Jamie Oliver Gift Guide

Over the last few weeks I've been glued to TV chef Jamie Oliver's latest series: Jamie's 15 Minute Meals. The recipes are, as ever, as promised and of the highest standards and Jamie Oliver cookbooks are best sellers every year, especially at Christmas - just like Jamie's other products.

Jamie Oliver gifts are good quality and great value - just the ticket for the cook in your life. Beautifully presented recipe books and well designed and effective kitchen utensils and bake-ware for the cook in your life. Take a look, for example, at Jamie Oliver mugs - great fun and super gifts for all the family.

Don't know Jamie Oliver? He's one of our best loved British chefs, (in fact I'm watching the Jamie Oliver Family Christmas right now)! Not only is Jamie famous for his wonderful Jamie Oliver recipes and cookbooks, but he's a long-time campaigner for good food, for compassionate farming and for school dinners and education. Even I was surprised to find paintings by him; and very good paintings they are too. Is there no limit to his talents? No wonder they gave him an MBE.

I use many of Jamie Oliver's recipes because they're just so sensible and we like good, wholesome food that's quick and easy to prepare and also foolproof, because we're not celebrity chefs.

Why not cast an eye over the selection of Jamie Oliver gifts for cooks that I've put together? Everyone a winner as far as I'm concerned.

So what would I like for my birthday present or in my Christmas stocking this year? Jamie's 15 Minute Meals is top of my list for Christmas 2013, but there's so much choice - just have a look below ......

This is Jamie Oliver's last cookbook - Jamie's 15-minute Meals. In just fifteen minutes Jamie Oliver cooks the most tempting meal before your very eyes on TV. He shows that you really can have a delicious, healthy, and beautifully presented meal on the table in just fifteen minutes.

Well, I do think it might take me a bit longer, but practice makes perfect. I've had a good look at this book in the book stores and it really is a good buy. Lots of lovely pictures to inspire, loads of recipes and absolutely inspirations. I run a holiday cottage and a Bed and Breakfast in Limousin, France, so I have to get good food on the table with as little fuss and time as I can. I'm an artist not a chef, so I'm always on the look-out for good recipes. I'm going to be asking for Jamie's Comfort food and fifteen minute meals for my Christmas gift this year.

Jamie's 15-Minute Meals

This is one substantial book! Hard back, great cover, it contains so many recipes that it'll keep a cook occupied well beyond Christmas 1013. The illustrations are great, the recipes simple and the whole book is designed to get wholesome food onto the table in 15 minutes to feed the whole family.

Great!

Jamie has always been a "Cheeky Chappie" right from the word go when he hit our TV screens aged about 17 years old with his fabulous new food that young people like myself actually wanted to eat. It was healthy, looked gorgeous and was achievable, unlike the old-school TV chefs producing elaborate meals using incredibly rich and expensive ingredients. Jamie looked like a student, (actually he still does!), and cooked his food in what looked like a student flat on an ancient, little stove. Now he's a Dad himself, father to four gorgeous daughters, Poppy, Rosie, Daisy and Petal, so he really should know what a Dad would like as a gift.

Which Dad wouldn't like this mug?

It's Jamies' campaigns against the low-cost, high fat 'cheap' foods that flood our market that really elevate him from chef to food-fighter. In Britain he fought for good quality and healthy food in schools at a time that children were being given the famous 'Turkey Twizzlers' - I hope I've go that right. He pulled back the cloak to reveal just how this food was made and he shocked and shamed a whole nation into putting better food in front of children at school - not that he received much thanks from either children, or, in some cases parents ?!?

More recently Jamie Oliver took it upon himself to tackle these food issues in America. What a mammoth task and one, I suspect, that would gain him enemies in high places. You've just got to admire his courage.

Jamie has also tried to further the fight against allowing children to fail at school. Setting up his own dream school he attempts to reform through education. You've got to admire the scale of his ambitions!

Yesterday I gave a big pre-Christmas dinner party for thirteen people and used one of Jamies recipes for the pudding - a sort of cross between an ice cream bomb and a summer pudding! I forgot to finish reading the instructions! I tried to serve it straight from the freezer, only returning to the notes that I'd made while watching Jamie's Family Christmas on TV the next day to see what went wrong.

Of course he'd said to take it out of the freezer an hour before serving. Read the Question!! Did I say that Jamie Oliver's recipes were foolproof? I could kick myself that I didn't take a photo. If I'd made people wait for the photo-shoot, the ice cream would have had time to soften a bit. Oh well .... good excuse to make another one!

Jamie's Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals

Tasty, easy, healthy, colourful and light on the washing up. These books are a great read and full of fabulous pictures. A winning combination.

Jamie also has a whole range of elegantly designed, simple kitchen equipment that actually works. I love this pepper pot, but there's lots more where this came from.

Jamie Oliver pop-up pepper mill

Don't you just love this clean and simple design, the fact that you can see how much pepper you have inside?

I've gone off that powder pepper that you buy ready ground, so I love to grind my pepper in a pepper grinder, or to grind it myself in a pastel and mortar for really chunky pepper.

Unfortunately you need to go to Amazon.co.uk to see a good range of salt and pepper shakers: but have a look at mine - I love it and it's lasted for years and years ..... My Chef'n Salt and Pepper Shaker

Who wouldn't like Jamie Oliver's face gazing down from the bedroom wall? Well, I must admit, I'm not so keen, but perhaps as inspiration in the kitchen this poster would keep me going? I would hope so! Have a look on Amazon for a canvas version.

I'm a professional artist and painter, so you can understand how you could have knocked me down with a feather when I discovered Jamie Oliver painted too. Nice work as well. I suppose the creativity and craftsmanship that goes into cooking, can just as well be transferred into art. Well these are little stunners. For anyone who perhaps wouldn't thank you for a Jamie Oliver poster, these paintings would make super gifts to liven up bedroom, sitting room or kitchen.

This could be a sculpture! There is something so satisfying about this pestal and mortar. The smooth, heavy, rounded shapes. The beauty of the materials, the almost Japanes simplicity of form. I'll have one of these please!

Jamie Oliver JB5100 Granite Pestle and Mortar

This is so beautiful you could use it as an ornament, and certainly it will grace the shelves of your kitchen.

You need a really solid pestle and mortar so this is just ideal. Use it to grind up you spices, and, as mentioned above, I love to grind peppercorns in mine. I then leave it on the table so that I can take a pinch whenever I cook or eat.

Who is Jamie Oliver?

The whole truth about British chef Jamie will have to be told in another story, but here are a few facts:

• Born 27 May 1975
• Brought up in his parents pub, "The Cricketers", Clavering, Essex, England.
• Left school at age sixteen without qualifications
• City & Guilds NVQ in home economics at Westminster Kingsway College
• First job at Antonio Carluccio's Neal's Yard restaurant
• BBC in after made unscripted appearance in a documentary about Neals Yard, "Christmas at the River Cafe", 1997 and became a BBC celebrity
• Married former model Juliette Norton July 2000
• Four children with rather OTT names: Poppy Honey Rosie, Daisy Boo Pamela, Petal Blossom Rainbow, Buddy Bear Maurice
• Awarded an MBE 2003
• Initiated a campaign called "Feed me Better" 2005
• On The Sunday Times list of richest Britons under 30