program to give disadvantaged problem teens the education to become professional cooks, using personal funds and even mortgaging his home to get it going. For the last several years, he’s been on a campaign to improve the school food in Britain (in one instance, when he was working at a school, some of the children’s mothers came to the school’s gates and passed burgers and fries to their children through the railings!) and to teach everyday folks to make a few simple recipes utilizing fresh, wholesome ingredients.
Oliver says what he’s doing is nothing less than a revolution. And now he’s bringing his campaign to America with a television series and cookbook. In the book he says:
“It’s such a shame, but we have a modern-day war on our hands, and it’s over the epidemic of bad health and obesity. The question is, do we wait until it’s too late, or do we do something about it now? I say we do something now. I’ve been told that fewer than a third of Americans cook their meals from scratch these days. And although 75 percent of people in the United States eat most of their meals at home, much like us Brits, over half of those dinners are fast food, delivery, or take-out! Regardless of recessions and credit crunches, we all need to know how to cook simple, nutritious, economical, tasty and hearty food. And once we’ve got this knowledge, we should pass it on through friends, family and the workplace to keep that cycle of knowledge alive.
I brought local cooking demonstrations to [a British town], along with smaller cooking classes where I asked people to teach the recipes I taught them to at least two other people….While I was teaching these cooking classes, I consistently saw the most radical, inspiring and completely emotional change happening to everyone I met, all through showing them how to cook a handful of meals. This change is so fantastic to see, and can literally happen within 24 hours. I know it sounds soft, but it’s true. And I’m not talking about easy, cuddly individuals who thought it might be quite nice to start cooking; I’m talking about people who had never, ever wanted to cook or been interested in food for years: miners, single moms, old-age pensioners and busy dads.”
I got a copy of Jamie’s Food Revolution last fall without realizing that a television show of the same name was in the offing. It’s a wonderful cookbook, and I can’t recommend it highly enough – something that, even though it’s meant to be for beginner cooks, is interesting enough, and the recipes are good enough, to appeal to cooks of every level. Some recipes are straightforward – ingredients and method. But much of the book is dedicated to variants on a theme. The basic stew recipe has four possibilities: beef and ale, pork and cider, chicken and white wine, or lamb and red wine. It can be served as is, or with four different toppings: mashed potatoes, sliced potatoes, dumplings or pastry. There’s a section on “Evolution Salads:” lettuce, carrot, potato, tomato, etc., that start very simply, and by adding more ingredients, become more substantial. There’s another section of chopped salads. There are Asian and Indian recipes, as well as family dinners, simple sautés, and stirfries. It’s not a diet cookbook, as such, but some dishes are lightened up, and rich and/or fatty ingredients are used judiciously.
Jamie’s Food Revolution, the television series, appears on ABC Fridays at 8 p.m. Past episodes can be seen online at www.hulu.com. Oliver is in Huntington, W. Va., a city of 50,000 that statisticians say is the “unhealthiest city in America.” The episodes so far have been gripping as Oliver tries to bring about positive change in spite of a sarcastic disc jockey and others whose attitude is “Who the hell does this British guy think he is to come here and tell us how to eat?” Through it all, Oliver is encouraging, and supportive, never condemning, as he talks to a tearful teen so grossly overweight that her physician has given her only a few more years to live, to a family whose deep fryer is their primary way of cooking, to deeply suspicious “lunch ladies.” There are setbacks as he discovers that federal government rules and regulations actually discourage the use of fresh food in the schools, and that their guidelines support school lunches consisting of chicken nuggets, fries and chocolate milk, that the children are often eating the same sorts of meals at home, and that fresh food is totally unknown – and initially unappealing to them.
But as the series continues, Oliver’s enthusiasm appears to be making headway. In last week’s episode, he manages to get 1,000 people cooking a stir-fry in his teaching kitchen or in their workplace, or even in the street in a single week, winning a bet with the cynical disc jockey, who ends up cooking along with everyone else, including some of those dubious lunch ladies and local officials.
Yes, it was a bit of a gimmick – just as the “Naked Chef” was. But it’s a gimmick in service of a good cause. So watch “Jamie’s Food Revolution,” buy the cookbook, and, as Jamie Oliver says, PASS IT ON!
Contact Julianne Glatz @[email protected].
Find a recipe for Jamie Oliver’s Sweet and Sour Pork on IT’s Web site.
