Read Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Cookery Course Online
Authors: Gordon Ramsay
Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Cookery Course (3 page)
Well, that’s the essentials out of the way. But there are some other good kitchen standbys you may find useful.
BLOWTORCH
We chefs love a blowtorch. It’s great not just for caramelising sugar – on top of a crème brûlée, for example – but for unmoulding frozen desserts.
DIGITAL SCALES
The great thing about digital scales is not just that you can weigh things down to the last gram, which is so important in baking, but that you can weigh everything into the same bowl, setting the scales to zero between each addition, which saves both time and washing up.
FOOD PROCESSOR
For making pasta dough, pastry and crumble toppings. Choose a processor that has a low starting speed as some are too powerful and will blow your flour and icing sugar around the room when you switch them on.
FREE-STANDING OR STICK BLENDER
For puréeing soups, sauces, making smoothies or quickly blending a batter.
ICE CREAM MAKER
You can make ice cream without a machine, but it will never be as smooth. There are two types: ones with built in coolers, which are much bulkier and more expensive, and those where you have to freeze the bowl ahead of using it. What you buy depends on how much you think you’ll use it.
MANDOLINE
No matter how good you get with a knife, you’ll always be able to slice vegetables more finely and more quickly on a mandoline (a metal, wood, or plastic board with a sharp metal blade built in). Choose one with a good guard to protect your fingers.
MICROPLANE ZESTER
Not just for zesting oranges and lemons, but for puréeing garlic or fresh ginger.
PESTLE AND MORTAR
Invaluable for crushing and grinding herbs and spices. It gives a coarser, more earthy texture than using an electric blender, which is ideal for Asian cooking. It’s also great for pounding garlic to a paste. Choose a mortar with a large bowl and a heavy-weight pestle.
POTATO RICER
A bit like a giant garlic press, a ricer is essential if you want to make silky smooth mashed potato. Boiled potatoes are pushed through to make thin strands, which can then be beaten with butter, milk or cream. You can get a similar result with a mouli (a hand-operated stainless steel mincer that pushes cooked vegetables through perforated discs).
PROBE THERMOMETER
A handy device that takes the guesswork out of cooking meat. There are two types: instant-read thermometers for a one-off reading, or alarm thermometers that will tell you when the temperature reaches a preset level. This is very useful if you are roasting meat, for example, and want to be sure it is cooked at the centre.
SIEVE
Essential for straining stocks and sauces or for draining vegetables. Choose one with a long handle and a balancing hook so that you can rest it over a deep bowl or pan. Conical-shaped sieves, known as chinois, are particularly useful when you want to purée something, as you can push down with the back of a ladle and exert considerable force.
VEGETABLE PEELER
The swivel types make peeling so much less of a chore, although to be honest, I’ll often leave vegetable skins on if I’m cooking at home. It’s where so many of the vitamins and nutrients, and a lot of the flavour, are to be found, so why waste them?
WHISKS
Electric whisks are useful for meringues and sponges, but a balloon whisk gives you much more control and makes it less likely you’ll overwhip cream.
So having started by saying you don’t need much kit, I realise I’ve gone on to mention rather a lot. I suppose the best advice is to buy things as and when you need them, rather than in one big pre-emptive shop. That way at least you know everything will be used at least once. But please, no egg separators or garlic peelers. That’s what hands and fingers are for.
ONCE UPON A TIME,
WE TOOK COMFORT
IN OUR ROUTINES.
People found it reassuring to follow the kind of weekly diet you could tell the day of the week by. As long as there was steak on Wednesdays, fish on Fridays, and a roast on Sundays, all was well with the world. And woe betide anyone who tried to change the way these things were cooked. You really could get by with just a handful of old faithful recipes.
