IN A bizarre turn of events, Gordon Ramsay spent lockdown being yelled at, rather than doing the yelling.
“I had my daughters filming, shouting, screaming and kicking my ass,” says the 54-year-old merrily over Zoom.
The Scottish-born chef, who splits his time between LA and the UK, used the pandemic-induced pause to get creative, reassess – and trying to “imagine we’re going into the ground for the first time, and how we pop up when we come out of this thing”.
To aid that, he started cooking live at the weekends on Instagram, all the while being heckled by his kids who would fine him – in honour of the NHS – every time a dish took more than 10 minutes to throw together. And instead of winding him up, the buzz of it echoed the adrenaline he was missing and would usually access in his professional kitchens, which “I didn’t have while the restaurants were closed,” he adds.
He’s now turned those Instagram lives into a cookbook, Ramsay In 10 – a collection of swift, resourceful recipes that give an insight into how the Ramsays cook at home. “I know everyone thinks, ‘Oh it’s easy for you, 10 minutes…’” he admits, but argues it’s all in the prep. You don’t need three Michelin stars and “the most expensive Japanese knives to chop your carrot or finely dice your onion – grate the f****** thing; use a box grater and grate it! Things get done quicker.”
Ramsay just wants people cooking, and is typically no-nonsense about it, right down to a section at the front called ‘What this book expects of you’, which includes directions like ‘Read the recipe’.
“I’m an assertive guy, so there’s no bulls*** there,” says Ramsay. “I just tell the truth, and some people say, ‘Well, ok, that’s a bit harsh’ – then don’t f******* ask me if you don’t want to hear it.” The aim though, beneath the directness is to make sure people know how much fun they can have cooking, if they get the basics done first. As Ramsay says, “90% of the battle is in the preparation, and I hate seeing missed opportunities go by, where things are overcooked because [people are] not prepping right at the beginning.”
Ramsay’s kids are never far from his thoughts. He and wife Tana (47), have Megan (23), twins Holly and Jack (21), Tilly (19), and Oscar (2), and he remembers teaching them the importance of food from the off, including buying his older children turkeys as part of Channel 4 show The F Word.
“Tilly must have been three,” he recalls. The turkeys were “to give them the responsibility of understanding how important food is, wasting nothing; from turkeys they went to pigs, from pigs they went to lambs.”
They all know how to cook and host a great dinner party – vital now his eldest are starting to fly the family coop and get their own flats. “Meg’s always asking me to pop round,” says Ramsay, “and I did pop round and the [fridge] seemed to be 90 per cent alcohol in there and very little greens. So she said, ‘Well I haven’t shopped yet, so think of something’. I whipped up a butternut squash, roasted it and then turned that into a beautiful Goan-style curry.”
Two days before we speak, Ramsay was caught on camera tearing up in the Strictly Come Dancing studio after their daughter Tilly performed the Charleston. “I saw her [smart] watch the other day and she burned 5,800 calories, and something like 32,000 steps, training for 12 hours. She preps herself, every morning it’s either toast or porridge, and then for lunch, it’ll be like a chicken salad. And then for dinner, it’s either some pasta, carbs, to load up, but trust me, she’s a little firecracker, she knows how to look after herself,” says Ramsay, the pride palpable in his voice.
“She can stand on her own two feet, trust me,” he adds, describing the Tupperwares Tilly’s been stacking in the fridge the night before training, labelled “11 o’clock, four o’clock, and seven o’clock; super disciplined”.
Ramsay spent his own 20s working 18-hour shifts with Marco Pierre White at legendary London restaurant Harveys. “The only thing we’d have on the way home in the taxi – because we could eat before we fell asleep in the back of that thing – was a Lucozade and a Mars Bar. And that was that, because the last thing you can do at that time of night, is eat,” he says, voice aglow with misspent youth.
