Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Cookery Course (29 page)
Read Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Cookery Course Online
Authors: Gordon Ramsay
3
. Add the fruits to the reduced wine mixture and simmer over a low heat for about 10 minutes until deep red in colour and soft but holding their shape. Transfer the fruit to a large bowl, return the poaching liquid to the boil and continue to cook for 5–10 minutes until it has reduced by another two-thirds, or until you are left with a syrupy glaze. Pour this over the fruit and leave to steep.
4
. Meanwhile, make the zabaglione. Pour a shallow depth of water into a saucepan and bring to simmering point. Put the egg yolks and sugar in a heatproof mixing bowl that will fit snugly on top of the pan without its base touching the water. With the bowl on a work surface, whisk the yolks and sugar together with a hand-held electric whisk for 2–3 minutes until pale and thick. Add the dessert wine and spirits and whisk again.
5
. Place the bowl over the pan of simmering water and continue to whisk for 8–10 minutes until the mixture is thick and creamy and has almost tripled in volume (you’ll know it’s ready when you lift the beaters and the mixture leaves a trail on the surface).
6
. Divide the fruit and poaching liquor between serving bowls and spoon over the hot zabaglione. Pass a cook’s blowtorch over the surface or place under a hot grill for a few minutes until the zabaglione turns lightly golden. Serve immediately with amaretti biscuits.
RASPBERRY
MILLEFEUILLE
SERVES 4–6
Desserts should always have that wow factor, and this dish is incredibly simple to prepare, yet looks and tastes absolutely stunning. By lightly dusting the top of the pastry with icing sugar it caramelises the top and allows all the layers to separate into the ‘thousand leaves’ that give the dessert its name.
320–375g ready-rolled all-butter puff pastry
3 tbsp icing sugar, plus extra to dust
Seeds from 2 vanilla pods
600ml double cream
Zest of 1 orange
½ tbsp orange-flavoured liqueur, e.g. Grand Marnier
200g fresh raspberries
1
. Preheat the oven to 220°C/Gas 7.
2
. Unroll the pastry and place on a non-stick baking tray. Dust generously with icing sugar and bake in the preheated oven for 8 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 200°C/Gas 6 and cook for a further 7–12 minutes until the pastry is golden and glazed. Remove and leave to cool slightly on a wire rack.
3
. Meanwhile, mix the vanilla seeds into the cream. Add the 3 tablespoons of sugar and whip the mixture until it forms soft peaks. (Don’t overbeat or it will separate.) Add the orange zest and liqueur and fold in using a spatula.
4
. Spoon the cream into a piping bag fitted with a plain nozzle, twisting slowly to move the cream to the pointed end. Chill until ready to use.
5
. When the pastry has cooled, slice it very gently into 3 equal-sized lengths with a bread knife.
6
. Assemble the millefeuille just before serving. Take the piping bag from the fridge, add a dot of cream to the serving plate to act as ‘glue’ and put a piece of pastry on top. Pipe a layer of cream over the pastry and add a border of raspberries around the outer edges. Pipe another layer of cream inside the raspberry border, then top with another layer of pastry and repeat the cream and raspberry stages. Finish with a top layer of pastry. Serve immediately, dusted with more icing sugar.
HOW TO VARY THE MILLEFEUILLE FILLING
You can vary the filling of the millefeuille as much as you like. Use crème fraîche, mascarpone, strawberries, lime… whatever takes your fancy.
APRICOT AND
FRANGIPANE TART
SERVES 8–10
This almond-flavoured tart is not dissimilar to our own Bakewell tart, which can be paired with any fruits in season: cherries, pears, peaches or, as here, apricots. Serve warm or cold with a dollop of crème fraîche for a simple, make-ahead pudding.
Butter, for greasing
500g sweet shortcrust pastry
Flour, for dusting
4 large, or 6 small, apricots, halved and stoned
3–4 tablespoons apricot jam
FOR THE FRANGIPANE
125g unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
125g caster sugar
25g plain flour
125g ground almonds
1 large free-range egg, beaten
1
. Lightly butter a 25cm loose-bottomed tart tin.
2
. Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface to the thickness of a £1 coin (3mm). Use the pastry to line the tin, gently pressing it into the sides and leaving about 1cm overhanging the top edge.
3
. Use a fork to prick the base, then line with greaseproof paper and fill with ceramic baking beans or uncooked rice. Chill for 20 minutes.
