Our Verdict: Quick and Delicious by Gordon Ramsay

Maureen: This was actually quite a good book, much to my surprise.

Kirstin: It was a solid book.

Maureen: These recipes were exactly what I like to cook. We had a lot of good meals this month, and I didn’t even post everything that I cooked, which is always the sign of a good book.

Kirstin: One recipe I’ve already made twice was Korean-style Prawn Fried Rice. It was excellent.

Maureen: I very much appreciated that he said they would take 30 minutes to cook and for the most part they were 30 minutes.

Kirstin: I didn’t like the ordering in some of the recipes. He didn’t do it in the order that I would do it, and that was confusing at times. If it’s going to be a 30 minute recipe, it should be well thought out.

Maureen: I liked how he used a lot of cheese and butter. That really hit our sweet spot.

Kirstin: It’s quite retro, isn’t it? It felt like a book written by someone who learned to cook in the 1980s, I don’t know if that was Gordon or not, but that’s what it felt like.

Maureen: He did learn to cook in the 1980s! Or maybe it was the 1990s. I didn’t quite get the retro vibe, but I think I liked it more than you did.

Kirstin: The tips were good. The pasta tips were really solid, like cooking pasta with slightly less water so it gets startchier. And now I’m using tongs all the time, like a real chef.

Maureen: I agree. The tips were excellent. Even if we had to live with all these scary headlines, at least we ate well this month.

“Quick and Delicious”
Overall Grade (A- F): A (Kirstin) A (Maureen)
Grade for Photography (A-F): B                                                                             Favourite Recipes: Korean-style Prawn Fried Rice. (Kirstin) Buffalo Chicken and Blue Cheese Dressing. We’ve already had it twice. (Maureen)                                                                                           Any Disasters? No.
Bookshelf or Charity Shop Donation? Kirstin: Bookshelf. Maureen: Might actually be a high rotation bookshelf, but only if I find myself making things again and again. Watch this space.

“Chicken Ramen” from “Quick and Delicious”

Kirstin: Some of us are missing ramen. Some of us ARE REALLY MISSING RAMEN. So when I found this recipe I was very excited to be able to tell the other members of my family that I had sourced a solution to The Ramen Problem. Indeed, it was a lovely thing to look forward to all day. Also, I have a cupboard full of strange Asian ingredients and was able to find both dashi powder AND furikake seasoning. I seem to have stocked up on miso paste and have buckets of it, so if anyone wants to swap a jar for some Parma ham, just let me know!
This recipe was fabulous. It’s FOR TWO people, so double it for 4. Obviously. And I would probably add some mushrooms to the broth for depth of flavour. I also used my new kitchen friends, the tongs for serving the noodles. I might just be a bit obsessed.
ALSO. It turns out that I have enough ingredients in the house to make this again. And that has made my family very happy indeed.

“Cacio e Pepe with Parmesan crisps” from “ Quick and Delicious”

Kirstin: Day one of the first weekend under lockdown. And we are all about the pasta. Also because Tate and Tom had originally planned to go to Rome this weekend to see an exhibition about Carthage which they had to cancel. Obviously.
I know lots of people are really enjoying cooking at the moment. But I am really struggling. I like to plan recipes ahead of time. That’s a bit difficult when you don’t have all the ingredients. I’m also struggling because I can’t concentrate ON ANYTHING. So I’ll be halfway through a recipe and realise I’ve added the wrong thing to the wrong pan. But this is only week one. I’m sure it will pass. I am on this.
One of the benefits of lockdown however is that we are eating more meals together. And I am also trying out recipes on them that I wouldn’t have dared to before. This is one of those.
Tate claims not to like cheese. At all. They asked as they walked into the kitchen (as I was adding the pecorino) if it was cheese. I said of course not. I know them. Cheese is not their thing. Cheese is evil. But I am obsessed with the Cacio e Pepe from Padella. I would eat it day and night if I could. So cooking this for dinner was a bit risky. And indeed as I was rustling it up, putting all the wrong things in the wrong pans, I did worry. That they weren’t going to eat ANY of it. And then what? Did we have something else they could eat instead?
I should also mention how wonderful this recipe is. There are so many incredible little tips. He tells us to use only enough water to cover the pasta to make the pasta water starchier and therefore better for making sauces with. He tells us to use tongs to remove the pasta from the water (I felt like a chef when I did!). Annoyingly though, the recipe is just for 2. Some of the recipes are for 4. You really do have to check with each recipe how many people it is for which is just a tad unnecessary. I mean, really. Interestingly I compared this recipe with the Padella one and I wonder if this one might just be sexier, with the Parmesan crisps, the toasted peppercorns, all that starchy pasta water and two kinds of cheese. I will have to try it out!

Also. They ate it. Pretty much of all of it. Apparently not all cheese is evil.

“Rib-Eye Steaks with Peppercorn Sauce”

I have quickly concluded that the only way we’re going to survive this global crisis is by making the best dinners I can for my family. I may not be able to make sense of this global pandemic, but by god, I can cook. And cook I will.

Using that rationale, I decided that it would be Steak Night at our house. Regular readers of this blog know that we love a good steak here, and that hasn’t changed amid all of this either. So I turned to Gordon, who had a most excellent recipe for rib-eye steaks with peppercorn sauce.