At work, he and fellow chefs and housemates Steve Terry and Tim Hughes would snaffle leftover pigeon and beurre blanc sauce “and make our own tagliatelle with this sort of oyster cream sauce and then feed ourselves from all the leftovers that Marco didn’t sell. Everything was so fresh,” he remembers, but “the only thing we’d do when we got home was literally crash, man,” and take it in turns to pay for that taxi they couldn’t believe they were taking home from work.
“You don’t really eat before service,” Ramsay adds.
“Any chef would be lying if they told you [they did], because you can’t fill up. You need to stay agile; you need to stay on your toes, and you need to have that hunger to constantly perfect – so we’re the world’s worst eaters.”
Usually, Ramsay can be spotted in reruns of Hell’s Kitchen and Gordon Ramsay’s 24 Hours To Hell And Back, screaming at woefully horrendous restaurateurs and chefs. But more recently he has been eating, as well as larking about, with Gino D’Acampo and Fred Sirieix in their buddy-holiday ITV series Gordon, Gino & Fred.
They were in Greece together last and “there’s some bloody good chefs on those islands,” recalls Ramsay.
“We never give [Greece] the look-in it deserves. It’s almost the ugly sister of France and Italy and Spain. Athens, Christ, some of the ingredients there, and what they do with octopus – there’s no restaurants anywhere on the planet that are as creative with octopus as they are in Athens.”
The food was sensational, but of course D’Acampo and Sirieix “were a nightmare. I mean a real nightmare.” Ramsay shakes his head.
“We make it look fun in the edit but my goodness me, you should see what we have to do to get there.”
Does he realise Ramsay In 10 will be going up against Gino’s new cookbook? “I f****** love competition,” Ramsay leans right into the camera, eyes full of zeal, and practically growls. “I swear to God, competition is healthy, right? And he will have his take on his classics. Is it Italian cuisine, again?”
It is. Gino’s Italian Family Adventure, to be exact. “Can you remind him he lives in Hertfordshire not Sicily?” says Ramsay, his tone rich with a scathing-fondness.
And if you’re not tempted by Ramsay In 10 instead… “F*** it, if they don’t want it,” he yells, back on brand, “I’ll buy it for them.” And with that, he’s off cackling.
Ramsay In 10 by Gordon Ramsay is published by Hodder & Stoughton, priced £25. Photography Jamie Orlando-Smith. Below are three recipes for you to try at home...
BLACKENED STEAK WITH KIMCHI FRIED RICE AND PICKLED RADISH
(Serves 2)
1tbsp hoisin sauce
1tbsp soy sauce or tamari
2 x 175g (6oz) bavette (flank) steaks
Vegetable oil, for frying
140g (scant 1 cup) kimchi, from a jar, plus 1tbsp of the juice
250g (1 1/3 cups) cooked jasmine or basmati rice
2 spring onions (scallions)
2 eggs
6 breakfast radishes or 5cm (2 inch) piece of daikon radish
2tbsp black sesame seeds or nigella seeds
1tsp chopped chilli, from a jar
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method:
Place a griddle (grill) pan or frying pan (skillet) over a high heat. Put the hoisin and soy sauce into a bowl and mix together. Add the steak and stir to coat. When the griddle or frying pan is smoking hot, drizzle over a little oil and cook the steaks for two to three minutes. Meanwhile, place a large, non-stick frying pan over a medium heat and add a little oil. While the oil is heating, roughly chop the kimchi, then add it to the pan. Add the rice and stir to combine. Slice the spring onions, reserving the green tops for serving, and add to the pan with the rice and kimchi. Flip the steaks over and cook for a further two to three minutes. Place a second non-stick frying pan over a medium heat and add a little oil. When hot, crack in the eggs and fry for two minutes, until the whites are firm and beginning to crisp around the edges. Finely grate the radishes into a bowl. Season with salt, then stir in the kimchi juice. Divide the hot rice between two bowls. Put a fried egg on top and sprinkle with the sesame seeds, followed by salt and pepper. Finely slice the steaks across the grain and place alongside the rice. Sprinkle over the chopped chilli and reserved spring onion greens before serving with the radish salad on the side.
