His Shows Get Bleaker by the Second
October 16, 2023 4:54 PM Subscribe
Jamie’s 5 Ingredient Meals has the air of an educational state broadcast made to raise morale after a national catastrophe – inevitably, perhaps, because that’s more or less what it is. (SL Guardian)
hearing about how bleak things are in the Uk always makes me feel less bad about California’s out of control housing and wealth inequality. We’ve only improvised the bottom 60% of the popular here, and our young folks can always move to Minnesota or North Carolina for cheaper housing (and plenty of good food).
posted by CostcoCultist at 5:28 PM on October 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by CostcoCultist at 5:28 PM on October 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yeah, I read the article and I feel like even if the show might be a bit dull, a cooking show that covers the basics is literally the least problematic thing to do right now. With soaring grocery costs (and even more severe dining-out/takeaway increases) this just seems like ragging on a fundamentally decent public service.
Also, my 5-ingredient show would be the most boring ever. Kosher salt, coarse pepper, peanut oil, corn on the cob and a full packer brisket, 12 hours of total and complete inanity, spent doing other things and (except for a brief interlude involving butcher paper) totally ignoring the cooking process... yet somehow creating a miracle at the end of the day.
posted by eschatfische at 5:31 PM on October 16, 2023 [18 favorites]
Also, my 5-ingredient show would be the most boring ever. Kosher salt, coarse pepper, peanut oil, corn on the cob and a full packer brisket, 12 hours of total and complete inanity, spent doing other things and (except for a brief interlude involving butcher paper) totally ignoring the cooking process... yet somehow creating a miracle at the end of the day.
posted by eschatfische at 5:31 PM on October 16, 2023 [18 favorites]
I didn't take the article as ragging on Jamie Oliver or this show, more that this is the kind of cooking show that is being put out right now because of how tough things are for many people. This is a UK show but I know it's no better here in Canada.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:37 PM on October 16, 2023 [14 favorites]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:37 PM on October 16, 2023 [14 favorites]
You can celebrate that with veggies. You can celebrate that with a lovely salad. What joy!
I've never heard a British person talk like that, what the fuck is going on? I feel like I'm about to see a grave, this isn't right!
posted by kingdead at 6:07 PM on October 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
I've never heard a British person talk like that, what the fuck is going on? I feel like I'm about to see a grave, this isn't right!
posted by kingdead at 6:07 PM on October 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
subbing in parmesan... if there’s no pecorino in the fridge
This is a Batman/Bruce Wayne scenario. Those two cheeses have never been seen in the same fridge at the same time.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 6:18 PM on October 16, 2023 [57 favorites]
This is a Batman/Bruce Wayne scenario. Those two cheeses have never been seen in the same fridge at the same time.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 6:18 PM on October 16, 2023 [57 favorites]
Is cheesy pea pasta a pre-existing thing in the UK? I can't tell if they are ripping on the fact that the name of the recipe is the recipe and you don't need a cooking show to tell you how to make it or if they are ripping on the fact that of course everyone already knows how to make this commonplace dish.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:18 PM on October 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 6:18 PM on October 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
My takeaway is that there is a dish called 'cheesy pea pasta' and the whole-ass editorial chain failed to include a recipe.
posted by stet at 6:19 PM on October 16, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by stet at 6:19 PM on October 16, 2023 [19 favorites]
can’t-be-arsed crisis pasta - chef's kiss
posted by maggiemaggie at 6:31 PM on October 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by maggiemaggie at 6:31 PM on October 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
Jamie Oliver is ostensibly helping people out by providing some recipes for inexpensive meals. It's not his fault that food is so expensive, so why does the author have Oliver in his sights? Could he be any more smug and snooty?
If his show is "getting bleak," Jack Seale, then maybe you should write an article about those causes than shitting on a guy making an attempt at helping.
posted by zardoz at 6:36 PM on October 16, 2023 [29 favorites]
If his show is "getting bleak," Jack Seale, then maybe you should write an article about those causes than shitting on a guy making an attempt at helping.
posted by zardoz at 6:36 PM on October 16, 2023 [29 favorites]
I feel like reading that article has told me more about the day the author was having than the show they’re ostensibly reviewing..
when Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall wrote Three Good Things on a Plate in 2012, The Guardian ate it up, this dude just seems peevish.
posted by Dr. Twist at 6:38 PM on October 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
when Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall wrote Three Good Things on a Plate in 2012, The Guardian ate it up, this dude just seems peevish.
posted by Dr. Twist at 6:38 PM on October 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
If his show is "getting bleak," Jack Seale, then maybe you should write an article about those causes than shitting on a guy making an attempt at helping.
If the British press could do that sort of work Brexit might not have happened.
posted by mhoye at 6:40 PM on October 16, 2023 [57 favorites]
If the British press could do that sort of work Brexit might not have happened.
posted by mhoye at 6:40 PM on October 16, 2023 [57 favorites]
My takeaway is that there is a dish called 'cheesy pea pasta' and the whole-ass editorial chain failed to include a recipe.
The name kind of is the recipe. Boil up some pasta, throw in some peas, add cheese, there you are.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:44 PM on October 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
The name kind of is the recipe. Boil up some pasta, throw in some peas, add cheese, there you are.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:44 PM on October 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
As a person who hates cooking and doesn't want to try to figure out anything with more than five ingredients, I think this is a great idea. I've always thought someone needs to do a cookbook for people who hate cooking and don't want to (and yes, I'm aware a few of these exist, somehow I didn't get into those either), so I'm actually rather impressed that a Big Name Cooking Person is doing something like that, because if you love cooking, why would you do something so plain and boring?
...Oh, because life sucks in the UK, is why? Well, that's less...fun.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:47 PM on October 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
...Oh, because life sucks in the UK, is why? Well, that's less...fun.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:47 PM on October 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
Jamie has had misfires, but for almost 25 years he has encouraged the "average" cook to make a go of it, to be brave in the face of cuisine, to go easier on yourself while following a recipe, and to be open to new things. I grew up part of that "small percentage of the audience who don’t know that you should save a bit of the starchy pasta water." Most chefs would distance themselves from the desperation of a society sinking ever lower into poverty, and never deign to be associated with a recipe collection called £1 Wonders. But some of us are looking not just for a recipe to follow, but also for someone to cook with. Jamie has been a brilliant and steadfast kitchen companion.
posted by cocoagirl at 6:49 PM on October 16, 2023 [101 favorites]
posted by cocoagirl at 6:49 PM on October 16, 2023 [101 favorites]
This is a Batman/Bruce Wayne scenario. Those two cheeses have never been seen in the same fridge at the same time.
Wegmans will sell you pecorino and parm reggiano all mixed up in a bucket! Grated or shredded!
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:53 PM on October 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
Wegmans will sell you pecorino and parm reggiano all mixed up in a bucket! Grated or shredded!
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:53 PM on October 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
I love stuff like this, because I'm a super shitty cook, especially at the end of the day when I just want to load Basic Nutritional Units into kids without tears, and I've come to appreciate simple stuff that tastes great. If you have ten ingredients in your dish, you're really just giving yourself ten different ways to fuck it up.
posted by phooky at 7:06 PM on October 16, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by phooky at 7:06 PM on October 16, 2023 [19 favorites]
There is a dish called cheesy peas
That’s almost certainly an allusion to this, itself a fairly accurate spoof of the sort of weird pre-made kids food that exists in the UK
posted by Jon Mitchell at 7:25 PM on October 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
That’s almost certainly an allusion to this, itself a fairly accurate spoof of the sort of weird pre-made kids food that exists in the UK
posted by Jon Mitchell at 7:25 PM on October 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
My takeaway is that there is a dish called 'cheesy pea pasta' and the whole-ass editorial chain failed to include a recipe.
They should have linked it. He calls it "sweet pea orecchietta" and you can watch it on youtube here.
The article is getting mad at Jamie Oliver for having a show aimed at where many of his viewers are at. It's not his fault that people are in that position, and it's to his credit that he is working to present options intended to be helpful. The review is meaner than it needs to be, when the descriptions of the food actually sound pretty great:
Oliver’s version of can’t-be-arsed crisis pasta does look tasty when it’s done, but it’s still pasta with cheese on. “Mmmm,” he says, taking the first steaming mouthful. “Cheesy.” Similarly, a guest recipe cooked by London restaurateur José Pizarro – also on his own in a basic studio kitchen – looks great, but the guy’s just roasted some garlic, tomatoes and peppers and put them on toast with a boiled egg.
Personally, I'd rather have dinner with Oliver than the reviewer.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:27 PM on October 16, 2023 [27 favorites]
They should have linked it. He calls it "sweet pea orecchietta" and you can watch it on youtube here.
The article is getting mad at Jamie Oliver for having a show aimed at where many of his viewers are at. It's not his fault that people are in that position, and it's to his credit that he is working to present options intended to be helpful. The review is meaner than it needs to be, when the descriptions of the food actually sound pretty great:
Oliver’s version of can’t-be-arsed crisis pasta does look tasty when it’s done, but it’s still pasta with cheese on. “Mmmm,” he says, taking the first steaming mouthful. “Cheesy.” Similarly, a guest recipe cooked by London restaurateur José Pizarro – also on his own in a basic studio kitchen – looks great, but the guy’s just roasted some garlic, tomatoes and peppers and put them on toast with a boiled egg.
Personally, I'd rather have dinner with Oliver than the reviewer.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:27 PM on October 16, 2023 [27 favorites]
i am a terrible cook. i was raised by extremely poor people who had a mixture of severe untreated mental health problems and raw viciousness. i certainly did not know about reserving pasta water until i learned it from a recipe in one of those "you'll pay us to send you a recipe and the ingredients for it in a box filled with a freezy gel that absolutely cannot be any good for the environment at all" boxes a few years back. it came to me as a revelation.
i'll never be much of a cook, but at least i can follow recipes now, and i can only follow recipes now because there exist recipes that spell out, in detail, things that people who aren't from circumstances get at the teat or whatever.
like, how do i cut things? what knife can i use to cut it? is it okay if i don't have that kind of knife? how thin should this be sliced? does it matter? how do i hold the knife? how do i hold the thing i'm cutting? these are questions i can only answer because there are websites that spell it all out in great, great, great detail and i have access to those websites.
like, wait, what? we're making cheesy pea pasta? that's easy the name itself tells you how to make it, right?
what kind of peas.
how much cheese.
which cheeses are okay. will some not melt right. what can be switched for what.
do i need to add milk to it or something i've heard sometimes people do that but i might be wrong.
what shape of pasta can i use.
are they all the same.
how do i know what can be substituted for what in general.
how do i know the pasta is done.
how much should i stir.
how high should the heat be.
do i need to put salt in the water.
do i need to put olive oil in the water i've heard you need to do that how much do i put in.
should i use a different oil if we don't have olive oil.
if i switch something i shouldn't or don't switch something i can switch or use the wrong pasta otherwise do the wrong thing will it be ruined.
if it's ruined will dad scream at me.
i can't do this i don't know how everyone else knows how and i don't i'm broken i give up.
there is something in the tone of this piece that reminds me very much of the tone that open source software developers take toward people who don't know every last thing about git or the unix filesystem or networking protocols or the ten thousand other fiddly things that seem like second-nature to people who've been working with them for a decade but completely opaque to those who don't already know. it's repulsive, it's gatekeeping, it sucks, i hate it, don't do it.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:34 PM on October 16, 2023 [131 favorites]
i'll never be much of a cook, but at least i can follow recipes now, and i can only follow recipes now because there exist recipes that spell out, in detail, things that people who aren't from circumstances get at the teat or whatever.
like, how do i cut things? what knife can i use to cut it? is it okay if i don't have that kind of knife? how thin should this be sliced? does it matter? how do i hold the knife? how do i hold the thing i'm cutting? these are questions i can only answer because there are websites that spell it all out in great, great, great detail and i have access to those websites.
like, wait, what? we're making cheesy pea pasta? that's easy the name itself tells you how to make it, right?
what kind of peas.
how much cheese.
which cheeses are okay. will some not melt right. what can be switched for what.
do i need to add milk to it or something i've heard sometimes people do that but i might be wrong.
what shape of pasta can i use.
are they all the same.
how do i know what can be substituted for what in general.
how do i know the pasta is done.
how much should i stir.
how high should the heat be.
do i need to put salt in the water.
do i need to put olive oil in the water i've heard you need to do that how much do i put in.
should i use a different oil if we don't have olive oil.
if i switch something i shouldn't or don't switch something i can switch or use the wrong pasta otherwise do the wrong thing will it be ruined.
if it's ruined will dad scream at me.
i can't do this i don't know how everyone else knows how and i don't i'm broken i give up.
there is something in the tone of this piece that reminds me very much of the tone that open source software developers take toward people who don't know every last thing about git or the unix filesystem or networking protocols or the ten thousand other fiddly things that seem like second-nature to people who've been working with them for a decade but completely opaque to those who don't already know. it's repulsive, it's gatekeeping, it sucks, i hate it, don't do it.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:34 PM on October 16, 2023 [131 favorites]
> but the guy’s just roasted some garlic, tomatoes and peppers and put them on toast with a boiled egg.
there is at least one thing in the above that i could only do if i looked up how and then very very closely watched videos of people doing it, multiple times, until i was absolutely sure that i could copy precisely what they were doing without any deviation whatsoever.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:36 PM on October 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
there is at least one thing in the above that i could only do if i looked up how and then very very closely watched videos of people doing it, multiple times, until i was absolutely sure that i could copy precisely what they were doing without any deviation whatsoever.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:36 PM on October 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
Oliver tells us, just in case
Okay, but like, a few years a go, a dear friend visited me. We cooked together, and I had to explain to her what browning is and why we do it. She simply didn't have much cooking experience and no one had told her. All of the things that I consider basic are things that have to be learned, and I was just lucky to learn them earlier in life.
If everyone is above teaching the basics, how are people going to learn them?
I find Jamie Oliver to be pretty distasteful sometimes, but I think this criticism is really off the mark.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:37 PM on October 16, 2023 [21 favorites]
Okay, but like, a few years a go, a dear friend visited me. We cooked together, and I had to explain to her what browning is and why we do it. She simply didn't have much cooking experience and no one had told her. All of the things that I consider basic are things that have to be learned, and I was just lucky to learn them earlier in life.
If everyone is above teaching the basics, how are people going to learn them?
I find Jamie Oliver to be pretty distasteful sometimes, but I think this criticism is really off the mark.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:37 PM on October 16, 2023 [21 favorites]
My five ingredient dinner (save for salt, pepper and olive oil) that I made tonight.
Fill an oven proof cast iron pan or pot or whatever with as many red tomatoes (I like the little sugar bomb cherry tomatoes) chopped onions, heads of garlic (with the top sliced off), and rosemary sprigs as you can muster. Drizzle a healthy amount of olive oil over it. Roast at like 375f for an hour or until it starts to look like it may burn (and a little burn I think helps the flavor). Blend till smooth and season with some salt and pepper to taste. Cook some pasta and drain - saving maybe a 1/3 of cup of pasta water. Mix the sauce, pasta, and pasta water and serve. It’s the best.
If you can make it to six or seven ingredients add cheese to grate over it, and basil leaves. Or maybe some good pita bread to dip in the sauce.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 7:39 PM on October 16, 2023 [22 favorites]
Fill an oven proof cast iron pan or pot or whatever with as many red tomatoes (I like the little sugar bomb cherry tomatoes) chopped onions, heads of garlic (with the top sliced off), and rosemary sprigs as you can muster. Drizzle a healthy amount of olive oil over it. Roast at like 375f for an hour or until it starts to look like it may burn (and a little burn I think helps the flavor). Blend till smooth and season with some salt and pepper to taste. Cook some pasta and drain - saving maybe a 1/3 of cup of pasta water. Mix the sauce, pasta, and pasta water and serve. It’s the best.
If you can make it to six or seven ingredients add cheese to grate over it, and basil leaves. Or maybe some good pita bread to dip in the sauce.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 7:39 PM on October 16, 2023 [22 favorites]
but the guy’s just roasted some garlic, tomatoes and peppers and put them on toast with a boiled egg.
I mean, knowing how to combine the random stuff you've got in the house to make something edible, not to mention tasty, is the most useful cooking skill of all. It's super common for people not to know how to do that, especially with vegetables.
posted by trig at 7:42 PM on October 16, 2023 [28 favorites]
I mean, knowing how to combine the random stuff you've got in the house to make something edible, not to mention tasty, is the most useful cooking skill of all. It's super common for people not to know how to do that, especially with vegetables.
posted by trig at 7:42 PM on October 16, 2023 [28 favorites]
I think the subtext here is that the United Kingdom is rather rapidly doing a u-turn into a country in which the middle class can't afford things like avocados and various types of South American fish on a regular basis, not that people don't know how to cook...
posted by rhymedirective at 7:45 PM on October 16, 2023 [36 favorites]
posted by rhymedirective at 7:45 PM on October 16, 2023 [36 favorites]
Oliver remains for the whole hour in a no-frills kitchen built on a set – there are no fancy trips or celebrity tasters, nor any glimpse of the life enjoyed by the Oliver family.I understand why this is noteworthy in the current media landscape -- but isn't it strange that it is noteworthy?
Isn't it the "lifestyle" cooking shows that are actually peculiar? Isn't it the injection of all that day-in-the-life personality fronting that would be hard to explain to a person from a different time?
Back-to-basics, back to an unassuming kitchen, back to where Julia Child started -- that sounds like a good thing to me, even outside of economic meltdowns.
posted by Western Infidels at 7:50 PM on October 16, 2023 [33 favorites]
Isn't it the "lifestyle" cooking shows that are actually peculiar? Isn't it the injection of all that day-in-the-life personality fronting that would be hard to explain to a person from a different time?
Not really. Cooking-as-escapism has replaced cooking-as-instruction as the norm a really long time. It's entertainment, and you can't taste television.
posted by mhoye at 7:58 PM on October 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
Not really. Cooking-as-escapism has replaced cooking-as-instruction as the norm a really long time. It's entertainment, and you can't taste television.
posted by mhoye at 7:58 PM on October 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
Well, I never thought reading an article would make me feel grateful that I'm not as snarky of a person as the reviewer seems. Yes, maybe it's dismal that we need a celebrity chef to "hero" frozen spinach and yogurt, but good for him for showing how to make food from whole ingredients, available at your supermarket, without a big to do. I mean who really has the energy to cook something fancy on a weekday after a long day of work? I feel like this is a good show for someone who is starting to cook from whole ingredients vs. processed boxes of food.
posted by ellerhodes at 7:59 PM on October 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by ellerhodes at 7:59 PM on October 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
It's super common for people not to know how to do that, especially with vegetables.
Trig, I just had like a two hour long conversation with one of my best friends about this on Saturday night! Her daughter’s school is part of a program where every kid brings home a selection of fresh produce from local growers once a week and it’s typically pretty standard things but sometimes they get interesting heirloom stuff too. But my friend, who is an enjoyer of food but someone who really needs recipes and details when cooking, feel SO guilty about all the veg she wastes every week. Because she just doesn’t know what to do with it! She has meal plans but she doesn’t feel comfortable just substituting some random green or whipping something up in the oven as well, and the veggies her kid brings home don’t come with recipes or anything either.
Like, I’m all for giving families food, and I’m a huge advocate for local produce and food in general. I think it’s an amazing program idea! But you have to teach everyone to “fish” as it were, not just give someone a raw uncleaned sea bass and tell them to have at it. I have begged my friend to ask me for what I’d do with the veggies she gets and I think this weekend I finally got through to her, because knowing what to whip up with random ingredients is kind of my best skill.
Like, for example this week she got collards, radishes, and fennel. She likes all of these but they were just rotting away in the fridge. She put them into chatgpt with some other stuff she had and asked it to give her recipes to use them up, and then she sent the results to me to check if any of the results would be viable. I would say chatgpt did about 1/3rds good. It did tell her to roast the fennel with onions and thyme and put it on toast, but also it told her to use the collards raw in a salad with mayonnaise dressing?? The point is, we need people to teach people this kind of skill and mindset. There are too many variables and it’s too individualized.
If Oliver is showcasing this kind of culinary flexibility, or even just encouraging nervous people to try instead of wasting fresh food, I’m all for it. He has been very hit or miss over his career, but I feel like the linked article is lacking in perspective.
posted by Mizu at 8:00 PM on October 16, 2023 [14 favorites]
Trig, I just had like a two hour long conversation with one of my best friends about this on Saturday night! Her daughter’s school is part of a program where every kid brings home a selection of fresh produce from local growers once a week and it’s typically pretty standard things but sometimes they get interesting heirloom stuff too. But my friend, who is an enjoyer of food but someone who really needs recipes and details when cooking, feel SO guilty about all the veg she wastes every week. Because she just doesn’t know what to do with it! She has meal plans but she doesn’t feel comfortable just substituting some random green or whipping something up in the oven as well, and the veggies her kid brings home don’t come with recipes or anything either.
Like, I’m all for giving families food, and I’m a huge advocate for local produce and food in general. I think it’s an amazing program idea! But you have to teach everyone to “fish” as it were, not just give someone a raw uncleaned sea bass and tell them to have at it. I have begged my friend to ask me for what I’d do with the veggies she gets and I think this weekend I finally got through to her, because knowing what to whip up with random ingredients is kind of my best skill.
Like, for example this week she got collards, radishes, and fennel. She likes all of these but they were just rotting away in the fridge. She put them into chatgpt with some other stuff she had and asked it to give her recipes to use them up, and then she sent the results to me to check if any of the results would be viable. I would say chatgpt did about 1/3rds good. It did tell her to roast the fennel with onions and thyme and put it on toast, but also it told her to use the collards raw in a salad with mayonnaise dressing?? The point is, we need people to teach people this kind of skill and mindset. There are too many variables and it’s too individualized.
If Oliver is showcasing this kind of culinary flexibility, or even just encouraging nervous people to try instead of wasting fresh food, I’m all for it. He has been very hit or miss over his career, but I feel like the linked article is lacking in perspective.
posted by Mizu at 8:00 PM on October 16, 2023 [14 favorites]
It strikes me that the reviewer is pissed at the state of things and a show that functions as a reminder of that state is just grit in their gears. As mentioned above, most cooking shows are really escapist fare and a down in the dirt with the proles programme must seem depressing to a snooty foodie. As a foodie myself, I understand wanting to see a show unveil a new dish to delight and dazzle. As a foodie facing the reality of a screwed up world I really appreciate knowing how to make the most basic, filling, and cheap dishes. Succotash using canned corn and beans with some peppers or squash as a step sideways on the rice and beans recipe track has a place and showing folks simple tasty meals seems like sacred work on a post-Brexit Britain.
posted by Ignorantsavage at 8:10 PM on October 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Ignorantsavage at 8:10 PM on October 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
Actually, in watching an episode or two on YouTube and flipping through some of his recipes on his website, I actually quite like this style. It's much more of a "minimum viable product" approach -- what are the 5 most core ingredients, w/ as little cooking complication as possible, that creates still something yummy and distinctive.
