Jamie Oliver’s festive recipes

In the first of two parts, Jamie Oliver shares new recipes for keeping friends and family happy and tells Matt Rudd why his baby hunger is properly sated now

Elevenses in Jamie Oliver HQ and, in a moment of madness, I have reached for the sugar. One spoon in the coffee. Then another. Then a little bit more. Oliver is appalled.

He counts out the spoons with mounting horror and a smattering of profanity. He has spent the past two years campaigning for his sugary-drinks tax. He did a jig outside the House of Commons when George Osborne included it in his budget in March. He was “in shock” when the obesity action plan that it was part of got trashed in August. And now he’s being interviewed by someone who puts two and a bit sugars in their coffee. By the time I’m done, he’s suggesting an intervention.

“I feel like you need to come and live with me and I’ll feed you,” he says.

If you’re British and you have an opinion, that’s quite annoying

Can you imagine living with Oliver? Just being in the same room is exhausting. He is, as he puts it, random at best. “Whatever anyone tells you about me that is even remotely impressive is probably untrue,” he says. This is nonsense, of course. Over the past 15 years, Oliver has grown from the toothsome, son-of-a-publican Naked Chef to a seasoned campaigner and a persistent thorn in the nation’s chubby side. But he’s right about the random.

We’re supposed to be talking about his first ever Christmas book, but before I can take a sip of that naughty coffee, we’ve covered nutrition in the Olympics (terrible in 2012, brilliant in 2016), the way Koreans make vegetables “totally cool and desirable”, the science of nutrition in general and the decline of sugar consumption in 2013-14 in particular.

Eventually, I make a question stick: is it frustrating when most of what he says is so bleeding obvious and people still don’t listen? And his reply is more measured than the Jamie Oliver I last interviewed five years ago. Five years ago, he was fed up. Fed up with politicians. Fed up and with parents pushing Turkey Twizzlers through school gates. Now, “it’s all about balance. I’m not saying I tread it, but generally speaking, I do OK. The problem is that if you’re British and you have an opinion, that’s quite annoying, even if it’s full of love. But anything good I’ve done, it’s basic logic. OK, so we have a problem with child health. OK, so where are we feeding children 190 days a year? OK, so there are standards for dog food but not kids’ food. OK. You know it’s not clever.”

It might not be clever, but it is logical. So why do some people find what he’s saying annoying? “I remember running into groups of parents in areas where this could be the only hot meal of the day,” he says, “and they’re all, ‘Oi, you, coming here with all that posh food.’ And it’s chilli con carne. And it’s cheaper than the scrotum burgers that were getting shipped in and reheated.

“It’s quite British, this association with having any degree of thought or love of food being upper class or middle class or whatever you want to class it up as. That’s not the rest of the world. On my travels, the best food has always come from the most economically challenged areas.”

Today, he is more reflective. He says he’s grown up a lot in the past five years. Now he’s reached the ripe old age of 41, he’s playing a long game. He talks in decades rather than weeks and months. But you still wouldn’t want to live with him. You would have launched the next campaign before your first sugar-free coffee of the day. Then you’d have to go for a run. Oliver does a lot of running these days. He’s been running this morning with a large backpack full of paperwork for the day. Then you’d have to go to school — he’s currently studying for a master’s in human nutrition at St Mary’s University in Twickenham, “so I can hold the conversation with scientists and doctors — it’s changed my life”. Then you would probably have to help out with his children. And there are five of them.

Five years ago, Oliver only had four children. I had two and we both thought that was plenty. Five years later, he has five and I’ve got three. Disaster. But his Instagram account is full of Athena-style shots of him and Rocket, his three-month-old son. He gives the impression that he absolutely loves fatherhood, so I ask when he’s having the next one. “Brrrrrr,” he shudders, as though someone just put sugar in his coffee. I remind him that he said he was done the last time we met. “That’s true, but now I know all those signs,” he says.

You’re not broody then? “No, I am not broody. I haven’t been broody for quite a few babies. I feel wise now. I won’t get lulled.”

