348: Jamie Oliver

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0:31now with technology like social media i have to try and feel what you're happy and pissed off about i'm worried about and nervous about and excited about and i have to kind of put that in a little kind of blender and think what should i spend my next year dedicated to doing for you

0:51This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rothbard.

1:27conversation. Okay, hi everyone. Welcome to Rizzoli Bookstore and welcome to Taste Live at Rizzoli. We're so glad to have you all here tonight for Jamie Oliver, our special guest, recorded live for the podcast, This Is Taste. And we're especially glad to have him here to launch his newest cookbook, Five Ingredients Mediterranean. He's joined by Matt Rodbard. He's the founding editor of the award-winning Taste and the host of the podcast, This is Taste. And let's give a warm welcome now to Jamie and Matt. Thank you.

2:02Hey, guys. For the podcast, we're going to do this again on April 23rd, a book called Career World, which I wrote with Dookie Hong as we're going to be talking to Eric Kim. So thank you for the pause, my wife. How are you, buddy? Very good to be here. I feel slightly guilty that all these good people have given up their night to come and see us talk. We better deliver. I think there will be some delivery. We had dinner last night. We went over some things. Okay, the first question, the most important question I'm going to ask you today is, have you seen Salt Burn? Oh, my. Yes, it's such a weird film.

2:35Okay. I nearly turned it off three times, but I managed to get to the naked dance at the end. Oh, spoiler. Oh, shit. Okay. yeah spoiler i can't wait it depends what you're into did you like that early 2000s like the time that they were setting it in because that's like a important time for you i feel like that you know naked chef was just popping it was it set in that time i didn't i didn't pick up on that nuance um but i certainly like that time yeah that was that was yeah that was when the naked chef kicked off and uh there was a lot of certainly in the uk it was a much better place to live than now um we'll get into that it was a good time there was a lot of good stuff going on at that so jamie we're going to talk about five ingredients mediterranean your new book which is terrific and is like to the to the top of amazon and you can buy you've already bought it here but let's first talk about london i i got a chance to visit your your office and studio in north london and you walk around the neighborhood and you're seeing there's like a far restaurant there's a loxa restaurant there's like a high-end cocktail bar how does london the city of london inspire the work that you do um oh that's a actually an interesting first of all i don't go out as much as people would think like i've got a big family i work hard and i go to bed and then at the weekend which i normally take off unless there's a problem it's all kids so i everyone thinks i'm out in restaurants and cocktail bars on a regular basis and i'm working yeah if anything i'm cooking um but um but it is a city full of many great restaurants and and quite a good edgy vibe and um certainly where we are in east london which is one of the rougher parts of london if i'm being sort of broad strokes when i say rougher i mean like like north london and west london's posh yeah but they they don't have that many great restaurants in east london it's full of incredible restaurants and um delis and coffee bars and bakeries and um it's literally it's riddled with it and and i think what that is is like if the rent's a bit cheaper and you're a talented person and you get a cheaper like rent deal then you can just express yourself and i love it i love it i love it and it's that energy of young people 25 to 35 year olds like they've got technical ability they got the nerve to go for it because it's a tough industry it really and it's such a great energy so you can still pop up in london right now you can still find a little space yeah because new york it's becoming more challenging you have to go to like you know deep brooklyn if you're going to get a space but is is there like a creative energy in london right now there's definitely there's definitely a sort of um i mean every city has its own energy and i think you go there for it and tune into it but london is quite funny irreverent yeah detailed at times and loose at times and yeah Londoners make me laugh quite a lot they're quite interesting when are you gonna do a London show I feel like maybe I never yeah I have never really I mean maybe the Naked Chef was the most London show I ever did yeah we remember you that was 25 years ago yeah maybe don't we want Jamie don't we want Jamie back on US television let's get an applause here guys like where where's your Netflix show where where Netflix are not really that interested in me boo yeah and and nor is amazon either yeah we're still sort of we got like we do fast channel stuff now which is which is where a lot of the eyeballs are going and like traditional broadcast and um yeah i know yes it's it's uh it's yeah it's definitely it was always complicated getting into the u.s because the way it's structured but um yeah i mean i remember launching food network back in the day they were the days back into the chelsea yeah i remember the like the first time I came to the States.

6:24So when you came to New York for the first time and you were like doing the Food Network meetings, was it like a nice office or was it like really scrappy? Fairly scrappy. Yeah. Fairly scrappy, but they were like, it was like a new cable channel. They had budget, like, you know, The Naked Chef, but they loved that. And it was, I think it was like me, Emeril Lagasse, and Bobby Flay. That was the only names you'd probably recognize compared to now. It was a good energy and like cable was new in those days. Definitely. so it was nice to be a part of that it was fun, really good fun but back to the fast TV, I turn on my Samsung and I'm watching you it truly is if you've got a Samsung TV you get me for free can you all please upgrade your TVs and we can continue this night together, you just got me I've got my own channel relentless Jamie I'm just always there 24-7 it's good TV For my wife, you know, big old Samsung TV in the front room.

7:24Yeah, are you doing 72? I can program it so when you turn it on, I come on. And it's like my wife is just like, seriously? Have you gone to a friend's house and programmed it so you go on for the first time? I do it every time, of course. It's like, hi. All right, I want to talk about the way that you set up your office in East London. You have this really unique, it kind of like, I'm going to say Warhol Factory. We're in like a book art bookstore. It kind of has that vibe, meaning there's like all sorts of creatives around. You're doing cookware, you're doing television, you're doing cookbooks, you're doing advocacy.