TUNA KATSU SANDWICH WITH GINGER AND APPLE SLAW
(Serves 2)
Vegetable oil, for frying
2tbsp (heaped) plain (all-purpose) flour
1 egg
60g panko breadcrumbs
Dash of milk
2 x 170g (5.oz) thick tuna steaks
180g (6.oz) white cabbage
60g (2.oz) pickled ginger, plus a splash of the pickling liquid
4 thick slices of white bloomer loaf, crusts removed
Freshly ground black pepper
For the tonkatsu sauce:
125ml tomato ketchup
2tbsp soy sauce
2tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2tbsp mirin
1 garlic clove, peeled
Pinch of chilli flakes
To serve:
½ green apple (optional)
1tsp toasted white sesame seeds or untoasted black sesame seeds (optional)
1 lime, cut into wedges
Method:
Place a heavy-based frying pan (skillet) over a high heat and coat the bottom of the pan with a thin layer of oil. Put the flour, egg and panko breadcrumbs into three separate bowls. Season the flour with black pepper. Add a little milk to the egg and beat with a fork. Dip each tuna steak in the flour, making sure it is well coated. Shake off any excess, then dip it in the egg followed by the breadcrumbs. Place the steaks in the hot oil and cook for one minute on each side. Meanwhile, finely slice the cabbage with a mandoline or the blade side of a box grater and combine in a bowl with the pickled ginger and pickling juice. Make the tonkatsu sauce by combining the ketchup, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce and mirin in a bowl. Grate in the garlic, add the chilli flakes and stir well. To assemble each sandwich, spread the tonkatsu sauce on two slices of bread and top one of them with the cabbage slaw. Place the tuna steak on the slaw and sit the other slice of bread on top. Finely slice the apple (if using) using a mandoline or sharp knife, then sprinkle with sesame seeds (if using). Cut each sandwich in half and serve with the apple salad, lime wedges and any leftover tonkatsu sauce on the side.
MINI CINNAMON DOUGHNUTS WITH CHILLI CHOCOLATE DIPPING SAUCE
(Serves 4)
Vegetable oil, for deep frying
250g (1 cup) ricotta cheese
2 eggs
60g (scant 3tbsp) caster (superfine) sugar, plus
2–3tbsp for dusting
125g (½ cup) plain (all-purpose) flour
2tsp baking powder
Few drops of vanilla extract
1tsp ground cinnamon
Zest of 1 orange
For the chilli chocolate dipping sauce:
50g (2oz) dark chocolate
30g (¼ stick) butter
100ml (scant ½ cup) double (heavy) cream
100g (1 cup + 2tsp) caster (superfine) sugar
2tbsp honey
2tsp chipotle paste
½tsp sea salt
Method:
Pour a 6–8cm (2½–3½ inch) depth of vegetable oil into a wide saucepan and place over a medium–high heat until it reaches 180°C/350°F. Put the ricotta into a food mixer or bowl and add the eggs, caster sugar, flour, baking powder and vanilla extract. Beat until everything is combined. Using two clean tablespoons, form the dough into eight walnut-sized balls. Now make the dipping sauce: break the chocolate into small pieces and put into a small saucepan. Add the remaining sauce ingredients, then place over a low–medium heat and allow everything to melt, stirring regularly. Do not let it get too hot or the sauce will split. When the oil is up to temperature, add half the dough balls to the pan and cook for two to three minutes, turning occasionally, until golden brown all over. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper (paper towel). Cook the remaining balls in the same way. Meanwhile, put the dusting sugar and cinnamon into a large bowl and mix together. Add the doughnuts and toss to coat. Transfer them to a serving dish, grate over the orange zest and serve with the warm chocolate sauce.
