Read Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Cookery Course Online
Authors: Gordon Ramsay
Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Cookery Course (20 page)
1 ripe Charentais or Galia melon
1 tbsp lemon juice
200ml stock syrup (see tip
here
)
4 tbsp crème fraîche
A few small seedless grapes, halved
8 mint sprigs, to garnish
1
. Peel the melon and discard the seeds, then use a melon baller to remove the flesh. Place in a food processor with the lemon juice and stock syrup, and blitz until smooth. Chill for 3–4 hours.
2
. Spoon the soup into 4 chilled glass bowls, top with the crème fraîche and grapes, garnish with the mint and serve.
HOW TO MAKE STOCK SYRUP
Boil 150ml water with 75g sugar for 5 minutes, then allow to cool. You can add any flavours you like during cooking – a strip of lemon rind, a knob of ginger or a star anise would all work beautifully here.
BREAD AND BUTTER
PUDDING
SERVES 6–8
Bread and butter pudding was absolutely my favourite when I was growing up. My mother always made it with cheap white sliced bread, but I’ve experimented with all sorts since: baguette, panettone, brioche, croissants. Pain au chocolat is my current favourite, as the nuggets of chocolate give it that extra dimension.
50g softened butter, plus extra to grease
2–3 tbsp apricot jam
6 pains au chocolat, cut into slices 1cm thick
1–2 tbsp ground cinnamon
4 tbsp demerara sugar
35g golden raisins
500ml whole milk
120ml double cream
6 eggs
2 vanilla pods, seeds scraped out
1
. Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas 4. Lightly butter an 18 × 23cm baking dish.
2
. Heat the jam in a pan over a low heat for a couple of minutes until melted. Remove and set aside.
3
. Butter the slices of pain au chocolat on one side, place them in a large bowl and set aside. Now sprinkle about 2 teaspoons of the cinnamon into the buttered serving dish along with 2 tablespoons of the sugar and all the raisins. Pour over most of the melted jam, reserving a small amount for glazing at the end.
4
. Whisk together the milk, cream, eggs, vanilla seeds and 1 teaspoon of the cinnamon and pour half of this mixture all over the bread. When it has soaked in slightly, arrange the bread in the serving dish so the pieces are overlapping. Continue layering the bread until all the pieces have been used, then pour over the rest of the egg mixture and scatter the surface with the remaining sugar and a light dusting of cinnamon.
5
. Place in the preheated oven and bake for 35–40 minutes until golden.
6
. To serve, brush the pudding with the reserved melted jam and serve immediately.
AN ORGANISED COOK IS A RELAXED COOK,
AND ONE OF THE BEST WAYS OF BEING
ORGANISED IS TO DO AS MUCH WORK IN
ADVANCE AS YOU CAN.
That doesn’t just mean putting out your ingredients before you start cooking, or prepping all your vegetables before you turn on the gas – important as these things are – sometimes it also means fully preparing dishes ahead of time. Not only will the meal be less stressful if you know one of the courses is already taken care of, but a lot of dishes actually taste better if cooked in advance. It’s what you might call a win-win, and it’s why forward planning is so important in the kitchen.
With some things you have no choice: they have to be made beforehand anyway. A jar of chutney, for example, is a great way to add flavour to a simple supper, but you’re hardly going to look in your fridge at 7 p.m., see some ham and think, ‘I know, I’ll make a quick chutney to go with that.’ These are things to make in batches and have sitting in the fridge or larder. With all that vinegar and sugar, they can keep for years if you sterilise the jars properly – something our grandparents knew only too well. (To sterilise jars, and their lids, wash them thoroughly and allow to dry on a clean tea towel. Preheat the oven to its lowest setting, then place the jars and lids on a tray and heat in the oven for 30 minutes.)
The freezer can be another life-saver when it comes to cooking in bulk. We’ve become a bit sniffy about frozen foods over the past decade or so, I think, because we’ve been encouraged to see chilled foods as somehow being fresher. In fact frozen is often best (I’ll take frozen peas over the so-called ‘fresh’ pods you see in supermarkets anytime; likewise a lot of fish). When it comes to your own cooking, there’s no question that making in bulk and then freezing some of it makes sense. I’ve always got things like chicken stock, tomato sauce, and meatballs in handy sizes in the freezer, ready to be taken out when needed. Meatballs are a good example as they freeze really well and are so versatile that you can take them in any direction you like once they’ve defrosted: in a Mexican soup, a pasta bake, a melted cheese sandwich…
Other things are best served at room temperature anyway, so it’s a good idea to make them during a quiet time in the day. That doesn’t just mean cakes, biscuits and the like, but also delicately flavoured things, such as quiches. When food is too hot we tend to gulp it down without savouring it; too cold and the flavours almost hibernate. That’s why you should always allow things you’ve kept in the fridge, like cheese or cold meats, to come to room temperature before you serve them, to give the flavours a chance to wake up. Similarly, there is no shame in serving a main course like poached salmon at room temperature. Again, less stress for the cook.
