Testing, testing - Gordon Ramsay's Souffle recipe

[the_nomad]

I thought that Egulleters might be interested in this - it's a repost of a blog post over at Kamikaze Cookery, where we've been testing celebrity chef recipes to see whether they're usable by the average person.

After trying Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson, our latest attempt was with Johnnie, a normal, geeky guy who cooks a bit, trying to cook Gordon Ramsay's Brussels Sprout and Goat Cheese Souffle. (original recipe here. It didn't go so well, although I'm told that the episode we made of it is hilarous.

Anyway, various people told us that novices shouldn't be trying to make hard recipes, and so we asked one of our viewers, who certainly isn't a novice cook by any stretch of the imagination, to try making the recipe himself. And this is what happened, which I thought Egulleters might find entertaining, both for a lovely description of a cooking adventure and in light of the ongoing debate about whether celebrity chefs actually write useful recipes or just serve up "food porn"...

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My name is Stu, and I can cook. And you should know from the start that I don't like Gordon Ramsay. I think he's a massive prick.

Now, cookery is manly. It helps you survive, and that's manly. It helps support your loved ones, and that's manly too. And I'm pretty manly. I go to the gym a lot, and lift weights in a manly way. I have a pretty geeky job — I'm a science and technology writer — and geekiness is manly. In the kitchen, I wield a massive, wickedly sharp Japanese knife with swirly patterns on it. That's manly.

However, I freely admit that I'm not as manly as Gordon Ramsay. He's so manly, his face is actually turning into a scrotum. He swears more than me, which I don't really object to, but he insults and victimises people, which I do object to. He is, as I said, a massive prick, and you can't get much more manly than that.

I also think his recipes are lousy. I tried his 'easy watercress soup' recipe once, and it didn't work. I was quietly satisfied when Hugh and Co demonstrated that his recipe for "goat's cheese and brussels sprout soufflé":http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/recipes/article3263942.ece was pretty much impossible for a cooking novice to follow. Chatting to Hugh on Facebook this afternoon, I happened to mention that I was quite tempted to have a go at it, just For Science.

Go on then, said Hugh. And tell us how you did it, in a way that anybody could understand.

Now, as I said, I cook, and I do it quite a lot. I'm good at it. Individual cheese soufflés, however, are pretty high on the list of things I wouldn't normally cook. For a start, they're very high in fat and salt, and I'm diabetic; I really shouldn't eat that sort of food. Also, they're very faffy and fiddly; what I normally call stunt cookery. It gets loads of pans and bowls dirty. And cheese is expensive (rightly so, when it's good — cheese-making is a skillful process which involves keeping animals, and it has to be stored under the right conditions before it can be sold) and I don't think making it into a soufflé actually improves it; I'd rather just have the cheese.

But this was a Challenge. And it was For Science. How could I refuse?

So, the first thing you have to do with a recipe you haven't used before is read it. All of it, not just the ingredients. That way, if there's anything in there which you don't understand, you've got time to check it out before you get stuck with a pan boiling over and no idea what to do.

Looking at Ramsay's recipe, it's obvious that it's badly written. For a start, it doesn't tell you why you'd cook these things. They're a starter, and a fairly rich one; you'd cook them for a dinner party with a fairly light main course. If you like that sort of thing. There are also undefined technical terms, like scalding (heat to boiling point then take off the heat immediately) and season (add salt and pepper), plus some unexplained processes (how to beat egg whites and fold them in). And some of it is frankly bizarre. That bit with the mashing together flour and butter? That's a classical French technique called beurre manié, but it's for thickening stews and pan sauces, where you've cooked something in a liquid which doesn't thicken as it cooks. You mix it in just before serving to thicken it up and make it shiny. You don't use it for thickening a white sauce, which is basically what we're doing here. So I'll be using another fat-and-flour technique called a roux instead. Sod you, scrotum-face.

Also, it's a very annoying recipe. You have to keep leaving things to cool. Who can be bothered? Like I said, it's faffy. A challenge is a challenge, though.

So. It's 8.10pm, and I'm making a start.

First off, we need to infuse the milk. We could cook the sprouts at the same time, but that'll get two pans dirty and I can't be arsed. I'm halving the quantities, so we need to chop a quarter of an onion — it needs to be fairly fine, to extract the maximum amount of flavour — and chuck that into a pan with 100ml of milk, half a bayleaf, half a star anise and two cloves. Then heat that to just boiling and whip it off the heat, pour it into a bowl and leave it to cool and infuse.

8.26, and that's done. I chucked it back into the jug I'd used to measure the milk, then washed up the pan and put it back on the heat with some water for the sprouts, which I'd peeled and halved while the milk came to the boil. No point leaving them whole when we want to purée them anyway and we want them to cook evenly. Now, let's cook them and see how long it takes for the milk to go cold, shall we?

8.37, and the sprouts are cooked and puréed. I did not 'refresh in ice-cold water', I just ran them under the cold tap for 30sec, which is far more efficient. And I don't have a food processor — I used to, but I hardly ever used it — so I used the little blending cup that came with my Braun stick blender (you know, the sort the KKC boys tried out a few weeks ago) and that did the job fine. So now I have some sprout purée, some funny smelling milk which isn't cold yet, and some washing up. I'll go separate some eggs while I wait.

8.45. Well, that was a deeply unpleasant egg-sperience. One of the eggs had gone off, and it was the second one I separated, so I had to get rid of both whites and wash the bowl, then separate another two. Urgh. Also, the milk still isn't cold. And I've buttered the ramekins, too.

