Jake - 'I feel most relaxed in the kitchen'

Last night, the Sony Ericsson Empire Awards took place in London, and while James McAvoy, Keira Knightly and the lovely Ewan MacGregor will be celebrating, unfortunately Zodiac and David Fincher were not among the winners - but at least both got nods. If you're in the UK and feel like it, you can watch the ceremonies on ITV2 tonight.


But on the brighter side, remember the Entertainment Weekly list of the top 30 stars under 30? IMDb ran a poll and have today revealed the results - the out and out winner by a long chalk is none other than Jake Gyllenhaal. 22667 votes were cast and Jake got a massive 24% of those. So while the lights flicker here as the storm passes over Britain, that's put a smile on my face.

Food for thought

Tonight, after all this talk of Jake in restaurants and cooking, I thought I'd have some fun and focus on one of Jake's many winning personality traits - his skills in the kitchen!



Jake's never made a secret of the fact that if he weren't an actor, he would have loved to be a chef, and his pride in his best friend's professions as a cook is evident. We've heard him say that cookery books are his porn and we regularly see him in some of the fine supermarkets of Beverly Hills (not to mention Sprinkles cupcakes store) and yet, for a man who clearly loves to cook, Jake's appreciation of good food has led him to be a regular frequentor of restauraunts - sometimes twice on the same day. From the blood sausages of Provence to the oysters of Santa Monica, Jake loves his food, athough he has decreed on more than one occasion that Italian is his favourite, making it the official cuisine of the fandom.


The Daily Mail asked Jake what his idea of heaven was: 'I have such a great family and I really love to cook for them. I've cooked since I was little. I feel most relaxed in the kitchen. If you can cook with any ingredients you have in your cupboards, then that's a sign of a true chef. I like to cook with any leftovers in the fridge.'

Jake told London's Metro: 'Cooking is just as much of a passion [as acting]. My best friend is a chef and all my closest friends are chefs. I think performing has always been a big thing for me and I think cooking is another type of performance.'


So what does Jake like to cook himself: 'I think if I were to tell you my best dish it would prove I was a real amateur. There’s people who are not really good cooks but I’m going to be really confident when I say, “Oh, my Milanese is amazing.”' Earlier in the same interview, Jake is asked if he would liked to have been a chef: 'That’s a temptation and has always been but I started so young that I didn’t realize I was just as passionate about that.'

And when Jake was featured in People (see and click on picture below) as one the world's sexiest men, Jake owned up to liking cooking breakfast (a big English fry-up maybe?) and being a dab hand at steak.


It looks like Jake had some fun experimenting with food, ingredients and cooking during those long summers on Martha's Vineyard where Jake remembered his mother cooking elaborate meals for them (click on picture below). 'Well, my parents have a garden in their house on Martha's Vineyard. I like to go to the fish market and buy fresh fish caught that day and take some vegetables from the garden and just make something fresh with it. I consider myself sort of the American equivalent of "The Naked Chef."'


As an aside it's rather interesting, in the light of recent comments here about Jake's experience with Dustin Hoffman on the set of Moonlight Mile, that Jake says here that Dustin would take some pleasure from ripping his feathers out.

As a teenager, when he wasn't peeing on jellyfish victims' legs, Jake was also earning pennies washing dishes: 'Jake Gyllenhaal, as a teen-ager, washed dishes for the chef Marco Canora, who was in the midst of his first big-time gig, at Tom Colicchio’s Craft.' I did that, myself as a teenager, and lasted the grand total of two days. In January 2006, it was reported that Jake had filmed a 'secret segment' as a busboy for Mario Batali's show: 'The actor was persuaded to take part on the Food Network show by Batali, who told him he'd make the perfect busboy (someone who clears tables in restaurants) and became part of the chef's staff at New York's Babbo. Gyllenhaal says, "There's an art to busboying. You have to be able to stay away from the table, really. You have to be invisible, you have to be a ghost."'


Talking of Mario Batali, not only are Jake and other members of the Gyllenhaal family regular visitors to Batali's restaurants, various combinations of the family have also appeared on his show to taste the food he cooks. One episode featured pasta and the other featured that old favourite - Italian desserts.



In February 2006, Maggie was asked about her brother's cooking: 'As the Oscar race heats up, Brokeback Mountain nominee Jake Gyllenhaal has it all under control – in the kitchen. "My brother is actually an astonishing cook," sister Maggie Gyllenhaal says. "I'm a pretty good cook – I'm like the lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper kind of cook. He took it to the next level. My brother makes roast beef in a béchamel sauce. When I'm in L.A. I stay with him and he cooks major meals."'


As another aside, it's moving here to listen to Maggie describe what it was like to see Jack Twist the victim of an attack in Brokeback Mountain: '"I really lost it when they show him getting beaten up (in Brokeback Mountain)," she told us at New York City's Spotted Pig restaurant, where she was celebrating Reebok's "I Am What I Am" campaign (she's a spokesperson). "He's my brother so maybe I felt it even more acutely. I thought, 'Why hurt him? What has he done?'"'


The power of a name such as Jake's to draw people into a restaurant shouldn't be underestimated, as this article on the role of Hollywood and the paparazzi in the shape of the LA restaurant scene shows: '[Entrepreneur] Suaya isn't worried. Enchanted by the potential he sees, he's busy identifying which young stars he will approach next to invest in Goa. Jake Gyllenhaal, the star of "Brokeback Mountain" and "Jarhead" is at the top of his list. "He's very hot right now, and I'm trying to get him," says Suaya. "We will get him."'


Jake's love of good food doesn't just extend to himself - he wants Atticus to have the very best too (Sprinkles do cupcakes especially for dogs, by the way). In June 2007, Jake attended a party that launched new tasty nibbles for dogs from The Honest Kitchen called Ice Pups: 'These are sold as do-it-yourself snacks for dogs, requiring pet owners to add warm water and freeze the treats into bite-sized chunks for their four-legged friends to enjoy on a hot summer day. The Honest Kitchen promotes health and nutrition for pets, providing a line of dehydrated foods that are nutritionally sound and made from natural ingredients.' The proceeds from the event went to Much Love Animal Rescue.


How about this for food for thought: In 2004, 'Kristin Davis was outbid at the Food Bank Annual Awards Dinner at Pier 60 for "a dinner prepared in your home by Mario Batali with Jake Gyllenhaal as his sous-chef," she shot back, "I get that for free." The dinner eventually went to Michael Stipe for $11,000.' Jake Gyllenhaal in your own kitchen, chopping veg? Lucky Michael Stipe. Although one does remember Parsleygate:.


Pictures from IHJ, Just Jared and People.