Interview with GORDON RAMSAY
Watch MasterChef on Tuesday Nights at 9 pm EST on FOX
August 7, 2010
By Lena Lamoray
GORDON RAMSAY is known for dominating the networks with his sensational culinary shows (“Hell’s Kitchen”, “The F Word”, “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares”, “Kitchen Nightmares”) and now MASTERCHEF. I don’t know about you but I certainly can’t get enough of Chef Gordon Ramsay. I love his wit and his no nonsense attitude. He gives his all and only expects the same in return from every person that he works with. MASTERCHEF gives talented individuals a platform to showcase their skills to the world.
I took part in a GORDON RAMSAY interview call where he took some time to talk to us about MASTERCHEF. Watch MasterChef on Tuesday Nights at 9 pm EST on FOX!
GORDON RAMSAY: It’s been a tough two years, not just in terms of the restaurant scene, but for everybody; the recession and to see the excitement and what kind of cooking skills are done at home now is incredible. And, more importantly, the talent that has been unearthed has been extraordinary. And there has been a wealth of excitement among these contestants. I work with professional chefs on a daily basis and we have customers coming to the restaurant kitchens with ideas and feedback and excitement, but not quite on the level I expected when I got introduced to the top 50 with MasterChef. It was amazing. So, domestic, not really; serious contenders to be great chefs and from all different walks of life and not one of them having spent any time in a professional kitchen. They were quite a phenomenon.
Q: On your show we know that you’re a very fiery, passionate person who can at times intimidate his contestants and I’m wondering, especially on a show like Hell’s Kitchen in comparison with MasterChef, is that part of sort of a training exercise to kind of test somebody’s will and see what they’re made of or is it just generally your personality that was being conveyed on television?
GORDON RAMSAY: Two reasons really; cooking is about passion, so it may look slightly temperamental in a way that it’s too assertive to the naked eye. But, more importantly, it’s a kitchen and it needs that kind of constant pressure. When you cook under pressure you trade perfection. The pressure tests across MasterChef have been unique, from handling the most amazing wedding to doing a send-off extraordinary dinner at Camp Pendleton for Marines visiting Afghanistan …. For me, I want it right. So, whether you’re standing in the MasterChef kitchen and pushing yourself to extreme on a pressure test, taste test, service test, initiative test, even knowing how to cook an egg perfectly, a laid back atmosphere with a laid back contestant doesn’t really produce a great sparkle. And when you push these individuals to that level of pressure they get to gauge what it’s like to cook under pressure, but more importantly, they understand a lot about themselves. And it’s quite interesting, not just professional chefs, but domestic chefs never get the chance to be under that level of pressure. And, as you know, not everyone is going to make it. But those that do, it’s quite amazing to see how they handle it and sometimes, for the very first time.
Q: Would you say that this is kind of the American Idol of cooking?
GORDON RAMSAY: To be honest, it’s exactly that. I had a chat with Simon Fuller last night. We had dinner together with David and Victoria and I was saying exactly that. MasterChef in my mind is Chef Idol, in a way that it’s discovering unfound talents. And from a chef point of view – I’ve been cooking for 25 years – I have cooked not just in my restaurants and cooks I’ve met across the world that would struggle going up against some of the talent we’ve found.
It’s been that good a search and in a way we’ve had a phenomenal series with Bravo and Top Chef and when you look at Food Network and the phenomenon of MasterChef, this is the first ever mainstream, I suppose, domestic search across America for these little hidden gems and, my God, they came out in abundance. So, I was a little bit taken back and I knew halfway through with my fellow judges, Graham and Joe, that we had to increase the level of pressure tests because they’re becoming that good. And for me, I’ve been given the chance to mentor talent and put my balls on the line, saying, no, you’re going through it because there’s something there that you haven’t shown yourself yet. And having that time, which was great, to spend a lot longer with them and nurse them and put them into those special situations and to sort of guide them on a mentoring base. Yes, I’d say is very much along the lines of Chef Idol, definitely.
