What’s the USP? A follow up of sorts to Ramsay’s 2007 book Three Star Chef that focuses on the food and story of his three Michelin starred flagship restaurant Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea, London. Recipes are organised by seasons, each with an introduction to the key ingredients available at the time of year. Interspersed is Ramsay’s anecdotal history of the restaurant. As such, the book is aimed at professional chefs and those who want a memento of what might possibly be a meal of a lifetime and be of less interest to the audience for Ramsay’s usual quick and easy-style cookbooks such as
Who is the author? That bad tempered shouty bloke from off the telly, that’s who. Born in Scotland and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon, he is a former aspiring professional footballer turned most-famous-chef-currently-on-the-planet. Trained by some of the leading chefs of the time including Albert Roux, Marco Pierre White, Guy Savoy and Joël Robuchon, Ramsay opened his first restaurant Aubergine in Fulham in 1993 where he won two Michelin stars. The third came when he opened Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in 1998. His restaurant empire currently spans the UK, France, the US, Dubai and Singapore and encompasses everything from the two Michelin starred Le Pressoir d’Argent in Bordeaux to a string of Street Pizza and Street Burger restaurants. Ramsay is a familiar figure on TV both sides of the Atlantic with shows including Hell’s Kitchen, Masterchef, Masterchef Jr., 24 Hours To Hell & Back, Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted and Gordon, Gino And Fred.
The book’s co author is Restaurant Gordon Ramsay Chef Patron Matt Abé who has worked for Ramsay for 16 years. Born in Australia, he worked at Aria Restaurant in Sydney and Vue du Monde in Melbourne before moving to the UK at the age of 21 to work as chef de partie at Claridge’s. He then moved to Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, working his way up from chef de partie to his current position overseeing the whole restaurant.
Are the recipes easy to follow? Well, sort of. Let’s take ‘Veal Sweetbread, Toasted Grains, Ajo Blanco, Malt’ as an example. First you’ll need to make your veal stock and chicken stock (separate recipes for both are included in the ‘basics’ section). You’ll need 4kg of veal bones and 3kg of chicken wings and necks and 24 hours during which you’ll be regularly skimming the stocks. The recipe fails to explain how you’ll get any sleep during this process so you’ll have to figure that one for yourselves.
Anyway, once you’ve had a nap, it’s time to get the malt jus on. You’ll just need a kilo of veal trimmings for this and fair amount of time for browning and reducing and passing. Once you’ve got your beautiful and extremely expensive sauce, it’s time to deep fry some wild rice and amaranth grains to puff them up for garnish. The cost of living crisis means this alone is an horrendously expensive process, but it’ll be worth it.
Once you’ve got those boxed up, all you need to do is trim 2kg of veal heart sweetbreads (they were all out at Asda but I’m sure you can track them down at your local butcher. Do you have one of those? Lucky you) removing the membrane with your razor sharp Japanese-style chef’s knife. Then just fry them up and top with some honey glaze (there’s a separate recipe for that), your puffed grains plus some sobacha and malted oats you just happen to have in the cupboard, along with all those allium buds and flowers you were looking for something to do with. Then you pour over your ajo blanco (sorry, didn’t I mention it that before? Yes, that’s another thing you need to make) and your malt jus and job’s a good’un.
It’s at this point you begin to realise why dinner at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay costs £180 a head just for the food. So to answer the question, the recipes are pretty straightforward, if you take each individual component by itself. But it’s the amount of components, the number of ingredient, the time involved and the skill and equipment required (you’ll need a Vitamix if you are going to follow the recipe to the letter and achieve the sort of velvety texture Abé does in the restaurant for example) that’s the issue.
Will I have trouble finding the ingredients? There are a number of dishes such as canapes and amuse-bouche where you will find it impossible as there are no recipes, just images and a description. This sadly includes the restaurant’s fantastic Parker House rolls. If anything would have been worth the £60 cost of the book it would be a recipe for that bread, one of the highlights of a recent meal I was lucky enough to enjoy at RGR.
While many of the ingredients for most of the dishes in the book are readily available in some form or another, there are quite a few instances of micro herbs/foraged flowers, herbs and leaves and the sort of powders associated with molecular gastronomy (although the food in the book is very far removed from that) being required. So you’ll need for example to track down mustard frills, chickweed leaves and three cornered garlic flowers for a asparagus and morel starter, and some Ultratex (and a Pacojet) to make a herb puree for a cod and Jersey Royal dish. However, it would only take a little thought and ingenuity for an experienced cook (and certainly a professional chef) to work around these requirements without straying too far from the original intention of the dish.
How often will I cook from this book? While this is at heart a coffee table book, it could also have a useful life in your kitchen. If you are a home cook, most of the complete dishes in the book will be quite a serious undertaking. However, many of the individual components are fairly straightforward, so you might make the saffron emulsion (mayo) that accompanies a crab and melon mousse and that’s flavoured with paprika and Espelette chilli powder and serve it with some simply grilled fish.
Does it make for a good bedtime read? This is the story of the restaurant as well as a recipe book so there’s a good amount to read. This is very much Ramsay’s version of events however and key players like Marcus Wareing, Angela Hartnett, Mark Sargeant, Jason Atherton and Mark Askew (none of whom still work for Ramsay) get only a passing mention. There are a few juicy nuggets like the fact Ramsay was paid £200k for the Boiling Point documentary series and that he applies ‘ruthless margins on wine’ (now you know the other reason why your dinner is so expensive). If you’ve read Playing With Fire or Humble Pie, Ramsay ‘s two autobiographies you won’t learn much new here but it’s an enjoyable read nevertheless. There are also some interesting observations on seasonal ingredients including the fact that lobsters are never cooked whole at the restaurant because each part cooks at a different rate.
Should I buy the book? The book looks a million dollars, especially the fantastic food shots by John Carey, is a decent read and has some great, if daunting recipes. Ramsay fans, professional chefs and ambitious home cooks will find much to enjoy and inspire here. What it’s definitely not is a practical everyday cookbook, but there are plenty of those already. Perhaps a book you would gift rather than buy for yourself.
Cuisine: Modern British
Suitable for: For professional chefs
Cookbook Review Rating: Four stars
Buy this book: Restaurant Gordon Ramsay: A Story of Excellence by Gordon Ramsay
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