I had heard he was squeamish about the snip so I suggest he could try the Glasgow vasectomy (half a bottle of whisky and two bricks). At least it’s quicker. “I’m not squeamish,” he says. “To be honest, I’d be happy going to the vet. I would sneak off and do it. I’m just slightly nervous about an audience of people with my bollocks in their hands doing the operation. I’m a bit shy.” The Naked Chef won’t get naked.

I ask how the logistics of a large family work. How, for example, do you go out and about with five children? “You don’t,” he says. “Farmers don’t take all their animals out at once, do they? You have to shepherd them in groups. It’s all down to organisation and that’s thanks to Jools, not me.” And, of course, a fleet of nannies and nurses?

“Well, literally yesterday we got a maternity nurse. We’ve never done that before. We’ve always done it ourselves. This time, we’re a bit older, the six- and seven-year-olds are up in the night anyway and we just got really sleep deprived. Last night, I got six hours and I’m so grateful for that.”

We’re not here to talk about babies. Or sugar. Or Korean vegetables. We’re here to talk about Christmas. For years, Oliver has presented his perfect Christmas on TV and we’ve watched it and tried to copy it and always fallen some way short. Now, he’s presenting it in book form, filled with pictures of his smiling, enormous family, roaring fires, intricately wrapped presents and tables laden with delicious food.

We were having our traditional Christmas lunch in the pub when Nan caught fire

In the real world, Christmas is not like this. It’s a time for Baileys-fuelled fallings-out with mothers-in-law. It’s a time for turkey roulette (will it be dry or will it kill us?). Can his book stop the stress? “No,” he says. “The stress is going to be there no matter what. It’s about getting on top of it. Getting organised. I’m not a list person, but at Christmas, you make lists. You start procuring things in November.” That means now, people. Stop reading this.

Go and organise Christmas. “There are things you can do to be ahead of the game. Like not cooking a turkey straight from the fridge. Like not worrying about undercooking it. Just get a thermometer. Be sure. And you want to delegate. Think beforehand who can do what.”

He carries on like this, bish-bash-boshing his way through a military approach to the season of goodwill. This year, he’s going to do turkey and goose because “no one will let me do just goose, but everyone enjoys it when it’s there”. And he’s going to do a rolled porchetta just as a “cheeky little curveball”. He’ll change up the veg. (You should always change up the veg.) And then he’ll batch up some cocktails: negronis, margaritas, old fashioneds and sidecars, a potent mix of cognac, triple sec and lemon juice that makes guests “interesting”.

“Making cocktails is quite a process and doing it for lots of guests is doubly complicated. But quite a lot of them you can do the day or the month before. You have time to batch up all the perfect amounts of everything and all you do is top it up with soda or serve over ice and it’s there, ready and raring to go.”This is what he does. It’s his great skill. He can make Christmas sound manageable, just like he can make the solution to our obesity crisis seem straightforward. But let’s get to the truth here. He must have overcooked a turkey (“I don’t think I have”). He must have had a disastrous Christmas. “I can’t think of one. I love Christmas with my children. I love the nostalgia, remembering people who are no longer with us, looking back at parts of your life.

“Until I was 14, we lived in Dad’s pub. On Christmas Day, we’d be open until three, then we’d have a late lunch, but it was nice living in a pub. People do leg it out for an hour or two. They get out, get the kids out for some fresh air and sneak a quick pint. There was always a beautiful buzz in there.”

So nothing bad ever happened? “Well, there was the time I thought Dad was beating Nan.” Finally. “I must have been five or six, and we were having our traditional Christmas lunch in the pub when Nan caught fire. I thought Dad was beating her because the way he was putting her out was so ferocious. She was only going to get a brussels sprout and, what with the paper hat and the hairspray, she went up like a candle. Once I realised Dad wasn’t beating her, I remember thinking, ‘Wow, she really wants that brussels sprout.’”

The interview has overrun. Oliver jogs off to his next engagement. I run off to buy cocktail ingredients. I’ll follow his advice. I’ll embrace the Christmas stress, I’ll batch up the booze and I’ll use a thermometer. I might even do a rolled porchetta. How hard can it be? But I’ll still have sugar in my coffee.

Next month: Jamie’s recipes for Christmas Day

Jamie Oliver’s Christmas Cookbook by Jamie Oliver (Penguin Random House £26) is out now