7:57And let me just get, for our audience in the podcast, I want to get a sense of how do you think about your work and your business when you've got everyone in this kind of factory, literally? It's hard to explain. We're a very unusual business. I agree in the best way possible. And we like to express sort of the passion and creativity in food in lots of ways. I think because like when I started 25 years ago, I was a bit more like edgy and like a bit, I guess, cooler and a bit more niche. But then you sort of earn your stripes into being mainstream. And then when you become mainstream, that's like a weird.

8:33What does that mean? It's a bit like pop music or like, you know, but I think I really believe in like you've got to ride the wave and then just go on your own personal journey. But also if you can, it's a really weird thing to explain. if you can connect with an audience and mine's a global audience we were broadcasting to 120 countries like pretty quick um with that comes responsibility yeah and then if you're to be relevant the next year and to be very frank about everything you've seen like i haven't got many contracts that are beyond a year yeah like i can get fired pretty quick like this is not your choice no no everyone's oh it's jamie i've really i get fired really quick across most stuff i do so staying relevant is a is a and being an author connecting with people book buyers earning your sale yeah you know it's not easy no publishing is not easy but the whole game is not easy so it i i i and this is not me trying to sound worthy or anything i have to be in service to the public and that includes every one of you in here yeah like now with technology which is obviously old technology now but like social media comments and and like the ability to broadcast and listen is you have to listen and I and I have to try and feel what you're happy and pissed off about and worried about and nervous about and excited about and I have to kind of put that in a little kind of blender and think what should I spend my next year dedicated to doing for you and I'm not saying I get it individually right for you every year but I kind of have to roughly go roughly in the right area and if I go to and I have done this if you go two years too late or two years too early you don't get the way what's worse early or late early is really frustrating because if i really if i put a load of time and money into something that's bloody important and brilliant and like yeah has this capacity to sort of celebrate food in this incredible way and you're too early and it's just dead and you're like oh that hurt yeah and then two years later like some schmucks do it that don't really they don't really care about it in the same way like it might be a bigger corporation or like so the bigger corporations are always and very good and robust at sniffing around the good stuff yeah yeah and before you know it and this is probably technological like technology and specifically like you're very early to the internet you were very early on social media you're probably doing things that yeah yeah we were early on a lot of stuff but people often look at us as being really good and professional but like we're genuinely baffled about the whole thing so if you're baffled in you know like i don't this idea that you're like on like we're we we're just it's a kind of the normal is being dizzy and and and i guess the trick is to keep listening and and then reacting and trying to use your craft or your ability to connect with people and amplify that across the world and 140 yeah and i think it's crazy when you say it we all go about our life in life's busy it's challenging every one of us has got stuff thrown at us for better and for worse all the time and food somehow has to fit into that so the question is how and people often forget that the biggest industry in the world is the food industry the biggest employer in the world is the food industry so it ain't arms it ain't oil it ain't city trading it's forget about the grocery store it's a trillion dollar business in the united states alone one trillion dollars and where you choose to spend your dollar yeah it's highly political but you think oh i'm just busy i'm just buying a coffee yeah you're buying like a six seven dollar coffee like is it the best you know so like i think just people are often disempowered by their power but actually we i mean part of what i do is tell stories and make documentaries but make people sort of spend a dollar slightly differently yeah and then what's really interesting is that wherever the dollar goes everyone follows so it's so i think like trying to do that at a kind of corporate level or a government level certainly my advert how do you say advocacy advocacy i couldn't yeah i have a related question though i think when i visited your office and this is related you had a big vision board um a literal white board of of lobbying efforts in political activism in efforts that you were actually pressuring Parliament to make change.

12:56You were actually working with government. And I want to get a sense for the podcast and for the audience, what's on that board now? And I just want to also just hear a little bit about how you really got the sugar tax passed in the UK. Yeah, okay, crumbs. And do it in 30 seconds, please. Look, I think on the journey, I got to know the voices of people around the world. what they're worried about. So I start making programs and documentaries to answer some of those questions. Probably one of the things that we do quite uniquely very well is campaigning TV. So what does that mean? It means hiring a team and structuring a team that can actually campaign.

13:37What do you mean by that? Sort of clarify. Documentary making is quite structured. It's production and there's a budget. There's a team, like you're good or not good, and then you tell a story and then you get that story everywhere. Campaigning is a team and it's hard and and it's it's that's how we're going to election time that's how people get voted for and like so building a case for for large amounts of people to say i agree and i support you is it has a very long tail so when i did say school dinners like 15 years ago which was a you know we had no standards for kids food in britain at all you know so 190 days of the year kids go to school for breakfast and lunch there's no standards it's a wild west all kinds of shit going in there terrible filthy stuff uh no standards so we created the first standards ever in british history there were standards for dog food i mean how british is that by the way there's standards for dog food to sell and if you don't adhere to them you go to jail like like it's serious business but our kids you know so so that's i mean so you have to have a very long tail to to to shepherd that to a good resolve but also the resolve which is winning which we did um you have to keep another government can change it so you have to have a long tail that keeps it dig your heels in and and that becomes part of modern culture so you can't go back regardless so give me an example of a film or piece of content you created that actually enacted changes it feels like the sugary drinks taxes are really interesting one i do yeah that's a good step back to that i do like a couple of documentaries prime time and we tell the story of sugar we show that the biggest source of sugar in our kids lives is for sugary sweetened drinks and we look at the industry and then we say look they came in a few years ago and it was cute and it was a treat and now it's hydration like is that cool like what do we do about it so then you build a case to tax it and that is a tax that the businesses would take and then when you tax it you say you got a ring fence it and only spend that tax for good right so governments hate this across the world so you say that tax which was 430 million in the first year um only goes to elementary schools for breakfast clubs and sports ring taxing is like you're marking the tax money for yeah they call it they call it hypothecation and yeah it's a big word for you can only spend it on that subject and they hate it because what they like to do with your money in tax is whatever they want to do with it like they don't want to be told what to do with it so um so so we do that and we get it across the line but basically what we created was the fastest reformulation of sugary sweetened drinks this in the world ever this is key reformulation of a drink you're not saying you're taking all of the sugar out of drinks it's reformulation you're not saying you're only doing and we did it in two gears there was always like a carrot for for any level and but but it's but but then if you if you judge me on that that's not the genius of of the story the genius of the story is that when you when government when authority creates rules right you wouldn't want to watch a sports game without rules right it'd just be a fight on the pitch so you have to like this idea that you can't be a nanny state is wrong like yeah like nannies are really important and rules are really important and they're the things that keep your planes in the air and the seatbelts doing their jobs and the geezer that drives your kids to school like trained extra than you to take 100 kids you know So the genius of it is that when you create these rules, they invest in R &D departments, and then they invest in new products, and then they give you more choice.

