Food File - Book review
Gordon Ramsay Kitchen Heaven, published by Penguin Books, £20.
Love him or hate him, his recent TV series Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares has got everyone talking. And if you found the Channel 4 series unmissable viewing, then buying Gordon Ramsay Kitchen Heaven, which accompanies the series, is as essential as the f word seems to be in Ramsay's conversation. All the "nightmare" characters are in there - including Bonaparte's "Lord of the Rings" Tim Gray, and the Glass House's pomegranate risotto creator Richard Collins.
It also gives Ramsay's thoughts on the running of pub the Walnut Tree in Abergavenny, whose owners felt duped about the name of the series. In the book Ramsay describes a classic fish stew he ate at the restaurant as a "muddy medley of tough fish". Ramsay says his main aim for the restaurants in the series was to make their menus hearty and rustic and many of the recipes in the book are in this style. As well as eluding to "nightmare" incidents from the restaurants he visited, the book is also packed with useful information for chefs such as tips on writing menus, how to deal with mistakes, and how to improve the ambience of your restaurant.
It is also littered with interesting anecdotes from the fiery chef's culinary career. But the main focus of the book is Ramsay's 100 new recipes, some of which he put on the menus of restaurants in the series. Among the recipes are Caesar Salad (the dish Ramsay nearly ended up "outside" arguing over), crispy duck salad, mackerel on toast with a warm potato salad, baked pumpkin, classic Dover sole with mashed potato and French peas, cottage pie, venison pie, stuffed loin of roast suckling pig with crispy crackling and banana sticky toffee pudding.
The book is also a visual treat, apart from the overkill of Ramsay pics, and is full of fantastic food photography and the faces that have fuelled many a talking point in the past weeks. Kitchen Heaven may be as arrogant and self-righteous in its tone as the man himself, but would we want him any other way? Prolong the nightmare and invest in Kitchen Heaven - it would be a sin not to.
