Italians are not huge dessert lovers, so the desserts section of this book could be better and what is there is quality. The little passages that start with "my thoughts on..." are little bits of advice from Jamie on things like porchetta, pizza and minestrone are brilliant insights, they are full of obvious first-hand experience and worth a read before starting the recipe.

The book does a good job of chronicling Jamie's trip around Italy in his quest to provide a "the best and simplest Italian cookbook for everybody anywhere to enjoy". on the whole he delivers, the situational pictures throughout the book, people and places Jamie visited on his trip are beautiful and make me extremely nostalgic, they really do remind me of my own travels around Italy. 

It is hard to imagine that there will be someone who doesn't know who Jamie Oliver is, but few will know how it all started for the naked chef. 

Jamie’s parents owned a pub/restaurant in Essex. In his early teens after much begging and pleading he was eventually allowed to work in the kitchen. At age 16 he enrolled at Westminster Catering College before going to cut his teeth and continue his training in France.

He found his first job in London under the Antonio Carluccio at the Neal Street Restaurant as head pastry chef, he soon left Neal Street and went to be the sous-chef at the River Café. 

It was at the River cafe where his talent for being on camera was spotted during the filming of a documentary on the restaurant. He was quickly  picked up by the production company to host The Naked Chef, his first and certainly not the last television series.

As well as his TV career taking off with the Naked Chef spinning off into other shows, Jamie started his mammoth publishing empire and authored a number of best-selling cookbooks. In 2002 he established the Fifteen Foundation, a London-based program that gave underprivileged youths the opportunity to experience careers in the culinary industry at Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant. The project featured in a channel 4 series Jamie’s Kitchen, and was a huge success and encouraged him to expand the model to the rest of the country and eventually overseas.

At the time of writing Jamie has authored 29 individual cookery books. The well-oiled publishing machine has churned out at least one book every year since 'The Naked Chef' in 1999 and shows no sign of slowing down. having sold 14.5 million books Jamie Oliver has a recipe book catalogue that could rival the library of congress one day.

I am a fan of most of Jamie's books with 'Jamie's Kitchen' 'Jamie's Italy' and '30 minutes meals' being particular favourites of mine.

Here are a few of my favourite recipes from 'Jamie's Italy'

The italians are not huge dessert lovers, so the desserts section of this book could be better and what is there is quality. The little passages that start with "my thoughts on..." are little bits of advise from Jamie on things like porchetta, pizza and minestrone are brilliant insights, they are full of obivous first hand experience and worth a read before starting the recipe.

Porchetta

The recipe in the book is basically just a rub for the inside of the pork loin, but these few basic herbs and spices will elevate your Sunday roast to truly spectacular levels. The roasties might look like they are a overcooked but they are just roasted in with the pork and they were amazing crispy, sweet and basted in the pork juices.

Polpette di Tunno (Tuna Meatballs)

These meatballs do need to be made with fresh tuna, tinned tuna will just simply not hold trust me I tried, and pine nuts are expensive, which means that this is not the cheapest nor the easiest dish to make from this book, but my god are they worth the time and money. They have great meaty texture and the sauce offers a perfect contrast to the flavours of the tuna balls

Spaghetti Tetrazzini

A super easy and quick chicken and mushroom pasta bake, topped with a parmesan just before baking to give you that incredible crust on the top. It uses porchini mushrooms and chicken thighs for the strong flavours but you could quite easily substitute for button mushrooms for convienience if you want. the sauce is wonderfully creamy and full of garlic.

Bustrengo

This dessert is the Italian equivalent to our english fruit cake, it is a dense polenta cake that is packed with dried fruit. but its the grated apple and orange zest that really comes come to the fore and make this quite heavy cake taste light as air 

Linguine alla carbonara di salsiccia (Sausage Carbonara)

I am a huge fan of carbonara in general so any diviation from a traditional carbonara recipe I am always wary but the addition of lemon zest and sausage is a left turn but it really lifts it and makes it a lot less stodgy and heavy.

The best recipe in this book in my opinion, no hard to source ingredients and only takes minutes to prepare, it was a huge suprise.

Semifreddo con Cioccolato e Riso (Rice and Chocolate and Ice-cream)

Semifreddos are brilliant work around for anyone who wants to make their own ice-cream but doesn't have all the expensieve equipment necessary to do so. This recipe also has risotto rice which gives a lot of texture, the recipe says to keep a little bite in the rice, but once frozen it give the ice cream a really unpleasant texture. I intentionally overcooked my rice and it was 1000% better.

Torta di Nada (Blueberry Cake)

This for me is the best dessert in the book, it does ask for muscat or fragola grapes which are beautiful but unfortuately the season is short and they are really expensive, so it is a bit unrealistic. it does say that you can use blueberries instead which i have done. 

The recipe is great easy to prepare and cook, it has a great texture and the blueberries add a nice tang, it goes great with custard

SAMPLE RECIPE

Me and my family have been eating carbonara for as long as I can remember, with a nice big slice of garlic bread, I tried this recipe with an open mind but not without a healthy dose of caution and scepticism. I was not dissappointed it is a wonderful dish well worth a try.

This is the best recipe in the book as far as I am concerned.

1. Cook the pasta in a pan of boiling salted water according to the packet instructions, then drain, reserving a mugful of cooking water. 
2. Meanwhile, squeeze the sausagemeat out of the skins, then, with wet hands, quickly shape into 18 even-sized balls. 
3. Roll and coat them in black pepper, then cook in a non- stick frying pan on a medium heat with ½ a tablespoon of olive oil until golden and cooked through, tossing regularly, then turn the heat off.
4. Cut the pancetta across the grain into 1/2 cm lardons and fry until golden and crispy, drain off the fat and add to the sausage balls
5. In a medium sized bowl put in the finely chop the parsley, stalks and all, beat it with the egg, the lemon zest and a splash of pasta cooking water, then finely grate and mix in most of the Parmesan
6. Toss the drained pasta into the sausage pan, pour in the egg mixture, and toss for 1 minute off the heat (the egg will gently cook in the residual heat). 
7. Loosen with a good splash of reserved cooking water, season to perfection with sea salt and pepper, and finely grate over the remaining Parmesan.