9.15, and the base is done. This is how you make the roux: put the amount of butter specified in the recipe into a small pan, melt it, then add the flour and stir with a wooden spoon over medium heat until it goes a shade darker. You need to do that to cook the flour, otherwise it tastes floury. Then strain the milk into the pan and whisk hard until it thickens, which only takes seconds. The Worcester sauce, parmesan, goat's cheese and egg yolks are added, and it's been seasoned (salt and white pepper). And the puréed sprouts are in. It's now cooling in a large bowl (ANOTHER one), and I've tasted it: slightly odd, and not entirely pleasant. Also, it looks like there's too much for my two ramekins.

I've also done some washing up and put the kettle on, and the oven is heating.

Christ on a bike, this is an annoying recipe.

9.30, and now I’m getting really grumpy. The egg-whites are now beaten. Here’s what Ramsay doesn’t tell you. You need a deep glass or metal bowl, which must be absolutely dry and absolutely clean. Your whites must have no trace of yolk in them. Beat them until it’s expanded a great deal in volume, and so that the whites around the whisk are billowy. When you take the whisk out, the whites should hold their shape in soft peaks but not stand up stiff and dry-looking.

The observant among you will have noticed that the recipe uses three eggs and I’m halving it. This isn’t a problem with the yolks, because a bit of extra yolk won’t hurt it. But you don’t want too much white, so just wash a big tablespoon of the stuff down the sink.

Now the folding in. You have to do this with a metal spoon, because you’re trying to keep in all the air you’ve added and a wooden spoon will knock it out. You’ll end up with a rubbery soufflé, and nobody wants that. So you loosen the base mixture by folding in a spoonful of whites — scoop it up from the bottom and cut across it to mix — then add that to the rest of the whites and keep folding until it’s all mixed in but it still looks foamy.

It doesn’t look promising. Hugh and Johnnie’s description of it is right: it’s mostly yellow, with green flecks, and it looks like something the cat threw up.

Maybe Scrote-face Ramsay actually hates Times readers, and this is some sort of manly revenge? Is he standing over my shoulder, heaping insults on me?

Or is this just a lousy recipe?

My girlfriend just came home, wrinkled her nose, and asked what the hell I was doing. I told her it was Hugh’s fault, and she could blame him when she had to taste the stuff.

She asked me why I was doing it. I explained it was a Challenge, and For Science, and she sighed and said 'Men!'

See? Manly.

In the meanwhile, the soufflés are in the oven. There was almost twice as much mixture as I needed to fill two ramekins. Currently, I am not inclined to keep the excess. There is washing-up debris all over my kitchen.

I notice Gordon does not tell me what they’re supposed to look like once they’re cooked for half an hour.

Thanks, Gordon.

9.55, and they’re out of the oven. They actually smell quite nice, in that baked-cheesy sort of way. They’ve risen hugely and cracked on top, so they look sorta like foamy yellow cheese-flowers with browned edges. As soon as they’re out of the hot water, they start to collapse, but they’re twice-baked souffles and they’re supposed to collapse. Scrote-face didn’t tell us that, did he?

So now we wait for them to cool down. Again. For God’s sake.

10.55, and they’re finally done. Left them to cool down while I watched Heroes - so it turns out it's good for something after all - then turned them out into individual oven-proof dishes (yeah, I know, they were left over from some ready meal thing), grated some gruyere on top, drizzled some cream around them, baked.

And they actually taste quite pleasant, although what they mostly taste of is toasted gruyere. No hint of sproutiness, or for that matter goat’s cheesiness, although the texture was quite nice. ‘If it was served to me for a starter,’ my girlfriend said, ‘I certain wouldn’t complain, but I wouldn’t be in raptures either.’ It took us less than three minutes to eat them.

There we go. An experienced cook took well over two and a half hours to cook this and found it very annoying. It created a huge heap of washing-up, used expensive ingredients, and was... well, OK.

So basically, Gordon Ramsay’s idea of a good time is to spend ages faffing around, stopping at irregular and frustrating intervals, at the end of which he probably feels very smug at showing off his technique, but doesn’t really satisfy his partner, and doesn’t do her much good either.

It’s Mrs Ramsay I feel sorry for.

Edited November 27, 2008 by the_nomad (log)

[Toufas]

whats the expensive ingredient in the list?

the parmesan costs like 20p, and the cheese is around 1-1.50

also the writer sees it from a point of view where food is just to feed you. they would rather eat mcdonalds than make their own burger.

also say about the yolk in the egg whites, thats like saying you brown the meat to seal in the juices..

Edited November 27, 2008 by Toufas (log)

[Tri2Cook]

I didn't find that interesting at all. He went into it with a Gordon Ramsay grudge, of course he was going to complain and be annoyed all the way through it. In the end, he admitted it was good to eat. How much work you have to do or how much cleanup you have to do after has nothing to do with whether or not a recipe is good. I don't share his sentiments on techniques either. There are enough books out there already with detailed explanations that spend 5 pages telling us how to sift flour. That annoys me. I'm not even convinced on the whole idea behind the experiments. Who claimed every cookbook exists for the purpose of being easy to use? I buy books like the Alinea book or Gordon Ramsays book or the Fat Duck book because I want to know how they do it. Just because I can't easily pull off a recipe in the book or some of the processes are inconvenient doesn't mean it's a crap book.

[Toufas]

also using a blender as a food processor...way to fail more

[kutsu]

Without being flippant, anyone who insults someone based on their appearance gets no respect off me anyway, but this is like a bad attempt at both food-testing, and comedy. Boring and unfunny, sorry.