Jamie has a great way with salads, in particular. We're delighted, because for too long our salads - even when jazzed up with nuts and/or dried fruits - have been boring, repetitive, and usually eaten up because they're "healthy".
So far, we've loved every single salad we've tried from this cookbook, such as the almond & carrot salad on the Rogan Josh page (a particular favorite), the ribboned cucumber salad (another favorite), the spinach, pine nut & cucumber salad, the beetroot & feta salad, the zucchini/courgette & mozzarella salad, and the kimchee slaw.
The majority of the main dishes are vegetarian, chicken or fish with a few more expensive cuts like steak but we wished he had offered more variations of ground lamb and ground beef. We like his chicken main dish recipes most, particularly the creamy mustard chicken, the killer jerk chicken and the easy oven chicken but not the piri piri chicken.
The book is much more usable now we've seen several of the TV episodes in each of which Jamie actually cooks - seemingly within 30 minutes of real time - everything from one chosen page of this book. The book is a series of 50 complete meals with specific step-by-step instructions on how to make it all happen at the same time.
Each meal is set out on one page, with the ingredients and instructions for everything needed: usually there's a main dish and one or two side vegetables/salads plus a starch/carbohydrate like bread, potato or rice - and quite often even a clever "cheat's" dessert. The instructions jump between the dishes, telling you what to start first, and exactly when during the half hour you should take each step - for all the dishes of that meal. The meals are not elegant or showy, but most could successfully be served to friends and/or (subject to the particular fads of your children) family.
Jamie is obviously faster than most but let's say it would take 45 minutes for us ordinary mortals - still an impressive outcome. Most important of all, every dish has actually been test-cooked, which is not actually the norm - yes, indeed, we were shocked when we first learned that most cookbook recipes are not tested, although it certainly explained the high failure rate we have experienced over the years.
We are looking forward to catching all 20 of the episodes in series 1 and hope the others will be made into further series.
P.S. Yes, this early version of the book (ISBN 0718154770) was published in the UK and therefore has the European metric measurements. I understand a U.S. version will be published.