Speed key to culinary success

30 Minute Meals by Jamie Oliver. Photo / Supplied

It is not easy flogging books to the public during a recession. But publisher Penguin has made it look easy with the record-breaking success of Jamie Oliver's 30-Minute Meals. Why this book rather than learning to cook in 24 hours, or like an Italian?

Jamie has cracked the brilliant contradiction in the consumer psyche. We yearn for terroir - eating al fresco with friends and family, sensuous and relaxed. But we would also like the meal cooked and cleared at top speed, so we can reply to the day's emails and hit the pillow.

We would love to shop at markets, tasting the tomatoes and cheeses before pedalling off with a baguette, but the reality is a sweaty commute and a dash to Tesco Metro.

How can one combine good life cooking with a work ethic? For the past decade, we have had slow cooking disintegrating down our throats. Nothing was worth eating if it had not been soaked overnight and simmered for five hours. Last year we swallowed the film Eat Pray Love, lingering on an American's delighted conversion to an Italian credo of eating and "doing nothing".

No wonder Julia Roberts, the film's star, looked embarrassed. Who buys laziness as a philosophy?

Time management is the grail of our age. It is not the same as cutting corners. That is why many of us were offended when Delia Smith suggested we serve frozen mash and tinned mince.

Jamie Oliver puts "beautiful" and "quick" in the same, genius sentence, where before they were regarded as antithetical. But he sympathises with the Busy Readers, too modest to mention his own hydra-headed life, multiple businesses and permanently pregnant wife.

The 30-minute recipe is not the same as having it all. You are not going to get lamb shanks in 30 minutes. What 30 minutes means, mostly, is pasta and salad. It is optimistic to manage a first course and a pudding in the time without a degree in neuroscience.

But, sprinkling basil on tomato, I have a glimpse of terroir that heated-up meals can never offer.

Jamie Oliver is doing what successful business people have always done. He is selling dreams.

- INDEPENDENT