Scrumptious South Africa

When Aletta Lintvelt, Food24′s new food editor, asked me to review a cookbook from Kalahari.net, it took a split second for me to choose the new Ramsay book. I’m a great fan of Gordon Ramsay’s, you see, and I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to cook a dish from his latest book. 

I had the chance to see the world’s most famous chef in action last year at the Cape Town Good Food and Wine Show (visit my blog to read about this event, and about why am a Ramsay admirer) and thoroughly enjoyed his presentation. I recall him cooking a sticky chicken dish of some sort at the demo, and that’s the first recipe in the book I tried. I didn’t like it at all. But more about that later.

First, the book. Ramsay’s Best Menus is a spin-off of a new Ramsay TV series Ramsay’s Best Restaurant, which has not yet aired in South Africa. The book features a wide range of recipes from a host of international cuisines, together with 52 seasonal menus, each comprising a starter, main course and dessert.

It’s these menus that I really like about this book, because they take all the hassle out of planning an interesting three-course meal using fresh seasonal produce.  For example, there’s a ‘French Spring’ menu featuring asparagus with herb butter, chicken breasts with a morel sauce, and lemon tart.  A ‘Thai All-Year’ menu offers Yam Pak salad, Thai-style beef, and litchis with mint sugar. There are 50 more menus like these, each one presented, showing all three courses, in its own photograph.

What I disliked about this book is that the pages are sliced horizontally into three ‘cards’, so you can flip them back and forth to mix and match the courses.  I can see the logic behind this format, but whoever dreamed it up failed to appreciate a crucial aspect of cookbooks: you need to be able to read them in bed.  And you certainly can’t read this one in bed – or slumped on a couch, either – because the sliced-up pages keep flopping over.  Even while standing cooking in the kitchen, I found the format annoying (although my kids and husband thought it was ‘cool’).

The book is illustrated with competent photographs of the dishes, although the photographer appears only to have three surfaces in his studio (dark grey, white and limed wood), which make for rather monotonous viewing. Along with the food photographs are full-sized studio portraits of His Ramsayness, dressed in his chef’s whites and holding – or wearing – a variety of foodstuffs.  Some of the portraits are sliced in three, so you can flip the pages back and forth to create different views of Ramsay, rather like one of those kids’ books that allows you to combine head, torso and legs to make funny-looking monsters.

Again, my kids thought it was hilarious to look at pictures of Ramsay wearing beans on his eyebrows and a chilli on his upper lip (and the final picture of him cheekily holding a pair of melons at breast height had them in stitches) but I was less enthusiastic. I wish that Ramsay had foregone the studio pictures and put a little effort into writing a few fresh, inspiring chapters for this book.

Unfortunately, although its recipes are all brilliant, the book has the feel of something that has been cobbled together by a team of editors and home economists, for the express purpose of making more money off the TV show.

Many of these recipes were familiar to me – I’ve seen them in books, online and on TV. I turned to the back of the book and, sure enough, there it was: ‘Some of the recipes in this compilation have been previously published in the following books from the F Word series: Sunday Lunch, Fast Food and Healthy Appetite.’

Still, this is a handsome book, and well worth buying if you don’t own any other Ramsay cookbooks.

Now, the recipes I tried.  I didn’t like the Sticky Lemon Chicken at all.  The sauce, which – when the recipe is doubled –  calls for two whole sliced lemons, peel on, had an unpleasant marmaladey taste, and was far too sweet for my tender palate.  Not surprising, considering the recipe calls for six whole tablespoons of honey.

This is a recipe that has the hallmarks of one that has been recycled and tweaked, but not properly retested. (Ingredient quantities such as ‘a generous splash of sherry vinegar’ and ‘a good splash of hot water’ are dead give-aways.)  Another example: the recipe asks you to fry the two halves of a whole unpeeled bulb of garlic in the same pan in which you’re frying chicken to ‘golden brown’.  Presumably, the garlic bulbs must be fried cut-side down (or what would be the point?) And anyone with a modicum of cooking experience will know that the garlic will be burned black and bitter by the time the chicken is golden brown. 

So I will draw a curtain over the sticky chicken and give you, instead, Ramsay’s recipe for Italian meatballs. This is a simple and homely recipe with no extra frills: the meatballs were firm and juicy, with a pleasant texture, and the sauce was packed with flavour.  I did find the sauce too  concentrated, though, using as it does only tinned tomatoes.

The second time I made the meatballs I used half tinned tomatoes and half fresh juicy ones, which I blitzed, skin and all, in a liquidizer, and I suggest you do the same (but cook the sauce for twice the length of time called for in the recipe). I also added, the next time I made the dish, some crumbled fried bacon, a sliced red pepper, and a touch of powdered cumin and coriander, all of which gave the sauce extra depth and savour.  (Not that I would presume to improve upon a Ramsay recipe. Oh, hell, I just did.)

Do take the trouble to get some minced pork (ask your butcher) for these meatballs, as they won’t be the same without it. If you don’t eat pork for whatever reason, use beef mince alone.  You can serve these with rice or pasta; I used giant pasta tubes (see picture).  

Gordon Ramsay’s Italian Meatballs

3 T fine breadcrumbs

a little milk, to soak

200g minced beef

200g minced pork

2 cloves garlic, chopped

½ bunch of flat leaf parsley

2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese, plus extra to serve

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

flour, to dust

2 T olive oil

Tomato sauce:

1 T olive oil

2 shallots, peeled and finely diced (I used baby onions)

3 garlic cloves, peeled and halved

½ red chilli, finely sliced (I used a teaspoon of dried chilli flakes)

splash of white wine

2 x 400 g tins chopped tomatoes

Small bunch of basil

2 T pitted green olives, drained (optional)

1 T chopped fresh oregano

Tip the breadcrumbs into a bowl, pour on just enough milk to cover and set aside to soak. Heat the oven to 180°C.

For the tomato sauce, heat the olive oil in a pan and fry the shallots, garlic and chilli for 2-3 minutes until soft. Deglaze the pan with a splash of white wine, then add the tinned tomatoes along with the basil [he means the whole bunch] and some seasoning. Throw in the olives if using and let the sauce simmer for 5-10 minutes to reduce and thicken.

While the tomato sauce is cooking, prepare the meatballs. Put the minced pork and beef into a large bowl and add the garlic, parsley and Parmesan. Squeeze the breadcrumbs to remove excess milk, then add to the bowl. Mix well, using your hands, and season with salt and pepper.

Shape the mixture into balls, the size of a walnut, and dust in flour. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan. When hot, fry the meatballs – in batches if necessary – until golden.

Add the meatballs to the tomato sauce then transfer to an ovenproof dish. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes. Discard the basil.

Serve with rice or pasta. If serving with pasta, toss it with some of the tomato sauce, then pile the meatballs on top. Scatter with oregano and Parmesan and serve with a salad on the side or to follow. 

Serves 4.

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© Jane-Anne Hobbs 2007-2010. You may not reproduce this material without my written consent