In a way, there was a lot to be said for that. It was proper home cooking, and the meals you did cook you became absolutely expert at. There’s no substitute for repetition when you want to master a dish, and the old ways certainly allowed for plenty of that. But the world’s moved on. It’s a faster place now, and we’re spoilt for choice in everything we do, from going to the cinema to buying a car. Going out to eat, you’ll find that even the smallest town will throw up plenty of choices, from the usual Italian, Chinese or Indian to Mexican, Thai or even Cambodian. We’ve grown accustomed to new flavours and food that excites us. And yet back at home how many of us are guilty of getting stuck in a rut, of always doing the same old dishes the same old way? Let’s be honest, how many of us see cooking as a chore?
That’s what I want to change in this chapter. I want to show you that cooking can be fun and exciting. I want to encourage you to look afresh at some familiar ingredients, and to throw in a few new ones too. Because the more you cook, the more confident you become, and the more confident you become, the more you’ll enjoy spending time in the kitchen.
Part of the problem is that you open the fridge or larder door, see the usual ingredients and instantly start cooking the recipes you are familiar with. You see a tin of tomatoes and some onions, and you make pasta and tomato sauce. You see half a dozen eggs and you make a cheese omelette. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I want to show you how just a few changes in your shopping habits, introducing a couple of new ingredients, can take your cooking in a new direction.
This is always the best way to develop – to build on dishes you are already familiar with. If you are used to roasting a chicken, then it’s a small step to start stuffing it with chorizo and butter beans, but it takes it to another level in terms of flavour. Add some dried chillies, capers and anchovies to that tomato sauce and you’ve got the most beautiful, rich, spicy puttanesca sauce. If you are used to making a risotto, why not try pan-frying it in squares (
see here
) to give it a new twist? I’m not saying don’t cook the basics ever again, but just ring the changes.
The best place to start is with your shopping. Ordering your supermarket shop off the internet is a real time-saver, no question, but it does tend to make us creatures of habit. It’s very easy to order the same things week in, week out, and that’s the death knell for creativity. I’d always suggest you walk around a market or some local shops and see what catches your eye. Ask the stallholder or shopkeeper what’s good at the moment. Ask him how he would cook it. You’ll be surprised at how much information you can pick up.
TASTING
The other thing I can’t urge you enough to do is to get into the habit of really tasting your food as you cook. It’s the first thing I teach any new chef in my kitchens and is the only way to understand how to combine new flavours. Cooking is far more intuitive than you might think, and you should learn to trust your palate – it will tell you if something is missing.
Often it comes down to building up layers of the five basic tastes – sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. The first four tastes are self-explanatory. Sweetness, of course, comes mainly from sugar, but also from treacle, maple syrup, honey, fruit, etc., each bringing a subtle difference to the final dish. It’s useful not only for countering acidity, but also for tempering too much heat. So if you think you’ve overdone it on the chillies, add a bit more sugar. I always add a pinch to a simple tomato sauce too, as it just helps to bring out the tomatoes’ natural sharpness. Sourness normally comes in the form of lemon or lime juice, tamarind or vinegar, and saltiness in a lot of Asian condiments, such as soy sauce, fish sauce and oyster sauce.
Salt you should think of as the backbone taste on which to hang the others. It really helps other flavours to shine: a little salt in caramel, for example, exaggerates its sweetness.
Bitterness is found in beer, olives, citrus rind, coffee, cocoa and some vegetables, such as chicory. It’s the taste to use with the most caution as it can set people’s teeth on edge and is difficult to disguise.
Umami was identified as a separate taste only in the last century. It means ‘meaty’ or ‘savoury’ in Japanese, and describes that lip-smacking, more-ishness you find particularly in soy sauce, dashi and other fermented or aged foods. It’s also in things such as Marmite, Parmesan cheese and tomatoes.
Asian cooking, in particular, often calls for a balance of the basic tastes, especially the first three: sweet, sour and salty. Once you understand this, you can start to experiment with more confidence. Taste your food. What is it lacking? Saltiness? Add a splash of soy or fish sauce. A bit more acidity? Maybe lime juice or rice vinegar. Sweetness? Mirin or palm sugar. With practice, your cooking will become instinctive and all the richer for it.
CLASSICS WITH A TWIST