Emma Brady: Oliver twist as he does his best to get Brits back in their kitchens
So he’s done it again. Earnest and well-meaning (although some might say interfering) chef Jamie Oliver has cooked up a storm with his latest quest to get Britons back in the kitchen.
But just as he alienated parents during his drive to improve school dinners, to the point where parents were taking orders for lunchtime takeaways, Jamie is now facing a backlash from residents of Rotherham.
Hitting back at their portrayal in his Ministry of Food series, which targeted the Yorkshire town as it has a strong junk-food culture, locals have claimed they were portrayed as “dumbos” and “numpties”.
As ever his idea was laudable, to teach people some basic but healthy recipes which, once they had mastered them, could be passed on to friends and family. A pyramid-style form of culinary brainwashing if you will.
This isn’t the first time he’s got the community’s backs up, as it was in Rotherham where mother Julie Critchlow and her friends were snapped passing takeaway parcels through school railings, in protest at Jamie’s attempt to change its menu.
Whatever you may think of Jamie Oliver, he is working – much as he does in his own kitchen – with raw material.
While the yummy mummies of Harborne, Leamington Spa or Worcester would no doubt love a one-to-one cookery lesson with the man determined we should abandon ready meals for real food, having such a sermon thrust on you would probably annoy in equal measure.
And it’s not like healthy eating schemes are a particularly new idea either.
Health bosses have tried free fruit and veg initiatives, cookery classes for those in deprived areas (albeit on a voluntary basis), and numerous ‘awareness campaigns’ to help educate those who have to feed their families on a very tight budget.
In the midst of the credit crunch, self-sufficiency and the ability to make the weekly shop stretch that little bit further by cooking from scratch, as well as taking advantage of supermarket price wars, this is important.
After stores have realised that their gourmet ranges are not selling as well as they usually do, but own-brand value ranges are flying off the shelves, do they not have a duty of care to ensure quality comes “as standard”?
When Jamie went into schools he found, unsurprisingly, that children and teenagers were eating frozen foods reheated and served up by their parents that were little more than regurgitated chicken carcasses, rather than pure poultry or meat.
But unless you’re already a chef, butcher or farmer it’s unlikely you will a notion of exactly what cuts, or more likely left-overs, go into pre-packaged frozen foods like chicken nuggets or turky ‘twizzlers’.
That level of education is necessary if novice cooks - and let’s face it not everyone took home economics at school, and if they did it was for a doss rather than a GCSE - are to gain anything from his latest project.
Rotherham is one of the fattest towns in the country, with some of the most deprived areas, but I suspect finding willing volunteers who wanted to have Jamie Oliver come to their house was not difficult.
Could it be they wanted to have their “five minutes” rather than genuinely want to learn how to cook.
For this kind of initiative to work the people have to be wholly on board, otherwise it is a futile exercise.
And since the first episode aired last week, the chicken (nuggets) have come home to roost.
Now I’m not suggesting for a second that Birmingham has a problem on the scale of Rotherham, but every city has its poorer areas where the cost of everyday living is an ongoing issue - not just during the credit crunch.
And I’m sure Jamie would be hard pressed to find any Brummie who couldn’t rustle up a balti from scratch.
A visit to our indoor markets or farmers’ markets in more rural areas will show the array of exciting ingredients, often much cheaper than the local supermarket.
Not only is it a healthier and cheaper way to eat, it can be fun and as a person’s confidence grows with the basics – spaghetti bolognese, roast chicken, or shepherd’s pie – so they start to try new things.
Or – as is sometimes the case at Casa Brady – it’s pure entertainment, to see if out of the smokey furnace something edible will appear.
Even so my guests never go home hungry – and are even polite enough to ask for my recipes!