Honestly, would I have come up w/ this pasta, mint and zucchini dish on my own? I swear I've stared at these 5 ingredients on my kitchen counter, and this thought never occurred to me.
I think what's nice about the simplification into 5 ingredients, is it makes it MUCH more obvious where you could be a bit more experimental. For instance, I probably would be okay with trying a different leafy herb in said pasta, or adding in some garlic b/c I had it handy, and feel like I was being adventurous and chefy. OR, if I ran out of spoons for the day, hell, I'm just going to stick to the 5 ingredients and call it that.
posted by ellerhodes at 8:13 PM on October 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
Honestly, would I have come up w/ this pasta, mint and zucchini dish on my own? I swear I've stared at these 5 ingredients on my kitchen counter, and this thought never occurred to me.
I think what's nice about the simplification into 5 ingredients, is it makes it MUCH more obvious where you could be a bit more experimental. For instance, I probably would be okay with trying a different leafy herb in said pasta, or adding in some garlic b/c I had it handy, and feel like I was being adventurous and chefy. OR, if I ran out of spoons for the day, hell, I'm just going to stick to the 5 ingredients and call it that.
posted by ellerhodes at 8:13 PM on October 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
So one thing ChatGPT is good for is suggesting recipes with a list of whatever you have available.
Like “I have salt, pepper, potatoes, carrots, onion, lettuce, garlic powder, paprika, chicken breasts, rosemary, and olive oil. What can I make, and I need step by step instructions?”
“ How about a simple yet tasty dish? Roasted rosemary chicken with seasoned veggies. Here's a quick guide:
Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).
Chop potatoes, carrots, and onion into bite-sized pieces……..”. Etc.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 8:56 PM on October 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
Like “I have salt, pepper, potatoes, carrots, onion, lettuce, garlic powder, paprika, chicken breasts, rosemary, and olive oil. What can I make, and I need step by step instructions?”
“ How about a simple yet tasty dish? Roasted rosemary chicken with seasoned veggies. Here's a quick guide:
Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).
Chop potatoes, carrots, and onion into bite-sized pieces……..”. Etc.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 8:56 PM on October 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm sitting her going, "making mac and cheese from scratch? I don't believe I've ever done that. Check out the fancy lad!"
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:56 PM on October 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:56 PM on October 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
Ctrl+F for Jack Monroe - I borrowed and then bought their latest book for solid and reasonably cheap meals. Some UK food is noticeably cheaper there than in Asia (cheeeeeeeese) but I love their whole ethos of yummy budget food that a stressed out person can make. I’m not a big fan of Jamie Oliver’s flavour profiles but I have had good meals cooked by people following his recipes happily
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 9:26 PM on October 16, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 9:26 PM on October 16, 2023 [11 favorites]
Kenji Lopez-Alt is kind of the US version of this. It's not as intentional as Oliver, but he's essentially doing the same thing with his Kenji Cooks videos (and a lot of those get collected by the Serious Eats folks). His books are something else, something fancy, but his behind the scenes stuff is very much in the simple stuff you can all do sort of meals.
He has a three-ingredient Mac and Cheese, for example. His third ingredient is evaporated milk. We make it often in the winter when we want dinner in less than 15 minutes.
posted by bonehead at 9:46 PM on October 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
He has a three-ingredient Mac and Cheese, for example. His third ingredient is evaporated milk. We make it often in the winter when we want dinner in less than 15 minutes.
posted by bonehead at 9:46 PM on October 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
I also recommend Dan Giusti's Epicurious videos for recipes in this vein (though it looks like a new chef has taken over this series). I think the prices in his videos are optimistic, but they're certainly still budget conscious, and he makes some great stuff that looks very fancy and satisfying for being relatively simple and cheap to make. I especially appreciated it when he went into what fruits and vegetables are best and/or most cost effective to buy frozen.
Anyway, I'm not a big Jamie Oliver fan but I agree this article was harsh on him when he's doing something that's actually needed. Like, I love me some aspirational and/or experimental style cooking shows/videos, but day to day, this kind of five-ingredient meal is what keeps you fed, you know? Sometimes it's just gonna be a cheesy pasta kind of night, and having someone show how you to elevate that cheesy pasta even the slightest bit can make the difference between a depressing struggle meal and something that makes you feel at least a little bit proud of yourself for making and eating it.
Like, "but the guy’s just roasted some garlic, tomatoes and peppers and put them on toast with a boiled egg" makes it sound like this is a scoff-worthy meal, but it isn't! That is a meal that is a major step up from the struggle meal that would be runny egg and toast! You eat runny egg and toast for dinner, and maybe you feel kind of blah and tragic. (Sometimes you don't, of course! Sometimes that really hits the spot, or sometimes your stomach's too touchy for anything else, etc.) You eat toast with a nice boiled egg and some flavorful roasted veggies, and now you feel like you're being healthy and a little bit fancy.
A solid half of my recommended Youtube videos are aspirational cooking videos, and I love that stuff, but also sometimes I do need a chef to clearly and engagingly show me how to make something new out of a cheap can of chickpeas. Real talk: variety and doing neat new stuff is all the more important when you've got a limited food budget or even just a limited effort/time budget for food, because the monotony of eating the same sad struggle food can really grind you down.
posted by yasaman at 10:11 PM on October 16, 2023 [16 favorites]
Anyway, I'm not a big Jamie Oliver fan but I agree this article was harsh on him when he's doing something that's actually needed. Like, I love me some aspirational and/or experimental style cooking shows/videos, but day to day, this kind of five-ingredient meal is what keeps you fed, you know? Sometimes it's just gonna be a cheesy pasta kind of night, and having someone show how you to elevate that cheesy pasta even the slightest bit can make the difference between a depressing struggle meal and something that makes you feel at least a little bit proud of yourself for making and eating it.
Like, "but the guy’s just roasted some garlic, tomatoes and peppers and put them on toast with a boiled egg" makes it sound like this is a scoff-worthy meal, but it isn't! That is a meal that is a major step up from the struggle meal that would be runny egg and toast! You eat runny egg and toast for dinner, and maybe you feel kind of blah and tragic. (Sometimes you don't, of course! Sometimes that really hits the spot, or sometimes your stomach's too touchy for anything else, etc.) You eat toast with a nice boiled egg and some flavorful roasted veggies, and now you feel like you're being healthy and a little bit fancy.
A solid half of my recommended Youtube videos are aspirational cooking videos, and I love that stuff, but also sometimes I do need a chef to clearly and engagingly show me how to make something new out of a cheap can of chickpeas. Real talk: variety and doing neat new stuff is all the more important when you've got a limited food budget or even just a limited effort/time budget for food, because the monotony of eating the same sad struggle food can really grind you down.
posted by yasaman at 10:11 PM on October 16, 2023 [16 favorites]
What rotten luck for the reviewer that this is the only food/cooking show on TV.
posted by senor biggles at 10:38 PM on October 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by senor biggles at 10:38 PM on October 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
"educational state broadcast made to raise morale after a national catastrophe"?
Just thing to lead into The Quiz Broadcast!
Hello, good evening, and Remain Indoors. Just don't think about The Event.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 11:38 PM on October 16, 2023 [16 favorites]
Just thing to lead into The Quiz Broadcast!
Hello, good evening, and Remain Indoors. Just don't think about The Event.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 11:38 PM on October 16, 2023 [16 favorites]
Actually, in watching an episode or two on YouTube and flipping through some of his recipes on his website, I actually quite like this style
I cook regularly but still learned three things from that particular video: using a grater to separate out tomatoes from seeds a pulp, turning spaghetti into makeshift orzo and using grated halloumi as a pasta ingredient. The ingredients he suggests are not expensive and the meal is quick, filling and healthy. So - not remotely "bleak". And I am well aware that Jamie Oliver would be given an equally - and much more justifiable - hard time if he was pushing dishes made with exotic ingredients like Caciocavallo Podolico cheese and Alba white truffles to an audience of broke proles.
posted by rongorongo at 12:14 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
I cook regularly but still learned three things from that particular video: using a grater to separate out tomatoes from seeds a pulp, turning spaghetti into makeshift orzo and using grated halloumi as a pasta ingredient. The ingredients he suggests are not expensive and the meal is quick, filling and healthy. So - not remotely "bleak". And I am well aware that Jamie Oliver would be given an equally - and much more justifiable - hard time if he was pushing dishes made with exotic ingredients like Caciocavallo Podolico cheese and Alba white truffles to an audience of broke proles.
posted by rongorongo at 12:14 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
If you're not familiar with what Jamie Oliver, his wealth, career, establishment entanglements, and 'cheeky chap' persona might represent to some people in the UK (and especially if you are), I can strongly recommend this episode of the brilliant 'Cursed Objects' podcast: Jamie's Cursed Cookin.
From the episode info:
posted by Joeruckus at 12:36 AM on October 17, 2023 [17 favorites]
From the episode info:
Pukka! We’re dancing in the moonlight with the king of the English culinary world, Jamie Oliver. How did someone so cringe achieve such dizzying levels of fame and power? How did he end up being an unofficial advisor to Tony Blair? Special guests Jonathan Nunn and Biz take us through Jamie’s Naked Chef years, the Downing Street years and the Jerk Rice years, via the extremely cursed Cookin’: Music To Cook By compilation CD. From New Labour and school dinners to the notorious Lamb Curry Song (complete with dodgy Jamaican accent), it’s a wild ride with the world’s most milquetoast indie soundtrack.Cursed Objects (patreon, insta) is presented by Dr Kasia Tee, 'historian of tat', and Dan Hancox, journalist and author. [Reminder to self: post a fpp on Cursed Objects].
posted by Joeruckus at 12:36 AM on October 17, 2023 [17 favorites]
Someone once told me that the UK does not have an equivalent of Casserole/Hot Dish? Can that be true? Surely there must be some Tinned Salmon & Tinned Soup & Frozen Veg Noodle Bake in the local vernacular cookery?
Anyway, such recipes are good for when you have to get a certain number of Nutritional Units Into These Children, yet your time and energy and budget is limited.
posted by bartleby at 12:41 AM on October 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
Anyway, such recipes are good for when you have to get a certain number of Nutritional Units Into These Children, yet your time and energy and budget is limited.
posted by bartleby at 12:41 AM on October 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
I grew up with British cooking shows where people such as Delia Smith would insist there was only one correct way to do something. Then the celebrity chef travel/food show replaced that, with an exoticness so far away from most people's experience that the food wasn't something they'd ever want (or be able) to make.
Jamie Oliver (and, to a lesser extent, Gordon Ramsay) were a breath of fresh air. Sure, Jamie's laddishness was irritating at the start, but as he's matured, his commitment to de-mystifying cooking and making it fun and relatable, and most of all, doable, to non-cooks is really awesome.
I made his £1 mushroom risotto last year after years of being a little scared of trying to make risotto - and I'm a good, experienced cook - and it was absolutely delicious and easy to make.
In other words: fuck this reviewer.
posted by essexjan at 12:45 AM on October 17, 2023 [15 favorites]
Jamie Oliver (and, to a lesser extent, Gordon Ramsay) were a breath of fresh air. Sure, Jamie's laddishness was irritating at the start, but as he's matured, his commitment to de-mystifying cooking and making it fun and relatable, and most of all, doable, to non-cooks is really awesome.
I made his £1 mushroom risotto last year after years of being a little scared of trying to make risotto - and I'm a good, experienced cook - and it was absolutely delicious and easy to make.
In other words: fuck this reviewer.
posted by essexjan at 12:45 AM on October 17, 2023 [15 favorites]
I feel like this is a good show for someone who is starting to cook from whole ingredients vs. processed boxes of food.
I had a little culture shock my last time in the UK, maybe 7 or 8 years ago. I went into a ?Sainsbury's? to get a drink and as I walked the aisles it was packed to the gills with pre-packaged meals, boxed stuff, bagged stuff, frozen stuff. I could not really see any plain old food.
Is this what people eat in the UK? Where do they get vegetables, and flour, and fruit? Does all the bread and fruit and veg come pre-cut and sold in little boxes and trays? WTF? Pre-made sandwiches in plastic were a whole aisle!
One thing that the developing world has, at least the bits I have been living in, is cheap and ready access to plain raw foods.
posted by Meatbomb at 1:04 AM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I had a little culture shock my last time in the UK, maybe 7 or 8 years ago. I went into a ?Sainsbury's? to get a drink and as I walked the aisles it was packed to the gills with pre-packaged meals, boxed stuff, bagged stuff, frozen stuff. I could not really see any plain old food.
Is this what people eat in the UK? Where do they get vegetables, and flour, and fruit? Does all the bread and fruit and veg come pre-cut and sold in little boxes and trays? WTF? Pre-made sandwiches in plastic were a whole aisle!
One thing that the developing world has, at least the bits I have been living in, is cheap and ready access to plain raw foods.
posted by Meatbomb at 1:04 AM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
As Joeruckus points out, those outside the UK might not be fully aware of Jamie Oliver's history and what he stands for in the minds of many British people. He's a ubiquitous multimillionaire celebrity chef with a distinctive, slightly affected style that puts many people's teeth on edge, who regularly shills for massive corporations, and whose poorly managed restaurant chain collapsed leaving employees and suppliers in difficulty. This leaves him wide open to that popular British pastime, trying to pull down successful people and put them back in their perceived place. This piece is pretty restrained when viewed as part of that genre...
(On preview Meatbomb, of course we have access to 'plain old food', I suspect you may have been in one of the smaller Sainsbury's mini stores that tend to stock goods aimed at people at work or using mass transit, where prepackaged stuff in the norm for fairly obvious reasons. If you go to a full sized Sainsbury's or other supermarket on the edge of any of our towns and cities usually the first thing you will see is a massive area of fresh fruit and veg.)
posted by tomsk at 1:13 AM on October 17, 2023 [29 favorites]
(On preview Meatbomb, of course we have access to 'plain old food', I suspect you may have been in one of the smaller Sainsbury's mini stores that tend to stock goods aimed at people at work or using mass transit, where prepackaged stuff in the norm for fairly obvious reasons. If you go to a full sized Sainsbury's or other supermarket on the edge of any of our towns and cities usually the first thing you will see is a massive area of fresh fruit and veg.)
posted by tomsk at 1:13 AM on October 17, 2023 [29 favorites]
Aha! Yes it was a smaller shop in the city centre, so that would explain it. Thanks tomsk.
posted by Meatbomb at 1:21 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Meatbomb at 1:21 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
^ Agreed tomsk, this story has such a depth of UK baggage loaded behind it.
Jamie Oliver has always been one of the easiest celebrity punchbags out there, and evolving UK society, politics and media standards over the past 25 years haven't changed that at all...
White, male, breakout success, super rich...
But also thick (left school at 16 with 2 GCSEs), provincial (everybody can feel free to trash Essex), overweight to just the right degree (the cheeky chubby chappy), boorish (didn't wear a tie to receive his MBE) and illiterate (ok quasi-illiterate, yes he did read his first book aged 38 and use it to raise awareness about dyslexia but darling, it was book two of the "Hunger Games" trilogy. You can take a cook to culture...)
And of course he is that really, a celebrity cook, not a chef... only ever worked in 3 kitchens dontchaknow :
1. His parent's pub in Essex (such quaint acceptance of child labour... too tubby to send up the chimneys I suppose)
2. Carluccio's (i.e. Pizza Express for the upwardly aspiring)
3. The River Café (notorious hotbed of pseudo-Toryism / chattering-class-treachery - delete Right / Left as required)
...
He could literally have pursued anything he wanted in food, celebrity or a life of indulgence from the age of 25 onwards... and all that could easily have been done without pasting more targets on his back through activism or leaning into his background.
In the scheme of people whose success as represented by obscene material disparity should be resented, mocked and disparaged, there are many other fish I can think of that are more deserving of frying.
posted by protorp at 1:24 AM on October 17, 2023 [24 favorites]
Jamie Oliver has always been one of the easiest celebrity punchbags out there, and evolving UK society, politics and media standards over the past 25 years haven't changed that at all...
White, male, breakout success, super rich...
But also thick (left school at 16 with 2 GCSEs), provincial (everybody can feel free to trash Essex), overweight to just the right degree (the cheeky chubby chappy), boorish (didn't wear a tie to receive his MBE) and illiterate (ok quasi-illiterate, yes he did read his first book aged 38 and use it to raise awareness about dyslexia but darling, it was book two of the "Hunger Games" trilogy. You can take a cook to culture...)
And of course he is that really, a celebrity cook, not a chef... only ever worked in 3 kitchens dontchaknow :
1. His parent's pub in Essex (such quaint acceptance of child labour... too tubby to send up the chimneys I suppose)
2. Carluccio's (i.e. Pizza Express for the upwardly aspiring)
3. The River Café (notorious hotbed of pseudo-Toryism / chattering-class-treachery - delete Right / Left as required)
...
He could literally have pursued anything he wanted in food, celebrity or a life of indulgence from the age of 25 onwards... and all that could easily have been done without pasting more targets on his back through activism or leaning into his background.
In the scheme of people whose success as represented by obscene material disparity should be resented, mocked and disparaged, there are many other fish I can think of that are more deserving of frying.
posted by protorp at 1:24 AM on October 17, 2023 [24 favorites]
Jamie’s 5 Ingredient Meals has the air of an educational state broadcast made to raise morale after a national catastrophe – inevitably, perhaps, because that’s more or less what it is.
The quote in the FPP is the thing that redeems this review, and it is thought-provoking. Why are so many people in the UK struggling, and aren't Oliver's shows just trying to remedy a probably that should be solved on a much higher, structural level? Also, isn't Oliver really irritating?
But the reviewer shows his middle-class Antoinette-ishness by assuming everyone and their uncle knows how to make a creamy pasta sauce or a delicious toast out of almost nothing. I know very few people who can do this. I can see when I stand in line at the supermarket that by far the most of the people who shop there know how to open a Knorr package of pasta or how to put a frozen dinner in the microwave. And this is a supermarket that has won prizes for being most focused on good local produce among its peers (do supermarkets have peers?).
Ultra-processed foods make up almost two-thirds of Britain’s school meals. So someone, like the lunch ladies, don't know how to make delicious food out of cheap ingredients. (Yes, I'm aware of Oliver's cross-Atlantic lunch crusade. He wasn't wrong there, either). But when I was a kid, 40 years ago, I'd come home from a school where the lunch ladies made terrible food out of the food they grew in the school gardens, to a mum who made food from tins and boxes that was much tastier. If I hadn't had an amazing grandmother, I'd have known nothing else. I have a hard time imagining I could be the only person in the UK with that experience. And BTW, already then, where we lived in Yorkshire was a food desert.
Because of that amazing gran, in Denmark, and because of a dear Italian friend who was a cook, I am not really a fan of Oliver's recipes. I didn't like his restaurants much, though they weren't terrible. IMO, they depend too much on "punchiness", on using garlic and chili to elevate unbalanced recipes. But they are a good damn better than a Knorr package and cheaper, too.
posted by mumimor at 1:26 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
The quote in the FPP is the thing that redeems this review, and it is thought-provoking. Why are so many people in the UK struggling, and aren't Oliver's shows just trying to remedy a probably that should be solved on a much higher, structural level? Also, isn't Oliver really irritating?
But the reviewer shows his middle-class Antoinette-ishness by assuming everyone and their uncle knows how to make a creamy pasta sauce or a delicious toast out of almost nothing. I know very few people who can do this. I can see when I stand in line at the supermarket that by far the most of the people who shop there know how to open a Knorr package of pasta or how to put a frozen dinner in the microwave. And this is a supermarket that has won prizes for being most focused on good local produce among its peers (do supermarkets have peers?).
Ultra-processed foods make up almost two-thirds of Britain’s school meals. So someone, like the lunch ladies, don't know how to make delicious food out of cheap ingredients. (Yes, I'm aware of Oliver's cross-Atlantic lunch crusade. He wasn't wrong there, either). But when I was a kid, 40 years ago, I'd come home from a school where the lunch ladies made terrible food out of the food they grew in the school gardens, to a mum who made food from tins and boxes that was much tastier. If I hadn't had an amazing grandmother, I'd have known nothing else. I have a hard time imagining I could be the only person in the UK with that experience. And BTW, already then, where we lived in Yorkshire was a food desert.
Because of that amazing gran, in Denmark, and because of a dear Italian friend who was a cook, I am not really a fan of Oliver's recipes. I didn't like his restaurants much, though they weren't terrible. IMO, they depend too much on "punchiness", on using garlic and chili to elevate unbalanced recipes. But they are a good damn better than a Knorr package and cheaper, too.
posted by mumimor at 1:26 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
The other part of uk-specific knowledge that might come in useful is that the Guardian newspaper hated the left-wing opposition during the 2019 election, and pretty much trashed their campaign. Of course, the guardian editorial staff wasn’t to know that the next Tory gov was going to oversee a pandemic and make some horribly wrong calls about the economy which tanked the standard of living, but they’ve got to be feeling a bit ashamed in guardian towers.
posted by The River Ivel at 1:36 AM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by The River Ivel at 1:36 AM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
Hi Meatbomb: the convenience food sector in the UK is quite prominent versus other countries, and it is present at both the low and high ends of the market. If you go Marks and Spencer, for example, you will see many easy to prepare but fearsomely expensive (and marked up) items. That tendency even extends to some items which would formerly have been standard fresh ingredients: a box of perfect looking satsumas or a chicken ready to be cooked in a prepared sauce. Those parts of supermarkets which signaled "fresh ingredients" such as a butcher or fish counter, have been disappearing - leaving consumers to forage within the aisles for options which are more limited. Finally, Brexit, has limited supplies of many types of food from the rest of Europe: finding something like an apricot (grown widely in France), even in season, can be tricky. There has also been a rise of the type of "convenience supermarket" mentioned by tomsk: places in town centres where the proportion of space given over to basic ingredients is even smaller. For those who are short of money, getting to one of the larger stores with better options, can be a challenge.
posted by rongorongo at 1:45 AM on October 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by rongorongo at 1:45 AM on October 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
like, wait, what? we're making cheesy pea pasta? that's easy the name itself tells you how to make it, right?
what kind of peas.
how much cheese.
which cheeses are okay. will some not melt right. what can be switched for what.
do i need to add milk to it or something i've heard sometimes people do that but i might be wrong.
what shape of pasta can i use.
are they all the same.
how do i know what can be substituted for what in general.
how do i know the pasta is done.
how much should i stir.
how high should the heat be.
do i need to put salt in the water.
do i need to put olive oil in the water i've heard you need to do that how much do i put in.
should i use a different oil if we don't have olive oil.
if i switch something i shouldn't or don't switch something i can switch or use the wrong pasta otherwise do the wrong thing will it be ruined.