Then there are dishes where the flavour genuinely improves with time. Marinades and casseroles are the most obvious examples. So much of cooking is about maximising flavours, making the ingredients work for you, and the easiest way to do that is to leave them in contact with each other for longer to meld together. If you marinate a piece of meat in herbs and wine for a couple of hours, it’s going to take on some of the flavours and become more tender. Marinate it for 24 hours, though, and your patience will be rewarded a hundred times over. Make a casserole the day before, and as the meat sits in all those lovely juices, it almost acts like a sponge and soaks up all that flavour, making it moister and tastier when you gently reheat it the next day. It’s a trick we use so often in the restaurants.
I’m also including in this chapter a lot of slow-cooked dishes, such as Slow-roasted Pork Belly with Fennel and Slow-cooked Beef Short Ribs (
see here
and
here
). You’re not necessarily making them in advance (although with the short ribs there’s no reason why you shouldn’t), but what you are doing is putting in the work much earlier on and then just leaving them to their own devices. Slow cooking works best on the fattier, tougher, less fashionable cuts of meat, such as cheek, neck and belly. This is gutsy, robust cooking at its best. Ten minutes spent really caramelising the meat, cooking out the wine and packing in the flavours will result, a couple of hours later, in a meltingly tender and flavoursome dish worthy of any dinner table. And the great thing is that because it’s all self-contained in one pan or casserole pot, you’ve got almost no washing up.
COOKING IN ADVANCE
Beef meatballs with orecchiette, kale and pine nuts
Meatballs in fragrant coconut broth
Beef meatball sandwich with melting mozzarella and tomato salsa
Slow-roasted pork belly with fennel
Coriander, ginger and chilli butter chicken
Moroccan lamb with sweet potato and raisins
SPICY MEATBALL SOUP
SERVES 4–6
This is real comfort food, meatballs in a richly spicy soup. It adds hugely to the flavour if you can find chipotles in adobo – jalapeño chillies in a smoky, sweet and sour purée – but if you can’t, you could try Aleppo chillies from Syria, which have a lovely smoky flavour, or regular chillies with a teaspoon or two of smoked paprika.
1 onion, peeled and diced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced
1 tsp cumin seeds
½–1 tbsp chipotle chilli paste or chipotles in adobo
1 × 400g tin chopped tomatoes
1 tsp dried oregano
1 litre beef or chicken stock
1 × 340g tin sweetcorn, drained
2 courgettes, trimmed and diced into 2cm pieces
FOR THE MEATBALLS
1 small onion, peeled and finely diced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
500g minced beef
75g fresh breadcrumbs
3–4 tbsp milk
Olive oil, for frying
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
TO SERVE
1 large handful of tortilla chips, roughly chopped
4 tbsp chopped coriander
2 tbsp jalapeño peppers, deseeded and chopped
1
. First prepare the meatballs. Sauté the onion and garlic with seasoning in a hot oiled frying pan for about 5 minutes until soft and lightly coloured, adding the chilli flakes after a minute or two. Place the mince in a large bowl and add seasoning. Put the breadcrumbs in a separate bowl and moisten with the milk. Add seasoning, then stir the breadcrumbs and onion mixture into the mince and combine well. With wet hands, shape the mince mixture into balls just smaller than a golf ball (about 3cm wide). Transfer to a lightly greased plate or tray and chill for 30 minutes until firm.
2
. Heat a little oil in a large saucepan and sauté the onion and garlic for the soup base with a pinch of salt and pepper for 4–5 minutes until softened. Add the cumin seeds and meatballs and cook over a high heat to toast the cumin seeds and colour the meatballs on all sides.
3
. Add the chipotle chilli paste and stir over a high heat. Add the tinned tomatoes, oregano and stock, bring to the boil, then lower the heat. Season and gently simmer for 20 minutes until the meatballs are cooked through and the soup has thickened a little. (This can be done in advance, then left overnight for the flavours to develop if you prefer.)