Overview - This book comes from Jamie Oliver, a man who has produced a large variety of culinary cook books over the past decade and embraced our tv screens with his foodie adventures. 'Save with Jamie' boasts that it will help you save money and states how to be more cost affective when choosing your meals; for example the book contains recipes for all your everyday meats and also has a veggie section, not to mention it enforces the use of leftovers so you have no wastage. A unique selling point the book has is the fact that it lets readers into secrets on various ways to store and buy produce so you save money, also stating how to joint a chicken so you can use every element of the bird.
Average Recipe Difficulty - Easy
Most Beneficial Readers - Students, Families, Beginners.
My Three Favourite Recipes'...
Roast Beef Brisket - A nice twist on the British classic of roast beef, Jamie shows how to create the classic plate using a cheaper yet still effective select of beef. Normally roast beef is difficult to perfect with topside often coming out chewy and tough, not only that somewhat expensive. This recipe helps you create a flavoursome, moist piece of beef at half the price you would normally pay. It's worth mentioning that the book then goes on to show what you can create with the leftover beef.
Lamb Burgers - What more could you want on a summers day than to chow down on a meaty lamb burger fresh from the BBQ, topped off with a drop of mint yogurt?. The recipe is fresh and will get your taste buds dancing as it posses a simplicitic method with few ingredients.
Chicken & Chorizo Paella - My final favourite, I love Spanish food and at the top of my list is by far chorizo, so this recipe was a cert from the moment I picked up the book. Again it's cost efficiency and simplicity will help any budding cook create a delicious Spanish dish that they can enjoy as a quick midweek meal.
Final Verdict - 8/10 - Overall this book is a real gem, giving a great help to the credit crunch climate that we currently live in. Not only does the book give insite into money saving tips when using food, it also promotes some really great recipes, showing people that they can still enjoy good food at low costs. The main factors I love about this recipe book is that it shows you how to use leftovers effectively and ways in which you can store goods that may not be used, for example it briefly explains pickling. An area that could be improved is if they added a couple more hands on recipes and removed some of the really basic page fillers where it's generally just using a carb with the protein, an example of this is the lamb burrito or the salmon taco. To round up this review I'd say this is a must have on the book shelf of a student on a budget, a budding cook that is looking to develop skills and finally the family cook who wants meal ideas and to tighten up on food costs.