Q: Is there one piece of equipment in the home kitchen that people should invest good money in? What would you say is the most overrated ingredients as a chef?
GORDON RAMSAY: Overrated ingredients, we have obsessions with truffles in this country and truffles are like sort of rare, fungi that grow in very short periods of time of the year, so chefs now have summer truffles, which look like real truffles, but taste of absolutely nothing. Now, because they get excited with that sort of glamorous side – wow, it’s a truffle, it must taste phenomenal – it doesn’t. Because you’re doing the actual patch of the truffle bed no good whatsoever. Because they’re summer truffles, and then they’re sprayed with this sort of toxic gas as a subsidiary to the real essence of truffle, so overrated, summer truffles and that strong, pungent smell of truffle oil. Every time I walk into a restaurant and I know there is an amazing, broad bean soup or a delicious salad, the minute I hear or watch truffle on the menu, I change my order. The one equipment, right now I would go for a $45 to $50 stunning pasta machine. The diversity across that is extraordinary.
Q: Did you feel like you treated these contestants on MasterChef any differently than those you do on Hell’s Kitchen?
GORDON RAMSAY: First of all, they’re two different scenarios. A chef in a professional kitchen spending the rest of his life in this industry is completely different than how you treat a truck driver or a tank driver coming out of a canister. These are domestic individuals that have all full-time jobs outside of their cooking passion. To be honest, to begin with they were put under intense pressure with the pressure test and having to cook their signature dishes so, as the competition got narrower, of course it increased the pressure and naturally so. But like I said, I got halfway through the sort of final cut and already I could match 75%, 80% of those domestic chefs as good as any professional chef that I’ve met in brigades.
Q: Do you ever have flashbacks of your early days when you’re judging cooks on the show and you’re thinking, oh my God, they’re doing the same thing I did or whatever?
GORDON RAMSAY: Yes, I can relate to them, very much so, whether it’s my first day getting my ass kicked overturning sorbets and sticking the ice creams in Guy Savoy’s restaurant in Paris, or over proving the bread with the… brothers at Gavroche or even poaching a Dublin Bay prawn or a lobster for 30 seconds too long and watching; you need to make these mistakes to understand that you learn through your mistakes. I’m fine on the first time; I’ll always forgive first time. The second time, I’m going to get a little bit cranky as there’s no excuse. So, yeah, I do and I can explain that, so if it’s a chocolate souffle that comes out of the oven three minutes prior to being cooked I would turn around and say, that’s it, you know what it’s like. Don’t throw away; taste something that’s undercooked – you should never go there again – don’t just throw it away because you’ve undercooked it, taste it. Taste the mistake and it registers. We had one individual across this competition; I had never seen this person cook a souffle like this in my entire life, ever. This individual put the souffle in the oven, hadn’t even tested it beforehand and knew exactly when to pull it out. And there was a lot riding on it, and the souffle came out and it was on the money with 100% perfection. I’ve never seen that kind of confidence together, not even in a professional kitchen let alone a domestic kitchen. Natural, whether you’re a natural writer, journalist, football player, basketball player, natural cook in terms of your found ingredients, you’ve got the natural flair; that’s exactly what MasterChef has drawn up in a way that has cultivated all that excitement, that passion where these individuals have these full-time daytime jobs and they’re cooking has been a huge distraction and it’s a passion that rekindled that has opened the heavens.
Q: Graham mentioned the American Idol comparison. He compared the three of you to the original judging panel with you as Randy, him as Paula and Joe as Simon Cowell. Do you agree with that comparison?
GORDON RAMSAY: Graham is a sweetheart. My skill is definitely not in that area, that’s for sure. I’ve never thought of it that way. So, I’m Randy Jackson? Hold on a minute, my trousers are a 32 waist, not 52. We have highs and lows across this competition and we argue and I argue with Graham and I argue with Joe and Joe argues with me and he puts his balls on the line because he thinks that person should go through. So, I suppose it sort of blows both ways really. Graham is the big, cuddly one, the one they all want to come and run and confide in and sort of love and cuddle and he gives that nice, sort of teacher’s pet affection. Joe, while Joe is a phenomenon. He has an amazing mom, a phenomenal background and I suppose I just call it as a I see it, I just say there and then, so I’ve never really looked at it that way, to be honest, but the fact that I’m not Mr. Nasty, oh God, am I getting soft in my old age?