The answer to almost all of these questions is "it doesn't matter much". You can use whatever peas. Whatever cheese. If it doesn't melt, it'll still taste good. You can use any shape of pasta. People might get haughty about "al dente" (I am one of these people) but really, you can't fuck up pasta so bad or doesn't taste good as long as you're boiling it. Follow packet instructions if you want a guide. How much you stir doesn't matter. You don't need oil in the water, but it won't harm anything if you do. As long as the water is boiling, the heat is fine.
But really, the main question to answer is the last one: it will not be ruined. The details, by and large, don't matter much in cooking. All the "you must do this, it has to be this way" stuff is quibbling about the last 5-10% quality of a dish, in by far most cases. You are still 90+% there if you deliberately fuck it all up - you still have a decent meal.
People are so intimidated by cooking in general, like you can ruin everything in a moment. If you're a restaurant chef, sure that may be true. But the rest of us? If I accidentally cook the hell out if that steak, it just means I'm eating a well-done steak instead of medium rare. If I'm a chef, fuck me does that matter, that is a bad mistake. If I'm cooking at home for myself and loved ones, it means we eat a lovely steak, that isn't quite how I prefer it.
Food is hard to genuinely fuck up. The fact that it's also hard to perfect doesn't mean it's hard to do decently.
posted by Dysk at 2:08 AM on October 17, 2023 [17 favorites]
what kind of peas.
how much cheese.
which cheeses are okay. will some not melt right. what can be switched for what.
do i need to add milk to it or something i've heard sometimes people do that but i might be wrong.
what shape of pasta can i use.
are they all the same.
how do i know what can be substituted for what in general.
how do i know the pasta is done.
how much should i stir.
how high should the heat be.
do i need to put salt in the water.
do i need to put olive oil in the water i've heard you need to do that how much do i put in.
should i use a different oil if we don't have olive oil.
if i switch something i shouldn't or don't switch something i can switch or use the wrong pasta otherwise do the wrong thing will it be ruined.
The answer to almost all of these questions is "it doesn't matter much". You can use whatever peas. Whatever cheese. If it doesn't melt, it'll still taste good. You can use any shape of pasta. People might get haughty about "al dente" (I am one of these people) but really, you can't fuck up pasta so bad or doesn't taste good as long as you're boiling it. Follow packet instructions if you want a guide. How much you stir doesn't matter. You don't need oil in the water, but it won't harm anything if you do. As long as the water is boiling, the heat is fine.
But really, the main question to answer is the last one: it will not be ruined. The details, by and large, don't matter much in cooking. All the "you must do this, it has to be this way" stuff is quibbling about the last 5-10% quality of a dish, in by far most cases. You are still 90+% there if you deliberately fuck it all up - you still have a decent meal.
People are so intimidated by cooking in general, like you can ruin everything in a moment. If you're a restaurant chef, sure that may be true. But the rest of us? If I accidentally cook the hell out if that steak, it just means I'm eating a well-done steak instead of medium rare. If I'm a chef, fuck me does that matter, that is a bad mistake. If I'm cooking at home for myself and loved ones, it means we eat a lovely steak, that isn't quite how I prefer it.
Food is hard to genuinely fuck up. The fact that it's also hard to perfect doesn't mean it's hard to do decently.
posted by Dysk at 2:08 AM on October 17, 2023 [17 favorites]
it was packed to the gills with pre-packaged meals, boxed stuff, bagged stuff, frozen stuff
funny that this is one of the things people always say they love about japan
posted by emmling at 2:19 AM on October 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
funny that this is one of the things people always say they love about japan
posted by emmling at 2:19 AM on October 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
My wife works at the chalkface of this and runs a local charity that delivers cooking and nutrition workshops in communities where they are needed. (This is in the UK.) It's staggering
- how much of the population lack the social capital so many of us take for granted and don't know how to plan, budget for, cook and store affordable, tasty and nutritious meals. And they also often trapped in much more broadly chaotic lives that lack the stability and structure that makes applying those skills easier.
- how badly served many communities are by food stores that just don't offer fresh basic ingredients (go into a convenience store in a typical community where they work and the selection is heartbreaking, it's all ultra-processed crap and booze)
It's a colossal problem with many connected causes (although most lead back to the government) and they simply can't meet demand. Jamie can put my teeth on edge but he also continually sticks his neck out to try and help, and he gets and deals with the same criticism every time. But as far as I know he's well-respected among the people actually trying to deal with these issues at a local level.
posted by dowcrag at 2:21 AM on October 17, 2023 [17 favorites]
- how much of the population lack the social capital so many of us take for granted and don't know how to plan, budget for, cook and store affordable, tasty and nutritious meals. And they also often trapped in much more broadly chaotic lives that lack the stability and structure that makes applying those skills easier.
- how badly served many communities are by food stores that just don't offer fresh basic ingredients (go into a convenience store in a typical community where they work and the selection is heartbreaking, it's all ultra-processed crap and booze)
It's a colossal problem with many connected causes (although most lead back to the government) and they simply can't meet demand. Jamie can put my teeth on edge but he also continually sticks his neck out to try and help, and he gets and deals with the same criticism every time. But as far as I know he's well-respected among the people actually trying to deal with these issues at a local level.
posted by dowcrag at 2:21 AM on October 17, 2023 [17 favorites]
Jamie has been a brilliant and steadfast kitchen companion.
This. He is maniacally enthusiastic, ridiculous & mixes things with his hands.
posted by chavenet at 2:27 AM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
This. He is maniacally enthusiastic, ridiculous & mixes things with his hands.
posted by chavenet at 2:27 AM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yes, I'm aware of Oliver's cross-Atlantic lunch crusade. He wasn't wrong there, either
Dan Olson has a terrific video on Jamie's School Dinners that I think unlocks some of the irritation that some British people feel about Oliver: there's a pronounced classism to Jamie Oliver's attitude to food. It comes through a little bit here, where parmesan is a "clever little swap" for pecorino if you don't have it. The differences between them do not actually matter for the purposes of making cheesy pea pasta.
And I think that's what the writer here is reacting to - Jamie Oliver is rich and a bit of a snob, and he's the guy telling you how to make cheap food that won't offend his upper-middle class pallete, which is why he has to call cheesy pea pasta "sweet pea orecchiette".
posted by Merus at 2:29 AM on October 17, 2023 [15 favorites]
Dan Olson has a terrific video on Jamie's School Dinners that I think unlocks some of the irritation that some British people feel about Oliver: there's a pronounced classism to Jamie Oliver's attitude to food. It comes through a little bit here, where parmesan is a "clever little swap" for pecorino if you don't have it. The differences between them do not actually matter for the purposes of making cheesy pea pasta.
And I think that's what the writer here is reacting to - Jamie Oliver is rich and a bit of a snob, and he's the guy telling you how to make cheap food that won't offend his upper-middle class pallete, which is why he has to call cheesy pea pasta "sweet pea orecchiette".
posted by Merus at 2:29 AM on October 17, 2023 [15 favorites]
The show does at least sound more helpful than eating dessert outside of No 10 to protest cheap high calorie food.
posted by lucidium at 3:02 AM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by lucidium at 3:02 AM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I admire Jamie Oliver and have enjoyed making recipes from his books for many years. He not only provides simple recipes but simple recipes that often contain a lot of veggies. Some of the simple meal chefs seem to forget adding vegetables to high starch recipes. His advocacy for improving school lunch menus is tremendous, although I'm not sure if it had much impact on American public schools after all given the state legisilators are in bed with the high processed food industry.
posted by waving at 3:11 AM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by waving at 3:11 AM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Dan Olson has a terrific video on Jamie's School Dinners
Doesn't look terrific to me. Come on, Oliver is showing little kids how UPF is made. He is not giving a lecture on food production at a university. I showed my kids a video about pink goo when they were small to stop them from wanting to go to McDs and it worked, they almost never went there again. (Drunk teens are a special situation). It is pretty heart-breaking to see the American kids wanting to eat that.
And of course you use the whole bird. Of course Jamie Oliver uses the whole bird. But he doesn't blend the carcass to make pink goo, he probably makes a lovely stock, that can enhance his stews or make a risotto. If your options are either blend the carcass or waste the carcass, you are incredibly out of touch with reality. And that applies to the food industry as well. Lots of food factories make stock out of the carcasses and it is fine.
The food and class discussion is such a weird thing, and specially so in the UK and US. What is the point? Are you saying that because you are working class, you have the right to eat food that will kill you! Or what? Go ahead, but that is just strange. Here in my neighborhood most lower class people are immigrants, so they buy cheap produce at the Asian stores and cook from scratch, because it is cheaper, and obviously better tasting and healthier. It's the middle classes who are eating waste disguised as convenience.
I get that a lot of people can't cook, and respect that is a struggle. And clearly it is an evil spiral of doom, where you can't get good produce in areas where no-one cooks. I also agree that Jamie Oliver telling people who can't cook and can't get reasonable produce seems like a superficial answer to a deep structural problem. BUT, I don't get why otherwise sensible, well-educated people defend the food industry, who are only out to kill us with their terrible food-like substances.
See this: Many of today’s unhealthy foods were brought to you by Big Tobacco
BTW, my stepdad, who still lives in the UK, has an allotment garden. Before Brexit, it was mainly for pleasure, he enjoyed spending time there and was proud of his produce. Now he depends on it as a pensioner with limited funds. They eat more and more vegetarian food, not for ethical or climate reasons, but because they can't afford meat or fish.
posted by mumimor at 3:12 AM on October 17, 2023 [16 favorites]
Doesn't look terrific to me. Come on, Oliver is showing little kids how UPF is made. He is not giving a lecture on food production at a university. I showed my kids a video about pink goo when they were small to stop them from wanting to go to McDs and it worked, they almost never went there again. (Drunk teens are a special situation). It is pretty heart-breaking to see the American kids wanting to eat that.
And of course you use the whole bird. Of course Jamie Oliver uses the whole bird. But he doesn't blend the carcass to make pink goo, he probably makes a lovely stock, that can enhance his stews or make a risotto. If your options are either blend the carcass or waste the carcass, you are incredibly out of touch with reality. And that applies to the food industry as well. Lots of food factories make stock out of the carcasses and it is fine.
The food and class discussion is such a weird thing, and specially so in the UK and US. What is the point? Are you saying that because you are working class, you have the right to eat food that will kill you! Or what? Go ahead, but that is just strange. Here in my neighborhood most lower class people are immigrants, so they buy cheap produce at the Asian stores and cook from scratch, because it is cheaper, and obviously better tasting and healthier. It's the middle classes who are eating waste disguised as convenience.
I get that a lot of people can't cook, and respect that is a struggle. And clearly it is an evil spiral of doom, where you can't get good produce in areas where no-one cooks. I also agree that Jamie Oliver telling people who can't cook and can't get reasonable produce seems like a superficial answer to a deep structural problem. BUT, I don't get why otherwise sensible, well-educated people defend the food industry, who are only out to kill us with their terrible food-like substances.
See this: Many of today’s unhealthy foods were brought to you by Big Tobacco
BTW, my stepdad, who still lives in the UK, has an allotment garden. Before Brexit, it was mainly for pleasure, he enjoyed spending time there and was proud of his produce. Now he depends on it as a pensioner with limited funds. They eat more and more vegetarian food, not for ethical or climate reasons, but because they can't afford meat or fish.
posted by mumimor at 3:12 AM on October 17, 2023 [16 favorites]
He calls it "sweet pea orecchietta" and you can watch it on youtube here
Thanks for the link. That looks absolutely delicious and that's now on my list. British media can get fucked.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:40 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Thanks for the link. That looks absolutely delicious and that's now on my list. British media can get fucked.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:40 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Looking at this thread, I feel obliged to cautiously recommend British foodie YouTube channel Sorted Food. 3 non-chefs and 1 (sometimes 2) chefs do food related stuff, from recipe videos, chef vs challenges, cooking games, experiments, and so on.
They seem generally encouraging, positive, kind, and try not to be snooty about food. Feels like some people here might like the vibe.
It's a cautious recommendation because (1) their videos are somewhat ill-curated, often you're better off using google search to find what you want, (2) innuendo can sometimes get annoying, and (3) they seem to be searching for their voice at the moment, so their current videos can feel a bit random.
Some videos to start you off:
Dame Emma Thompson and her daughter Gaia Wise on a Pass It On.
Kitchen Gadget Review Vol. 9.
A playlist of old videos when they did mostly recipes.
Bonus Tom Scott crossover.
posted by theony at 3:48 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
They seem generally encouraging, positive, kind, and try not to be snooty about food. Feels like some people here might like the vibe.
It's a cautious recommendation because (1) their videos are somewhat ill-curated, often you're better off using google search to find what you want, (2) innuendo can sometimes get annoying, and (3) they seem to be searching for their voice at the moment, so their current videos can feel a bit random.
Some videos to start you off:
Dame Emma Thompson and her daughter Gaia Wise on a Pass It On.
Kitchen Gadget Review Vol. 9.
A playlist of old videos when they did mostly recipes.
Bonus Tom Scott crossover.
posted by theony at 3:48 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
It may seem like this man wrote a mildly snotty review of a Jamie Oliver show, but underneath I detect an irredeemable soul impervious to kindness, positivity, and quite possibly the spiritual light. Had this review not been written, millions of Britons would be happily sitting down to their cheesy pea pasta, but now they don't know how to make it and are attempting to eat cardboard instead. I hope he knows what he did, but I suspect this culinary eugenicist, a man who no doubt is some sort of vegetarian because Hitler, doesn't care.
As an American, I demand that he be acted against with extreme prejudice before his negativity spreads! And if he ever comes to this land, it's on sight with a Kindness Matters Here lawn sign. You have been warned.
posted by kingdead at 4:05 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
As an American, I demand that he be acted against with extreme prejudice before his negativity spreads! And if he ever comes to this land, it's on sight with a Kindness Matters Here lawn sign. You have been warned.
posted by kingdead at 4:05 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
This is one of those "more than one thing can be true at the same time" things, isn't it?
All the stuff upthread about classism in food and how Jamie has made mistakes and is a multi-millionaire who remained so while his staff got fucked over by his failing restaurants and how he's honestly just a bit annoying sometimes is absolutely true. But so is all the stuff about him campaigning for better school meals for children and doing £1 recipes during a cost of living crisis and the broader job he's done of de-mystifying cooking for a whole generation of British people[1].
The show itself is fine. If you have pecorino and parmesan in your fridge, it's probably not aimed at you; you already know how to make cheesy pea pasta and probably don't care if it costs more than a pound.
[1] I say this, because I'm one of them, and so are a pile of people I know from my late teens/early 20s in the late 90s. Delia taught me recipes, Jamie taught me to cook.
posted by parm at 4:38 AM on October 17, 2023 [13 favorites]
All the stuff upthread about classism in food and how Jamie has made mistakes and is a multi-millionaire who remained so while his staff got fucked over by his failing restaurants and how he's honestly just a bit annoying sometimes is absolutely true. But so is all the stuff about him campaigning for better school meals for children and doing £1 recipes during a cost of living crisis and the broader job he's done of de-mystifying cooking for a whole generation of British people[1].
The show itself is fine. If you have pecorino and parmesan in your fridge, it's probably not aimed at you; you already know how to make cheesy pea pasta and probably don't care if it costs more than a pound.
[1] I say this, because I'm one of them, and so are a pile of people I know from my late teens/early 20s in the late 90s. Delia taught me recipes, Jamie taught me to cook.
posted by parm at 4:38 AM on October 17, 2023 [13 favorites]
> The answer to almost all of these questions is "it doesn't matter much". You can use whatever peas. Whatever cheese. [...] Food is hard to genuinely fuck up. The fact that it's also hard to perfect doesn't mean it's hard to do decently.
ah, it seems you are someone who has never in their adult life ever made a nice big pot of pasta mash in piping hot cheesy milk.
in general "do whatever it doesn't matter much it's hard to fuck up" is really bad advice for anything involving unfamiliar tasks involving irreversible steps and materials that cost money. it's like saying "it's simple just do `git rebase -i HEAD~10` or whatever, the number doesn't matter, just far enough back that it's everything you need to drop or squash, and drop the commits you want to drop and squash the ones you want to combine with the previous commits, you can't fuck it up, oh, and you'll have to use --force when you push to your remote repo, ignore the warnings you get."
in general if you're teaching something that's unfamiliar to the learner, particularly something where there's a sense that all participants in the community already know it, you absolutely must avoid language like "it's hard to fuck this up" or "this is simple" or anything with a whiff of the suggestion that the thing is very, very easy. if something really is simple for you, don't say it's simple, say it's straightforward and then give instructions as detailed as you possibly can — instructions that really are straightforward. if you say something is simple and that it's hard to fuck up, when the learner fucks it up the implication is that they themselves are simple and fucked up. maximal discouragement.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 4:46 AM on October 17, 2023 [56 favorites]
ah, it seems you are someone who has never in their adult life ever made a nice big pot of pasta mash in piping hot cheesy milk.
in general "do whatever it doesn't matter much it's hard to fuck up" is really bad advice for anything involving unfamiliar tasks involving irreversible steps and materials that cost money. it's like saying "it's simple just do `git rebase -i HEAD~10` or whatever, the number doesn't matter, just far enough back that it's everything you need to drop or squash, and drop the commits you want to drop and squash the ones you want to combine with the previous commits, you can't fuck it up, oh, and you'll have to use --force when you push to your remote repo, ignore the warnings you get."
in general if you're teaching something that's unfamiliar to the learner, particularly something where there's a sense that all participants in the community already know it, you absolutely must avoid language like "it's hard to fuck this up" or "this is simple" or anything with a whiff of the suggestion that the thing is very, very easy. if something really is simple for you, don't say it's simple, say it's straightforward and then give instructions as detailed as you possibly can — instructions that really are straightforward. if you say something is simple and that it's hard to fuck up, when the learner fucks it up the implication is that they themselves are simple and fucked up. maximal discouragement.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 4:46 AM on October 17, 2023 [56 favorites]
> The food and class discussion is such a weird thing, and specially so in the UK and US. What is the point? Are you saying that because you are working class, you have the right to eat food that will kill you! Or what?
i don't think anyone in this thread is saying that?
> Go ahead, but that is just strange. Here in my neighborhood most lower class people are immigrants, so they buy cheap produce at the Asian stores and cook from scratch, because it is cheaper, and obviously better tasting and healthier. It's the middle classes who are eating waste disguised as convenience.
it's cheaper, obviously better tasting and healthier if someone has patiently shown you how to do it, starting with the absolute ground-floor basics and diligently avoiding any language implying that everyone reasonable already knows how to do it. if you're lucky you get this from your parents or community when you're single digits, if you're not enjoy your piping hot bowl of pasta mash in cheesy milk, served with a side of self-loathing about one's own unfixable ineptitude.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 4:48 AM on October 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
i don't think anyone in this thread is saying that?
> Go ahead, but that is just strange. Here in my neighborhood most lower class people are immigrants, so they buy cheap produce at the Asian stores and cook from scratch, because it is cheaper, and obviously better tasting and healthier. It's the middle classes who are eating waste disguised as convenience.
it's cheaper, obviously better tasting and healthier if someone has patiently shown you how to do it, starting with the absolute ground-floor basics and diligently avoiding any language implying that everyone reasonable already knows how to do it. if you're lucky you get this from your parents or community when you're single digits, if you're not enjoy your piping hot bowl of pasta mash in cheesy milk, served with a side of self-loathing about one's own unfixable ineptitude.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 4:48 AM on October 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
(i had never thought of putting peas with noodles, and now i have a use for this huge bag of frozen peas other than, hey look, now i've microwaved yet more peas.) (although now i see i am out of cheese.)
posted by mittens at 4:49 AM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by mittens at 4:49 AM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
> Had this review not been written, millions of Britons would be happily sitting down to their cheesy pea pasta, but now they don't know how to make it and are attempting to eat cardboard instead. I hope he knows what he did, but I suspect this culinary eugenicist, a man who no doubt is some sort of vegetarian because Hitler, doesn't care. As an American, I demand that he be acted against with extreme prejudice before his negativity spreads! And if he ever comes to this land, it's on sight with a Kindness Matters Here lawn sign. You have been warned.
what the fuck.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 4:49 AM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
what the fuck.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 4:49 AM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
I see no one in the comments here was ever dragged out for a meal to Jamie's Italian, by far the worst food in its price range, mostly barely edible stodge, and which he extracted handsome amounts of money out of before all his creditors took.
But honestly, reading the comments here, I'd have thought the article was a far bigger slamming. For all that it mocked the cheesy peas pasta (an in joke for — I will admit — middle aged people who grew up on the Fast Show like me), the review definitely introduced it by its proper name of sweet pea orecchiette.
Yes, it is a review that seems to take it as read that the UK is undergoing a shitty decline in living standards, but that's because it gets boring and depressing to earnestly reintroduce that in every single article, so the reviewer's writing for their audience. An audience who might well be interested in the program, but will definitely find Jamie's gigantic ego an irritation and for whom this will be the palate cleanser that balances it out.
If people are thinking that maybe The Guardian should stand behind people because they're promoting accessible food, well, it's probably not actually undermining them here (see previous paragraph), but it's worth mentioning that their food section is second to none, with a good emphasis on accessible and interesting meals.
I clicked through here excited about joining in with taking the piss out of Jamie Oliver, a man whose giant ego and giant bank balance can certainly stand it, and I was disappointed to find the reaction was nothing but po-faced sanctimony.
posted by ambrosen at 5:08 AM on October 17, 2023 [14 favorites]
But honestly, reading the comments here, I'd have thought the article was a far bigger slamming. For all that it mocked the cheesy peas pasta (an in joke for — I will admit — middle aged people who grew up on the Fast Show like me), the review definitely introduced it by its proper name of sweet pea orecchiette.
Yes, it is a review that seems to take it as read that the UK is undergoing a shitty decline in living standards, but that's because it gets boring and depressing to earnestly reintroduce that in every single article, so the reviewer's writing for their audience. An audience who might well be interested in the program, but will definitely find Jamie's gigantic ego an irritation and for whom this will be the palate cleanser that balances it out.
If people are thinking that maybe The Guardian should stand behind people because they're promoting accessible food, well, it's probably not actually undermining them here (see previous paragraph), but it's worth mentioning that their food section is second to none, with a good emphasis on accessible and interesting meals.