4
. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas 6.
5
. When the tart case has chilled, blind bake it in the preheated oven for 15 minutes. Remove the paper and beans, then return the pastry to the oven for 5 minutes to cook the base.
6
. When cooked, use a sharp knife to trim the excess pastry level with the top of the tin and set aside to cool.
7
. Reduce the oven setting to 150°C/Gas 2.
8
. To make the frangipane, cream the butter, sugar, flour and almonds together, then slowly add the egg, mixing until fully incorporated. Allow the frangipane to rest for 5 minutes before smoothing it inside the pastry case.
9
. Cut each apricot half into 3 or 4 wedges and arrange them on top of the frangipane, skin side up. Push the apricots gently into the mixture, then bake in the preheated oven for 30–35 minutes until golden.
10
. Heat the apricot jam gently in a small pan for about 2 minutes until warmed. Remove the tart from the oven and brush with the melted jam while still warm.
11
. Leave the tart to cool slightly before removing from the tin and serving in slices.
PIMM’S JELLIES
MAKES 6–8
This is such a beautiful pudding to have in the garden on a summer’s afternoon, especially if served in some pretty glasses or teacups. Depending on the size of your containers, you may find the fruit floats to the surface. If so, fill them in two stages, setting them in between, so that the fruit is trapped throughout the jelly.
8 sheets of leaf gelatine
500ml lemonade
200g small strawberries, hulled
2 small oranges
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored and quartered
Juice of 1 lemon
200ml Pimm’s No.1
2 tbsp caster sugar
125g mascarpone cheese
150ml double cream
A few mint sprigs
Shortbread biscuits, to serve (optional)
1
. Soften the gelatine in cold water for about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, heat half the lemonade until almost boiling, then remove from the heat. Squeeze the water from the gelatine, then stir it into the hot lemonade until completely dissolved.
2
. Quarter the strawberries and peel and segment 1 of the oranges. Chop the apple into equal-sized pieces and toss in half of the lemon juice.
3
. Once the lemonade and gelatine mixture has cooled, stir in the Pimm’s, the remaining lemonade and the lemon juice. Pass through a sieve. Divide the prepared fruit between 6–8 moulds, tumblers or teacups (the number depends on their capacity), then pour the jelly mixture over and chill for 2–3 hours until completely set.
4
. To make the cream, finely zest and juice the second orange. Mix with the sugar and boil in a small pan for about 5 minutes until reduced to about 2 tablespoons. Beat into the mascarpone. Softly whip the double cream and fold into the orange mascarpone. Chill until ready to use.
5
. Remove the jellies from the fridge 20–30 minutes before serving, placing them on small plates or saucers and turning them out if you wish. Spoon some of the orange cream on top of each jelly and garnish with mint leaves. Serve with a biscuit on the side if you like.
IF YOU ARE LUCKY ENOUGH TO HAVE PARENTS OR
GRANDPARENTS WHO COOKED A LOT WHEN YOU
WERE A CHILD, I’M SURE FRESH BAKING IS ONE OF THE
MOST EVOCATIVE SMELLS YOU CAN COME ACROSS.
It always transports me back to the times when my mother ran a tearoom in Stratford-upon-Avon, and we’d come home from school to all these wonderful scents. There’s something so homely and comforting about the smell of cakes cooling on wire racks, or freshly baked bread coming out of the oven.
It’s curious how the cycles of food fashion go. Baking used to be one of the first things that cooks would master – banana loaves and Victoria sponges were the staples of every home economics class – but often nowadays even those who cook regularly don’t necessarily bake very much. Maybe they see it as being too time-consuming or too much hassle, and it’s true that food manufacturers have gone out of their way to make sure you need never be short of a sweet treat. But baking is about so much more than flapjacks and teatime treats. It opens up a whole world of savoury dishes too, and once you master the art of the perfect pastry or lightest sponge, your cooking will be all the stronger for it.
