In Jamie: What To Eat This Week - Autumn the celebrated chef continues his year-long quest to 'cook the seasons' on C4.
Here’s everything you need to know about Jamie Oliver’s latest helpful and informative three-parter…
Jamie: What To Eat This Week - Autumn — release date
Three-parter Jamie: What To Eat This Week - Autumn kicks off on Channel 4 on Monday, September 9, 2024 at 8pm. The subsequent episodes air at the same time on the next two Monday evenings.
All episodes will be available to stream from channel4.com.
Jamie: What To Eat This Week - Autumn — premise
Following in the footsteps of his Spring and Summer outings (Jamie: What to Eat This Week - Spring and Jamie: What To Eat This Week - Summer are both available on channel4.com) earlier this year, this Autumn installment sees Jamie turning his attention to the season’s best ingredients.
The glut of veggies and fruit available at this time of year lends itself to warming soups and curries, filling pies and puddings, as well as delicious pasta dishes and tasty burgers. And it turns out that Jamie doesn't just know his onions, he plaits them too!
Jamie: What To Eat This Week - Autumn — episode guide
Jamie: What To Eat This Week - Autumn — episode 1
In this opening episode, Jamie concentrates on leafy green cabbage, fresh corn on the cob, tomatoes and onions. First on the menu is Savoy Cabbage Farfalle.
“As a kid, cabbage was boiled and, if you were lucky, seasoned with a little knob of butter, but from slaws to stir fries to beautiful sauerkrauts, there are infinite ways of celebrating it,” explains Jamie. “I’m giving it an Italian makeover by combining layers of crunchy cabbage leaves with smoky bacon, parmesan and mozzarella for my massively moorish savoy cabbage farfalle. This is cabbage, but not as you know it!”
Other recipes here include smoky sweetcorn burgers, cheesy onion soup and tomato galette. Jamie also shares some clever hacks too, from how to preserve onions by plaiting them to saving tomato seeds on kitchen paper in order to plant them next year!
“These are brilliant dishes to transition you from the end of Summer into Autumn when the nights are closing in,” smiles Jamie. “So if you've got a bit of time to make something special I've created these to make the most of what's in season. There are so many incredible British fruits and veg bursting with flavour and ripe for the picking!”
Jamie: What To Eat This Week - Autumn — episode 2
Jamie Oliver once again celebrates the joys of autumnal fruit and veg here, using the best ingredients in the shops as we hit harvest time. With so much available and ready to eat, Jamie shows us what to cook right now, but also what to save and how...
In this episode the chef picks some home-grown aubergine and creates a roast chicken fit for a party of pals. He bakes feta and serves it with a fig and prosciutto salad and homemade flatbreads. He unearths some potatoes he planted earlier in the year and uses them in a Mediterranean inspired runner bean stew with bacon wrapped fish. He gives us some super-useful tips on how to store both blackberries and chillies for winter months. And he cooks up a simple yet stunning tutti frutti pear tarte tatin, perfect for a special occasion and a total celebration of autumn.
Jamie: What To Eat This Week - Autumn — episode 3
In this third and final Autumnal episode, Jamie rounds up his glorious autumnal offerings as he cooks some gorgeous seasonal squash in a cheesy buttery sauce, served wrapped around homemade tagliatelle. He heroes some box-grown mushrooms in a stunning curry with crispy ginger-infused rice. The, back in the garden, Jamie digs up his homegrown celeriac and creates a deliciously zingy dressing for his remoulade, served with British cured meats. To finish off his seasonal delights, he goes foraging for blackberries which he stews with apples and pears under a blanket of biscuit dough in a blackberry cobbler. The perfect end to a crisp Autumn day.
Jamie: What to Eat This Week - Autumn — Q&A with Jamie Oliver
What excites you about Autumn, Jamie?
“Autumn is a wonderful season. As a gardener, I get really excited at the beginning when I’m rushing to harvest, cook and preserve the end- of-summer glut, like aubergines, tomatoes, peppers, beans and sweetcorn.
"At the same time, I’m already thinking about pumpkins and squash, and the mighty world of mushrooms coming to the fore – I want to cook it all! It’s a real period of transition, echoed in the food we eat, as we naturally lean towards more comforting, warming dishes to match the darker, wetter days. My tomato & ricotta galette is a real representation of this transition period, when I’m still cooking the last of those ripe tomatoes, but they’re layered up in a rustic buttery pastry that’s all about comfort.”
