To wonder what the buggery bollocks Jamie Oliver means half the time

[scaryfrogfish]

I'm currently flicking through his 5 ingredients cookbook, and several times it says to cook something until it's "gnarly". He even has whole recipes called "gnarly" this that and the other.

Gnarly means dangerous... I cannot find a single definition that could be descriptive of exactly how this "gnarly" food is supposed to look.

He uses the wrong word all the time for things, like a "good gulag of oil" and it just irritates me.

AIBU to think "gnarly" is a shit description when you're trying to explain to a cook how something needs to look?

The recipe tells you to do it twice.

I think it is the commenter here who mistyped glug as gulag, not mr. Oliver. And if you think he writes down his own recipes and types them up nicely for the publisher instead of, at most, verbally reviewing what his corporate team have come up with, then I have a bridge to sell you…

@SillyUnMurphy

Gulag - forced Soviet labour camps. Glug - pour or drink liquid with a gurgling sound. That’s hardly writing as you speak. It is an entirely different word.

Quite. Using the word “gulag” out-of-context is pretty insensitive. When he wants you to put your gnarly shepherds pie into the oven, does he say to put it in the gas chamber? No, because that would also be insensitive.

Proofreaders and editors should be stopping this kind of error.

He can say what he likes UNLESS he says waffer when I, and the rest of the world, wants to hear wafer. That's way-fer JO. Not waff-er. Grrr.

Totally off topic (although, I too, would be perplexed about "cooking until gnarly" )
Fred Sirieix did a series of programmes about a year ago where chefs had to make exact replicas of common foods, (I thought the concept was slightly weird as I thought chefs would want to create the opposite of processed food) Kitkat being one of them. He repeately referred to waff- eurs, and now we always refer to wafers as Waff-eurs.

@LucilleBluth disagree, ‘pick over’ is totally British and you’d never hear it in American recipes. Along with ‘tip’ (as in ‘tip the rice into the pan’) and ‘plate up’ and others that I can’t recall at the moment but I come across them all the time.

Celebrity chefs’ recipes must by law contain one ingredient you’ve never heard of and have no idea where to get.

@SerenDippitty that's known as "a booths ingredient" in my house
If you have an ingredient you've never heard of, booths will have it
Usually goes
"WTF is this, and where will sell it?"
"Tried booths?"

@QueenPaws Unfortunately I don’t live anywhere near a Booths, Waitrose is as posh as it gets round here!

@MikeUniformMike

I know lots of people who have worked with him and they concur. So yes, you can know what people are like IRL.

@QueenPaws

Booths is the best! Can’t understand why they aren’t everywhere

@SerenDippitty Waitrose only arrived here a few years ago. Bizarrely we have no big Tesco only a Tesco express. Lots of booths though!

I only have a couple of his earlier books, but I really enjoyed the lockdown videos he did with his lovely family. He comes across as a genuine nice guy.

@QueenPaws I am totally stealing "Booths ingredient"

Time for a trip to Garstang methinks.

@MaskingForIt, proofreading and editing standards are not what they used to be.

It's a typo that would pass the spellchecker.

Arf at Booths ingredient, v good.