I clicked through here excited about joining in with taking the piss out of Jamie Oliver, a man whose giant ego and giant bank balance can certainly stand it, and I was disappointed to find the reaction was nothing but po-faced sanctimony.
posted by ambrosen at 5:08 AM on October 17, 2023 [14 favorites]
> (i had never thought of putting peas with noodles, and now i have a use for this huge bag of frozen peas other than, hey look, now i've microwaved yet more peas.) (although now i see i am out of cheese.)
I think it was from Mark Bittman but I can't find a link now, so here is the recipe I kept. I haven't made it recently, if I remember correctly it was a bit dry but tasty.
Pasta With Peas, Pancetta, Pecorino, Parmesan, Parsley and Pepper
This "sauce" can be made in the time it takes for the pasta to cook.
Ingredients
• 1 pound pasta
• 1 10-ounce package frozen peas
• 1/3 pound pancetta diced
• 1/4 cup pecorino grated
• 1/4 cup parmesan grated
• 1/4 cup chopped parsley
• 1 tablespoon black pepper
Method
• Drop the pasta into boiling water (I do not salt the water for this dish because the cheese and pancetta are sufficiently salty for my taste)
• Saute the pancetta in a high-sided skillet or dutch oven (large enough to hold 1 pound of cooked pasta) until it is nicely browned and has rendered its fat. (about 6-7 minutes)
• Stir in the peas.
• Strain the cooked pasta (it should be al dente) and transfer to the pan with the pancetta and peas
• Stir in the pecorino, parmesan, parsley and pepper and serve
posted by anzen-dai-ichi at 5:08 AM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
I think it was from Mark Bittman but I can't find a link now, so here is the recipe I kept. I haven't made it recently, if I remember correctly it was a bit dry but tasty.
Pasta With Peas, Pancetta, Pecorino, Parmesan, Parsley and Pepper
This "sauce" can be made in the time it takes for the pasta to cook.
Ingredients
• 1 pound pasta
• 1 10-ounce package frozen peas
• 1/3 pound pancetta diced
• 1/4 cup pecorino grated
• 1/4 cup parmesan grated
• 1/4 cup chopped parsley
• 1 tablespoon black pepper
Method
• Drop the pasta into boiling water (I do not salt the water for this dish because the cheese and pancetta are sufficiently salty for my taste)
• Saute the pancetta in a high-sided skillet or dutch oven (large enough to hold 1 pound of cooked pasta) until it is nicely browned and has rendered its fat. (about 6-7 minutes)
• Stir in the peas.
• Strain the cooked pasta (it should be al dente) and transfer to the pan with the pancetta and peas
• Stir in the pecorino, parmesan, parsley and pepper and serve
posted by anzen-dai-ichi at 5:08 AM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
dammit, i went and reread the review, and it does indeed have a lot of bad packed into a very few paragraphs. the author is accusing jamie oliver of being a good teacher? it's like if they went to an adult literacy class and responded by complaining about how bleak it is, and can't you just tell them to sound it out? i mean, it's just words, right? it's just pasta and peas with cheese on, right?
like, okay, i am 100% not familiar with jamie oliver's oeuvre or whatever, i only know him from that one pink slime video, but if he's a bad teacher talk about him being a bad teacher. don't talk about him being a good teacher who's teaching material that you think is too simple.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 5:08 AM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
like, okay, i am 100% not familiar with jamie oliver's oeuvre or whatever, i only know him from that one pink slime video, but if he's a bad teacher talk about him being a bad teacher. don't talk about him being a good teacher who's teaching material that you think is too simple.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 5:08 AM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
parmesan is a "clever little swap" for pecorino if you don't have it
Along the same lines, his Italy cookbook suggested that if you didn't have room for your own pizza oven you should prioritise getting a 2 inch think marble slab to go in the bottom of your oven.
posted by biffa at 5:08 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
Along the same lines, his Italy cookbook suggested that if you didn't have room for your own pizza oven you should prioritise getting a 2 inch think marble slab to go in the bottom of your oven.
posted by biffa at 5:08 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
Looking at this thread, I feel obliged to cautiously recommend British foodie YouTube channel Sorted Food. 3 non-chefs and 1 (sometimes 2) chefs do food related stuff, from recipe videos, chef vs challenges, cooking games, experiments, and so on. They seem generally encouraging, positive, kind, and try not to be snooty about food. Feels like some people here might like the vibe.
I can second the recommendation for Sorted! Although, the caveat there is that the three non-chefs are people who do have some basic cooking experience already, and are continuing to improve as the series goes on. But they are indeed supportive, in that sort of "we're all good friends so we know when it's safe to tease each other" kind of way.
They also have an app called "Sidekick" that helps with meal planning. I've not used it, so I don't know ALL the details, but - I think that when you sign up, you tell it the kind of vibe of cooking you like to do ("less than 8 ingredients", "bold flavors", "vegan", "low cost", etc.), and each week it generates both a shopping list and a list of 4 recipes, which are symbiotically connected so that a) you only get what you need for the week and b) it uses up what you've bought with as little food waste as possible. The recipes also come with a video tutorial that walks you through the cooking - i.e., when step 3 says to cook the pasta, you can pause the video until the pasta's all the way cooked and then unpause it, and the video goes on to "okay, now that the pasta's done you do THIS" and they show you.
Honestly, the one and ONLY thing that has stopped me from getting Sidekick myself (and I"m an avid home cook) is that it's missing the biggest thing that would help me - the ability to generate recipes based on what I've already got in my fridge and pantry. I'd love the ability to have a running database of "I have X number of beans, Y amount of sausage links and Z cans of tomatoes", and the app can track "okay, you can make recipes X Y and Z" and it automatically re-calculates what I've got based on what I make ("okay, you've logged a sausage and apple bake, so that means one less sausage, got it"). I actually wrote into them suggesting that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:20 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I can second the recommendation for Sorted! Although, the caveat there is that the three non-chefs are people who do have some basic cooking experience already, and are continuing to improve as the series goes on. But they are indeed supportive, in that sort of "we're all good friends so we know when it's safe to tease each other" kind of way.
They also have an app called "Sidekick" that helps with meal planning. I've not used it, so I don't know ALL the details, but - I think that when you sign up, you tell it the kind of vibe of cooking you like to do ("less than 8 ingredients", "bold flavors", "vegan", "low cost", etc.), and each week it generates both a shopping list and a list of 4 recipes, which are symbiotically connected so that a) you only get what you need for the week and b) it uses up what you've bought with as little food waste as possible. The recipes also come with a video tutorial that walks you through the cooking - i.e., when step 3 says to cook the pasta, you can pause the video until the pasta's all the way cooked and then unpause it, and the video goes on to "okay, now that the pasta's done you do THIS" and they show you.
Honestly, the one and ONLY thing that has stopped me from getting Sidekick myself (and I"m an avid home cook) is that it's missing the biggest thing that would help me - the ability to generate recipes based on what I've already got in my fridge and pantry. I'd love the ability to have a running database of "I have X number of beans, Y amount of sausage links and Z cans of tomatoes", and the app can track "okay, you can make recipes X Y and Z" and it automatically re-calculates what I've got based on what I make ("okay, you've logged a sausage and apple bake, so that means one less sausage, got it"). I actually wrote into them suggesting that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:20 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is a review of the bread and circuses while the country goes to hell.
If I had a platform, I'd be using it to express how pissed I am as well. Jamie's going to be alright.
posted by slimepuppy at 5:31 AM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
If I had a platform, I'd be using it to express how pissed I am as well. Jamie's going to be alright.
posted by slimepuppy at 5:31 AM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
tomsk: As Joeruckus points out, those outside the UK might not be fully aware of Jamie Oliver's history and what he stands for in the minds of many British people.
Being from outside the UK, Jamie Oliver is best known for the YouTube video showing an assembly of school kids the “pink slime” that forms the basis of their beloved chicken nuggets and oh! wouldn’t you love some nice veggies instead?
You can see his soul depart his body when he asks the kids what they’d rather eat after his laborious demonstration and an overwhelming majority raised their hands for chicken nuggets.
posted by dr_dank at 5:37 AM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
Being from outside the UK, Jamie Oliver is best known for the YouTube video showing an assembly of school kids the “pink slime” that forms the basis of their beloved chicken nuggets and oh! wouldn’t you love some nice veggies instead?
You can see his soul depart his body when he asks the kids what they’d rather eat after his laborious demonstration and an overwhelming majority raised their hands for chicken nuggets.
posted by dr_dank at 5:37 AM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
Just had a quick look back at previous Jamie Oliver threads. He is actually getting it pretty lightly in comparison to some of the past stuff. He's managed to move beyond the 'Fat tongued Mockney wanker' stuff that used to follow him.
posted by biffa at 5:43 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by biffa at 5:43 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Bombastic lowercase pronouncements, you just reminded me of an excellent resource for people with no cooking skills who need detailed explanations of technique: Cooking for Engineers. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to learn how to cook basic and not so basic things without any prior experience.
posted by ananci at 5:54 AM on October 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by ananci at 5:54 AM on October 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
I see no one in the comments here was ever dragged out for a meal to Jamie's Italian, by far the worst food in its price range, mostly barely edible stodge, and which he extracted handsome amounts of money out of before all his creditors took.
As it happens I did get hauled into a Jamie's Italian once, on a stag do, I'd almost blanked it from my memory, thanks for dredging that up. *shudders*
posted by tomsk at 5:58 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
As it happens I did get hauled into a Jamie's Italian once, on a stag do, I'd almost blanked it from my memory, thanks for dredging that up. *shudders*
posted by tomsk at 5:58 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Shocked SHOCKED that the free SAD BASTARD COOKBOOK (subtitled: food you can make so you don't die) hasn't been linked yet.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:00 AM on October 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:00 AM on October 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
ananci, this seems really good! i've just glanced at a few of the recipes, but i can already tell that the pictures are really useful. i like how the salsa cruda one doesn't gloss over any of the different details about cutting tomatoes, onions, and garlic.
(tbf the web design alone establishes so much ethos, so i was well on its side before i even clicked through to the recipes)
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 6:02 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
(tbf the web design alone establishes so much ethos, so i was well on its side before i even clicked through to the recipes)
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 6:02 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
it's cheaper, obviously better tasting and healthier if someone has patiently shown you how to do it, starting with the absolute ground-floor basics and diligently avoiding any language implying that everyone reasonable already knows how to do it. if you're lucky you get this from your parents or community when you're single digits, if you're not enjoy your piping hot bowl of pasta mash in cheesy milk, served with a side of self-loathing about one's own unfixable ineptitude.
Hey, I think we agree. Don't kill the messenger
posted by mumimor at 6:10 AM on October 17, 2023
Hey, I think we agree. Don't kill the messenger
posted by mumimor at 6:10 AM on October 17, 2023
ah, it seems you are someone who has never in their adult life ever made a nice big pot of pasta mash in piping hot cheesy milk.
I haven't, but housemates certainly have, and I enjoyed eating it. It's like, that is the worst case outcome, and it's still delicious.
posted by Dysk at 6:20 AM on October 17, 2023
I haven't, but housemates certainly have, and I enjoyed eating it. It's like, that is the worst case outcome, and it's still delicious.
posted by Dysk at 6:20 AM on October 17, 2023
(Which is what I mean by it being hard to fuck up - you can end up with something unlike what you'd intended, but it's genuinely hard to end up with something inedible unless you leave pans unattended or go ham with the salt.)
posted by Dysk at 6:24 AM on October 17, 2023
posted by Dysk at 6:24 AM on October 17, 2023
I guess a lot depends on how edible one's household finds the concept of undifferentiated glutinous mass--mine being fairly glop-intolerant, this thread is also reminding me of all the trauma I caused by miscooking rice. (Fortunately a thrift-store copy of one of Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks put a stop to that, before too many years of damage were done!)
posted by mittens at 6:51 AM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by mittens at 6:51 AM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
I liked the article.
Cooking is a lot of accumulated knowledge, and it can be hard to break into that. The problem is mostly psychological, people are just afraid to try. That doesn't make Jamie Oliver seem like any less of a prick to me.
He's a sugar tax guy. That pretty much categorically excludes him from "trying to help poor people" territory to me, putting him instead in "orthorexic proto-fascist" territory.
He'd rather make the poor pay more for the little tasty treats that help people cope with late-stage capitalism, rather do a series that inevitably carries the implication "a budget is no excuse to not be a cook" than actually address the structural issues.
I love being a cook. I love how my friends treat me as special because I can take a few odd vegetables and turn them into something interesting and fun. I don't think it should be a mandatory skill, I never have, and I don't think Jamie Oliver is interested in anything except whether he can get a little portion of that limited budget.
posted by Audreynachrome at 6:54 AM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
Cooking is a lot of accumulated knowledge, and it can be hard to break into that. The problem is mostly psychological, people are just afraid to try. That doesn't make Jamie Oliver seem like any less of a prick to me.
He's a sugar tax guy. That pretty much categorically excludes him from "trying to help poor people" territory to me, putting him instead in "orthorexic proto-fascist" territory.
He'd rather make the poor pay more for the little tasty treats that help people cope with late-stage capitalism, rather do a series that inevitably carries the implication "a budget is no excuse to not be a cook" than actually address the structural issues.
I love being a cook. I love how my friends treat me as special because I can take a few odd vegetables and turn them into something interesting and fun. I don't think it should be a mandatory skill, I never have, and I don't think Jamie Oliver is interested in anything except whether he can get a little portion of that limited budget.
posted by Audreynachrome at 6:54 AM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
I guess a lot depends on how edible one's household finds the concept of undifferentiated glutinous mass
To be fair, that is a reasonably accurate description of a lot of trad food where I'm from, even when it goes right.
posted by Dysk at 7:00 AM on October 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
To be fair, that is a reasonably accurate description of a lot of trad food where I'm from, even when it goes right.
posted by Dysk at 7:00 AM on October 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
I know to reserve a bit of the starchy pasta water, but I appear to lack the necessary gene for making it do anything of any use whatsoever with the rest of the ingredients. I gather, from books, that combining a little starchy pasta water with whatever is forming the sauce is supposed to turn it into a *sauce*. Instead, it turns it into wet ingredients. No magic happens here.
Perhaps I cook my pasta in too much water, having once made the mistake of cooking it in too little and ending up with an inedible glutinous mass, and so the specified amount of reserved water doesn't contain enough starch. Perhaps I don't have the sauce ingredients hot enough, or I don't stir things together vigorously enough, or the food senses my fear and seizes the advantage. At any rate, I have learned over time that if the recipe doesn't include double cream or a considerable amount of tomato, I am going to be eating pasta with ingredients, not pasta with sauce.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 7:02 AM on October 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
Perhaps I cook my pasta in too much water, having once made the mistake of cooking it in too little and ending up with an inedible glutinous mass, and so the specified amount of reserved water doesn't contain enough starch. Perhaps I don't have the sauce ingredients hot enough, or I don't stir things together vigorously enough, or the food senses my fear and seizes the advantage. At any rate, I have learned over time that if the recipe doesn't include double cream or a considerable amount of tomato, I am going to be eating pasta with ingredients, not pasta with sauce.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 7:02 AM on October 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
if the pasta mash in hot cheesy milk that your housemates made was delicious, or even borderline edible, then i assure you they did not make proper pasta mash in hot cheesy milk.
apologies for jumping on folks in this thread. for most of my career i've taught in a couple of different fields that are plagued with gatekeepers, and because the material has an intimidating reputation among people who haven't done it before, even teachers who mean well can accidentally game people off. the "never say simple, because nothing. is. simple." advice is part of my first week of class spiel for teaching assistants/in-class tutors, who often are very bright but/and don't know how painful it is to have someone tell you something is simple while they're failing to give nearly enough detail for you to get a grasp on anything. and if you know something well-ish and you're confident in your knowledge, it's very easy to fall into the trap of saying "this is simple you can't mess it up" when it turns out the reason you think it can't be messed up is that you've so internalized where the guardrails are and how to avoid them that you no longer recognize that it's possible to smash into them head-on.
i really don't know jamie oliver's career at all — it seems like people in england are not fans — but this seems like he's deploying a good approach in the show that makes the guardian reviewer sad. sure, okay, it's cheesy pea pasta, but 1) not everyone (including me!) knows how to make cheesy pea pasta, 2) i really like the strategy of using the name "sweet pea orecchiette" for the dish — so long as the instructions are good enough for the learner to make it! — because it's just as accurate a name as cheesy pea pasta and it helps both the learner and the teacher recognize that making it is making cuisine, even if it's starter cuisine. that feeling can carry someone toward making things that guardian reviewers can't sneer at.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:09 AM on October 17, 2023 [11 favorites]
apologies for jumping on folks in this thread. for most of my career i've taught in a couple of different fields that are plagued with gatekeepers, and because the material has an intimidating reputation among people who haven't done it before, even teachers who mean well can accidentally game people off. the "never say simple, because nothing. is. simple." advice is part of my first week of class spiel for teaching assistants/in-class tutors, who often are very bright but/and don't know how painful it is to have someone tell you something is simple while they're failing to give nearly enough detail for you to get a grasp on anything. and if you know something well-ish and you're confident in your knowledge, it's very easy to fall into the trap of saying "this is simple you can't mess it up" when it turns out the reason you think it can't be messed up is that you've so internalized where the guardrails are and how to avoid them that you no longer recognize that it's possible to smash into them head-on.
i really don't know jamie oliver's career at all — it seems like people in england are not fans — but this seems like he's deploying a good approach in the show that makes the guardian reviewer sad. sure, okay, it's cheesy pea pasta, but 1) not everyone (including me!) knows how to make cheesy pea pasta, 2) i really like the strategy of using the name "sweet pea orecchiette" for the dish — so long as the instructions are good enough for the learner to make it! — because it's just as accurate a name as cheesy pea pasta and it helps both the learner and the teacher recognize that making it is making cuisine, even if it's starter cuisine. that feeling can carry someone toward making things that guardian reviewers can't sneer at.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:09 AM on October 17, 2023 [11 favorites]
or the food senses my fear and seizes the advantage
That's it!
posted by mumimor at 7:10 AM on October 17, 2023 [8 favorites]
That's it!
posted by mumimor at 7:10 AM on October 17, 2023 [8 favorites]
And I am well aware that Jamie Oliver would be given an equally - and much more justifiable - hard time if he was pushing dishes made with exotic ingredients like Caciocavallo Podolico cheese and Alba white truffles to an audience of broke proles.
That'd be Ottolenghi whose recipes are required by some sort of law to have at least one but preferable several ingredients that are damn near impossible to find and the Guardian wouldn't run a critique of him because he writes for them.
posted by srboisvert at 7:30 AM on October 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
That'd be Ottolenghi whose recipes are required by some sort of law to have at least one but preferable several ingredients that are damn near impossible to find and the Guardian wouldn't run a critique of him because he writes for them.
posted by srboisvert at 7:30 AM on October 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
I grew up in a cooking/foodie family and internalized basic cooking as well as some improvisational skills and ended up having to check my assumptions about what was obvious in cooking when I met my partner, who has only in the past few years stopped taking recipe instructions exactly as written. For example: an America’s Test Kitchen recipe for a cornstarch-thickened custard cake filling says “Cook until it bubbles.” Which means, basically, until it boils and thickens, not, as my partner assumed, until little bubbles started showing up along the rim of the pot. And don’t get me started on “Cook for 5 minutes or until X happens” because for years it was going to get cooked exactly 5 minutes, until my partner internalized that “X” (golden brown, translucent, fragrant, whatever) was the better way to mark the done-ness of that particular step. And that was with me standing there advising. Anyone who doesn’t have guidance like that is going to have a terrible time.
Two more resources I haven’t seen mentioned and one I have:
1. The website and app Supercook, which catalogs recipes from the web by their ingredients. You put in what you have in the pantry and it links you to recipes that include only those ingredients, or those plus one or two more, etc.
2. Misha Fletcher’s book Cooking is Terrible, along the lines of The Sad Bastard Cookbook, a collection of ways to get more-or-less enjoyable sustenance into yourself and your family when you can’t even.
3. And I’ll 2nd or 3rd Jack Monroe’s cookbooks and website Cooking on a Bootstrap.
posted by telophase at 7:54 AM on October 17, 2023 [8 favorites]
Two more resources I haven’t seen mentioned and one I have:
1. The website and app Supercook, which catalogs recipes from the web by their ingredients. You put in what you have in the pantry and it links you to recipes that include only those ingredients, or those plus one or two more, etc.
2. Misha Fletcher’s book Cooking is Terrible, along the lines of The Sad Bastard Cookbook, a collection of ways to get more-or-less enjoyable sustenance into yourself and your family when you can’t even.
3. And I’ll 2nd or 3rd Jack Monroe’s cookbooks and website Cooking on a Bootstrap.
posted by telophase at 7:54 AM on October 17, 2023 [8 favorites]
I know to reserve a bit of the starchy pasta water, but I appear to lack the necessary gene for making it do anything of any use whatsoever with the rest of the ingredients. I gather, from books, that combining a little starchy pasta water with whatever is forming the sauce is supposed to turn it into a *sauce*. Instead, it turns it into wet ingredients. No magic happens here.
Perhaps I cook my pasta in too much water, having once made the mistake of cooking it in too little and ending up with an inedible glutinous mass, and so the specified amount of reserved water doesn't contain enough starch
It's a lot harder than people think and I'm surprised Jamie Oliver doesn't include more tips on it for beginner cooks as it's one of those things that is "theoretically" easy once you get a hang of it, but involves a lot of screwing up first.
I can successfully make a perfectly creamy sauce with only cheese and pasta water and no cream, but it took a ton of practice and messing up - basically you just have to feel it out as you go and play with your stove top temperature. It's a very involved and "vibes" based process - like, dump your cheese on your pasta in a pan on very low heat, add a little bit of pasta water to loosen it up, if the cheese looks like it's clumping or getting stringy you add a little more pasta water, if it's looking too thin and watery then you add more cheese and turn up the heat a little bit, etc. And you just keep doing this until it hits the desired consistency.
It's actually hard to screw up once you get the "feel" for it and the worst case scenario is...you end up with pasta that is way cheesier than you anticipated, which is a good problem to have.
posted by windbox at 7:55 AM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Perhaps I cook my pasta in too much water, having once made the mistake of cooking it in too little and ending up with an inedible glutinous mass, and so the specified amount of reserved water doesn't contain enough starch
It's a lot harder than people think and I'm surprised Jamie Oliver doesn't include more tips on it for beginner cooks as it's one of those things that is "theoretically" easy once you get a hang of it, but involves a lot of screwing up first.
I can successfully make a perfectly creamy sauce with only cheese and pasta water and no cream, but it took a ton of practice and messing up - basically you just have to feel it out as you go and play with your stove top temperature. It's a very involved and "vibes" based process - like, dump your cheese on your pasta in a pan on very low heat, add a little bit of pasta water to loosen it up, if the cheese looks like it's clumping or getting stringy you add a little more pasta water, if it's looking too thin and watery then you add more cheese and turn up the heat a little bit, etc. And you just keep doing this until it hits the desired consistency.