What produce are you most looking forward to showcasing here?
“Oh, so much. Pumpkins and squash are really the epitome of autumn, and each variety tastes so different, yet you’ve also got blackberries and orchard fruit at their best, which go so beautifully together in crumbles (you’ll love my Autumn blackberry cobbler).
"Then there are mushrooms, which are truly their own kingdom – they fascinate me. We all know chestnut, button and Portobello mushrooms; but there’s also lion’s mane, which taste almost like fresh crab, and golden oyster mushrooms that you can roast in whole clusters, and so many more. In the show, I hero mushrooms’ meaty-yet-delicate flavour in a soul-warming mighty mushroom curry – it’s a true celebration of mushrooms with all their weird and wonderful shapes, sizes and textures. Cooked down into layers of caramelly, smoky, sweet, fragrant flavours, this dish is Autumn for me.”
What can we grow in the UK that might surprise people?
“I remember the first time I grew aubergines in my garden in Essex – I couldn’t believe it! The smaller varieties do really well here. In the show, I make a North African-style roast chicken, served with gnarly squash and smashed aubergine, which I’ve charred over a flame until silky, then whipped up with tahini, garlic and lemon. It’s a twist on a Sunday roast that’s full of colour and surprise.
"Fresh figs grow well in Essex, too, but they have a really short season. What is more readily available is fig leaves. Fig trees grow in parks, back gardens and side streets, and their leaves are well worth using. In the show, I bake a block of feta, wrapped in fig leaves until oozy and molten. As the fig leaves blacken and burn in the oven, it infuses the feta with phenomenal figgy flavour – it can be surprising to think of the fig as a British-grown ingredient, but it definitely is!”
Is eating the seasons mainly about eating more veg?
“I would say yes, and no. With all the recipes in the show I wanted to put seasonal veg and fruit at the centre of the plate, sharing tips and inspiration on how to maximise their potential, rather than leaving them as an afterthought to meat or fish.
"Sometimes it’s all about the veg, whether that’s charring sweetcorn until blackened all over for gorgeous smokiness in my sweetcorn & feta burger, or cooking onions really, really slowly until super caramelised and sweet in my cheesy onion soup.
"That said, meat and fish also have seasons, which is why a lot of the recipes include those, too. I invited London’s Cobble Lane charcuterie onto the show – they cure meat that can match and surpass the popular cured meats we get from Europe. The UK has a long tradition of animal husbandry and in recent decades people have relearned the craft of curing.”
What’s so important about eating the seasons?
“Eating the seasons means eating food that hasn’t had to travel halfway around the world to get to our dinner table, which in most cases means it’s going to be fresher, more nutritious, more flavoursome, and probably better for our planet, too.
“It is also about looking around you and seeing what ingredients and produce are available locally, then using and championing them. If you don’t use it, you lose it!”
Do you have Autumnal favourites?
“Runner beans are one of my favourite things to have at this time of year. Fresh from the pod, they’re not just delicious; they’re full of fibre, and they’re great for our gardens, too. Beans take nitrogen from the air and fix it into the soil, which helps veggies like corn and pumpkins to grow alongside them – nature is unbelievably clever like that. It just makes sense that what grows together also tastes good together, but it also makes sense that food that’s grown near to where we live is going to be more nourishing for our bodies and for the soil that grows it, too.”
What crops haven’t grown so well for you this year?
“If you watch the show, you’ll laugh at how my celeriacs turned out – it was not the best year. That’s the joy of gardening, though. Sometimes I’ll get a bad crop or something doesn’t turn out quite how I expected, but those disappointments are far outweighed by the pleasure of planting, nurturing, then cooking something I grew with my own hands.”
And, finally, do you have a favourite recipe from these new Autumn episodes?
“If I had to choose one right now, based on the weather outside and how I’m feeling today, I’d go with my cheesy onion soup. It’s a nod to French onion soup, but using British ingredients that make it, in my opinion, quite a different dish. I’m rather proud of the cheesy croutons, made with good sourdough bread, topped with a mix of melty, oozy British farmhouse cheeses and a hint of English mustard, then clanked up and layered on top of the soup. A really humble, warming, delicious dish, just perfect for Autumn.”
Everything you need to know about Jamie: What to Eat This Week - Spring
Everything you need to know about Jamie: What to Eat This Week - Summer
Jamie: What to Eat This Week - Winter will air later this year.
