A Month of The Naked Chef – Celebrating 25 Years of Jamie Oliver’s Work

2024 celebrates 25 years of Jamie Oliver’s first cookbook, so this month we celebrate a month of The Naked Chef in the cookbook club. And I unveil a common kitchen standby as the inspiration for the July cookbook selection.

As I mentioned last month, Jamie Oliver‘s seminal work, The Naked Chef turns 25 this year, so in June the Lambs’ Ears Cookbook Club will be dedicating our kitchens to a whole month of the Naked Chef.Every now and again a cookbook comes along that rearranges what we do in our kitchens – how we cook and how we approach food and our cooking. Jamie Oliver certainly did that with his first cookbook and his fun and cheeky television series, and then built on it with an enormous body of subsequent work.

His culinary explorations covered a variety of cuisines, food celebrations and culinary approaches – from budget cooking, 30 minute meals, and five ingredient meals, right through to Christmas cooking, family meals, and sharing dinners.

In June we will be focusing on Oliver’s first work with a month of the Naked Chef, but we will also be visiting any of his other 35 cookbooks, so we won’t be short on inspiration and culinary options. The variety of cuisines and cooking styles he’s given us is enormous – this will be a lot of fun.

What did we cook in May?

Our may cookbook selection, Easy Wins by Anna Jones, was enormously popular. I personally rate this book very highly, so I was thrilled to see that so many cookbook club members loved it as much as I do. Once a few of us got cooking and sharing from it, quite a few more members decided they had to race out and buy it for themselves! (I sure hope the publishers over at Harper Collins Australia, and elsewhere, realise what an impact our group has on cookbook purchases.)

Here’s a few of the dishes that our members shared in our Facebook group.

 

So tell me about July

A few months back a modest little cookbook called The Tinned Tomatoes Cookbook by Samuel Goldsmith was released by Murdoch Books. I think it escaped the notice of many of us simply because of the unpretentious and familiar nature of the star ingredient. However, this is a staple that pretty much everyone has in their kitchen cupboard or pantry, and this cookbook will be our July cookbook club selection.

Take a tin of tomatoes and you have the beginning of an enormous range of tasty meals – meals that can be as simple or as fancy as you might want or need. From simple soups or a basic pasta sauce, to gourmet seafood dishes and hearty slow cooked meals, a tin of tomatoes will meet all dietary requirements, time constraints or culinary varieties. They are affordable, easy to source, and healthy – this book will make the most versatile ingredient in your kitchen your new best friend.

But back to June for now. I think our month of the Naked Chef is going to be quite an adventure. Jamie Oliver’s food is always full of fun, flavour and joy. With such an enormous repertoire, it has enormous versatility and appeal – there’s definitely going to be something to inspire all of us in the Lambs’ Ears Cookbook Club.

So far, 2024 is looking a little like this –

The whole year cookbook is The Food Saver’s A-Z – The Essential Cornersmith Kitchen Companion by Alex Elliott-Howery and Jaimee Edwards

June – The Naked Chef and any other Jamie Oliver cookbook
May – Easy Wins by Anna Jones
April – Your choice from any ONE book you have
March – Recipes for a Lifetime of Beautiful Cooking by Danielle Alvarez with Libby Travers
February – Any recipes from the late Bill Granger, either from his books or online
January – Kindred by Maria and Eva Konescny

YOU CAN BUY ANY OF THESE COOKBOOKS AT ALL GOOD BOOKSHOPS, OR ONLINE AT BOOKTOPIA USING THE LINKS IN THIS POST. (IF PURCHASED VIA THESE LINKS, YOU WILL GET A GREAT PRICE AND I WILL RECEIVE A SMALL PERCENTAGE OF THE COST.)

Details for last year in the cookbook club are all here.

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