It's actually hard to screw up once you get the "feel" for it and the worst case scenario is...you end up with pasta that is way cheesier than you anticipated, which is a good problem to have.
posted by windbox at 7:55 AM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
This article reminds me of how not long ago, during a wave of shortages, UK media ran stories about how it's okay to eat some kinds of moldy food. It wasn't a bad idea to provide people with that information. Those stories may have helped some people who might otherwise have been hungrier. But it was a telling symptom of a very unhappy situation.
Same thing here. I don't think the article is implying that the premises of Jamie Oliver's recent shows are a problem. Of course it's not a bad idea to teach people to make inexpensive dishes or five-ingredient meals. But it's a symptom, and the reality it represents is bleak, and the article primarily seems to be about how the situation is so downbeat that even the Naked Chef guy, who has a lot of experience at entertaining people while teaching more accessible cooking, is having a hard time putting a happy face on it.
posted by wiremommy at 8:02 AM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
Same thing here. I don't think the article is implying that the premises of Jamie Oliver's recent shows are a problem. Of course it's not a bad idea to teach people to make inexpensive dishes or five-ingredient meals. But it's a symptom, and the reality it represents is bleak, and the article primarily seems to be about how the situation is so downbeat that even the Naked Chef guy, who has a lot of experience at entertaining people while teaching more accessible cooking, is having a hard time putting a happy face on it.
posted by wiremommy at 8:02 AM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
If there is one thing I learned from this thread it's that shit is way worse in the UK than I thought. I had assumed that the food issues you guys were having were broadly similar to what has been going on in the US, where a bit of not-so-creative substitution could work around high prices.
As far as cooking skills go, back when we lived in Tulsa one of the nonprofits my SO volunteered for involved teaching people how to cook using fresh ingredients from the market they also ran in what would otherwise have been a food desert. The classes were always very well attended, which was satisfying to see but also a bit eye opening.
posted by wierdo at 8:09 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
As far as cooking skills go, back when we lived in Tulsa one of the nonprofits my SO volunteered for involved teaching people how to cook using fresh ingredients from the market they also ran in what would otherwise have been a food desert. The classes were always very well attended, which was satisfying to see but also a bit eye opening.
posted by wierdo at 8:09 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
All The Times Jamie Oliver Made Everyone Angry
I've always thought of Jamie Oliver as a twerpy poverty tourist who's more interested in shaming people than doing actual good, but maybe he's finally responding to criticism and learning how to present useful information without being condescending / judgemental / hypocritical?
Regardless of that, I do think anyone who slaughters a lamb on television and then goes on to declare that "a chef who has cooked 2,000 sheep should kill at least one, otherwise, you're a fake." is not someone I'd want teaching me, regardless of how good he is. What an asshole.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:09 AM on October 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
I've always thought of Jamie Oliver as a twerpy poverty tourist who's more interested in shaming people than doing actual good, but maybe he's finally responding to criticism and learning how to present useful information without being condescending / judgemental / hypocritical?
Regardless of that, I do think anyone who slaughters a lamb on television and then goes on to declare that "a chef who has cooked 2,000 sheep should kill at least one, otherwise, you're a fake." is not someone I'd want teaching me, regardless of how good he is. What an asshole.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:09 AM on October 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
rather do a series ... than actually address the structural issues...
He has skills with cooking, but as mentioned up-thread he is a bit daft and uneducated - exactly how do you suggest he addresses the structural issues?
How do any of us? Those who are trapped in this rat race, with no access to money, power or influence? He has been championing mostly worthwhile causes for decades.
Myself - I don't like him, I don't particularly like his shows - but - I can admire him for doing what he can with what he's got. This "you are not doing enough" nonsense has to stop.
posted by rozcakj at 8:17 AM on October 17, 2023 [17 favorites]
He has skills with cooking, but as mentioned up-thread he is a bit daft and uneducated - exactly how do you suggest he addresses the structural issues?
How do any of us? Those who are trapped in this rat race, with no access to money, power or influence? He has been championing mostly worthwhile causes for decades.
Myself - I don't like him, I don't particularly like his shows - but - I can admire him for doing what he can with what he's got. This "you are not doing enough" nonsense has to stop.
posted by rozcakj at 8:17 AM on October 17, 2023 [17 favorites]
Regardless of that, I do think anyone who slaughters a lamb on television and then goes on to declare that "a chef who has cooked 2,000 sheep should kill at least one, otherwise, you're a fake." is not someone I'd want teaching me, regardless of how good he is. What an asshole.
Oh damn, see that's the kind of thing that makes me inclined to like him more. If you're going to eat and cook meat you should have to reckon with the slaughter behind it. (Full disclosure, I eat meat, and haven't reckoned enough apart from fishing, and watching a chicken be butchered.)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:23 AM on October 17, 2023 [17 favorites]
Oh damn, see that's the kind of thing that makes me inclined to like him more. If you're going to eat and cook meat you should have to reckon with the slaughter behind it. (Full disclosure, I eat meat, and haven't reckoned enough apart from fishing, and watching a chicken be butchered.)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:23 AM on October 17, 2023 [17 favorites]
we all seem so cross with each other in this thread about an article about a TV show about pasta about declining living standards
posted by Hermione Dies at 8:26 AM on October 17, 2023 [21 favorites]
posted by Hermione Dies at 8:26 AM on October 17, 2023 [21 favorites]
On the one hand, Jamie Oliver is a bit of a twit and I can understand why the reviewer would take issue with him, specifically.
On the other hand, the show and recipes presented seem pretty reasonable and meet people where they're at, so it seems like Oliver and his show are taking a lot of undue heat for the current socio-economics of the UK.
you should prioritise getting a 2 inch think marble slab to go in the bottom of your oven.
My pizza stone is supposed to be made of MARBLE? I guess I'm not as middle-class fancy as I thought.
posted by asnider at 8:35 AM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
On the other hand, the show and recipes presented seem pretty reasonable and meet people where they're at, so it seems like Oliver and his show are taking a lot of undue heat for the current socio-economics of the UK.
you should prioritise getting a 2 inch think marble slab to go in the bottom of your oven.
My pizza stone is supposed to be made of MARBLE? I guess I'm not as middle-class fancy as I thought.
posted by asnider at 8:35 AM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
If there is one thing I learned from this thread it's that shit is way worse in the UK than I thought.
It's likely even worse then you're even now thinking! They've had years of pretty savage pension cuts, wages were always low unless you worked in finance in The City. Rent is OOC, energy prices skyrocketed, and the inflation is staggering compared to the US and Europe (where many countries have instituted price controls) and their consumer costs were high to begin with (other than the chippies - god I miss those)!. I found England uneconomical when I lived there 10 years ago. Now? I really worry about my friends there both for now and in the future when they retire and they are
almost all uni profs. It used to that I would think "Well, at least they have NHS" but now.....
posted by srboisvert at 8:48 AM on October 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
It's likely even worse then you're even now thinking! They've had years of pretty savage pension cuts, wages were always low unless you worked in finance in The City. Rent is OOC, energy prices skyrocketed, and the inflation is staggering compared to the US and Europe (where many countries have instituted price controls) and their consumer costs were high to begin with (other than the chippies - god I miss those)!. I found England uneconomical when I lived there 10 years ago. Now? I really worry about my friends there both for now and in the future when they retire and they are
almost all uni profs. It used to that I would think "Well, at least they have NHS" but now.....
posted by srboisvert at 8:48 AM on October 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
wait wait some european countries have instituted price controls? that is freaking awesome. that idea is so far off the radar in the u.s. that i think anyone who proposed it here would be looked upon as if they had just tried to sell trotskyist newspapers on the senate floor.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:59 AM on October 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:59 AM on October 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
One subtext of the review is how incredibly low effort this show was, which I think is fair.
I'm not entirely sure how much the patronising pats on the head about life in the UK are helpful, though.
posted by ambrosen at 9:00 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm not entirely sure how much the patronising pats on the head about life in the UK are helpful, though.
posted by ambrosen at 9:00 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
RonButNotStupid, that list leaves out my favorite bit of fuckup that Oliver has ever had, the reason why I don't bother to watch anything he does anymore, as he can never do as well as when he pissed off approximately 250 million people at once. The issue was Jollof Rice. This is the cultural equivalent of fish and chips in the UK or clam chowder in Boston. The rivalry between various nations makes the American debates over barbeque look like church services. Ghanaian musicians write diss tracks about Nigerian Jollof Rice. Even the Gambia gets in the act, as they are the home of a large number of the Wolof people, which the dish is named after.
Anyway, Oliver posted a recipe for Jollof rice calling for coriander and lemon and some other things. The equivalent of declaring that clam chowder would be improved by adding tomatoes or that smoked brisket just needs some ketchup to taste right. He managed to piss off Nigeria, Ghana, the Gambia, and probably Senegal and Liberia as well. He was blasted over and over in the press and online. The rivalry these nations have around Jollof rice has been dubbed Jollof wars. And despite that, they all united in their glory to tell Jamie Oliver just how much of a dumbass he was.
I do not think he will ever again get around to offending an entire group of nations and certainly won't offend a quarter of a billion people. He had his glory moment in 2014, it's been all downhill ever since.
posted by Hactar at 9:08 AM on October 17, 2023 [15 favorites]
Anyway, Oliver posted a recipe for Jollof rice calling for coriander and lemon and some other things. The equivalent of declaring that clam chowder would be improved by adding tomatoes or that smoked brisket just needs some ketchup to taste right. He managed to piss off Nigeria, Ghana, the Gambia, and probably Senegal and Liberia as well. He was blasted over and over in the press and online. The rivalry these nations have around Jollof rice has been dubbed Jollof wars. And despite that, they all united in their glory to tell Jamie Oliver just how much of a dumbass he was.
I do not think he will ever again get around to offending an entire group of nations and certainly won't offend a quarter of a billion people. He had his glory moment in 2014, it's been all downhill ever since.
posted by Hactar at 9:08 AM on October 17, 2023 [15 favorites]
The equivalent of declaring that clam chowder would be improved by adding tomatoes or that smoked brisket just needs some ketchup to taste right.
Clam chowder with tomatoes is Manhattan Clam Chowder, which is also the location of wretches who told us guacamole should have peas in it! And Jamie Oliver made some pasta with peas. Does anyone have some push pins and string? It's all connected somehow.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:13 AM on October 17, 2023 [11 favorites]
Clam chowder with tomatoes is Manhattan Clam Chowder, which is also the location of wretches who told us guacamole should have peas in it! And Jamie Oliver made some pasta with peas. Does anyone have some push pins and string? It's all connected somehow.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:13 AM on October 17, 2023 [11 favorites]
But how did Jamie Oliver's Jollof Rice recipe taste?
posted by srboisvert at 9:15 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by srboisvert at 9:15 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
And of course you use the whole bird. Of course Jamie Oliver uses the whole bird. But he doesn't blend the carcass to make pink goo, he probably makes a lovely stock, that can enhance his stews or make a risotto.
It's worth considering what parts of the bird you consider to be "carcass" and why it's okay to extract just flavor from them and not actually consume them for sustenance like much of the world actually does. Stock leaves nutritional value behind that a lot of people can't afford to do.
It's also worth noting that Jamie Oliver's recipe for "proper chicken nuggets" is free-range chicken breast, which is Dan Olsen's point in his video - that he's perpetuating the idea that there are "proper" parts of the bird to eat. He could promote this whole bird philosophy in his recipe for nuggets without resorting to ultra-processing them - but he remains focused on the most expensive possible "proper" approach to it.
Jamie also has a habit of subbing ingredients (particularly olive oil) to recipes from parts of the world where they do not belong while promoting the authenticity of the dish in the recipe books or videos he's making money off of.
I tend to think personally that Jamie's issue is he's only interested in other cultures when he can appropriate it, make it "safe" for a particular type of consumer base (or "simple" as he calls it), and all the while make a profit off it. And that colors my respect for his healthy school lunch advocacy because the positions he has taken - organic western veggies and free-range chicken breast - are largely those of affluent white cooking culture.
posted by openhearted at 9:27 AM on October 17, 2023 [12 favorites]
It's worth considering what parts of the bird you consider to be "carcass" and why it's okay to extract just flavor from them and not actually consume them for sustenance like much of the world actually does. Stock leaves nutritional value behind that a lot of people can't afford to do.
It's also worth noting that Jamie Oliver's recipe for "proper chicken nuggets" is free-range chicken breast, which is Dan Olsen's point in his video - that he's perpetuating the idea that there are "proper" parts of the bird to eat. He could promote this whole bird philosophy in his recipe for nuggets without resorting to ultra-processing them - but he remains focused on the most expensive possible "proper" approach to it.
Jamie also has a habit of subbing ingredients (particularly olive oil) to recipes from parts of the world where they do not belong while promoting the authenticity of the dish in the recipe books or videos he's making money off of.
I tend to think personally that Jamie's issue is he's only interested in other cultures when he can appropriate it, make it "safe" for a particular type of consumer base (or "simple" as he calls it), and all the while make a profit off it. And that colors my respect for his healthy school lunch advocacy because the positions he has taken - organic western veggies and free-range chicken breast - are largely those of affluent white cooking culture.
posted by openhearted at 9:27 AM on October 17, 2023 [12 favorites]
HAIYAAA!
The last couple years, most of my exposure to the former Naked Chef has been through Uncle Roger’s roasty reaction videos. The article is less fair-minded than Uncle Roger.
posted by wabbittwax at 9:34 AM on October 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
The last couple years, most of my exposure to the former Naked Chef has been through Uncle Roger’s roasty reaction videos. The article is less fair-minded than Uncle Roger.
posted by wabbittwax at 9:34 AM on October 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
it's a symptom, and the reality it represents is bleak, and the article primarily seems to be about how the situation is so downbeat that even the Naked Chef guy, who has a lot of experience at entertaining people while teaching more accessible cooking, is having a hard time putting a happy face on it
Yeah, I see some kneejerk insecurity in responses here. U.S. cooks will probably recall Mark Bittman's Minimalist recipes--fairly close in concept to the five-ingredient meals here, and largely uncontroversial even if you don't care for his style. I doubt the author of this column objects to the idea of simple recipes per se. I think they find the spectacle of a rich guy talking cheerfully and condescendingly about "heroing frozen spinach" while former disability payment recipients get cut off and die in the background fucking grim. Which it is, and it is even if Jamie Oliver can't personally solve and isn't personally responsible for the UK's economic problems. But you feel bad about your cooking skills, and the columnist is criticizing someone who's doing a show on simple cooking, so...
(The unstated skill inherent in most non-baking recipes is being able to judge when the look/smell/texture is going right and when it's going wrong, and that is literally impossible to learn except through experience, meaning trial and much error, so everyone should be easier on themselves.)
posted by praemunire at 9:37 AM on October 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
Yeah, I see some kneejerk insecurity in responses here. U.S. cooks will probably recall Mark Bittman's Minimalist recipes--fairly close in concept to the five-ingredient meals here, and largely uncontroversial even if you don't care for his style. I doubt the author of this column objects to the idea of simple recipes per se. I think they find the spectacle of a rich guy talking cheerfully and condescendingly about "heroing frozen spinach" while former disability payment recipients get cut off and die in the background fucking grim. Which it is, and it is even if Jamie Oliver can't personally solve and isn't personally responsible for the UK's economic problems. But you feel bad about your cooking skills, and the columnist is criticizing someone who's doing a show on simple cooking, so...
(The unstated skill inherent in most non-baking recipes is being able to judge when the look/smell/texture is going right and when it's going wrong, and that is literally impossible to learn except through experience, meaning trial and much error, so everyone should be easier on themselves.)
posted by praemunire at 9:37 AM on October 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
Hearing someone tell poor people to make stock is like the number one thing that tells me they have no fucking clue what it's like to be poor and immediately discount their opinion. Making stock takes hours, requires large pots, and then you have a bunch of liquid you need to cool and store. These are not easy things to do when you have limited time and resources.
posted by Ferreous at 9:38 AM on October 17, 2023 [23 favorites]
posted by Ferreous at 9:38 AM on October 17, 2023 [23 favorites]
So since we're also sharing resources in here, I have a new one. And I know I'm on Team Cooking and Team DIY Kitchen a lot, so this may be a surprising recommendation at first blush...
I found a Youtube channel called Dollar Tree Dinners, run by a young woman who specializes in meal planning for two people entirely based on shopping at Dollar Tree/Dollar General/Family Dollar locations. It's definitely on the cheap-and-cheerful comfort-food side of things, but - y'all, she's got some INCREDIBLE ideas in there.
But what really caught my attention was that she addresses some of the very, very real issues that her viewers may have about things like storage space, skill level, and even a lack of kitchen resources. She has a whole video about things you can make without having access to a kitchen - maybe you're traveling, she says, or maybe you're a college student trying to make something in your dorm, or maybe you're living out of your car. You can still feed yourself. She uses some pre-made processed food - and comments that often, when she does, she gets critical comments about "cooking from scratch is better for you and cheaper". But she addresses those comments REALLY well - pointing out that a) not everyone knows how to make some of these things from scratch, b) not everyone has the TIME to make these things from scratch, and c) if you're starting from absolute zero in your pantry, having to shell out the extras for other things to go from scratch will be a financial burden. Her most recent video addresses that really well (a meal plan with NINE dinners for two, costing just under $40 for EVERYTHING).
She's also really good about walking you through how to re-use leftovers, meal-prep for future meals, and use up what you got in creative ways; and also pointing out ways to save even more (watching out for dollar store coupons, pointing out that "if you already have potatoes and you have the time, then you DON'T actually need the instant hash browns and you can save even more", etc.).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:41 AM on October 17, 2023 [20 favorites]
I found a Youtube channel called Dollar Tree Dinners, run by a young woman who specializes in meal planning for two people entirely based on shopping at Dollar Tree/Dollar General/Family Dollar locations. It's definitely on the cheap-and-cheerful comfort-food side of things, but - y'all, she's got some INCREDIBLE ideas in there.
But what really caught my attention was that she addresses some of the very, very real issues that her viewers may have about things like storage space, skill level, and even a lack of kitchen resources. She has a whole video about things you can make without having access to a kitchen - maybe you're traveling, she says, or maybe you're a college student trying to make something in your dorm, or maybe you're living out of your car. You can still feed yourself. She uses some pre-made processed food - and comments that often, when she does, she gets critical comments about "cooking from scratch is better for you and cheaper". But she addresses those comments REALLY well - pointing out that a) not everyone knows how to make some of these things from scratch, b) not everyone has the TIME to make these things from scratch, and c) if you're starting from absolute zero in your pantry, having to shell out the extras for other things to go from scratch will be a financial burden. Her most recent video addresses that really well (a meal plan with NINE dinners for two, costing just under $40 for EVERYTHING).
She's also really good about walking you through how to re-use leftovers, meal-prep for future meals, and use up what you got in creative ways; and also pointing out ways to save even more (watching out for dollar store coupons, pointing out that "if you already have potatoes and you have the time, then you DON'T actually need the instant hash browns and you can save even more", etc.).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:41 AM on October 17, 2023 [20 favorites]
Oh - you wanna know how impressed I was by the Dollar Tree Dinners channel? She inspired this self-professed Brooklyn Foodie Snob to shop at her local Family Dollar for some of my groceries last weekend. And she's right - they have good deals on smoked sausage!
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:43 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:43 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
It's worth considering what parts of the bird you consider to be "carcass" and why it's okay to extract just flavor from them and not actually consume them for sustenance like much of the world actually does. Stock leaves nutritional value behind that a lot of people can't afford to do.
I don't really disagree with you, but I am curious about who in the world eats blended bones. (I'm from a family that ate everything but the bones, so don't come back with inestines or cartilage at me).
The reason the Jamie Oliver chicken nuggets are made from chicken breast is that they are made to persuade people to eat real food rather than ultra-processed food. And Oliver or his team (probably rightly) thought it would be too much of a leap to fry chicken liver or even thigh meat for picky eaters.
But hey, again, I am not a fan of his.
Hearing someone tell poor people to make stock is like the number one thing that tells me they have no fucking clue what it's like to be poor and immediately discount their opinion. Making stock takes hours, requires large pots, and then you have a bunch of liquid you need to cool and store. These are not easy things to do when you have limited time and resources.
However, this is a thing that regularly gets me all het up. There are like a gazillion poor people, including myself, who cook for a living, or have cooked for a living, and thus know exactly what to do with scraps and leftovers from a kitchen.
I only got my first freezer a decade ago, and still I managed to make use of the stock I cooked when we had a chicken all the years that went before. (A chicken lasts four days, and one of those days is the thing you make with the stock).
There was a survey some years ago that showed - contrary to popular belief - that most people on food stamps in the US would prefer to be able to buy real produce to UPF. Which makes sense, since a lot of them probably work in the food industry, and either know how shitty UPFs are, or know how to make good food.
posted by mumimor at 9:50 AM on October 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
I don't really disagree with you, but I am curious about who in the world eats blended bones. (I'm from a family that ate everything but the bones, so don't come back with inestines or cartilage at me).
The reason the Jamie Oliver chicken nuggets are made from chicken breast is that they are made to persuade people to eat real food rather than ultra-processed food. And Oliver or his team (probably rightly) thought it would be too much of a leap to fry chicken liver or even thigh meat for picky eaters.
But hey, again, I am not a fan of his.
Hearing someone tell poor people to make stock is like the number one thing that tells me they have no fucking clue what it's like to be poor and immediately discount their opinion. Making stock takes hours, requires large pots, and then you have a bunch of liquid you need to cool and store. These are not easy things to do when you have limited time and resources.
However, this is a thing that regularly gets me all het up. There are like a gazillion poor people, including myself, who cook for a living, or have cooked for a living, and thus know exactly what to do with scraps and leftovers from a kitchen.
I only got my first freezer a decade ago, and still I managed to make use of the stock I cooked when we had a chicken all the years that went before. (A chicken lasts four days, and one of those days is the thing you make with the stock).
There was a survey some years ago that showed - contrary to popular belief - that most people on food stamps in the US would prefer to be able to buy real produce to UPF. Which makes sense, since a lot of them probably work in the food industry, and either know how shitty UPFs are, or know how to make good food.
posted by mumimor at 9:50 AM on October 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
Hearing someone tell poor people to make stock is like the number one thing that tells me they have no fucking clue what it's like to be poor and immediately discount their opinion. Making stock takes hours, requires large pots, and then you have a bunch of liquid you need to cool and store. These are not easy things to do when you have limited time and resources.
