Becoming Ramsay, the Beginning

My husband, Tell, is a dang good cook. I mean, not saying that I married him for his food but it's up there on the list of things I am grateful for in this marriage. I can not cook... like at all. I have been known to burn Easy Mac in the microwave... twice. However, since being married, my husband has admitted that I have developed a pretty decent palette. I still can't cook all that well (I've definitely improved in the two years that we've been married) but I still have a long way to go.

Well, my amazing, fancy-pants, chef of a husband has decided that his cooking skills need to be pushed so that he can become an even BETTER chef. Well, now that it's summer vacation and now that we are in our new place, we have been watching a whole lot of TV: specifically anything to do with Chef Gordon Ramsay. You could say we are slightly obsessed. Well with that kind of cooking inspiration in mind, my honey decided to buy one of Chef Ramsay's cookbooks. It's his goal to, once a week, try out a new recipe and slowly Become Chef Ramsay.

So here is the newest bright idea of mine: while my husband is the cook, I am the writer. So I am going to blog about our weekly cooking experience as my husband "Becomes Ramsay."

For credit's sake, the cookbook that we will be pulling recipes from is Gordon Ramsay's Home Cooking: Everything you Need to Know to Make Fabulous Food.  We got it at our local Barnes & Noble for $32 (plus tax). I will do my best to include pricing on the food but, for sake of copyright and to respect Chef Ramsay, I won't be posting the recipe in its entirety.

Week 1:

(Tell says he will also be working on his plating) 

So this week, Tell made a Roast Beef Sirloin with Pesto Potatoes and a Red Wine Reduction Tarragon Sauce.

Now keep in mind that I am NOT a chef, so me describing some of this stuff is going to sound pathetic to anyone who is a true foodie. (I'm a kind of like a foodie in training).

So from what I understand, Tell bought a full Sirloin Roast ($28 for 6 pounds at our local grocers), a bag of potatoes ($3), Red Cooking Wine ($2 for 16 oz bottle), assorted herbs (including Tarragon and Rosemary which were both about $2 a piece), Olive Oil, Shallots and Garlic (all relatively cheap).

This definitely was an experience for Tell. It made me feel a little better that he somewhat struggled with the process. We were having dinner with some friends the night he made this and so there was somewhat of a time crunch and the added pressure of performing for friends I think added to his anxiety in the kitchen. The roast didn't have quite enough time to cook fully to his or my liking (it ended up more on the rare end of medium rare, and I prefer it closer to the medium end of the spectrum) and because he was stretched so thin on timing, the potatoes weren't cooked all the way. There were chunks of under-cooked potatoes and because of that, Tell added pesto into the potatoes to try and help compensate for the no-longer stand alone potatoes.

On top of that, he decided to try and add the Red Wine Reduction Sauce on the potatoes to act like a type of gravy.

Okay, so obviously there was a lot that went in to the preparation of the dish, but how did it taste when all was said and done?

When we left our friend's house, Tell and I had a slight drive to discuss our thoughts on the outcome of the meal. Now, you should know that Tell and I have an outrageously honest relationship so I can tell him when I like something and when I don't and he isn't offended. So when he asked me what I thought, I was honest in saying it wasn't my favorite meal of his... now for the why...

The meat, to me, was just too rare in the middle. The roast itself didn't have enough time to cook and I don't really like it when my cow is still moo-ing on my plate. It was just a little too chewy in the middle. (I will say that when we got home, Tell put the roast back in the oven and once it was a bit more done for my liking, it tasted much better!)

The Red Wine Reduction Sauce was absolutely amazing... on the meat. It was a very very sweet tasting sauce and I thought it paired well on the meat (Tell says it's the sweet with the savory of the meat...like I knew that lol!) However... that being said, I hated the sauce on the potatoes. It wasn't a nice pairing of flavors like the meat and the sauce. I felt like it was two really weird flavors put together that really didn't mash (get it?? On the MASHED potatoes??!! I know, I'm hilarious).

Overall, I felt like it was okay. It wasn't terrible, by any means, and even with the weird sauce/potato combination I still cleaned my plate...and continued to eat it for 2 days after (thank goodness for leftovers!). Still lots of recipes to try out and hopefully it only get better from here!

Here's to Becoming Ramsay! Cheers.

TaNee and Tell