17:15And then what you see, what happened in Britain, is in the first year, we took the tax, we reformulated it, genius, and then they created more milk, more water, more fruit products. And then in your vending machine, you had more choice. The companies that were making the sodas decided to pivot to healthier foods. So what's interesting is the CEOs and the marketing companies and the sort of dark side of those businesses will see me as an enemy. Right. So let's just look at that for a second. It's so fascinating. Yeah. So I grew their business. They took more money. They made more profit. The senior management got bigger bonuses because of me.

17:51And I'm the enemy. What you get is a more reformulated product. Nothing's taken away. You can still get your Coke red. Right. So no one's taken nothing away. You've still got what you want. But you get a better version of all the other stuff, plus you get more choice. So when you're working a shift, doing a night shift in a call center in God knows where, and it's free in the morning, it ain't just the same stuff. You've got choice. So for me, I'm pro-choice. Rarely do we ever try and take anything away unless it's harmful to you. And weirdly, governments are really bad at taking harmful stuff away.

18:23We tried to, Bloomberg tried to hear about it 12 years ago, but he was trying to take it away. Bloomberg is a classic story. we were very closely with him like he was yeah two and a half years too early there you go he would have got that over the line two and a half years but he got the smoking ban and we're all better for that in america yeah but then the ripples because he did the u.s thing that didn't work he got the mexican one over the line right and the ripples of that is then you've got we've got 50 countries that have now taken on what we did in the uk so and i think it's a really fascinating lesson to life like certainly in the press you're always judged in a very binary way like yes no white well the british press is probably the most yeah yeah i mean for sure but but that's just simpleton way of looking at anything like the ripples well you know what the ripples are always like the juicy interesting nuanced bit like you do an action and then there's a reaction but look beyond the obvious look look beyond the pillar and that's where the good stuff is that my friends that was the the heart the vegetable portion of this interview like the word like we're doing heavy vegetables there are we talking about metaphors for a balanced metaphors we're getting in there so let's actually get into a little bit of like the good you know the fried stuff let's get into talk about cooking i want to hear about this book five ingredients mediterranean how do you think about this challenge because in the book and it's very beautiful the way you've done it you show the five ingredients and you're like this is a great dish and there's repeat repeat repeat how do you like is simplicity that's like one of the hardest challenges in cookbook writing wouldn't you say yeah i mean i um so i like i i mean i'm gonna try and not so for context so i'm probably the best-selling cookery author in the world and i'm not saying that to like i'm that'll sound arrogant and and not humble which is i'm not 45 million books heading towards 50 heading to yeah so 50 million books have been sold but like i i don't want to just come with me on this let's let's get come with me like i was also a really thick kid at school so i was dyslexic in special needs utter failure right so i think you put the two things together and we're just like okay that's getting interesting so when you've got neurodiversity or you struggle with things you have to problem solve and get around it okay okay so then like when it comes to that which is sort of like words were my enemy so like if something's going to hurt or burn you you run away from it so then I had this gift of having an opportunity to write a book so you have to like it's a very very emotional yeah subject so I like if you're kind of like niche and you're foodie and like you're like into it and you're kind of geeky and nuanced cool i've got books for you i've written them right and i've given you the best version i can of that historical philosophical you never want a good one about america one of my best books is america but like that is answering a that's a question that's an answer to a problem so so you have to be able to divide yourself and not just do things for yourself so you listen hard and then as a dyslexic like the white page is different to me so i get in a little room in a glass room i have stickies and i and before i write one single recipe i break it down into structures and and and chapters that kind of flow and then within the chapters i look at a nice mix of the most common like to give myself to you which is how i look at it i look at exactly what all of you buy and i get that data so i roughly know what you're all buying every week and and roughly what you all buy every week in your basket data is it doesn't change much it's about four percent different every week right so I'm looking at the proteins you're buying the veg you're buying right and then I go okay and this is for the states and the UK I do both out of curiosity so then I look at the chapter and I start going right chicken like what would we do on fish like veggies like carbs so I break down that say 10 10 chapters 10 things in it so I want a nice spread because I want to get enough recipes that will resonate.

22:41Each recipe will resonate with different people in the room for different reasons. So I've got to get enough of what you want, enough of what I know you're going to like, and enough of what you don't know you're going to like yet. So that's like the two years too early stuff. And then I've got to study what's in the supermarkets because I love and support the farmer's markets, but I know the people are in the supermarkets. So that relationship's important because we want them to be better. And where you spend and what you ask for makes them change and and i i have to although there's lots of reasons not to i have to believe that small medium and big businesses can all be better and we're all part of that so i haven't even written a recipe yet so then we start traveling ingredients then we start doing the tv then we put the tv research in right and we spain france you know greece we're in tunisia you know and then we start writing right and then we put we start looking at little things like pastes, pestos, tapenades, harissas, that are like these little flavor bombs.

