Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay
Posted on 10/23/2005 1:44:45 AM PDT by dennisw
Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay
 15 May 2005: Ramsay's pizza joke outrages vegetarians |
He is infamous for his raging four-letter-word tirades but now Gordon Ramsay has managed to insult 50 per cent of the population without uttering a single expletive.
The television chef has provoked uproar by claiming that young British women "can't cook to save their lives". In a move likely to alienate his army of female fans, the 38-year-old Michelin-starred chef, who is currently filming a new series for Channel 4, says that Britain has produced a generation of women who can "mix a cocktail" but are incapable of doing anything else in the kitchen.
Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay The former professional footballer said that while more and more men were making their mark in the kitchen, far too many women were surviving on a daily diet of expensive and unhealthy ready-made meals.
"I have been visiting ladies' houses up and down the country with our film crew and you'd be amazed how little cooking the girls are doing," he said. "When they eat, they cheat - it's ready meals and pre-prepared meals all the way.
"Seriously, there are huge numbers of young women out there who know how to mix cocktails but can't cook to save their lives, whereas men are finding their way into the kitchen in ever-growing numbers. Trust me: I am only telling you what I've discovered."
The comments might come as a shock to Ramsay's wife, Tana, who cooks for their four young children in a separate kitchen at home.
Ramsay, who has become an unlikely sex symbol through his regular television appearances, makes his scathing comments in an interview to promote his new series, The F Word, in which he cooks a three-course meal for each episode.
He tells the current edition of Radio Times that he has no time for "stick-thin models who never eat" and he says that he would refuse to serve anyone in his restaurants who asked to go off menu because they were "on a stupid diet like the Atkins or GI".
"They would be out of the door before they knew what was happening," he said.
His damning verdict on the culinary skills of young women is causing controversy. Female cooks and writers accuse him of ignoring the inroads made by a new generation of women chefs into what was previously a male-dominated world.
The number of female chefs at work in Britain has been rising steadily for years. They include Ramsay's former protégée, Angela Hartnett, the 36-year-old chef-patron at the Connaught in Mayfair, central London, in addition to Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray at the River Café in Hammersmith, west London, who trained Jamie Oliver.
Clarissa Dickson Wright, who shot to fame as one half of television's Two Fat Ladies, said that Ramsay's remarks were "rubbish and about 10 years out of date".
Ms Dickson Wright, who was until recently the rector of Aberdeen University, said: "I think when I first joined the university there were young women students who didn't know how to cook. But I think the situation has completely changed over the past five or six years.
"Young women have read books by food experts and chefs and are now much better informed on what they should eat and how they should prepare it.
"I have noticed the sea change because unlike a lot of so called celebrity chefs I spend my time with real people rather than the glitterati."
Tamasin Day-Lewis, a food writer who contributes to The Daily Telegraph and Vanity Fair, described the Ramsay thesis as "complete b*****ks".
"I have a 20-year-old daughter at Bristol University who has already written a student cookbook and prides herself on cooking from scratch, buying good food and making sure her store cupboard of essentials never runs out," she said.
"My three children are all like that and so are their friends."
Skye Gyngell, a chef and the food editor of Vogue, agreed that cooking was a dying art but said it was "bull***t" to suggest that women were worse than men.
"We live in a world of convenience and life is so quick that a lot of us can no longer be bothered to learn cooking as a craft or skill," she said.
Ruth Watson, the proprietor of the Crown and Castle Inn at Orford in Suffolk, who presents Channel Five's The Hotel Inspector, said: "I don't disagree that a lot of people aren't bothering to cook real food during the week but as Gordon Ramsay seems to rate everyone on the size and efficacy of their balls, it's hardly surprising he gives women the thumbs down."
Nigella Lawson, the television chef and chat show host, has herself previously attacked British women for "vaunting their undomesticity".
"Of my friends, it is mostly the men, not the women, who cook," she said.
You have a point!
I will try that next week. Thanks for that tip.
I've noticed that most of the prepared, canned products like gravy and jams and jellies really have very little flavor. I think that they water the stuff down and try to make up for it with all that sugar and salt, which is why the stuff is so salty or sweet. After all, water, salt, and sugar is much cheaper than meat broth and fruit. I make my own preserves and they are 3:1, fruit to sugar. I add just enough sugar to cut the tartness. YUM!
You have all the right ideas! Wholesome home cooking is good for the family
I've heard that the weather can have an effect on how bread rises. It's supposed to rise better when the pressure is low. That might be a factor.
