I can not remember how and when my love affair started but I remember very distinctively watching TV on a Saturday night waiting for my parents to get ready for a party we were all going to attend. On the screen - you guessed it - Jamie was preparing a tiramisu. Gosh he was cute and he was speaking another language! I seemed to be very interested in other cultures when I was a teenager as I wanted to escape from my parents so badly... I bought my mum his new book at the time, Jamie's Kitchen for her birthday as I was so into him and I cooked a lot of his meals ever since the book hit our kitchen shelf!
I guess I just fell in love with the show concept. It was similar to a diary except the episodes concentrated on him preparing a dinner around a theme (such as 'Jamie and the King' for American famous recipes, 'Pasta and the Master' for an Italian menu, etc.) for his friends and family. He was a very down-to-earth cook and he wasn't taking himself too seriously. He was young and thin and the series were filmed in his own flat which made him seem very genuine to me. Of course I enjoyed watching him teaching me how cooking was SO easy and fun. I absolutely loved all his recipes because that made me realize what we were eating at home was boring and too filling. I guess Jamie showed me another way to eat with my loved ones and I think it influenced me a lot in the way I host dinner parties.
- Jamie taught me pasta was incredibly easy to prepare - 100gr of flour/one egg per person, take a glass to roll the dough, cut strips out of it with a knife and plunge in boiling water for three minutes and ta-da you have pasta!
- I discovered long before Pinterest, Tumblr, Paleo/Crossfit... took off that photos of vegetables were so damn sexy and I integrated very early how to eat healthily.
- I just integrated the concept that I have to cook pretty much everything from scratch. I do it all the time and I think I just owe this to Jamie whom you could say inspired me too much.
- When I was in Brisbane for a weekend in 2007 I stayed in a flat shared by two co-workers and in their library was a Jamie recipe book. Inside was his autograph coupled with a lovely note and I was so jealous and sad that I was not going to meet him when I'll finally be able to eat at his first restaurant Fifteen.
- I only ate twice in a Jamie restaurant, only the Jamie's Italian in Covent Garden and Westfield shopping center in London and I LOVED both meals and restaurant atmosphere.
- In 2006, I read his wife's book Minus One to Nine just because it was related to him and it was really a good read that I enjoyed and re-read years after that even if I have still never been pregnant to this day.
- My favourite recipe and the first I ever tried is the shrimp pasta.
- I am not that obsessed and think he has too many businesses going on to interest me on every level. However I enjoy his Christmas series and very occasionally his magazine.
- On the other hand I follow him and his wife on Instagram just because and yes, I just bought this issue of Red while I was in Dublin because... Well, you get the picture... I have a crush!