23:44Slap. So you're buying loads of chicken, you lot. You're all buying loads of chicken. Unless you're vegetarian or vegan. But there's chicken everywhere. Actually, a lot of people are bored of the same old, same old, same old. So you start using these little kind of flavor bombs just to give it a spank here and there. And it's like, okay, cool. Are we going North African? I mean, harissa is in many of the recipes. Not many. that's because in this book like tunisia stole my heart a little yeah because i feel it's it's like it's it hasn't become let's talk about harissa a bit let's go there harissa when you think about harissa what is it doing to a protein like a chicken or like a fish it's good on everything really i mean it's a i think the combination of chilies and how they dry it and then rehydrate it and then mince it and then add their own preference of spice you get it in a jar and you rub it on a chicken breast or a piece of white fish or you use it as part of a dressing or a marinade or like it's a little tiny little bit on something that's like creamy and tangy and delicious and cheese and veg and like but you know you can use it like overtly and just go for it or you can just have such restraint but it's just sort of like a touch in like a big bowl of yogurt yeah no i think so i think like but also it's in all the supermarkets so um so you like use it or lose it so like the supermarkets will absolutely sell anything honestly but you gotta ask for it yeah so if you if you go to the same brand in an area where there's a massive indian population or an asian population like you'll see them like peaking in those areas and in a regular version that you wouldn't get that so they can do anything i like the new york shook i'm going to shout them out i like their harissa a lot so i'm going to shout out the local brand for the podcast but love it but um let some of the chilies i like chilies so so the dishes bully based mujidara you've got like shrimp beans and harissa we just talked about the tunisian uh influence so when you think about the mediterranean i mean that's a very large swath of the world how do you actually define for this book particularly the question is is like mediterranean food can you like say what that is in like a few words no i can't say anything in a few words listen i can't do short answers and it really pains me to do it but you're doing a good job i think like the mediterranean diet has got all the years of people looking at diets like the mediterranean diet has it stacks up like they're pro they're pro vegetables pro herb pro citrus like pro legumes like and they get the benefits of that i mean they're connected by the sea and the temperature but there's so many different like religions and cultures within that you know 28 countries give or take i mean And, you know, depending on how you want to look at it, but like the olive oil is obviously a common denominator, the citrus, the herbs.

26:26But there is a simplicity there that's so beautiful. But I think also as a Brit, and I think probably you would admit as an American, it's sort of like as a writer and as a program maker, like we were still kind of post-COVID and we wanted a little bit of sunshine in people's lives. Yeah. You wanted to go on holiday to like to Naples, right? Yeah. And feel that energy. and then when you restrict it to five ingredients which is kind of code like so it's like nothing's by luck really like what five ingredients is cute for lots of reasons like it kind of like work five you know five um like but essentially everyone hates at the moment the idea of long shopping lists yeah and at this moment in time people have never cooked less than now so we the people in this room are part of if you're here this is a true fact if you're here yeah, I'm like you're in.

27:20This is the kind of club. And there's not many of us left. We cook less as a culture. Everyone assumes we cook more because food is at the center of our lives. In the media, we know who the players are on the baseball card. It's never been less. But it's never been less. It's a rare breed. Which is very sad. Yeah, and also people think cooking, like heating something up, like cooking, like a pile of stuff, doing stuff to it, and having something delicious at the end of it. Like that's cooking. So I think, and so I, this is kind of code or a version or an expression of code to try and get you so so as a room full of foodies it's it should still be worthy of your time and i hope it serves you well but for the people that aren't in this room that's what that was kind of written for yeah like trying to write something or express something that can talk to a wide range of people and try you know and and i guess my approach as a dyslexic is trying to take the luck out of it i mean it was always very tactile like i always went to like the printers and saw and chose the paper chose the font sat with the designers every book every book since day one and um i watched you do it for we were walking around your office and you're doing it for knife packaging that day i happened to visit you you were like yeah tweaking it just walking by it's cool it's cool to see yeah i mean i think like it's you can apply it to anything but i think like when this comes off the press warm it's like a little baby you know it's not but for me it is um but like um and like you know some covers feel really like textual and high quality and quite artisan and i've had a few of those that's nice and then some like this was more about being wiped clean and a little bit like no no nonsense and if you look at the page you know you know i was fighting for white space yeah you know i didn't want to baffle you with heart and soul and philosophy that ain't this book you know business crack on yeah you're all busy crack on get to the recipes get amongst it you've had a hard day get you know get to the recipes so i think i think um that that's so that's what i was sort of saying it is a fearless it for me it feels yeah it's a it's a it's a point of view it's a statement i'd like to talk about italy a little bit because i think it's at the soul of all of your cooking yeah um if you watch naked chef in 99 when did you start 99 yeah yeah whatever so when you started it you know everyone assumed he's a british guy doing british whatever but no like your soul is in italy and i want to get for the podcast and for this audience about tell us like why did you fall in love with italy so hard was there a moment in your culinary career where you're like this is where i want to be rooted i think i kind of go back i'm not doing it for it like as a dyslexic kid like I had to find another way to get around stuff and for me like even when you're trained in cooking it's still very classically French regimental which I love and adore and I respect but for that kid and for this grown grown man like there was something in the Italian spirit and actually the Mediterranean spirit but for me it was through italy that was driven by mothers nonnas which was driven by appropriation of the dish right like dishes that were fit for purpose that uses used up gluts or you know like a few extra people turn up so how do you stretch it like there was like this common sense with the food that was so joyful so delicious so humble yet glamorous and then the Italians like they're not bitchy about it they're not you can try and cook some stuff and if you don't do it right you get a slap and then like physically verbally through the press like the Italians are just cool yeah oh you mean you're referring to like the French previously in that statement correct no i wasn't actually but but i'm sure they don't for me the italian vibe had a freedom yeah that spoke to me and then it sort of then i worked in lots of italian kitchens and with italians and it then just became a little filter that is deep inside me now and even if i'm cooking british stuff or and i'm trying to reach it and i funny enough i've gone full circle now I'm like deep into French stuff.