A lot of people give up before they’ve even started and claim they can’t bake, full stop. ‘My hands are too warm,’ they’ll say, or ‘My kitchen’s too cold.’ It’s all rubbish, of course. The truth is that baking, more than any other discipline in the kitchen, is a science and you’ve got to follow the formula. Just like in those chemistry lessons you hated at school, accuracy is all-important. You need the right ingredients and you need to combine them in the right way. Self-raising flour is not same as plain flour; plain flour is not same as bread flour. If you don’t put enough baking powder into a cake mix, it won’t rise; put too much in and it will rise too much and then collapse. I’m an instinctive cook, and I judge most things by eye, but baking is the one time you’ll see me reaching for the scales. A bit too much flour in sweetcorn pancakes is not going to make a whole world of difference, but too much flour in hazelnut shortbread and it will. So follow the recipe, pay attention and weigh out to the final gram. This is no time to come over all creative. Stick to the rules and you’ll get perfect results.
BREAD
I absolutely love making bread. There’s something so satisfying – magical almost – about the process. You can really switch off and lose yourself in it. I learnt my craft as a 22-year-old working in Paris. I’d start at midnight and by 7 a.m. had to have produced white, brown, sourdough and cheese breads worthy of a three-star establishment. That’s a lot of pressure, and the sense of danger, that everything would go wrong, never quite left me. But I did learn to have no fear and to get stuck in and enjoy it. That’s the secret.
If you ever stop to read the list of ingredients in your average supermarket bread, with its emulsifiers and fungicides and stabilisers, you’ll be amazed at how little goes into a proper old-fashioned loaf: flour, salt, yeast and water. And that’s it. If ever you needed an incentive to make your own, you’ve got it right there.
Yeast is what gives most breads their lift and texture, and this takes time to ‘wake up’ and feed on the sugars in the flour. So the quickest and easiest breads of all are those without yeast – soda bread and flatbreads being two of the most common. As its name suggests, soda bread, which is typical of Ireland, relies on bicarbonate of soda to aerate it. It’s a simple combination of ingredients that barely even need kneading, yet it produces this fantastically dense, brooding loaf. Flatbread is entirely unleavened and can be ready to eat within 30 minutes.
Of breads made with yeast, the Italian focaccia is a good one to start with. It’s a very simple hands-on bread that produces really impressive results, with a lovely silky, rich texture. Because it’s baked in a tray, it’s easy to shape – you simply massage it into the corners – and you can top it with almost anything that takes your fancy, from tomatoes, olives and rosemary to bacon, onion or chorizo. Yes, you can buy bread, but once you’ve tried this, you’ll be addicted.
Making bread can also be a good workout, as kneading requires a bit of effort. This is where you stretch and aerate the dough by pushing it away from you with the heel of your hand, then pulling it back over itself and pinching it in. You repeat this process until the dough feels smooth and elastic and comes cleanly away from the work surface. This can take anything up to 15 minutes.
PASTRY
The cornerstone of any proud home cook. You can buy very good ready-made pastry these days, and I must admit I seldom bother making my own puff pastry at home (I’ll only buy a good all-butter version, though), but shortcrust is another matter. Rich, buttery and robust, it is one of the staples of the kitchen and is very versatile and easy to make. There is a certain knack to making pastry, but once you crack it, it will make such a difference to your cooking.
For savoury shortcrust pastry, I normally use the ‘rub-in’ method, where you rub cold butter into flour using your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. It’s important not to handle the mixture any more than necessary at this stage or the butter will become oily, resulting in tough pastry (that’s where the hot hands myth comes in). Then you add enough water (or beaten egg if you want a richer result, although I don’t think it often needs it) for the dough to come together. This is another crucial stage that you will learn to judge with practice. If the dough is too dry now, it will end up too crumbly to roll or crack as you cook it. If it is too wet, it may be easier to handle, but when you cook it, the water will evaporate and the dough will shrink in the oven. You can do all this mixing in a food processor, but it is good to do it by hand so that you learn to identify the texture you are looking for. Give the dough a very quick knead, folding it and pushing it away with the heel of your hand, until it is homogenous.
Next, it is really important to allow the dough to relax for about 20 minutes in the fridge so that the butter and flour can synchronise together. The strands of gluten will absorb some of the moisture, making them more durable and less likely to crack when you roll out the dough. Once rested, it will be much firmer. No matter how tempting, you shouldn’t rush this stage.
Next comes the rolling out. Sprinkle the work surface with flour, place your flattened disc of dough in front of you and, using a floured rolling pin, roll once away from you. Give the dough a one-eighth turn and roll again. Turn, roll, turn, roll, turn, roll, and so on, re-flouring the pin if the dough starts to stick, until you have the size and shape you require. This rotating process will ensure you have evenly rolled dough.