Oh my!
I've got my mother's old pressure canner. I haven't seen it used in almost a decade.
You're right, it IS a lost art.
How silly and ahistorical. In the West - women, wives, mothers, grandmothers have always been the keepers of the hearth
Cooking good wholesome meals can be such a point of pride and confidence. Not to mention the food is health- and family-promoting.
Home cooking definitely helps family cohesiveness.
It's a tragedy that Hamburger Helper rules the day.
Someone else said it might be that they CAN do it but really don't want to do it on a regular basis.
I've been cooking since I was little...starting with cake mixes at 8 and full meals by the time I was 11.
But I still have many nights were it's just a grilled cheese sandwich :)
I just got one a couple years ago. I've canned corn and leftover turkey broth from Thanksgiving and chicken soup when I've made too much. It's great to go into the basement and get that to use for cooking instead of the high priced stuff in the stores. And turkey broth is simply not to be found. Pressure canners are not hard to use but you need to check the integity of the one you have if you plan to use it and see if you have the instruction book for it, or get one somewhere.
I honestly think the canner is older than me (It may have been my grandmother's). It weights a ton and looks scary ;)
Most of what I do is freezing stuff. It's just me and I've got a big freezer. I've 'stove' top canned in the past (jellies mostly) and I've still got the jars in my storage building.
Why not get her a FReeper cookbook?
***Boy, you're not kidding! Whenever I make gravy for company, people are amazed at how good it comes out. It's really not that hard and it sure has that canned glop beat.***
It took me years to learn how to make a good gravy, and LOTS of it. I hate to waste that ability. When I make roast beef, I have enough rich gravy to freeze some and use it later in beef stew. With dumplings. Ummm...great cold day food.
Another problem I've run into, though, is making gravy for a roasted turky because I get the turkey breasts and they no longer include the giblets. Some really nice Freeper gave me the name of a frozen turkey product that includes giblets, but I forget what it is. Have you ever heard of it?
I started with canning some of those things cause of the freezer space (there's 5 of us)and freezer burn. Also, where we used to live, the power went out with some regularity and I thought it would be safer canned than frozen. I admit, I find the canner somewhat intimidating. It can be dangerous and I am REALLY, REALLY careful to read the instructions when I use it. So far, I haven't had any problems.
Stove Top. UGHHHH! I can taste the preservatives in it.
Your recipe for stuffing sounds delicious. Except, ahem...tons of sage. I never cared for sage even as a child. The first year I was married I read about substituting marjoram and thyme for the sage. I loved it! It has the same taste, but milder. So, when are you going to invite me to dinner?
And, off topic, but about herbs, I've been trying to find out why catnip smells exactly like oregano. Nothing on the net mentions that they might be similiar plants.
Yeah? Well I bet you don't order pizza WITHOUT cheese.
Thanks for the tips.
I was just sounding off about the sorry state of gravy making today. I shopped the "good" stores who specialize in kitchen stuff, and had no luck getting that roasting pan that could also be put on the burner to make gravy with the drippings intact. I also did the internet with no luck. There are roasting pans and frying pans and saute pans for every sort of gourmet food you can think of, but nothing for old-fashioned homemade cooking.
Then I found the right one in, of all places, Walmart.
No, I never heard of it. No one in my family likes the dark meat for dinner but I buy the whole turkey anyway. I use the darker meat for turkey salad and then boil up the carcass and use the broth for gravy in the future. You could always freeze it if you can't can it. With what the breast alone cost per pound, I figure that I'm really not losing any money this way since I get so much use out of the turkey. You do have to watch if the turkey is basted, though, cause it can really ruin the broth. The basting tends to be greasy, like it's all butter. I just use broth for my gravy, BTW, and not drippings. I haven't figured out that method because my drippings are always burnt.
***They do make great Yorkshire Pudding though.***
YUMMMMMM! Yorkshire pudding with the roast beef. Yorkshire pudding (left over from the day before) in the microwaver with butter and gravy on it for breakfast. I never make less than three times the recipe.
LOL! My mother was from Yorkshire, and I hated everything she cooked except blue pike and yellow pike. Everything else was overcooked. But her Yorkshire pudding was excellent.
There's a catalog that we get called "Lehman's Non-Electric Catalog"". It's an Amich company and they sell all kinds of old-fashioned stuff like that. Their web address is www.Lehmans.com. (LOL)
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