Reader, it was delicious.

(This photo does not do this dinner justice. It looks a bit like a picture you’d see on a laminated menu of a dodgy restaurant. I can assure you that it was utterly delicious. Maybe it’s the green plate…)

Our family dinners have become the highlight of everyone’s day here, and this was no exception. May the good dinners continue for as long as we can continue to get good food supplies in.

Quick butternut and chickpea curry” from “Quick and delicious”

Kirstin: Tate was not at all impressed that I had put two of her least favourite food things together to make this meatless curry. But she came around. She’s even decided that chickpeas aren’t that bad! Because this was delicious. And quick. And thankfully there’s a little left for lunch today too. I would love to make it again; there is nothing quite like the smell of spices and onions frying together.

“Halloumi, Asparagus and Green Bean Salad” from “Quick and Delicious”

You can be sure that I will happily test any recipe that requires me to eat half a block of halloumi cheese. This, friends, was that recipe.

I will readily admit that I am a stress eater, so you can imagine what it’s been like for the last 10 days. But this– aside from the aforementioned half block of cheese– is pretty good for me. Look at all those vegetables! It’s a plate full of goodness, I tell you.

But a plate full of goodness, even with all that cheese, is exactly what we all need right now. So please proceed with eating whatever is going to make you feel better.

“Pork larb with sticky coconut rice” from “Quick and delicious”

Kirstin: I know how much the children love larb and with Tate now back from university I thought this would be a good recipe to try. Especially to cheer us up with all the current scary news. There were some differences from our usual favourite recipe. I used turkey mince rather than pork, for a start. Onions and chilli were added fairly late on in the process which meant they added texture and flavour. And the sauce had white sugar, not the usual brown. Crunchy ground up rice was a nightmare for Miles’s braces too!
That said, Miles had thirds. He actually cleared out the pan. Everyone loved it. And the sticky rice, cooking the rice in coconut milk, was a complete success. I am definitely making that again. But I think I will stick to our usual recipe now I have been reminded how much everyone loves it!

"Tuna Steaks with Preserved Lemon Couscous" from "Quick and Delicious"

Once again, Gordon hits it out of the park. (Given that we’ve got no sports to watch for the forseeable future, I feel like I should sprinkle my writing with sports references so we can all pretend that things are normal when they definitely are not.)

Tuna may be an expensive ingredient, but it’s worth it. Also, whenever I start to overthink the price, I think about how much we’re saving by eating at home and not going to a restaurant, so I get over it quickly.

In the introduction, Gordon says tuna, “wins the speed prize because it’s served rare in the middle and is literally in and out of the pan in four minutes.” That’s absolutely true. Talk about 30 minute dinner, more like 10 minute dinners and that includes taking all the ingredients out and making the side salad. What could be better?

I should also add that I had some leftover couscous salad, which was absolutely perfect the next day when a work meeting ran over and I needed something to feed both of us. (This was before the voluntary self-isolation period, which we’re now in.)

Absolutely lovely. 10 out of 10, would eat again.

“Crispy Chicken Thighs with Romesco Sauce” from “Quick and Delicious”

“May you live in interesting times,” is a Chinese curse, but for years I never understood why interesting would be a bad thing. Now I fully understand why it’s a curse, because we are truly living in interesting times.

But the one thing I can do for my family– and yes, everyone is now under one roof given that universities have sent students home– is cook good food. And that’s exactly why I intend to do for the forseeable future. It’s the one thing I know I can do well and one of the few things I can control at the moment. I will cook up a storm and enjoy every moment of it.

Much like Kirstin’s Double Lemon Chicken, this recipe has a very Diana Henry feel about it. Not only because it features chicken– one of her favourite ingredients– but also because it’s very much a “Bang it in the oven and reap the benefits” recipe. I made it on a Friday night after I had met friends for a medicinal gin and tonic (this, obviously, was pre-optional-lockdown) and I wasn’t much in the mood for cooking something complicated. We had all the ingredients to hand, it took no time to prepare and it was delicious. Win/Win/Win.

One small thing: When I said we had all the ingredients to hand, we didn’t actually. I thought we had Cavolo Nero when I first started cooking, but when I checked the vegetable drawer half-way through and clocked its absence, I quickly sought an available substitute. We had bok choy, which is not really like cavolo nero, but it worked anyway. Needs must when you’re in the middle of a global pandemic and all that.

Stay healthy, friends!

“Korean-style Prawn Fried Rice” from “Quick and Delicious”

Kirstin: Miles immediately told me how much he loved this. But also that it was a bit spicy. So I have amended the recipe; I will only put in one tablespoon of gochujang next time I make this. The recipe also asked for me to cut the raw tiger prawns in half lengthways. Life is too short to be faffing with prawns. So I just lobbed them in, whole. It worked just fine. The kimchi, spring onions and crispy fried onions (ready bought, who knew this was a thing?) were perfect sides. But here is what is most telling. This recipe makes enough for 4. I was sure Tom would have leftovers for lunch the following day (he has been working remotely with all the Covid-19 shenanigans). But no. We literally scraped the pan clean. IT WAS YUM!