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.
My daughter married a Brit whose mother is a gourmet cook of Chinese food, Best I ever tasted, but then again, she's not a Brit female. My daughter is known as a great cook to most guests at her table. They are always surprised that she cooks from a scratch and does not abide prepared foods. However, I tend to agree with the idea that most Brit women are poor cooks. I have eaten meals all over the world, but the worst were there in Old England.
Thanks - for tomorrow
Boy, this guy is SUCH a gem, a wit, a kidder! He probably feeds pork to Jews and Muslims, meat to Seventh Day Adventists, and beef to Hindus and giggles over that, too! Tricking a vegetarian into eating meat and then abusing him for being a vegetarian, what a special kind of guy!
(If it sounds this much like sarcasm, it probably is.)
I love to cook and cook ALL our meals, (never pre-made or take-out), as well as have dinner guests (both invited and unexpected) a lot. We seldom eat out. I prefer having something fresh, tasty, and made just the way I like it: without "fake" flavors or colors in it.
But it is also true that many people, men or women, seem to have no time or ability to put together a decent home-cooked meal, which is very sad.
Wouldn't British cuisine have to be considered tasty to begin with in order to judge young British women's cooking skills? Just the introduction of garlic and black pepper alone would make a chef a superstar there.
Is there anything that does? My grandfather died in April of the year I was 12. My grandmother took it very hard and was very lonely, so when school let out that summer, I would walk to her house to see her and have breakfast with her every morning. She made sausage-gravy with biscuits EVERY morning. I gained 20 lbs that summer, but at least I made my grandma feel better.
I found good canning stuff in the Polstein's catalog too. I heard 2 rumors this year; that WalMart was no longer going to carry canning stuff, and that the Kerr people were no longer going to make the small-mouth lids.
PS: 28 qts of tomatoes; 40 qts of various pickles; 12 frozen qts of squash (I don't have a pressure canner); 21 pts of pickled okra; and, 21 pts of habanero salsa.
When I was in England visiting my sister, we stopped at a little Chinese restaurant in Oxford. The food was like manna from heaven. I've heard that those and Thai restaurants are excellent.
That's too bad cause Wal-mart was the only place I could find a canner and they have the best prices, of course. I tried Kerr lids at one time and had a lot of them fail. Never went back. I prefer the wide mouth jars even though they are more expensive because they are easier to clean; I can fit my hand in them. I can in quantities like that. Usually about 30 pints of preserves, cherry, strawberry, peach, and blueberry spice. (That's just a touch of cinnamon) I do a bunch of cranberry sauce and whole cherries and blueberries. I even tried corn this year. I get tired of freezer burn. Good for you for all that canning.
Canning home-grown produce made it possible for me & my sibs to grow up poor without knowing we were poor. Now, fortunately, I just do it because I like it, and not because I HAVE to do it. Our home is too new to have any fruit trees or grape vines mature enough to produce enough to can fruit preserves or jellies, but I'm going to keep an eagle eye out for good sales in the produce aisle. We have TONS of habenero peppers, though, from the garden, and I think I'll try to find a habanero jelly recipe to can.
HA! Love it!
What Gordon said was they've raised a generation of "young" women who couldn't cook. I've eaten in quite a few English and Scottish homes and been hosted by some amazing cooks...all older women.
Is it different here in the states? I don't think so. I know fewer young women who have time to develop culinary arts. Maybe once they settle down and have a family, but not necessarily. I come across many resale homes with fancy kitchens which no one has ever used.
We live far enough out in the country that we can go and pick all kinds of produce. We own a home in a very small town (less that 1,000) surrounded by farms but don't have a lot of land to garden. I am trying strawberries, though. When I was a kid we needed to can and freeze, too, and I really enjoyed it. You just can't beat the quality and even if you could match it in the stores, you couldn't afford it. It's a win/win situation. Plus, I like to know what's in my food.
Okay....I just found a recipe for Apricot Habanero Jelly which sounds YUMMY. But, it calls for 1 pkg Certo. Is that anything like Sure Jell? Sure Jell is all I've ever heard of.
It's England! English food is terrible. Most British women throughout history have never been able to cook!
Certo is a liquid pectin and I've always seen it next to the Sure Jell. I don't use the store pectins anymore cause they're too expensive and you can't make big batches. If you google "pectin" or "Pacific pectin" you can find sources for bulk pectin that costs a lot less than Certo or Sure Jell per batch. The kind I like best is Pomona's Unversal Pectin. The problem is that the initial outlay for that much pectin is high but when I figured it out per batch, it was well worth it. You can make BIG batches and it sets well; I've never had it fail. I make 7 pints (one canner load) at a time so it saves a LOT on clean up and making a lot of small batches, which is very time consuming. The other advantage is that you can control the amount of sugar you use. I make a batch of jam using 12 C fruit and 3 C sugar. What's "habanero"? I'm a northerner. You don't live in the path of Wilma, do you? I've seen your name on other hurricane threads, if I remember correctly.
That's a lot of canning. I've helped out with home canning
20 years ago? 1985? Not a chance. The chain supermarket in the small town in CA I lived in had five different kinds of fresh mushrooms all year in 1985, and dried mushrooms of six or seven others.
We didn't have them in Chicago in 1985! There were white button mushrooms, or canned.
There IS a world outside of LALA-land!!!
...btw...I moved from Chicago to SF in 1985. The difference in food back then was ASTOUNDING....
...WOW!!! You've had sex with at least 50.01% of British women??? I'm VERY impressed!!!
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