Q: Did you feel that you ran into some contestants here that actually were more talented than some who have made it on to Hell’s Kitchen?
GORDON RAMSAY: Let’s be honest; some of the contestants on Hell’s Kitchen it’s not hard to base, the domestic scene across America, there are some wannabes; I think that’s in every walk of life, but seriously, of course. Listen, it’s taken us all by surprise and it has been an eye opener.
And I suppose what I’m more excited about is being given the chance now, for the next three or four years to sort of nurse that talent and help catapult them even further, whether they want to write their own books – which they will do, of course, as a winner – run their own restaurant, bistro, café or whatever it may be, I want to make sure that we’re following that mentoring stage through. So, I have been wildly shocked in a way that it’s become a bit of a shock, to be honest, and that’s no kidding.
Q: If I’m hearing you correctly it kind of sounds like you’re saying some of the best cooking that’s happening in this country is actually happening in home kitchens.
GORDON RAMSAY: The transition has been ridiculously brilliant because there has been that necessity because it’s been hard felt and everyone’s been feeling the pennies in terms of cutting down, so you put that extraordinary amount of time and energy and money you haven’t got into a humble star ingredient. We had one challenge; that was to do something unique with an egg, one single egg. Well, my God. You want to talk about scrambled or poached or egg white omelet, trust me, this was better than we’ve ever seen before and it was a level of creativity from a coddled egg to a baked egg to this amazing brioche with a baked egg inside the brioche with rashers of turkey bacon. It was just what you didn’t expect from a domestic cook, so, yeah, I think the timing and the climate has been suited to MasterChef because the level of concentration in the domestic cooks now, at home with a little bit more time on their hands and a little less disposable income has become evident and I can see that in the standards of what these – I hate that word contestant because they’re not contestants, they’re cooks. And one of them becomes a chef. So, it’s been a little bit of a, not a wakeup call, but we sat there on those stools after getting that close the final cut and we just looked at ourselves after tasting those dishes and went, oh my gosh, we’re in for a roller coaster here.
Q: How much mentoring is going on? Are they actually learning or is this an opportunity for them to show skills that they already have?
GORDON RAMSAY: Yes, that’s a good point. As you know, there’s no service running. So, they’re not running a restaurant. They get put into the restaurant environment and they even get to go up against Beat the Chef, which is just extraordinary where they actually go on and take on a chef and go head-to-head with a phenomenal chef. So, they get a lot of mentoring. There are books, there is a MasterChef kitchen, they have access to us and then we sort of don’t pick our favorites; but I look for the weaknesses because once you’ve got a weakness in an individual, you turn that into something extraordinarily positive and so we all took it in turn and sort of harbored our own sort of styles and we sort of carried it across the cast and honed in on them, so quite interesting mix.
Q: I’m just curious about the kind of mistakes that are made at the chef level with a certain amount of experience and the amateur level. Do chefs and amateurs make versions of the same mistakes? Maybe amateurs make them in a more grandiose fashion, or are they a completely different level of mistakes that are made? Are they doing different things?
GORDON RAMSAY: That’s a very good question. I suppose a chef gets carried away with the flashiness of ingredients. A domestic cook will always cook with a humble approach because they don’t understand that level of sort of trimmings, and they don’t want it oversaturated with little bits of micro herbs and shavings of foie gras and truffles. They have no access to that level of quality that professional chefs search for. So, the domestic chefs know where to stop. They know where to stop because they don’t have access to the sort of inconvenience of Angus beef and fresh loads of foie gras and hand-dived scallops, so there’s a level of core taste in a way that they become a lot simpler, but a lot more exact on their combinations because they’re uninterrupted with the flashiness of cooking. Sometimes a young chef as a professional will look at sourcing the best ingredients from around the world and because it’s all sounding absolutely amazing it’s going to taste amazing. I’ve seen a domestic cook take something like a shin of veal, braise it, press it, fry it and serve that with a caramelized onion marmalade and I’ve seen a fillet of veal served with a foie gras sauce completely bastardized and you’ve been charged $45, $50 for, so it’s quite an interesting comparison. The domestic side knows where to stop. The executive level, the professional chefs, sometimes get a little bit too carried away and that’s the access to ingredients.