31:39I'm back into the French stuff. You're back into it? Yeah, I'm loving it. But I think that's like the book I gave you last night as a gift. Yeah. I said last night, like when I read it when I was 20, it meant a lot. But now I've read it again because the chef died. Yeah. Like it's such a... Give him credit on the... Yeah, yeah. Nico Landis. Nico Landis, yeah. The words mean different things now than when I read them at 20. And I think that's all part of our journey. Like it's good to go back to old stuff and just refresh and to look. and and and that appropriation like you were single then you had family then the family have moved on then like just the way you live and how you live and where you live like it changes the reference point of a dish yeah i think um so is there a dish that you have over the course of your culinary career haven't quite figured out is there something is there like a technique or a dish that you had it once in Emilia Romagna or you know wherever and you have been trying to I mean yeah I mean there's there's like there's pasta dishes like I'm pretty good at pasta and like done it a lot and like many times I've sat with a 96 year old nonna and she's just destroyed me and then conversely like it's like I've sat with an eight-year-old Italian girl and she destroyed me and i so i think like it's good to be humbled regularly and my wife would attest to that um i think like being in a constant state of not being good enough um is is quite good for your creative soul i think um and and also that the people that you saw in the office like i've surrounded myself with some of one of the things i've done right over the last 25 years is as soon as i had any money i invested it in people yeah and like they don't like walk around all day saying how great i am there it's quite the opposite like we're always interrogating always i got always not quite happy enough like always trying to do better but always for you actually um and that's so that that constant state of not quite happy enough is it keeps you going kind of a great tension and they're not kissing your ass also you do group lunch twice a week or something in the office every day every day there's like lunch in the office every day that is truly the greatest and breakfast yeah uh well it's i mean i think it is we're a food business you know so if you're a food business like the best way to you don't need to do a memo if you're eating it no it's true you get a test stuff and even like sometimes like it's an amazing resource that we have now like yeah we were like in startup mode and we were like a shabby chic operation for 17 years then we finally got organized and so now like if there's beautiful authors that are like just starting out and they're brilliant and they like it's in their heart like they have full access to my business full access to the room they can do their book lord party they're like and you know we had julius roberts there yeah we're putting out his book in january yeah we sniff out the good ones You got some good guys coming by, yeah.

34:46We just love people that try hard and do their thing. One more question, then I'll get to our last section, then we'll open up the audience. Television, I kind of hinted and joked at the beginning. What TV show do you want to do? Netflix is listening. Really? Netflix are never going to be interested in me until I'm dead, probably. But to be fair, when I'm dead, they'll probably be dead as well. so um i look here's the thing like it's um the days of tv saying the sky is the limit dream up something wacky and we'll pay for it like that they're gone yeah um even for netflix and um but i personally would love to spend a summer in peru and work hard to bring to you a patchwork quilt of that country like like i've read enough eaten enough and i'm desperate to go and and i can go but if i go without the means to show you i feel like i'm like having an affair um it's like so there's it's and it's really like if i go to a country without taking a crew i feel bad um and there's a kind of rigor of making a program that really helps you get under the skin of it we spend months we spend months um and our job is to go where you haven't seen on tv before so that that involves weeks and weeks and months of research but yeah i mean i'd love to do that but there's no way the bbc or channel 4 will commission that netflix ain't going to commission that so actually you know where i want to get in my career actually because it's all a bit weird at the moment in tv yeah no actually no one's having a good time out there like because it's It's the same sort of people and dough just getting scattered across bigger, wider.

36:33Podcasts are worse too. Are they? Yeah, kind of. I've never done podcasts, so I wouldn't know. But I would love to self-fund stuff. So I would love to pitch to you and say, like that kind of whole Kickstarter stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like open it up to the audience and say, like, here's three shows that I'm really passionate about that I think, you know, obviously tell me what you want as well. But like, and do a little sizzle of each one and then say, look, you know, put five bucks in. and then when we get to you know a million quid then we can go yeah so because that's what it costs is it's bloody expensive to get to do it right yeah and it's like good kit good lenses good crew people that can shoot food really well really good producers like none of it's cheap and then the secret ingredient is time and the time's the most expensive bit in production so it's too much i hope i can get to that stage what about the samsung money the samsung money Well, the Samsung money...

37:24It's not quite hidden. Well, no, they buy old content. But actually, they're getting so robust now that they might start commissioning their own content, which is quite exciting. Because I don't care who my boss is. I just want to make good stuff. You just want to go to Peru and film a good show? Yeah, I just... I don't care. It will happen. Literally, it could be the most random person in the world. I just want to make it. But, like, it's... So I just got to find the means to do it. I'm giving you five. Give me$5. Everyone in here is going to give me$5. Get us another few. All right. On This Is Taste, we have guests about the discerning taste.

37:57So to close this live interview, here's a little fast and furious quick fire test. Are you ready? I'm so bad at quick fire. I love it. You're going to do it. You're going to be faster. We're going to get to questions because everyone's going to have great questions to answer. All right. The best fruit. Oh, God. Passion fruit. The worst vegetable.

