You have been such a strong advocate of teaching ordinary people how to cook exceptional meals in their own home. If there were three things that are dead easy to learn, but would improve almost anybody's cooking, what would they be?
– Jim Smerdon, Vancouver
If you're starting totally from scratch and have never cooked before, I'd try one-cup pancakes first, because they're very easy and they give you such a sense of pride when you get something like that right for the first time. I'd also try mini-shell pasta with peas and bacon – the recipe is on my website and in the Food Revolution book, and then parmesan chicken with crispy posh ham. If you go onto YouTube and put in “Mick the miner,” there's a clip of a 51-year-old bloke who's never cooked in his life doing parmesan chicken with crispy posh ham. If he can do it, anyone can do it. And that 51-year-old bloke cooked his family's Christmas dinner last year!
The Best of Jamie Oliver
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What are your five essentials to have in the kitchen? And red or white wine for you?
– Ron Lee, Vancouver
Red wine, please. And do you mean equipment or food essentials? If you mean equipment, a speed peeler, a pestle and mortar, three decent knives, a good Tefal pan or two and a food processor. If you're talking food, extra virgin olive oil, chilies – fresh and dried – garlic, lemons, good-quality tinned tomatoes.
How do you balance the demand for healthier meals for British, and now American school children, with the cost considerations of poorer parents who may not be able to afford fresh, good-for-you foods and ingredients?
– Jane Auster, Toronto
Well, I always say that through history, the best food has always come from the poorest people, because they've had to use their imagination, knowledge and skill to create meals from very little. So ‘good' food isn't about having money, it's about having knowledge. When I started school dinners in the U.K., we had a budget of about 66 cents [U.S., per head] to make delicious, nutritious food and we did it. But in the U.K., some councils are trying out offering school food free to poorer families and I'm all for that.
Given your experience with the English public-school system, what is the one most effective change that we should make here to encourage better nutrition for students in our schools?
– Joel Dick, Toronto
I think we need to remove the junk and take away the choice. In the U.K., I started by offering a more nutritious alternative alongside the chips and turkey twizzlers and guess what? The kids all chose the chips and twizzlers because it's what they were used to. Once we removed the choice, they started trying my food and they loved it and pretty soon, even the most hard core of chip lovers were saying they didn't want the chips back. Sometimes it takes time to get to that point, but if you want to make a real difference, the junk needs to go.
I am a working mom with two boys in school (5 and 7), who has exhausted her lunch-box repertoire. Could you suggest some new lunch ideas that are healthy, easy and fit well in a kid's lunch box?
– Martine Carriere, Ottawa