Yeah when I see that advice I'm always convinced that the advisor pictures poor people as like, a photo of a hardscrabble housewife in a rambling farmhouse during the Depression. It's a romanticized, Laura Ingalls Wilder kind of vision of poverty, where like you were already self-sufficient and full of Gumption before the hard times hit, and now you just need to roll your sleeves up a little higher.
Are some people poor in that way? With ample storage space and working appliances, and like, a fuckin yard for a garden, and enough time and energy and skill to pull off the most advanced level of From Scratch? Well fuckin yeah of course some of them are, lifestyle variations are infinite. Like mumimor says, some people cook/ed for a living and have high skill levels. THIS ISN'T FOR YOU THEN! IT IS FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT YOU!
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:58 AM on October 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
Yeah when I see that advice I'm always convinced that the advisor pictures poor people as like, a photo of a hardscrabble housewife in a rambling farmhouse during the Depression. It's a romanticized, Laura Ingalls Wilder kind of vision of poverty, where like you were already self-sufficient and full of Gumption before the hard times hit, and now you just need to roll your sleeves up a little higher.
Are some people poor in that way? With ample storage space and working appliances, and like, a fuckin yard for a garden, and enough time and energy and skill to pull off the most advanced level of From Scratch? Well fuckin yeah of course some of them are, lifestyle variations are infinite. Like mumimor says, some people cook/ed for a living and have high skill levels. THIS ISN'T FOR YOU THEN! IT IS FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT YOU!
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:58 AM on October 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
Hearing someone tell poor people to make stock is like the number one thing that tells me they have no fucking clue what it's like to be poor and immediately discount their opinion.
I think this must be a key to why these threads wind up so puzzling to me: Very different experiences of what poor people do, what they know, and what they have access to. "Poor people can't make stock? Since when? Who are these people?" It probably should go without saying that everything depends on where you are, what's around you. Not using every part of the bird seems like a very wastefully middle-class thing to do, to me, rather than the poor-person practicality of making use of every calorie available...but where I'm from you can't throw a rock without hitting some neighbor's chicken, so my imaginary poor person is probably different from someone else's imaginary poor person.
posted by mittens at 10:04 AM on October 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
I think this must be a key to why these threads wind up so puzzling to me: Very different experiences of what poor people do, what they know, and what they have access to. "Poor people can't make stock? Since when? Who are these people?" It probably should go without saying that everything depends on where you are, what's around you. Not using every part of the bird seems like a very wastefully middle-class thing to do, to me, rather than the poor-person practicality of making use of every calorie available...but where I'm from you can't throw a rock without hitting some neighbor's chicken, so my imaginary poor person is probably different from someone else's imaginary poor person.
posted by mittens at 10:04 AM on October 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
probably best to let the non-imaginary poor people take the lead
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 10:05 AM on October 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 10:05 AM on October 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
I found his original TV persona very irritating but a second cousin is a cook and worked for Oliver years ago. He maintains he was by far the most generous and supportive boss he ever had in the restaurant industry, admittedly not famed for its enlightened management.
I haven't watched him in well over a decade; he may have toned the act down and this sounds like an interesting approach to cookery shows so I'll check out some clips later.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 10:08 AM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
I haven't watched him in well over a decade; he may have toned the act down and this sounds like an interesting approach to cookery shows so I'll check out some clips later.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 10:08 AM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Being poor in the US is very much a matter of not just being cash poor but time poor. Random shifts, multiple jobs, transportation eating into free time. Making stuff from scratch can be more cost effective but that's only if you don't consider your time to have any value. I think lots of people who are living in poverty in the US would love to make homemade meals but they make the decision that buying back time is worth eating premade food. Oliver and the like's whole ethos treats people in poverty as being irrational actors who don't know better when in reality the choices they make stem from the material situation they exist in.
posted by Ferreous at 10:15 AM on October 17, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by Ferreous at 10:15 AM on October 17, 2023 [19 favorites]
Also space, which is a limitation that applies across the income spectrum for those of us living in apartments or shared housing. I'm doing perfectly fine, but I still live in an apartment with a roommate, and we share a fridge. Our kitchen is small, there's limited cupboard space. I simply don't have room for things like big or even medium containers of freshly made stock, or even an extensive collection of various oils, spices, and condiments. I can afford to buy whatever random oil or vinegar or spice for any given recipe, but I won't have room to store it! Like, my parents have a house, and they have an extra fridge in the garage where my mom can put the stuff she preps in bulk in the freezer. Between my roommate and I, we only have freezer space for ice cream, frozen veggies, bread, and a few other frozen prepared foods.
For those of us with those limitations, something like Ethan Chlebowski's recommendation to prep aromatic blends like mirepoix or garlic and ginger, and freeze those in little ice cube trays in the freezer, is far more realistic. (Chlebowski, by the way, is fairly exhaustive in showing you why/how these things work and setting out the best use cases for them.) I also really appreciate that he points out that this something that can really make it easier for you to just plain get over the hurdle of starting cooking. You know you have these in the freezer, so suddenly the prospect of making a quick curry is easier.
Of course, this is still more time and effort than many people can afford. This still requires cooking knowledge even if Chlebowski explains to you what these aromatics are and what they're used for/in. But it's at least a more realistic option than finding space for quarts of homemade stock, or holding onto those chicken bones in your freezer for some future day when you will make stock, or what have you.
posted by yasaman at 10:38 AM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
For those of us with those limitations, something like Ethan Chlebowski's recommendation to prep aromatic blends like mirepoix or garlic and ginger, and freeze those in little ice cube trays in the freezer, is far more realistic. (Chlebowski, by the way, is fairly exhaustive in showing you why/how these things work and setting out the best use cases for them.) I also really appreciate that he points out that this something that can really make it easier for you to just plain get over the hurdle of starting cooking. You know you have these in the freezer, so suddenly the prospect of making a quick curry is easier.
Of course, this is still more time and effort than many people can afford. This still requires cooking knowledge even if Chlebowski explains to you what these aromatics are and what they're used for/in. But it's at least a more realistic option than finding space for quarts of homemade stock, or holding onto those chicken bones in your freezer for some future day when you will make stock, or what have you.
posted by yasaman at 10:38 AM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
Here in my neighborhood most lower class people are immigrants, so they buy cheap produce at the Asian stores and cook from scratch, because it is cheaper, and obviously better tasting and healthier.
That's great if you don't live in a food desert. They are real
posted by treepour at 10:42 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
That's great if you don't live in a food desert. They are real
posted by treepour at 10:42 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
Here in my neighborhood most lower class people are immigrants, so they buy cheap produce at the Asian stores and cook from scratch, because it is cheaper, and obviously better tasting and healthier.
That's great if you don't live in a food desert. They are real
It also typically relies on unpaid labor, mostly by women and girls, that not all households have available.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:47 AM on October 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
That's great if you don't live in a food desert. They are real
It also typically relies on unpaid labor, mostly by women and girls, that not all households have available.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:47 AM on October 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
Not only the time issue, but food deserts are a real thing, and are getting worse - this video on the economics of dollar stores discusses how they're making food deserts worse by undercutting small local grocers.
And this gets back to Olson's point about the fundamental dishonestly of Oliver's crusade against nugs - there are so many legitimate arguments to be made about processed food and the meat industry, and yet he goes for "this is bad because the process is disgusting", while ignoring that the very process he's showing is how some forms of cased sausages are literally made - I don't think it's coincidence that he got rhetorically pantsed by kids from West Virginia, a region where sustance hunting is very much a thing. And the dishonesty is important because it undercuts the actual arguments and problems with processed foods.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:48 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
And this gets back to Olson's point about the fundamental dishonestly of Oliver's crusade against nugs - there are so many legitimate arguments to be made about processed food and the meat industry, and yet he goes for "this is bad because the process is disgusting", while ignoring that the very process he's showing is how some forms of cased sausages are literally made - I don't think it's coincidence that he got rhetorically pantsed by kids from West Virginia, a region where sustance hunting is very much a thing. And the dishonesty is important because it undercuts the actual arguments and problems with processed foods.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:48 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
(regarding food deserts, if you're in the US and curious about where they are, the USDA has a map that shows low-income areas and their distance from supermarkets.)
posted by mittens at 10:58 AM on October 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by mittens at 10:58 AM on October 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
That's great if you don't live in a food desert. They are real
I know. I mentioned above that I once lived in one.
Yesterday I was thinking about the common argument that changing your own diet makes no difference for global heating, because the scale of the problem is so huge that individual contributions are meaningless. But it turns out people can make a difference. Here, people eat far less pork than they did before, and in spite of the fact that most of the pork is exported, it makes people think. It may be that the farmer can still sell their animals to China (actually to Italy where they process the meat and sell it on to China), but the processing plant down the road is closed, and now the political support for industrial pork isn't as strong anymore. And the support for regulating pollution from farms and animal welfare is gaining traction.
What I'm saying is that it may well be that Oliver is scratching the surface of a huge structural problem. And he is not a political animal. But maybe he does good work within his range. As others have said, other TV-chefs don't get called out this way. I know a lot of people who are inspired by his books and show to eat more vegetables and more fresh produce. How can that be bad?
posted by mumimor at 11:11 AM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I know. I mentioned above that I once lived in one.
Yesterday I was thinking about the common argument that changing your own diet makes no difference for global heating, because the scale of the problem is so huge that individual contributions are meaningless. But it turns out people can make a difference. Here, people eat far less pork than they did before, and in spite of the fact that most of the pork is exported, it makes people think. It may be that the farmer can still sell their animals to China (actually to Italy where they process the meat and sell it on to China), but the processing plant down the road is closed, and now the political support for industrial pork isn't as strong anymore. And the support for regulating pollution from farms and animal welfare is gaining traction.
What I'm saying is that it may well be that Oliver is scratching the surface of a huge structural problem. And he is not a political animal. But maybe he does good work within his range. As others have said, other TV-chefs don't get called out this way. I know a lot of people who are inspired by his books and show to eat more vegetables and more fresh produce. How can that be bad?
posted by mumimor at 11:11 AM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I don't really disagree with you, but I am curious about who in the world eats blended bones. (I'm from a family that ate everything but the bones, so don't come back with intestines or cartilage at me
If you look at the original video of Jamie doing the shock and awe thing with children - he takes off legs, wings and breasts and that is it. There's a ton of meat and cartilage left on what he uses as his demonstration, and that's ignoring all the parts of the chicken that were pre-trimmed and are consumed around the world.
I think you and I both would look at what he considered carcass and think - there's a lot of meat left on there.
The reason the Jamie Oliver chicken nuggets are made from chicken breast is that they are made to persuade people to eat real food rather than ultra-processed food. And Oliver or his team (probably rightly) thought it would be too much of a leap to fry chicken liver or even thigh meat for picky eaters.
I mean - chicken thigh is the preferred ingredient for most of the world as it's cheaper, more flavorful, absorbs spice better, and ends up moist. Kids around the world eat it in a myriad of dishes. The people for whom the leap to thighs is too far from chicken goo are a very specific subset of the market, and pushing schools to design their menus around a product that is exponentially more expensive so it appeals to that subset was...problematic.
However, this is a thing that regularly gets me all het up. There are like a gazillion poor people, including myself, who cook for a living, or have cooked for a living, and thus know exactly what to do with scraps and leftovers from a kitchen.
I mean, I grew up with cooks and spent about 8 years in and around kitchens - the binding issue for poor people that makes cooking inaccessible is a lack of time and energy. For some it's a lack of time to learn, others a lack of time to generate disposable income, and others a lack of time to invest in cooking.
Working in a kitchen for 12 hours a day, every cook I knew was too exhausted and burnt out cooking food for others to come home and make stock and risotto on their off hours. They went to UPF. Ditto for the parents or those with two jobs trying to make it work - even if there are the ingredients and the knowhow, their batteries are tapped and the idea of a scratch meal and cleanup is impossible with the way things are today.
posted by openhearted at 11:23 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
If you look at the original video of Jamie doing the shock and awe thing with children - he takes off legs, wings and breasts and that is it. There's a ton of meat and cartilage left on what he uses as his demonstration, and that's ignoring all the parts of the chicken that were pre-trimmed and are consumed around the world.
I think you and I both would look at what he considered carcass and think - there's a lot of meat left on there.
The reason the Jamie Oliver chicken nuggets are made from chicken breast is that they are made to persuade people to eat real food rather than ultra-processed food. And Oliver or his team (probably rightly) thought it would be too much of a leap to fry chicken liver or even thigh meat for picky eaters.
I mean - chicken thigh is the preferred ingredient for most of the world as it's cheaper, more flavorful, absorbs spice better, and ends up moist. Kids around the world eat it in a myriad of dishes. The people for whom the leap to thighs is too far from chicken goo are a very specific subset of the market, and pushing schools to design their menus around a product that is exponentially more expensive so it appeals to that subset was...problematic.
However, this is a thing that regularly gets me all het up. There are like a gazillion poor people, including myself, who cook for a living, or have cooked for a living, and thus know exactly what to do with scraps and leftovers from a kitchen.
I mean, I grew up with cooks and spent about 8 years in and around kitchens - the binding issue for poor people that makes cooking inaccessible is a lack of time and energy. For some it's a lack of time to learn, others a lack of time to generate disposable income, and others a lack of time to invest in cooking.
Working in a kitchen for 12 hours a day, every cook I knew was too exhausted and burnt out cooking food for others to come home and make stock and risotto on their off hours. They went to UPF. Ditto for the parents or those with two jobs trying to make it work - even if there are the ingredients and the knowhow, their batteries are tapped and the idea of a scratch meal and cleanup is impossible with the way things are today.
posted by openhearted at 11:23 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
Probably poor people's struggles are not identical around the world, or even within the U.S. or U.K., particularly as their living arrangements may vary dramatically. Stock is a way to extract nutrition from a large quantity of materials over a long period of time. A poor person may find problems anywhere along the line in that sentence, but where won't be the same.
posted by praemunire at 11:23 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 11:23 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
I've no idea why everyone is falling over themselves to declare how much they don't like Jamie Oliver. I like him. There are a lot of chefs who are verified arseholes to staff, a lot who run businesses badly, and at least he makes approachable, edible stuff with pretty much normal ingredients. My family have been in the business for generations and his cooking - when he sticks to his usual wheelhouse of English and Italian comfort classics - is fine. Good, even. He doesn't spend his time online attacking people with less power than him, he hasn't been caught up in any sex scandals, he's not a secret Tory. Of the many white male telly slebs that came out of the 90s and early 00s, he's one of the better ones.
posted by Ardnamurchan at 11:30 AM on October 17, 2023 [14 favorites]
posted by Ardnamurchan at 11:30 AM on October 17, 2023 [14 favorites]
I refer to stock specifically because it's a time consuming process that requires a fair amount of bones and aromatics to produce not a meal but a component of a meal. You have a whole extra meal prep to do before that stock is something you can consider a meal.
It's also one of those things that routinely is used as an example of how poor people are "throwing money in the trash" by not utilizing every part of the bird while ignoring time and energy costs of the process.
posted by Ferreous at 11:31 AM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
It's also one of those things that routinely is used as an example of how poor people are "throwing money in the trash" by not utilizing every part of the bird while ignoring time and energy costs of the process.
posted by Ferreous at 11:31 AM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
in general "do whatever it doesn't matter much it's hard to fuck up" is really bad advice for anything involving unfamiliar tasks involving irreversible steps and materials that cost money.
I kind of only marginally learned to cook and still don't cook meat because of the cost of messing up. There wasn't money when I was growing up to have an alternate hot meal substituted in if dinner failed. A burnt or otherwise badly screwed up dinner would've meant cold sandwiches instead - and we had that option, we didn't have the added stress of food insecurity. But it really cut into the "cook alongside your parents" model of learning because my parents were very busy at dinner time trying not to make sure a big meal didn't fail.
Baking was lower pressure and I learned a lot from my parents there - I can generally cope with an imprecise set of instructions in a baking recipe and rescue it. And I knew how to follow a recipe, so cooking didn't seem impossible. But it was a discouraging slog to find recipes that were detailed enough for me to feel confident I could produce decent food from them. Ending up with something I couldn't stomach after investing all of the effort of cooking was so demoralizing, even though I could afford to get a backup pizza.
I finally got my hands on a cookbook written by a woman who saw that her kids and their friends needed help getting themselves set up as adults living on their own. The recipes got really specific about prep and cooking instructions and while they didn't always turn out inspiring meals, I didn't have any horrible failures. That helped me get my skills and confidence up and feel more confident branching out. But I came into cooking with some key supports and still felt really lost and overwhelmed at the start and don't think I'm ever likely to learn to love it. I appreciate how it can feel like an insurmountable hurdle on a lot of fronts to invest the time and money to even get the basics down.
posted by EvaDestruction at 11:49 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
I kind of only marginally learned to cook and still don't cook meat because of the cost of messing up. There wasn't money when I was growing up to have an alternate hot meal substituted in if dinner failed. A burnt or otherwise badly screwed up dinner would've meant cold sandwiches instead - and we had that option, we didn't have the added stress of food insecurity. But it really cut into the "cook alongside your parents" model of learning because my parents were very busy at dinner time trying not to make sure a big meal didn't fail.
Baking was lower pressure and I learned a lot from my parents there - I can generally cope with an imprecise set of instructions in a baking recipe and rescue it. And I knew how to follow a recipe, so cooking didn't seem impossible. But it was a discouraging slog to find recipes that were detailed enough for me to feel confident I could produce decent food from them. Ending up with something I couldn't stomach after investing all of the effort of cooking was so demoralizing, even though I could afford to get a backup pizza.
I finally got my hands on a cookbook written by a woman who saw that her kids and their friends needed help getting themselves set up as adults living on their own. The recipes got really specific about prep and cooking instructions and while they didn't always turn out inspiring meals, I didn't have any horrible failures. That helped me get my skills and confidence up and feel more confident branching out. But I came into cooking with some key supports and still felt really lost and overwhelmed at the start and don't think I'm ever likely to learn to love it. I appreciate how it can feel like an insurmountable hurdle on a lot of fronts to invest the time and money to even get the basics down.
posted by EvaDestruction at 11:49 AM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
tl;dr but a large fraction of the meals I've made at home since 1999 is from the Cooking Light 5 Ingredient 15 Minute Cookbook ($13 new, $1+ used).
posted by neuron at 11:58 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by neuron at 11:58 AM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I've no idea why everyone is falling over themselves to declare how much they don't like Jamie Oliver
If Jamie Oliver was a pleasing personality who cooked on TV and stuck to English and Italian classics then I think I would have no issue with him at all. I'd be impressed with him if he took some of his wealth and donated a whole bunch of it and his time to making healthy food available for others as well.
The issue I have with Jamie Oliver is that he has made a lot of his fame and money positioned as the hero who understands poverty and getting credit for his solutions to getting healthy food to people who can't afford it even though they don't address the actual issues at hand for people who actually need help. Like I wish America had looked to people from its own diasporas who for generations have been making affordable, healthy food and getting every last bit of nutrition from what they have before elevating a white male savior who wanted to go to war with the chicken nugget and thinks taxing unhealthy food will help poor people get healthier.
He is not alone - Alice Waters has very similar issues, and it is not a coincidence that they are white and affluent. They are people who mean extremely well and want to be helpful (and seen as being helpful) but they don't understand and suck up a lot of time, money and energy that could be dedicated to people who do if we actually want to solve these issues.
posted by openhearted at 12:11 PM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
If Jamie Oliver was a pleasing personality who cooked on TV and stuck to English and Italian classics then I think I would have no issue with him at all. I'd be impressed with him if he took some of his wealth and donated a whole bunch of it and his time to making healthy food available for others as well.
The issue I have with Jamie Oliver is that he has made a lot of his fame and money positioned as the hero who understands poverty and getting credit for his solutions to getting healthy food to people who can't afford it even though they don't address the actual issues at hand for people who actually need help. Like I wish America had looked to people from its own diasporas who for generations have been making affordable, healthy food and getting every last bit of nutrition from what they have before elevating a white male savior who wanted to go to war with the chicken nugget and thinks taxing unhealthy food will help poor people get healthier.
He is not alone - Alice Waters has very similar issues, and it is not a coincidence that they are white and affluent. They are people who mean extremely well and want to be helpful (and seen as being helpful) but they don't understand and suck up a lot of time, money and energy that could be dedicated to people who do if we actually want to solve these issues.
posted by openhearted at 12:11 PM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
And my last comment - I think it's great if Jamie Oliver inspired you or others to do things that are beneficial to you. I think it can be true that someone has done some good while also acknowledging they've gotten way too much credit for it at the same time.
I hate to say it but Gordon Ramsay did have an impact on my own food journey even though, years later, I really wish I had given him a lot less energy to leverage into being a total asshole. Jamie's not the most problematic TV chef, far from it, but he is the subject of this thread.
posted by openhearted at 12:25 PM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I hate to say it but Gordon Ramsay did have an impact on my own food journey even though, years later, I really wish I had given him a lot less energy to leverage into being a total asshole. Jamie's not the most problematic TV chef, far from it, but he is the subject of this thread.
posted by openhearted at 12:25 PM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Way back in the day when I had an actual place of my own with a kitchen for once I decided that I wanted to learn to cook. But me being me, I overthought it and came to the conclusion that I loved Chinese food, and Chinese food at restaurants was expensive, so it made sense to start by learning how to cook Chinese food.
So I did a little research, picked up a cookbook (Chinese Cookery by Rose Cheng and Michelle Morris), and started off.
As it turns out this worked really, really well. The cookbook didn't assume I knew anything about cooking Chinese food, and didn't assume I had any of the equipment necessary. It talked about woks and how to season them, the different implements that you used with them, the steamers and gear that you'd need. It broke down different slicing techniques.
And because there wasn't that weight of expectations on me, that I should have already known this, that I should be a better cook already, I was free to be a beginner, to master the little skills that eventually made me a better cook in general.
I very much agree with bombastic lowercase pronouncements that the expectation that you should know something already, the expectation that this should be simple, is an enormous impediment to learning that's all over the culinary field. Most professionals started out cooking at an early age, and take the skills they picked up in grade school for granted. I had to figure out my own workaround back in the day, but it's great that there are cooking gurus who are starting to take these things into account.
posted by MrVisible at 12:30 PM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
So I did a little research, picked up a cookbook (Chinese Cookery by Rose Cheng and Michelle Morris), and started off.
As it turns out this worked really, really well. The cookbook didn't assume I knew anything about cooking Chinese food, and didn't assume I had any of the equipment necessary. It talked about woks and how to season them, the different implements that you used with them, the steamers and gear that you'd need. It broke down different slicing techniques.
And because there wasn't that weight of expectations on me, that I should have already known this, that I should be a better cook already, I was free to be a beginner, to master the little skills that eventually made me a better cook in general.