38:25turnip yeah agree hard agree terms are not good thank you for saying that i mean i still love them i can do some good stuff you can do good stuff but you got to throw in a bunch of like pork fat and stuff all right your favorite london restaurant we'll say that right now that's really hard you gotta give me one just give me one answer um a probably rachel's canteen I'll go with because I really like Margot Henderson and think she's great and I like the crew there and the food's delicious Favorite New York City restaurant? King Shout out to King Yeah, go on Here we go Jess is here, thank you, Kate Alright, that was an easy one That was a sincere answer, by the way You mentioned it yesterday Yeah, it's not because she's there I'm going to fact check this, you said it yesterday, that was one of your favorites No, it's actually genuinely sincere Alright, so So, favourite cookbook of all time?

39:16No, that's really hard. So what I will do is say, and I think this is an interesting lesson for the boys, I believe the best writing comes from the feminine and the people that have changed my life have generally been women or very camp men. So Alice Waters, Marcello Hussain, Patricia Wells, Rose Gravery Rogers you know Stephanie Alexander you know is the tip of the iceberg but like anything by those dudes is like great heartfelt emotional thoughtful sensitive and that is something that the fellas often great chefs specifically men are a bit baffled by the connecting on the words so I think like read what those ladies are doing I love that and that look I think and it's not like a weird game it's not But I think when you're writing menus, like if you just go on geezer craft and testosterone, it's going to bode badly, you know.

40:20And you can read it on a menu straight away. Yeah, you can definitely. Alice writes the best menus. Yeah, Alice Waters. Did I say that in my list? You sure did. First one. Do you hang out with Ruthie Rogers a bit? Do you guys see each other? Yeah, I love her with a lot of passion. She's amazing. Amazing human. Ruthie Rogers from the River Cafe. Check out the book here. You should pick up the River Cafe cookbook. Yeah, I mean, so they were game changers back in the day. They reimagined what cookbooks should look like. Yeah. And a sense of design. And obviously her husband was Sir Richard Rogers, who did the Pompadour Centre and all those.

40:55Last one, your favorite sandwich. Oh, that's really hard. I love sandwiches so much. I mean, yeah. But I also like, I like the kind of, I like the tension between really artisan fillings and then putting really cheap crisps in them. I think you call them chips, right? We like to, but I'll take crisps. I like it when it's like naughty but nice, like posh but filthy. But I think like, you know, when I was in Louisiana, they were like knocking out these muffaladas. I don't know if you've ever had one. Yeah. But that stole my heart. Yeah, come on, girl. Clap right there for central grocery. Let's go there.

41:36Smoked dams and like delicious cheese. tamponade though and like like they do this kind of their version of a piccalilli which is just like all these pickles and yeah i love pickles so much life without pickles is like not worth living i'd give up if there were no pickles in the world i'd give up tomorrow if there was no herbs in the world i'd give up tomorrow those are yeah um but yeah the muffalata is the answer okay we're gonna open it to questions in the audience oh this is always the good bit i love it who anything you like guys i will not hold back first yeah right there yeah oh thank you hi it's great to see you nice to see you um it's the second time i've been to one of your book signings so i'm really excited thank you um i was wondering um i always adapt the recipes but i have a bunch of food allergies and intolerances and i was wondering if maybe in the future you'd consider doing a book that is like naturally allergen free so not kind of doing the substitutes but doing it's gluten free just because it is not because you had to make it or dairy free just because and things like that yeah um just something no i think it's it's it's um it's a really interesting thing like the beautiful thing about a book is text it feels different than a screen um but also when you're answering a certain question so every one of you might you know so for years i had people saying i want a vegetarian book for like 20 years and i'm like writing back going look 65 of everything i ever written has been veggie like no i want my book so and i get it i get it um and and i get asked to do stuff for you know i'm i'm working on a project uh behind the scenes at the moment for like for cancer and diet and food and so it's all kind of going into journeys of like the nuance so i i do do that the kind of the big hitting books but i think the future should be and must be about the nuance and individualized stuff so the good news is is i've written 7 000 recipes in 25 years i've got them all logged i've got nutritionals for all of them i've got them all like shot and it's all mine so so the clever bit will be like how do i package that for the nuance so there's two ways of doing it one is on a screen super easy and we'll be getting on that soon ish um and the other way is that you can kind of build your own book and then have a beautiful machine make it for you and bind it for you and actually it will cost a bit more i'm sure i haven't done the numbers yet but it's probably say twice the price but it will arrive just there for you so i I think that, you know, it's a bit like the Nike IDs, like when you buy a pair of shoes and you can put Johnny on the back and it's like cute and individualized product, I think, is the answer.

44:24And a few years ago, I did a book called Superfood and I didn't want to be that guy that quoted stuff and was talking shite. So I went back to school and it was like I gave up Fridays to study nutrition and get a degree in nutrition and it was one of the best things I ever did. Completely changed my life, completely changed the structure of my business actually. So nutrition is actually fundamentally at the heart of my business, which sounds like a random one-liner, but it's entrenched. So yeah, I think we're definitely going to go into that area. That's a long answer for a simple question. I'm so sorry.

