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Charity work
Jamie receives requests every day from charities and organisations seeking his involvement. He’d love to be able to support them all but due to time constraints, this is simply not possible. He is currently involved with several charities, including The Fifteen Foundation, and is unable to take on any new commitments at the moment.

Charity donations from Jamie
Unfortunately, due to the sheer number of requests Jamie receives for auction and raffle donations, we are no longer able to donate any prizes.

Event invites
Jamie’s diary is really busy and - while it's frustrating for him - there simply aren't enough hours in the day for Jamie to go along to all the events he receives invitations for.

Cooking lessons
Jamie hasn’t had the time to give lessons himself for a while now, but do check out what's on offer in your area. You can get some great cooking lessons from your local college or evening classes. Remember, Jamie started out in his parents’ pub kitchen!

Catering for events
Jamie is always very flattered when people ask him to cook for their dinner parties or events. However, he likes to spend any spare cooking time he has in Fifteen supporting the staff and trainees. Therefore, he is unable to cater for private or public events. The lovely folks at Fifteen Events however, will be able to assist you with this.

Jamie’s Italian
The first branch of Jamie’s Italian launched in Oxford in June 2008. Branches in Bath and Kingston are also scheduled to open this year. Find out more at www.jamiesitalian.com

Fifteen
Fifteen has restaurants in London, Cornwall, Amsterdam and Melbourne. You can find out more about the restaurants – including reservation information – at www.fifteen.net.

Tours of the Fifteen kitchen
We’d love to be able to offer visitors the opportunity to look around the kitchen at the London restaurant, but it's actually quite small in there - there's just about enough space for the staff and students! This means we’re unable to offer any behind the scenes tours.

Jamie Oliver recipes
We regularly update the website with lots of new recipes and post video recipes whenever we can. Keep checking the site for new recipes you can try out at home.

Recipe requests for publication
The licence for publishing all Jamie’s book recipes is held by Penguin UK. Visit their website for more information.

Tefal
Jamie works with Tefal to produce a range of cookware products. Check out the Tefal website for more information on the range and to find stockist details.

Royal Worcester
Jamie and Royal Worcester produce a range of tableware products. Check out the Royal Worcester website for more information on the range and to find stockist details.

Flavour Shaker™
The Flavour Shaker™ is Jamie’s modern alternative to a pestle and mortar. To find out more visit the website

Outdoor oven featured in 'Jamie at Home'
Jamie had a wood oven built in his garden a few years ago – it was provided by a company called ‘Orchard Ovens’ in Lancashire. These ovens reach very high cooking temperatures so they’re perfect for cooking bread and pizza. Although Orchard Ovens provided the oven and installed it, Jamie’s own builder built the brick facade around it and the swirly chimney. Further information and contact details can be found at their website.

Barbecues
According to Jamie the only barbecues to go for are charcoal or wood ones – he feels that gas barbecues don’t give you the authentic smoky flavour that makes barbecuing what it should be.

When you’re cooking on the barbecue food can often burn on the outside but not cook through on the inside. The secret is to organise your charcoal high on one side (hot end) and low on the other - this way, you can use one side to get fast, hot, direct heat to achieve good colour and on the other side, your food will cook slowly and remain tasty and moist.

You’ll find a whole section dedicated to barbecuing in Jamie’s book Jamie at Home.

Spit roast featured in ‘Jamie at Home’
The traction motor barbecue spit that Jamie used is vintage and was bought from a flea market, so unfortunately we don’t know where you could buy a brand new one. Try looking online or doing as Jamie did and having a scout round local flea markets.

Cookers
In Jamie’s opinion, gas hobs are far superior to electric ones. He feels they’re more robust and allow greater control over temperature. His ideal scenario would be to have a gas hob and an electric oven. You generally get what you pay for, but when buying an oven on the slightly cheaper side, Jamie would recommend going for larger, better known companies - these tend to have very good warranties, spare parts and servicing departments.

Knives
You get what you pay for with knives - a large, cheap set simply won’t last very long. To get you started, buy a large and small chopping knife, a paring knife and a serrated bread knife.

Jamie often gets asked for advice on becoming a top chef. Here’s his response:

“First of all you have to think to yourself “Do I really like cooking, do I really like eating?” and if the answer is yes to both, then you’re already halfway there!

Don’t for a minute believe that it’s about training for years and years and travelling the world - this helps of course and is really useful, but I think it’s really the little things that matter. It’s about doing things properly, with real conviction and passion. Like most things in life, the right way or the wrong way, “dos and don’ts”, and perfection in the catering industry can’t really be put into words. It’s more about personality and your style of cooking. Without sounding too gushing - good food is all about the love!

I was about 5 years old when I started cooking in a professional kitchen, but don’t be put off by my head start. It means nothing, I’ve seen 30-year olds become proper chefs in just five years.

Here are my top tips for getting started:

1. If you’re going to get a weekend job as a kid or a student, get one in a restaurant, pub, fishmongers, butchers or on a fruit and veg stall. All of these are really valid ways of learning about food. Then, as the years go by, try and move on to something different or to a more challenging restaurant.

2. Use the summer holidays to do a work placement in a really exciting hotel or restaurant. Whether it’s for a week or a month you’ll get a real feel for the kitchen and the way a team works together. After this you’ll have a good idea whether you can handle the job, the hours, the money and the ups and downs that happen working in a high level pressured kitchen. I’ve never heard of any head chef who’s refused an enthusiastic stranger on the end of a phone the chance to come and do a work placement for free. It’s quite common and charming for it to happen to any chef and you may find yourself with a good job offer at the end of it!

3. Having done those last two, you now have three options to consider, none of which are necessarily the right answer.

(a) Go straight into a professional job. Jump in at the deep end with possibly not enough skills but be bold enough to carry it off.
(b) Go to the best local catering college and do a two or three year course that focuses mainly on cooking but also gives you an insight into the science of cooking, French culinary language, the front of house, management and accounting sides of the business. That’s what I did and I enjoyed it, but I did find that it lacked the real feel and vibe of the kitchen. I found working in restaurants over the holidays and on weekends gave me a really good balance.
(c) I’ve always thought arranging to do day release over two or three years at a good local college is a really good idea. It means you can get a full time job, which challenges, inspires and pays you, and with your employers support (and often this includes financial support), you can go to college one day a week.

To finish off, it really is down to you. There’s nothing that you can’t achieve with hard work, passion and real commitment for cooking. Read as many books as you can get your hands on and try to work in other countries if you can for authenticity. I used to save up and go out for a posh meal with my fellow chefs every five weeks for education. Do all this and you’ll be laughing. I don’t consider myself a don of cooking but I love what I do and I do it properly with passion and that will always shine through. So get stuck in, get cooking and good luck!”

You can find information on the Fifteen Foundation training scheme here.

Swiss site
This German and French language microsite features the Jamie Oliver products that are available in Switzerland. This is a product-based site so doesn’t have the full functionality of jamieoliver.com.

Languages other than English
Currently we don’t have the resources to translate the main Jamie Oliver site into other languages. We appreciate that we have a global audience and hope we’ll be able to accommodate everyone in the future.