I very much agree with bombastic lowercase pronouncements that the expectation that you should know something already, the expectation that this should be simple, is an enormous impediment to learning that's all over the culinary field. Most professionals started out cooking at an early age, and take the skills they picked up in grade school for granted. I had to figure out my own workaround back in the day, but it's great that there are cooking gurus who are starting to take these things into account.
posted by MrVisible at 12:30 PM on October 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
so why does the author have Oliver in his sights?
I read this article this morning and had a good laugh. Why they picking on him? Because of class (as others above have mentioned). I think if you are not familiar with that part of UK culture it is easy to miss it. It is classic tall poppy syndrome (which from my experience, to be polite, US Mefites don't usually care for or really understand). Oliver has been pretty tone deaf about checking his wealthy white boy privilege over the years so he's an easy target for the Guardian (I suspect they think of him as a closet Tory as well). IMO, it is a pretty good takedown of Oliver who, though he seems to try so very hard, can be condescending in his earnestness. This show isn't about teaching cooking, its more "here's a recipe that's cheaper than buying a kebab you prole." But YMMV. It is also why Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who's much more outspoken about his Guardian approved politics, gets a pass when he put out the 3 Good Things book (tho that book was from a decade ago which might as well have been an alternate reality). Speaking of which, his "cheesy pea pasta" recipe is pretty good.
So in short, nthing Jack Monroe. But also Ruby Tandoh.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:42 PM on October 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
I read this article this morning and had a good laugh. Why they picking on him? Because of class (as others above have mentioned). I think if you are not familiar with that part of UK culture it is easy to miss it. It is classic tall poppy syndrome (which from my experience, to be polite, US Mefites don't usually care for or really understand). Oliver has been pretty tone deaf about checking his wealthy white boy privilege over the years so he's an easy target for the Guardian (I suspect they think of him as a closet Tory as well). IMO, it is a pretty good takedown of Oliver who, though he seems to try so very hard, can be condescending in his earnestness. This show isn't about teaching cooking, its more "here's a recipe that's cheaper than buying a kebab you prole." But YMMV. It is also why Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who's much more outspoken about his Guardian approved politics, gets a pass when he put out the 3 Good Things book (tho that book was from a decade ago which might as well have been an alternate reality). Speaking of which, his "cheesy pea pasta" recipe is pretty good.
So in short, nthing Jack Monroe. But also Ruby Tandoh.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:42 PM on October 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
It is classic tall poppy syndrome (which from my experience, to be polite, US Mefites don't usually care for or really understand)
Are you seriously asking us to weep for the English upper class in this thread? Well, at least that's thoroughly on brand.
posted by praemunire at 12:48 PM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Are you seriously asking us to weep for the English upper class in this thread? Well, at least that's thoroughly on brand.
posted by praemunire at 12:48 PM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Well, maybe. But this whole thread just comes across as a lot of mean spirited people talking past each other, many of whom openly say they both don't like Oliver and haven't engaged with his content much either (and giving Hugh F-W, whom *even Boris Johnson thinks is a toffish twunt*, a big ol' hall pass). Buy other cookbooks if that's your jam. Take up a hobby. Donate your money. Crikey.
posted by Ardnamurchan at 12:59 PM on October 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Ardnamurchan at 12:59 PM on October 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
Guys, no one in the US is watching Jamie Oliver's new program airing right now in the UK uness you have a need to drink Bad Decision Juice and tell us how awful it was.
Back to the Guardian, yeah, they'll take the piss out of Oliver but Nigel Slater has been doing similar recently and gets a pass. And I say that as someone who LOVES Nigel Slater.
posted by Kitteh at 1:19 PM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Back to the Guardian, yeah, they'll take the piss out of Oliver but Nigel Slater has been doing similar recently and gets a pass. And I say that as someone who LOVES Nigel Slater.
posted by Kitteh at 1:19 PM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
OK so I was out walking the dog, and something really bothered me.
We can all agree that Jamie Oliver is a rich, pudgy, white man who is full of himself. Right? That's normal.
This Jamie Oliver who we all have an opinion about does videos, where he demonstrates cooking, mostly Italian-inspired plain cooking, because that is what he knows, and he has literally never aspired to do anything else. Back in wealthier days he may have suggested more exotic ingredients, but he has always been focused on the cucina povera of southern Italy, meaning he has always provided recipes for people on a budget.
Now TFA's main points are that the food in the five ingredients book and videos is plain and the set is basic. This criticism is made by another white man who also seems a bit full of himself. That white man has a point about the current state of the UK, but otherwise, he is mostly saying that JO and another chef should be more interesting, not that they should donate their millions to the homeless or start a food bank, or get how people depend on UPFs.
So what are we discussing? TFA or whatever we feel about Jamie Oliver or whatever we feel about poverty? I don't mind it when metafilter goes off on a tangent, it's fun. But maybe it would be more fun if we knew what we were talking about?
posted by mumimor at 1:19 PM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
We can all agree that Jamie Oliver is a rich, pudgy, white man who is full of himself. Right? That's normal.
This Jamie Oliver who we all have an opinion about does videos, where he demonstrates cooking, mostly Italian-inspired plain cooking, because that is what he knows, and he has literally never aspired to do anything else. Back in wealthier days he may have suggested more exotic ingredients, but he has always been focused on the cucina povera of southern Italy, meaning he has always provided recipes for people on a budget.
Now TFA's main points are that the food in the five ingredients book and videos is plain and the set is basic. This criticism is made by another white man who also seems a bit full of himself. That white man has a point about the current state of the UK, but otherwise, he is mostly saying that JO and another chef should be more interesting, not that they should donate their millions to the homeless or start a food bank, or get how people depend on UPFs.
So what are we discussing? TFA or whatever we feel about Jamie Oliver or whatever we feel about poverty? I don't mind it when metafilter goes off on a tangent, it's fun. But maybe it would be more fun if we knew what we were talking about?
posted by mumimor at 1:19 PM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
I just learned that there's a food desert nearby me and it was actually in an unexpected location.
posted by zenon at 1:48 PM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by zenon at 1:48 PM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
This Jamie Oliver who we all have an opinion about does videos, where he demonstrates cooking, mostly Italian-inspired plain cooking, because that is what he knows, and he has literally never aspired to do anything else.
Except that's false, as the evidence presented in this thread shows. The reason people find him off putting is because he chose to wade into the discussion on food and poverty with little understanding of said matter and the dynamics driving it, and unsurprisingly making a hash of it because he was unwilling to understand that it turns out that this is a very thorny problem getting into economics and cultural dynamics.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:08 PM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
Except that's false, as the evidence presented in this thread shows. The reason people find him off putting is because he chose to wade into the discussion on food and poverty with little understanding of said matter and the dynamics driving it, and unsurprisingly making a hash of it because he was unwilling to understand that it turns out that this is a very thorny problem getting into economics and cultural dynamics.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:08 PM on October 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
No see it's just that poor people are brainwashed and lazy! They could be having nutritious homecooked meals if they just had the wherewithal of an entitled rich brit.
posted by Ferreous at 2:10 PM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Ferreous at 2:10 PM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Oh, sorry, I just meant it's the only cooking he knows. I agree on the social/political issues. And my point was: don't we all?
posted by mumimor at 2:12 PM on October 17, 2023
posted by mumimor at 2:12 PM on October 17, 2023
Along the same lines, his Italy cookbook suggested that if you didn't have room for your own pizza oven you should prioritise getting a 2 inch think marble slab to go in the bottom of your oven.
you mean a $30 piece of stone instead of a $300 oven that can only cook one thing? how absurd, how nonsensical. how laughable.
posted by Sebmojo at 2:27 PM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
you mean a $30 piece of stone instead of a $300 oven that can only cook one thing? how absurd, how nonsensical. how laughable.
posted by Sebmojo at 2:27 PM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
(apologies if that wasn't your intent, that's how it read tho)
posted by Sebmojo at 2:28 PM on October 17, 2023
posted by Sebmojo at 2:28 PM on October 17, 2023
I clicked through here excited about joining in with taking the piss out of Jamie Oliver, a man whose giant ego and giant bank balance can certainly stand it, and I was disappointed to find the reaction was nothing but po-faced sanctimony.
Imagine how I felt in the billionaire submarine thread.
posted by slogger at 2:30 PM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Imagine how I felt in the billionaire submarine thread.
posted by slogger at 2:30 PM on October 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
I do not think he will ever again get around to offending an entire group of nations and certainly won't offend a quarter of a billion people. He had his glory moment in 2014, it's been all downhill ever since.
I see uncle roger is mentioned above, that's the high water mark for savaging, i still like it better than the linked article because it's someone who cares about food being genuinely outraged.
posted by Sebmojo at 2:33 PM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I see uncle roger is mentioned above, that's the high water mark for savaging, i still like it better than the linked article because it's someone who cares about food being genuinely outraged.
posted by Sebmojo at 2:33 PM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
you mean a $30 piece of stone instead of a $300 oven that can only cook one thing? how absurd, how nonsensical. how laughable.
I think the commenter's point is that the cookbook did imply you should get the $300 pizza oven that can only cook one thing, if possible. But failing that, you should at least invest in a marble pizza stone (from a quick search, ~$70 for something that thick, and side note, quick search also suggests marble isn't a good pizza stone material).
posted by wiremommy at 3:49 PM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think the commenter's point is that the cookbook did imply you should get the $300 pizza oven that can only cook one thing, if possible. But failing that, you should at least invest in a marble pizza stone (from a quick search, ~$70 for something that thick, and side note, quick search also suggests marble isn't a good pizza stone material).
posted by wiremommy at 3:49 PM on October 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
the cookbook did imply you should get the $300 pizza oven that can only cook one thing, if possible
I know y’all don’t want the facts to get in the way of a fun kicking, but the cookbook very much says nothing of the sort (I just checked). Plus, Jamie Oliver‘a own company was selling pizza stones for years, for the outrageous price of $25. But please, carry on about how he’s too posh, chubby, stupid, and [in a delightfully British disregard for consistency] woefully low class.
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 4:51 PM on October 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
I know y’all don’t want the facts to get in the way of a fun kicking, but the cookbook very much says nothing of the sort (I just checked). Plus, Jamie Oliver‘a own company was selling pizza stones for years, for the outrageous price of $25. But please, carry on about how he’s too posh, chubby, stupid, and [in a delightfully British disregard for consistency] woefully low class.
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 4:51 PM on October 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
Imagine how I felt in the billionaire submarine thread.
We can probably all agree that Jamie Oliver isn't the cause of any teenagers dying?
posted by praemunire at 5:14 PM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
We can probably all agree that Jamie Oliver isn't the cause of any teenagers dying?
posted by praemunire at 5:14 PM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'll speak to the jollof rice thing, because it's close to home.
* I really like Oliver's recipes, particularly those from a fusion mindset (adding chilli to everything) since, as a fusion person, that's how I cook anyway. He's good at being tasty.
* We ate at Jamie's once, it was disappointing given that we'd all used his cook books and liked them. Is that not a problem with running a business rather than with irredeemable personal awfulness? What percentage of restaurant businesses go under within 5 years? I just looked this up and took the first results so it's not exactly in depth research. Maybe it's skewed by Covid? Still, anecdotally indie restaurants go under all the time.
* The class thing. Perhaps there's some transatlantic confusion going on here. Oliver will never in his life be upper class in the English sense. He has money now, that's not the same thing at all.
* Condescending? I think he's gauche, which he can't help as it's genuinely part of who he is, like his lisp and his dyslexia.
* Getting a bollocking for cooking Jollof Rice wrong is something anyone who's added the slightest little unexpected ingredient to it has also had. And believe me some of those bollockees will have been Nigerian, Ghanaian, Gambian etc and not all of the bollockers will have been from a different West African country than the cook. That seems a harsh thing to take as an unforgiveable act of heinousness. I mean, as a Nigerian, I enjoyed the snarky banter I came across online about it, it's very characteristic of WA mockery. I haven't tried Oliver's recipe but I'll be surprised if it isn't tasty. He probably should have called it something like 'Jollofish Rice' though. Cue complaints there's no fish in it.
There are Nigerian owned restaurants in London developing an haute cuisine version of Nigerian foods. My feeling is if you have a longing for a good dish of eba or amala with ewedu, or egusi soup, or even! Jollof Rice, they are not the places you should go to. The best Jollof needs to be cooked outside over a wood fire anyway, that's for the smokey taste, how reproduceable is that for your average Western kitchen?
Here is a quote from Madhur Jaffrey's Cookbook: Food For Family & Friends about her Golden Sesame Corn Bread recipe: "I suppose such things are bound to happen when a woman from India marries a man from America whose father comes from the southern state of Kentucky. This corn bread, a direct result of this pleasent cross-fertilization ...(ingredients).... Those who have eaten a freshly baked bandva, a savoury cake from the Indian state of Gujurat, will easily recognise its ancestry." Some people follow recipes religiously, some people don't, and food gets adapted accoring to circumstance, like what's available locally. If I'm going to cook Nigerian food I need several free hours and a trip to Maliks in Stapleton Road. Then I need several more free hours and a heck of a lot of frying, simmering and grinding. Then I need to cook loads because it will all disappear and some people get extra to take home. Then I also have to make macaroni cheese and healthy vegetables because the little ones can't tolerate hot pepper. But if it's just a routine day and I haven't got hours and hours and I make a stew or mixed rice, those things are very much informed by the Nigerian version of tasty, even if they don't go all the way. I don't think gate keeping food has a place in the context of day-to-day life.
* I read that weird Guardian article and thought it was both sour and silly. But seriously at the moment here just about everything you can buy, especially food, has steeply deteriorated while becoming at least 1/3 more expensive. One of my grandchildren has issues with texture and eats only certain things and the quality even of the cheap processed foods she used to prefer is blatantly abysmal. Amazing that we are emptying the oceans and yet can only buy fishfingers made of soggy recovered fish mush at double the price as 3 months ago.
posted by glasseyes at 4:29 AM on October 18, 2023 [14 favorites]
* I really like Oliver's recipes, particularly those from a fusion mindset (adding chilli to everything) since, as a fusion person, that's how I cook anyway. He's good at being tasty.
* We ate at Jamie's once, it was disappointing given that we'd all used his cook books and liked them. Is that not a problem with running a business rather than with irredeemable personal awfulness? What percentage of restaurant businesses go under within 5 years? I just looked this up and took the first results so it's not exactly in depth research. Maybe it's skewed by Covid? Still, anecdotally indie restaurants go under all the time.
* The class thing. Perhaps there's some transatlantic confusion going on here. Oliver will never in his life be upper class in the English sense. He has money now, that's not the same thing at all.
* Condescending? I think he's gauche, which he can't help as it's genuinely part of who he is, like his lisp and his dyslexia.
* Getting a bollocking for cooking Jollof Rice wrong is something anyone who's added the slightest little unexpected ingredient to it has also had. And believe me some of those bollockees will have been Nigerian, Ghanaian, Gambian etc and not all of the bollockers will have been from a different West African country than the cook. That seems a harsh thing to take as an unforgiveable act of heinousness. I mean, as a Nigerian, I enjoyed the snarky banter I came across online about it, it's very characteristic of WA mockery. I haven't tried Oliver's recipe but I'll be surprised if it isn't tasty. He probably should have called it something like 'Jollofish Rice' though. Cue complaints there's no fish in it.
There are Nigerian owned restaurants in London developing an haute cuisine version of Nigerian foods. My feeling is if you have a longing for a good dish of eba or amala with ewedu, or egusi soup, or even! Jollof Rice, they are not the places you should go to. The best Jollof needs to be cooked outside over a wood fire anyway, that's for the smokey taste, how reproduceable is that for your average Western kitchen?
Here is a quote from Madhur Jaffrey's Cookbook: Food For Family & Friends about her Golden Sesame Corn Bread recipe: "I suppose such things are bound to happen when a woman from India marries a man from America whose father comes from the southern state of Kentucky. This corn bread, a direct result of this pleasent cross-fertilization ...(ingredients).... Those who have eaten a freshly baked bandva, a savoury cake from the Indian state of Gujurat, will easily recognise its ancestry." Some people follow recipes religiously, some people don't, and food gets adapted accoring to circumstance, like what's available locally. If I'm going to cook Nigerian food I need several free hours and a trip to Maliks in Stapleton Road. Then I need several more free hours and a heck of a lot of frying, simmering and grinding. Then I need to cook loads because it will all disappear and some people get extra to take home. Then I also have to make macaroni cheese and healthy vegetables because the little ones can't tolerate hot pepper. But if it's just a routine day and I haven't got hours and hours and I make a stew or mixed rice, those things are very much informed by the Nigerian version of tasty, even if they don't go all the way. I don't think gate keeping food has a place in the context of day-to-day life.
* I read that weird Guardian article and thought it was both sour and silly. But seriously at the moment here just about everything you can buy, especially food, has steeply deteriorated while becoming at least 1/3 more expensive. One of my grandchildren has issues with texture and eats only certain things and the quality even of the cheap processed foods she used to prefer is blatantly abysmal. Amazing that we are emptying the oceans and yet can only buy fishfingers made of soggy recovered fish mush at double the price as 3 months ago.
posted by glasseyes at 4:29 AM on October 18, 2023 [14 favorites]
How do any of us? Those who are trapped in this rat race, with no access to money, power or influence? He has been championing mostly worthwhile causes for decades.
Big sugar tax fan then?
he's not a secret Tory...
(I suspect they think of him as a closet Tory as well)
I'm struggling a bit now, because based on his whole anti-worker shtick and everything I had completely assumed he was a Tory supporter. I mean, who chooses to address poverty by working to make food poor people eat more expensive? He definitely comes off as a Tory to me. Does he have opinions on Welfare Queens?
posted by Audreynachrome at 4:44 AM on October 18, 2023
Big sugar tax fan then?
he's not a secret Tory...
(I suspect they think of him as a closet Tory as well)
I'm struggling a bit now, because based on his whole anti-worker shtick and everything I had completely assumed he was a Tory supporter. I mean, who chooses to address poverty by working to make food poor people eat more expensive? He definitely comes off as a Tory to me. Does he have opinions on Welfare Queens?
posted by Audreynachrome at 4:44 AM on October 18, 2023
I don't know anything about his politics, only his cookery programmes and food campaigns. Now that he's scrubbed up a bit he does look like someone in the Young Conservatives! But that doesn't mean he is one.
Personally I would be a sugar tax fan if only sugar substitutes weren't so disgusting. And probably toxic once the research gets done. I think a poisonous amount of sugar has become routine in the UK diet, I really worry about the long term effects on my grandchildren. The short term effects are perfectly evident in their teeth.
posted by glasseyes at 5:06 AM on October 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Personally I would be a sugar tax fan if only sugar substitutes weren't so disgusting. And probably toxic once the research gets done. I think a poisonous amount of sugar has become routine in the UK diet, I really worry about the long term effects on my grandchildren. The short term effects are perfectly evident in their teeth.
posted by glasseyes at 5:06 AM on October 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm struggling a bit now, because based on his whole anti-worker shtick and everything I had completely assumed he was a Tory supporter.
....You're....you're saying he's anti-worker? When someone in here has a second-hand account of him being a good boss in a notoriously shady industry?
I will grant I'm not an expert, but the only thing in here I can see about him being a bad boss is that his restaurants failed and that put people out of work. But that doesn't strike me as being "anti-worker", more like "good at cooking but crap at running a business".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:50 AM on October 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
....You're....you're saying he's anti-worker? When someone in here has a second-hand account of him being a good boss in a notoriously shady industry?
I will grant I'm not an expert, but the only thing in here I can see about him being a bad boss is that his restaurants failed and that put people out of work. But that doesn't strike me as being "anti-worker", more like "good at cooking but crap at running a business".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:50 AM on October 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Ask me about how to use Google Maps to find stone and marble yards with dumpsters out back and how straightforward it can be to find slabs of stone to use in your oven for pizzas (wait I just told you the whole thing)
posted by ersatzkat at 5:50 AM on October 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by ersatzkat at 5:50 AM on October 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
(do not use that strategy to find free mozzarella for your pizza)
posted by mittens at 6:14 AM on October 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by mittens at 6:14 AM on October 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
Ask me about how to use Google Maps to find stone and marble yards with dumpsters out back and how straightforward it can be to find slabs of stone to use in your oven for pizzas (wait I just told you the whole thing)
The offcuts from them cutting the shape for a sink out of a counter slab are often perfectly sized for use in the kitchen. The last time I wanted one I just asked at the front desk of a place that did stone counters and they pointed me to the scrap pile. Whether the time and hassle that takes is worth the ~$25 you would save over buying a stone that can be delivered to your house is one question; the other question is if there is enough value in having a slab of stone taking up space in your kitchen regardless of how cheap it is. (Personally, I ended up deciding the answer was no, and discarded the stone during our next move.)
posted by Dip Flash at 6:15 AM on October 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
The offcuts from them cutting the shape for a sink out of a counter slab are often perfectly sized for use in the kitchen. The last time I wanted one I just asked at the front desk of a place that did stone counters and they pointed me to the scrap pile. Whether the time and hassle that takes is worth the ~$25 you would save over buying a stone that can be delivered to your house is one question; the other question is if there is enough value in having a slab of stone taking up space in your kitchen regardless of how cheap it is. (Personally, I ended up deciding the answer was no, and discarded the stone during our next move.)
posted by Dip Flash at 6:15 AM on October 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
I made the mistake once of buying a small marble slab at Sainsbury for rolling out pastry. It was affordable, probably less than Jamie's if I could remember. And since it was an impulse buy like a fool I reckoned on walking home with it as usual with the rest of the shopping. Big mistake. I hardly ever used it, even though it wasn't very big it was heavy and had sharp corners and was generally a pain in the arse so I get where you're coming from Dip Flash. I don't even know if it's still in my kitchen
Ah! Before I forget. Metafilter: now i see i am out of cheese
posted by glasseyes at 7:11 AM on October 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Ah! Before I forget. Metafilter: now i see i am out of cheese
posted by glasseyes at 7:11 AM on October 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Perhaps there's some transatlantic confusion going on here. Oliver will never in his life be upper class in the English sense. He has money now, that's not the same thing at all.
Yes, you're correct, I should've said "the English rich," but the point still stands.
posted by praemunire at 7:19 AM on October 18, 2023
Yes, you're correct, I should've said "the English rich," but the point still stands.
posted by praemunire at 7:19 AM on October 18, 2023
....You're....you're saying he's anti-worker? When someone in here has a second-hand account of him being a good boss in a notoriously shady industry?
Why yes, because a) the plural of anecdote is not data, b) it's quite possible for people to be good to those in their monkeysphere while enabling harmful policies outside of it, which leads to c) things like his "war on nugs" are absolutely anti-worker as they attack the working poor for being victims of systemic failures.