45:04I told you I'm not good at shopping. No, this is... Thank you for getting me to think about cooking. I don't do that much, and I always thought if there was a cookbook out there that had just five ingredients, maybe I'd learn to cook, and voila. So thank you, and thank you to Meg for introducing me to the book. The question is, the pictures are so tantalizing. How is it that you are able to figure out the magic five? It's not more, it's not less. It's five ingredients that somehow are destined to make these incredible results. um obviously by giving you a clarity on the front of the book sort of doing what it says on the front of the tin vibes you know um it's five ingredients mediterranean right so so i i have to restrain and and as as a concept in cooking restraint is the secret ingredient it's tricky it's so easy to put another thing in so because i'm trying to sell a dream on simplicity which is really important especially now i have to restrain which comes naturally to many cultures but but you can always put another thing in so i think you start to think about marriages and let's say best friends and and certainly there's many concepts of best friends some of it's subjective and some of it is just non-negotiable i mean like there's just certain things that work together so um if you look in the shop here there's probably a book called the theosaurus of flavor like the bible what the flavor bible yeah yeah so that's kind of interesting and then you can add your own to that and it's sort of things just you know what is what is chili best friends with so it can be as you know from chocolate all the way through citrus you know through to what grows together goes together you know what what grows together goes together yeah yeah i mean often often um but like so i love that so when we put in the five ingredients together but then the tricky bit so like there's a lot of in modern day like the addition there like when we're in greece on the islands like and they're making tzatziki everywhere it's delicious if you go to any supermarket you can buy tzatziki so for me that's almost six or seven ingredients in one product that you buy so that's like cheating right so we're allowed to cheat because that's how you live right so like when i'm out there with the greeks and i'm like dudes like do you use like tzatziki as a marinade no never but there's dips and this and that and the other but never marinade i'm like it's funny like the other day i was like studying marinades and it's like three gears and it's sort of like citrus and vinegar gentle takes time um and and obviously the concept of a marinade is to flavor and to tenderize then the second gear is like dairy buttermilk you know and the acids within the dairy and then the most powerful is fruit you know know pineapple and kiwi and papaya and all that sort of stuff and that'll that'll like turn tough meat into like mush in 24 hours right so and i'm like i wonder what it'd be like like marinating chicken into lemon mint like garlic olive oil salt pepper dairy like and and and he was saying well we don't do it and i'm like i'm gonna do it i'm gonna do it and then when you roast it or grill it it's incredible so like so it's like you want to have like respect and authenticity but But also like some things are so deeply cultural that it takes a foreigner to come in and sort of like go, that's kind of a marinade.

48:35Like this, oh, it's delicious. So in that dish in the book is like onions, rice, chicken, tzatziki and lemon. And you get a whole meal out of one pan. And it's badass. It's like, all right. So that's part of the journey of writing 120 of those. It's like, but it's never easy. Let's take another couple of questions. I'll try and make them quicker. I do apologize. Yeah, you're doing okay. You're down to like three and a half minutes each. Hey, Jamie. Hello, sir. From one Essex boy to another. I'm from Clacton-on-Sea. Have you been there? I haven't, actually. Haven't you? Tell me. How is Clacton-on-Sea?

49:13I haven't been there for a few years because I live here now in the great New York. But, yeah, I just wondered, obviously, I grew up in Essex boy. I wondered what were your favorite foods growing up in, you know, Essex? you know things i i love fishing chips and blah blah so i'd love to know what what yours were um well certainly around that that area the sea it's it's cold clean water incredible oysters mold and sea salt colchester oysters um beautiful winkles and cockles clams whatever you want to call it like we had amazing seafood flat fish dover souls place turbots sea bass like like so I mean, I grew up in a pub restaurant with six, seven chefs working on a shift.

49:54So we cooked that in some lovely Anglo-French ways. Beautiful pies, fish and chips, of course. But also, like, you know, something that we're quite good at in the States and the UK is, like, most towns have an array of, like, immigrant restaurants that are, like, fundamental to our happiness. so um you know from chinese italians greek you know uh um uh indian like it's like we're so spoiled so and blessed so that's the tip of the iceberg but definitely hot chips malt vinegar you know some tartar sauce and a lovely bit of fish and chips on the seaside on a cold miserable raining day uh is i can't think of anything better and and the smell of burning tires from an escort xr3i with some boy racer with fluffy dice and um and a group of people in the back seat um yeah that's and a straight through exhaust pipe that is essence through and through it sounds like pittsburgh yeah hi jamie um i'm a very inspired home cook by many of your books and the founder of a new food as medicine startup so my question comes from that angle i think in today's environment I'm curious what role you see your books your shows your knowledge in the overall health care industry gee whiz I mean look the health care industry for as much wonder as it contains is as conflicted as the food industry you know they're kind of you know they're pretty happy with the status quo at the moment you know they might not necessarily want you to be healthier uh because they want to sell you some stuff to fix you right so i think the food is medicine and the conceit of it and obviously you know many cultures chinese medicine is a is a good example i think thousands of years of like take control of your own you know take control i think that's really powerful now um and that's why i think cooking is so powerful and keeping cooking alive and all of us trying to get our friends and our family to cook and it's empowering and if you can cook you can save money if you can cook you've got choices if you can cook you should be a lot healthier than the everyman um so i i'm super supportive of that um but there's a lot of noise and inertia with you know you have to make your own choices because sometimes it's hard to get the good stuff so you have to be curious in your area and find the little shops and the little places and you know and and i guess in some respects you can order stuff online and certainly in the uk we can anything can get delivered to your house now and i'm talking about raw ingredients and you can get subscriptions and there's some really cool stuff happening so it's kind of but i think now now more than ever you've got like kind of more crap than ever and then more choices than ever so you kind of have to like and then the kind of algorithms in tiktok and this that and the other are kind of like just strange so it's you know so i just think hopefully we get to the position where the interesting small uh guys that are doing great stuff um can get their stuff to you and and i think also schools have got to start teaching cooking again i just i just don't understand it baffles me it baffles me so much that we don't seriously take teaching kids across the country yeah it's a real shame how it could let's do two more is somebody in this area and then we'll do somebody in that area so let's do one there one there and then we'll wrap it up well jamie i didn't know you until this past year with yes chef and so that you're that's cool and it's amazing birthday my wife flew me up here to see today and sign it so well that is a lovely wife but just the same that you're talking about food and those 10 i think 10 uh ingredient or 10 foods that you that everybody ought to be able to cook yeah for like you say the schools it's very difficult to get anybody in public schools to go to that direction you're talking about but after school programs like boys and girls clubs where you could come in there with funding to be able to start a kitchen get somebody in there is there any thought of something like that in the u.s um like for me personally like anything that i do with anything like that they've always got my 100 support for free forever like you know that i'm all game for that and um i think what needs to happen in food and stuff is there's lots of cute things happening in cute places and it's all a bit random and i know what i've tried to do in my business is take the randomness out of getting these breakthroughs so the idea of communities coming together and there being a network and and sharing resource and and and parents having a louder voice to get governments to take because you know if you're talking about america or britain being more successful in gdp and and and and you know the money that's created in this country like feeling the kids right right makes complete sense you know if if kids know how to cook and they grow into young parents you know we we can track them in england and america and and you see that they're if they're fed right and they're and they're taught about food they do better at school they get better jobs they earn more money they take less days off sick they're more productive and they live longer and and it certainly in elementary school it's the best way to learn math and history and and geography and all of those things.

