idea what I mean). But ok, I can do go along with that. What I really did not like is that a lot of the recipes call for ingredients that you are not likely to find unless you shop at Whole Foods on a regular basis (and that assumes you even have a Whole Foods in town, which we do not where I live now). So, show more that seemed to make the book a bit less accessible to me in terms of recipes I may have wanted to try making.

Having said the above, Jamie does give a pretty good look at American cuisine overall, showing it as the diverse canvas that it is from big cities like New York to the bayous of Louisiana to the Arizona desert. And what he is doing is giving those traditional cooking ways his own touch as well. I think this is a book people will enjoy, maybe make a recipe now and then as a treat, but it seems more enjoyable as a coffee table kind of book, i.e. very nice to look at. show less

this is my favorite J.Oliver cook book. Great recepies and interesting info`s about different states inside the USA. From NYC all the way to the Navayo`s and Cowboys
As with all of his cook books the amounts od some ingredients are not alway exact, so it`s sometimes little tricky to get it right. But I don`t care, I love his books this one especially

Another I think I'll actually purchase. (Hey, I work in a library!}
Love this bloke.

simple basic recipes that all looked good!

Great TV program , Great book and good food.