Is it good that he's a good boss in the horribly abusive food service industry? Of course. But if he's taking no further action on that to change things, then it's evidence of him being good to those he personally knows, and nothing more.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:20 AM on October 18, 2023
Why yes, because a) the plural of anecdote is not data, b) it's quite possible for people to be good to those in their monkeysphere while enabling harmful policies outside of it, which leads to c) things like his "war on nugs" are absolutely anti-worker as they attack the working poor for being victims of systemic failures.
Is it good that he's a good boss in the horribly abusive food service industry? Of course. But if he's taking no further action on that to change things, then it's evidence of him being good to those he personally knows, and nothing more.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:20 AM on October 18, 2023
I just learned that there's a food desert nearby me and it was actually in an unexpected location.
It probably wouldn't qualify as a "food desert" technically but the most annoying place i ever lived for groceries was a newly gentrified chunk of the city, because a Whole Foods ~2 miles away had basically swept the whole neighborhood clean of smaller markets. The longer-term residents mostly didn't have cars and that 2 miles was a real kick in the pants.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:39 AM on October 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
It probably wouldn't qualify as a "food desert" technically but the most annoying place i ever lived for groceries was a newly gentrified chunk of the city, because a Whole Foods ~2 miles away had basically swept the whole neighborhood clean of smaller markets. The longer-term residents mostly didn't have cars and that 2 miles was a real kick in the pants.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:39 AM on October 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
i'll see your 5 and lower you 2 - cacio e pepe , add peas if you want ....
Oliver's a patronising laddish throwback imho .
posted by burr1545 at 12:59 PM on October 18, 2023
Oliver's a patronising laddish throwback imho .
posted by burr1545 at 12:59 PM on October 18, 2023
things like his "war on nugs" are absolutely anti-worker as they attack the working poor for being victims of systemic failures.
Actually, I would be happy if someone could explain this to me. From my European perspective, Oliver was trying to put healthy school meals on the political agenda, and showing how that could be done. I had friends doing that exact thing here, at the same time, and succeeding in some places, like where my kids went to school. My impression was that there was/is an international movement and that my friends probably know Jamie Oliver, but I'll have to ask.
It was a good thing. From thousands of kids being underfed and undernourished, we went to all kids getting a solid lunch, and in some cases breakfast. Low income families get it for free, and some families get it at a huge discount, but it is managed in a way that makes the subsidies invisible. You know, the magic you can do with technology.
My daughter actually started her career working in the school kitchen in our neighborhood. All the food is balanced, made from scratch and mostly vegetables. You can choose vegetarian or halal food. There are special treats on Fridays, but generally, there is no added sugar and no UPFs at all. The full price is the equivalent of 2.4 dollars or less than 2 pounds, but as stated above, it is regulated according to the family income and no-one will ever know what your family pays.
My question is, how can that be bad for the working poor?
posted by mumimor at 1:34 PM on October 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
Actually, I would be happy if someone could explain this to me. From my European perspective, Oliver was trying to put healthy school meals on the political agenda, and showing how that could be done. I had friends doing that exact thing here, at the same time, and succeeding in some places, like where my kids went to school. My impression was that there was/is an international movement and that my friends probably know Jamie Oliver, but I'll have to ask.
It was a good thing. From thousands of kids being underfed and undernourished, we went to all kids getting a solid lunch, and in some cases breakfast. Low income families get it for free, and some families get it at a huge discount, but it is managed in a way that makes the subsidies invisible. You know, the magic you can do with technology.
My daughter actually started her career working in the school kitchen in our neighborhood. All the food is balanced, made from scratch and mostly vegetables. You can choose vegetarian or halal food. There are special treats on Fridays, but generally, there is no added sugar and no UPFs at all. The full price is the equivalent of 2.4 dollars or less than 2 pounds, but as stated above, it is regulated according to the family income and no-one will ever know what your family pays.
My question is, how can that be bad for the working poor?
posted by mumimor at 1:34 PM on October 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
Well, all the things you might do to compensate you mention are about kids. The sugar tax doesn't just apply to kids, it's kinda orthogonal to school meals? Nobody is mad at Oliver for pushing for better school meals, they're mad at him for the sugar tax specifically, which serves to make a lot of food more expensive.
posted by Dysk at 2:44 PM on October 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Dysk at 2:44 PM on October 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
I just wrote a long reply and it got lost.
So now I'll get to the point faster. IMO the sugar tax is rubbish, but so is the opposition to the sugar tax. It's not about your jam or your fizzy drink, it's about food where sugar has no place.
Why is there any sugar in Iceland's lasagne (trying to build a link to this is what broke my post, so not trying again). I don't need sugar in my lasagne. Sugar is a core element in UPFs and taxing it theoretically makes it more difficult to produce rubbish food. Except it doesn't because the food industry is way ahead of that.
And at the end of the day, the sugar tax is a poor response to the real problem of obese children, which would be better addressed by better school meals, hence my comment above. Good school meals are immensely significant for population health outcomes.
So, I agree that Jamie Oliver supporting the sugar tax was not ideal, I also see his stance as naive, rather than evil. Things are much worse than he imagined.
posted by mumimor at 3:29 PM on October 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
So now I'll get to the point faster. IMO the sugar tax is rubbish, but so is the opposition to the sugar tax. It's not about your jam or your fizzy drink, it's about food where sugar has no place.
Why is there any sugar in Iceland's lasagne (trying to build a link to this is what broke my post, so not trying again). I don't need sugar in my lasagne. Sugar is a core element in UPFs and taxing it theoretically makes it more difficult to produce rubbish food. Except it doesn't because the food industry is way ahead of that.
And at the end of the day, the sugar tax is a poor response to the real problem of obese children, which would be better addressed by better school meals, hence my comment above. Good school meals are immensely significant for population health outcomes.
So, I agree that Jamie Oliver supporting the sugar tax was not ideal, I also see his stance as naive, rather than evil. Things are much worse than he imagined.
posted by mumimor at 3:29 PM on October 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Whether or not there's a sugar tax, there need to be more subsidies for healthy stuff. Where I live it's crazy how much cheaper (not to mention easier) it is for me to eat junkfood as a meal than something not likely to help me get diabetes.
posted by trig at 3:57 PM on October 18, 2023
posted by trig at 3:57 PM on October 18, 2023
Why is there any sugar in Iceland's lasagne (trying to build a link to this is what broke my post, so not trying again). I don't need sugar in my lasagne.
I don't know anything about lasagna in Iceland (something I never had when I was there), and I can easily believe they add too much. But sugar is a quite common thing that people add to homemade spaghetti sauce here in the US. I don't do that, I don't have a sweet tooth at all, but many or even most people like a sweeter taste profile in food, so they add sugar at home and preferentially buy premade products with sweetener in them.
I'm not disagreeing with your overall point, particularly in that I think the added sweetners gets carried way too far in a lot of premade foods, but it's also necessary to acknowledge that it's providing a flavor that a lot of people like.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:48 PM on October 18, 2023
I don't know anything about lasagna in Iceland (something I never had when I was there), and I can easily believe they add too much. But sugar is a quite common thing that people add to homemade spaghetti sauce here in the US. I don't do that, I don't have a sweet tooth at all, but many or even most people like a sweeter taste profile in food, so they add sugar at home and preferentially buy premade products with sweetener in them.
I'm not disagreeing with your overall point, particularly in that I think the added sweetners gets carried way too far in a lot of premade foods, but it's also necessary to acknowledge that it's providing a flavor that a lot of people like.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:48 PM on October 18, 2023
it's about food where sugar has no place.
Why is there any sugar in Iceland's lasagne
"Where it has no place" is pretty subjective though, and culturally dependent. You could argue that the lasagne contains sugar because it is made with food industry tomatoes rather than freshly picked sun ripe off a Mediterranean vine. A touch of sugar is a super common way of compensating for less sweet tomatoes with a lower natural sugar content, even in pretty fancy restaurant settings. Yes, you could also make the lasagne more palatable by using more expensive tomatoes, picked closer to ripening and with the factory sited closer to where they're grown, but that makes it a choice between affordable and tasty.
posted by Dysk at 4:50 PM on October 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Why is there any sugar in Iceland's lasagne
"Where it has no place" is pretty subjective though, and culturally dependent. You could argue that the lasagne contains sugar because it is made with food industry tomatoes rather than freshly picked sun ripe off a Mediterranean vine. A touch of sugar is a super common way of compensating for less sweet tomatoes with a lower natural sugar content, even in pretty fancy restaurant settings. Yes, you could also make the lasagne more palatable by using more expensive tomatoes, picked closer to ripening and with the factory sited closer to where they're grown, but that makes it a choice between affordable and tasty.
posted by Dysk at 4:50 PM on October 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Personally, I want the approach to be to make the 'better' options more accessible and attractive, not to make the 'bad' ones more expensive or worse, or at the very least for the approach to be two-pronged. Just effectively removing the palatable bottom-shelf option altogether is going to have a serious adverse effect on a lot of people's lives, and that is what the sugar tax would do. Free school meals aren't going to help adults on the breadline who can no longer afford to buy food they can stand to eat.
posted by Dysk at 5:06 PM on October 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Dysk at 5:06 PM on October 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Iceland is a supermarket chain in the UK, and it won't let me link to its products.
If you are making frozen foods, you can make them from the best ripe produce at low cost, and thus you don't need to use sugar to enhance your products. But the food industry does. And generally, sugar in savory products is a typical aspect of UPFs. There is sugar in there because it is all about optimizing cheap, low grade produce.
Frozen food in itself is not bad at all. For most people, sweet peas, spinach and kale are all produce that will be better frozen than fresh, for different reasons. There are more, but I should be in bed already. But a pasta with cheese and frozen peas is an excellent cheap food, very nourishing, no additives and less than 30 minutes cook time.
Tinned tomatoes, tinned beans and frozen spinach or kale are all a bomb, for flavor and nutrition, which you can improve with garlic, chili and herbs. Much better than baked beans, that are sugared.
posted by mumimor at 5:29 PM on October 18, 2023
If you are making frozen foods, you can make them from the best ripe produce at low cost, and thus you don't need to use sugar to enhance your products. But the food industry does. And generally, sugar in savory products is a typical aspect of UPFs. There is sugar in there because it is all about optimizing cheap, low grade produce.
Frozen food in itself is not bad at all. For most people, sweet peas, spinach and kale are all produce that will be better frozen than fresh, for different reasons. There are more, but I should be in bed already. But a pasta with cheese and frozen peas is an excellent cheap food, very nourishing, no additives and less than 30 minutes cook time.
Tinned tomatoes, tinned beans and frozen spinach or kale are all a bomb, for flavor and nutrition, which you can improve with garlic, chili and herbs. Much better than baked beans, that are sugared.
posted by mumimor at 5:29 PM on October 18, 2023
Much better than baked beans, that are sugared.
This is subjective. A tin of tomatoes on toast is also a terrible dinner. You don't need a proper kitchen to make good use of the beans.
If you are making frozen foods, you can make them from the best ripe produce at low cost, and thus you don't need to use sugar to enhance your products.
I'm not sure you've ever had anything from Iceland? They are really quite far from using "the best" anything (and I would still use a touch of sugar in a lasagne with middle-shelf tinned tomatoes, nevermind the really cheap ones).
What you're asking for us effectively the cheapest option to be done away with (or made as expensive as a less cheap alternative) which sure, that'll mean the fancy version will be no more expensive than the cheapest, but really you're just pricing some people out of food altogether. People aren't buying the cheapest possible version of things for fun.
posted by Dysk at 7:30 PM on October 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is subjective. A tin of tomatoes on toast is also a terrible dinner. You don't need a proper kitchen to make good use of the beans.
If you are making frozen foods, you can make them from the best ripe produce at low cost, and thus you don't need to use sugar to enhance your products.
I'm not sure you've ever had anything from Iceland? They are really quite far from using "the best" anything (and I would still use a touch of sugar in a lasagne with middle-shelf tinned tomatoes, nevermind the really cheap ones).
What you're asking for us effectively the cheapest option to be done away with (or made as expensive as a less cheap alternative) which sure, that'll mean the fancy version will be no more expensive than the cheapest, but really you're just pricing some people out of food altogether. People aren't buying the cheapest possible version of things for fun.
posted by Dysk at 7:30 PM on October 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm hard pressed to see your argument as much beyond "convenience foods shouldn't exist because people in poverty are can't be trusted to not eat them"
A meal put together with frozen kale, pasta and cheese in 30 minutes takes a kitchen that can handle that, has added cleanup time, and for people who are caregivers thirty minutes is actually a lot of time
posted by Ferreous at 10:14 PM on October 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
A meal put together with frozen kale, pasta and cheese in 30 minutes takes a kitchen that can handle that, has added cleanup time, and for people who are caregivers thirty minutes is actually a lot of time
posted by Ferreous at 10:14 PM on October 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
My point is that ultra processed food is bad for everyone, rich and poor, old and young, and sugar in savory food is often an indicator that it is ultra processed. As stated above, I think sugar taxes are a stupid, mean way of handling this problem, but that is what it is.
In one of the richest countries in the world, everyone should have access to proper food, a kitchen to cook it in and the knowledge to cook it. Jamie Oliver has skills that make him able to tackle the last factor: teaching people to cook.
That leaves squalor, distribution of wealth, and stopping inflation on the table, and to me they all look a lot like political issues. It would be fine if Oliver used his fame and fortune to rise those issues in the public debate, but it isn't his duty in any way. As others have stated above, none of the other TV chefs have done anything like it, and yet it is Oliver who gets the hate.
Pasta with peas and cheese is really delicious, really nutritious, really easy to make and really cheap. Every young person should know how to do it. I make it often in spite of being an adult with a huge kitchen and a fully stocked freezer. Somehow the reviewer makes that look bleak. Maybe he never tried it himself?
BTW, the whole chicken nugget debacle was about school lunches. So that is why I brought that up.
posted by mumimor at 1:36 AM on October 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
In one of the richest countries in the world, everyone should have access to proper food, a kitchen to cook it in and the knowledge to cook it. Jamie Oliver has skills that make him able to tackle the last factor: teaching people to cook.
That leaves squalor, distribution of wealth, and stopping inflation on the table, and to me they all look a lot like political issues. It would be fine if Oliver used his fame and fortune to rise those issues in the public debate, but it isn't his duty in any way. As others have stated above, none of the other TV chefs have done anything like it, and yet it is Oliver who gets the hate.
Pasta with peas and cheese is really delicious, really nutritious, really easy to make and really cheap. Every young person should know how to do it. I make it often in spite of being an adult with a huge kitchen and a fully stocked freezer. Somehow the reviewer makes that look bleak. Maybe he never tried it himself?
BTW, the whole chicken nugget debacle was about school lunches. So that is why I brought that up.
posted by mumimor at 1:36 AM on October 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
People are going entire winters with their heating shut off, because the price of both gas and electric are obscene. I can’t emphasise enough how expensive utilities are in the UK, let alone groceries, rent, etc. Many people who can’t afford to heat their homes certainly aren’t going to pay for an hour+ of the gas or electric hob being on to make virtuous homemade chicken stock, they’re going to quickly heat something up in the microwave and then get back under the blankets. A lot more goes into “affordable” cooking than being able to use up every bit of a chicken. Things are just that bleak right now. To their credit, Jack Monroe recognises the cost of utilities are a not-insignificant factor in making good food as cheaply as possible, and as far as I can tell, it never crosses Oliver’s mind.
posted by skybluepink at 1:42 AM on October 19, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by skybluepink at 1:42 AM on October 19, 2023 [9 favorites]
Sorry if I'm pushing this too hard. I think the thing that triggers me is that this is very similar to my job, where I am very frustrated these days. I'm sure many of you are in similar situations, because it is a global issue: we need to change the way we do things, because if we don't, the real catastrophes are going to pile up on us and even more on our children. What we are seeing now is nothing compared to in five or ten years. At my workplace, there is also the even more immediate threat that if we don't get more relevant, we will be closed down.
A lot of my colleagues are saying, well they can't save the world, and anyway it's impossible to change capitalism, so they won't bother doing anything at all. I'm trying to say that even small things can be relevant. Teaching a kid to make food from scratch can be very important, for the planet and for the kid, specially if you have a platform where you are reaching millions. In the street next to mine, someone is doing guerilla gardening between the parked cars. Not for food but for biodiversity. It's tiny, but if everyone did it, it would make a difference, and they inspire by doing, instead of waiting.
posted by mumimor at 1:52 AM on October 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
A lot of my colleagues are saying, well they can't save the world, and anyway it's impossible to change capitalism, so they won't bother doing anything at all. I'm trying to say that even small things can be relevant. Teaching a kid to make food from scratch can be very important, for the planet and for the kid, specially if you have a platform where you are reaching millions. In the street next to mine, someone is doing guerilla gardening between the parked cars. Not for food but for biodiversity. It's tiny, but if everyone did it, it would make a difference, and they inspire by doing, instead of waiting.
posted by mumimor at 1:52 AM on October 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
As others have stated above, none of the other TV chefs have done anything like it, and yet it is Oliver who gets the hate.
Well yeah, because Oliver is the one who has campaigned to make the financial situation worse for a lot of people, by agitating for taxes on the cheapest food.
posted by Dysk at 3:35 AM on October 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
Well yeah, because Oliver is the one who has campaigned to make the financial situation worse for a lot of people, by agitating for taxes on the cheapest food.
posted by Dysk at 3:35 AM on October 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
Jamie Oliver gets flak because he's a sanctimonious prick who can't see past his wealth and comfort and his disdain for the masses eating dirty chicken nuggets is on full display. The fact that he thinks lack of cooking skills is the primary reason people don't eat better makes his blinkered view readily apparent.
posted by Ferreous at 6:10 AM on October 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Ferreous at 6:10 AM on October 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
the sugar tax [is] not about your jam or your fizzy drink, it's about food where sugar has no place.
I mean, the sugar tax in the UK* is precisely about my fizzy drink. And as I can't stand the taste of artificial sweeteners and also have enough digestive problems that it's hard to get enough calories in, I would often like a sweet drink. So my sole option is Coke.
But if I want to put sugar in my tomato sauce when I'm cooking, luckily I can just use balsamic vinegar: 50% more sugar than Coke and the same price (£1.10 for 250ml), so that works out nicely. I manage to escape consequences thanks to my middle class cultural references.
posted by ambrosen at 7:51 AM on October 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
I mean, the sugar tax in the UK* is precisely about my fizzy drink. And as I can't stand the taste of artificial sweeteners and also have enough digestive problems that it's hard to get enough calories in, I would often like a sweet drink. So my sole option is Coke.
But if I want to put sugar in my tomato sauce when I'm cooking, luckily I can just use balsamic vinegar: 50% more sugar than Coke and the same price (£1.10 for 250ml), so that works out nicely. I manage to escape consequences thanks to my middle class cultural references.
posted by ambrosen at 7:51 AM on October 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Yes, I'm mixing things up.
Anyway, I totally agree that the sugar tax is stupid. We've had it here for a decade in its current shape, which is identical to the UK model, and it has no effect whatsoever. Before that we had a slightly harsher tax, but that didn't work either. The good news for you is that because the fizzy drink manufacturers were marking up their prices insanely before, they just had to mark them down a tiny bit to arrive at the same or even lower prices after the tax. Same with sweets.
What I don't agree is that Oliver's support for the tax makes him a bad person: the reason I mixed things up is because I have dear friends who supported the tax here, and I'm confusing their discussion with what eventually made it into law. And they are not ignorant or evil people, they just didn't understand how the industry works and they were worried for everyone's health. They, and Oliver were/are naive.
I think the misunderstanding here was that we have huge taxes on cars, petrol, cigarettes and alcohol, and they actually work. But those industries are not marking their products up to the degree the processed food and drink industry is, so you can actually make a notable difference by taxing them. Likewise, we originally had a fat tax, and that worked (though I think that was wrong for different reasons, today we know that fats are what make people fat). BTW, if you look up Danish sugar tax, it will seem that it was closed down ten years ago. It wasn't. It was renamed or something, and no-one noticed, which tells you how inefficient is was and is.
posted by mumimor at 10:14 AM on October 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Anyway, I totally agree that the sugar tax is stupid. We've had it here for a decade in its current shape, which is identical to the UK model, and it has no effect whatsoever. Before that we had a slightly harsher tax, but that didn't work either. The good news for you is that because the fizzy drink manufacturers were marking up their prices insanely before, they just had to mark them down a tiny bit to arrive at the same or even lower prices after the tax. Same with sweets.
What I don't agree is that Oliver's support for the tax makes him a bad person: the reason I mixed things up is because I have dear friends who supported the tax here, and I'm confusing their discussion with what eventually made it into law. And they are not ignorant or evil people, they just didn't understand how the industry works and they were worried for everyone's health. They, and Oliver were/are naive.
I think the misunderstanding here was that we have huge taxes on cars, petrol, cigarettes and alcohol, and they actually work. But those industries are not marking their products up to the degree the processed food and drink industry is, so you can actually make a notable difference by taxing them. Likewise, we originally had a fat tax, and that worked (though I think that was wrong for different reasons, today we know that fats are what make people fat). BTW, if you look up Danish sugar tax, it will seem that it was closed down ten years ago. It wasn't. It was renamed or something, and no-one noticed, which tells you how inefficient is was and is.
posted by mumimor at 10:14 AM on October 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
The good news for you is that because the fizzy drink manufacturers were marking up their prices insanely before, they just had to mark them down a tiny bit to arrive at the same or even lower prices after the tax.
That is not how it's played out over here - the few drinks that haven't switched in some awful artificial sweetener are significantly dearer everywhere than the alternatives, and than before the tax.
A sugar tax in a Danish context is a bit different - there isn't anything line the same level of food precarity, and the welfare system kinda works. The relative balance of prices on food is quite different as well - processed food is much more heavily marked up in Denmark in my experience. A sugar tax here is just not the same thing, and to be for or against it here does not mean the same thing as it does in Denmark.
posted by Dysk at 11:12 AM on October 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
That is not how it's played out over here - the few drinks that haven't switched in some awful artificial sweetener are significantly dearer everywhere than the alternatives, and than before the tax.
A sugar tax in a Danish context is a bit different - there isn't anything line the same level of food precarity, and the welfare system kinda works. The relative balance of prices on food is quite different as well - processed food is much more heavily marked up in Denmark in my experience. A sugar tax here is just not the same thing, and to be for or against it here does not mean the same thing as it does in Denmark.
posted by Dysk at 11:12 AM on October 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
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I feel like reading that article has told me more about the day the author was having than the show they’re ostensibly reviewing..
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 5:22 PM on October 16, 2023 [56 favorites]