55:36But sadly, they look at it as a luxury, not a necessity. And I think one of the problems is because our governments work in a three-, four-year cycle, really to answer a lot of the questions that you're passionate about is a 20-year, 25-year plan. So we've just got to get organized. And believe you me, I'd love to get involved in it, and I'm open to anything. What is the car you drive? Yes, is it a Ford? so what is that yeah it was a funny top i've got like i've got a mark one capri ford this that's quite sexy and it was sort of i think it's shaped a bit like the old mustangs um and um and then uh i've got a renault traffic which is not glamorous but i've got five kids um and uh that's the people carrier um because when they say you're a seven seater there's no room for the baggage right so you need a van so that's more over here we'll do one this guy right here we'll do questions that Jamie thank you for sharing everything so far my question for you as someone who's written over 7 ,000 recipes and has sold over almost 50 million cookbooks as a chef and more importantly a lover of food what continues to fuel your passion to continue to cook you know more than 25 years later is it travel is it your family what is it that continues every day to encourage you to cook of course it's the fundamental part of your business but what is it that keeps pushing you to continue to cook it's a great question i mean oh god i think like now i've set up a life where like there's so many people in it that are obsessed as i am so you fuel each other so sort of safety in numbers as it were um i think the hope is is if i keep trying and keep poking and keep innovating in the best ways i can that i can start answering some of the questions that he was just answering about like how do we like how do we how do we get food back to be like a pillar of society because when you get the food culture right and i'm not i don't think it's because i'm being biased or like romantic it's like to be american is food to have community is food like to to to celebrate diversity is food and like and i've seen it play out in so many ways so i think i'm gonna go hard for as long as i can hoping that one day i think i know it's i know the argument is it's always down to the individual you know the whole argument about individual choice but that's tricky one i mean it's a really easy one-liner because talking about individual choice makes you feel empowered but actually actually like we do invest in institutions and powers that be that are gifted with the power resource and science to look objectively galactically at your town at your street at your country and look at patterns that are really deadly and patterns that are not pro happiness or pro health or pro productivity so so there's like this hilarious and beautiful and natural romantic side of food which is the bit that we love but there's this kind of this other side which is like and all we need is a few people if you had if you had a president that really believed in that like like brilliant things could happen and and it could make people happier and healthier and and i and i truly believe that and interestingly like we're about to go into elections in the uk like never in british history has a minister ever gone for the big job and put child health central and food and farming central.

59:22So I really believe that it's fundamental. And it's just been like quite forgotten. So I'm going to keep trying. And I'm hoping because I think life sometimes is a bit of a numbers game. You know, if you just do one thing, like it might work, it might not. And I've had my fair share of not. So I'm just going to keep plugging away while the legs are working and the brain's working. And hopefully by the time, hopefully before I die, we might strike lucky and and i think it's never too late to change but sooner the better but um but yeah will we see you in parliament i asked you this in july parliament you were like hell no but now will we see you if i had the big job i would invite you all over like we're gonna have a great time but i think um and i'd be massively biased on the things i just spoke about but i um no the answer is no i'm not going for that job but um but i sometimes wish like god like yeah we we have a program called the ministry of food and actually it was an old department of the government in the war and funnily enough that in the uk in the second world war we had a ministry of food and it's and it's kind of actions not objectives its actions was about going to the public so it wasn't about the public coming to them it's a really interesting sort of emotion it's like so obviously we're in crisis but to answer a bit of your question again like humans are funny like we only do shit when it's really bad you know so so so like in the ministry of food if you actually look at what they did it was like two and a half thousand ladies that went out into bingo halls went out into high streets into factories and they were showing how to do cool things that were delicious with rations and like they still got to do birthday cakes morale you You know, like keep the island pumping and going.

1:01:08So I love the emotion of the government going to the people. And I love the emotion of having a ministry that's just for food because it's gone. It's been disbanded. Yeah, so that's the end of that answer. Well, Jamie, you are an inspiration. I will give him a round of applause. You really are one of my favorite people in food. And you really are. Keep please doing it. Thank you. I know you're all busy people, so I'm really sincerely grateful that you took the time to come and see me. 25 years of publishing in this beautiful country. And honestly, when we do these events, I do worry that no one's going to turn up.

1:01:51I can't help it. But it's so nice to see a full room and smiling faces. And thank you very much. And I wish you a really great 2024. Thank you, Christina Rizzoli. Thank you, Pat Stengel, our producer for the show. And thank you for coming. We'll see you in the spring. Appreciate it.