My first ever Cookbook - “Jamie at home”
When it comes to cookbooks I definitely have a lot on my shelves - but “Jamie at Home” by Jamie Oliver definitely has a special place in my heart. I would even go so far to say, that I am doing what I am doing right now because of him and his book and TV show with the same name.
I was first introduced to the “Naked Chef” - a reference to his simple pared-back approach to cooking - during my travels to Australia in 2007. Jamie Oliver’s shows were on TV all the time and I fell in love with his show '“Jamie at Home.” It’s pretty much him walking around in his beautiful garden in the British countryside, harvesting the freshest ingredients, and cooking them outside on a bonfire or make shift kitchen.
I loved this romanticized version of cooking, and when I arrived back home to Germany, I bought the book and got to work. I played around with the recipes, made deep-fried calamari, spinach tarts, lamb kebabs, and everything else that sounded good. The book is organized by the four seasons, so without knowing it back then I got my first introduction into seasonal cooking when I first started. The years went by and while I was working as a journalist, I fell in love with cooking more and more. Then after moving to the US I was ready for a career change.
After culinary school and a few different jobs in kitchens I found my true home in the kitchen at Ava Gene’s in Portland, OR - and it all came full circle. “Locally sourced, aggressively seasonal” was the restaurant’s motto and boy did it live up to it. Every week local farmers delivered hundreds of pounds of the freshest produce available and I fell in love with this kind of cooking - using the best ingredients available and letting them shine. So there I was working my way up from line cook to sous chef at at the best restaurant I have ever worked, still cooking with the same approach I learned from Jamie Oliver ten years earlier. And to this day not much has changed…