To line your tin, lift the pastry up by half-rolling it onto the pin, then drape it over the tin, allowing it to overhang the edges. Take a little ball of leftover dough and use it like a soft mallet to gently push the dough into the corners to ensure a snug fit. Be sure not to trap any air under the pastry or it will bubble up when it is cooking.
Although ceramic pie dishes may look attractive, they are poor conductors of heat and often result in a soggy base, and that’s the last thing you want. Always use metal containers, either a flan tin with a removable base, or an ovenproof frying pan, and place them on a preheated metal tray rather than directly on a rack. This will ensure more heat is directed at the bottom of the pastry and result in a crisper base.
Recipes will often call for you to cook the pastry ‘blind’, which means giving it an initial cooking without its filling. This is particularly the case when you are adding a liquid filling, which would otherwise make the pastry soggy. To do this, line the pastry case with foil or baking paper and fill it with something inert that will weigh it down. You can buy special ceramic baking beans, but dried rice or lentils will work just as well (store them for use again but don’t eat them). After 10–15 minutes, take out the beans and paper and cook the pastry case uncovered for another 5–10 minutes to crisp up the base. (To seal the base even more, you can brush it with beaten egg and cook for another minute.) Trim the excess pastry with a knife. The pastry case is now ready for filling.
Sweet shortcrust is very similar to savoury shortcrust, but is enriched with caster or icing sugar and egg. This one I tend to make in the processor, creaming the butter, sugar and egg together first, then adding the flour and pulsing briefly to bring the dough together. This results in a slightly more pliable, user-friendly dough. It will be slightly less flaky, perhaps, but easier to handle and still very crisp, as you want any good pastry to be. You then treat it just as you would a savoury shortcrust.
These are just beginnings, of course. You can add any flavours you like. Try substituting a quarter of the flour with ground nuts or cocoa powder, or add some chopped thyme, lavender, lemon zest or vanilla seeds. Take it in any direction you like.
CAKES AND BISCUITS
There are various ways of making cakes, but the most common is the creaming method, where you beat together butter and sugar, add eggs one by one and then fold in the sifted flour. Air is the key ingredient here, the thing that gives cakes their lightness, so everything you do is geared towards incorporating as much of it as possible.
Unlike in pastry, butter should be at room temperature; too cold and it won’t cream properly, too warm and it will be oily and coat too much of the flour. Start by beating it until creamy, then add the sugar and whisk for at least 5 minutes, ideally with an electric beater, until it is pale and fluffy. It’s so important to start this aeration process properly at the beginning, and it’s where so much cake-making fails. The eggs should also be at room temperature or else they are more likely to curdle when you add them to the butter and sugar mixture. (If that starts happening, add a tablespoon of flour at this stage to bind the mixture together again.)
Once the eggs are incorporated, sift in the self-raising flour and use a metal spoon or spatula to cut and fold the mixture together. Again, you are trying to keep as much air as possible in the mix, so don’t be too heavy-handed. You are looking for what’s called a dropping consistency, when the mixture falls slowly from your spatula, so you might need to let the mixture down with a little milk. Again, with practice you’ll learn to judge this.
Have a buttered cake tin ready and dust the inside with flour so that nothing will stick, then spoon in the cake mix. Level it out with your spatula and then bang the tin on the work surface a couple of times to help settle the mixture and get rid of any air pockets that will make the cake rise unevenly.
You can always smell when a cake is ready, so trust your instincts more than the time given in a recipe. All ovens and flours vary, so it is impossible to give entirely accurate cooking times. When you think the cake is cooked, take it out and insert a knife blade or metal skewer into the middle. If it comes out clean, the cake is ready. If not, put it back in for five minutes more.
Biscuits often have the same mix of ingredients – butter, flour, sugar and eggs – but you change the chemistry of them by incorporating less air to produce a shorter, crumblier texture. That means less beating, and using plain flour instead of self-raising. The key thing to remember when making things like Lemon Thyme Shortbread (
see here
) is to make even-sized biscuits so that they cook at the same rate. A good trick with a solid dough such as this is to roll it into a cylinder, wrap it in cling film and then chill it. This way, you can not only cut beautiful, even slices of dough, but also, because the dough is chilled, the biscuits are more likely to keep their shape as they cook.