Q: What advice do you have for home cooks who might just be average, but they aspire to be on your show one day. What’s the best way the average person can improve their skills?
GORDON RAMSAY: The one way we can all improve is just asking a friend, family member, boyfriend, girlfriend to cook something simple. It could be a penne aviata, it could be the most amazing spaghetti Bolognese, it could be a stunning smoked chicken Caesar salad and unknown to you, make sure that you don’t know what the dish is. Put a blindfold on and start tasting food with your eyes closed. The level of sense and the speed of acceleration of identifying flavors, textures, contrast is extraordinary. I take my professional chefs and we dine in the dark and when a new cook arrives at Claridge’s, we’ll go out and we’ll dine in the dark and we’ll eat three or four courses and then they have to memorize those dishes and write down – because we can write down in the dark quite easily – write down those particular flavors. If they don’t get 80% of what they’ve been fed, then they shouldn’t be cooking it. And it’s very similar when you’re training at home and you want to become excited and understand, if you don’t know what it tastes of, you shouldn’t be cooking it. So, we play those sort of initiative tests where you blindfold each other, and trust me, from a partner, I do it to my wife, it’s very sensual, you know, great fun, sometimes you didn’t get to finish the dish would you believe; however, that’s a different chat for a different time, but try dining in the dark or with a blindfold, you’ll be surprised how quick your senses work.
Q: Have you seen any actual marked differences between the MasterChef U.S. show as opposed to the U.K. or the other show that you have in Australia, and I mean like in personalities, creativity in the dishes or ingredients? At the end of the day, what would you like the viewers to walk away with after seeing the show?
GORDON RAMSAY: First of all, the whole MasterChef, as you know, is in 110 different countries. It originated out of the U.K. and it was put to bed, literally, ten years ago. Liz Murdoch revitalized it and put it back on the map. So, it’s been a huge hit here, not only as a domestic set up here, MasterChef also goes to a professional MasterChef as well, for young professional chefs, a Junior MasterChef as well and a celebrity MasterChef. That’s all happening here as we speak. Australia was a huge hit because it’s a country that absolutely is infested with excitement with food. And the comparison between what we’ve done in America, I’d say we’ve been at the cutting edge because the pressure tests have been so much more significant in a way, and I’m not saying that to … on the MasterChef in Britain, but we’ve just been a lot more creative because of the scenarios with the troops, the scenario with the wedding. I mean, this is real stuff, so it’s been more of a mentoring aspect there from all three judges, which has been, again, full of highs and lows because it’s very hard to get that message across to someone that doesn’t do it for a job and hasn’t done it for 15 or 20 years, but they love cooking from their heart. And to take it to the next level then, it’s a painful exercise, but it’s worth breaking in, I can assure you. And what would a viewer gain? For me, this has all been about that level of simplicity, how the better the ingredient, the little it needs doing to. But combining four or five ingredients becomes magical; eight, nine, ten becomes confusion. And then I want the viewer to go on that journey because I want them to shout, “I can do that!” And they will get up and they will go and they will try it literally 15 minutes after watching it, whether it’s creating the perfect salad, making a stunning pasta sauce or… a chicken or making a wonderful chicken Parmesan, it’s done with class. So, we had a chili con carne tasting session where we had to get the contestants and the young chef to taste on this taste test and identify the ingredients. It was extraordinary. There were nearly 20 ingredients in this chili, including all the spices, and there was one individual that got nearly up to 15 ingredients right. That’s not normal in the professional world, let alone the domestic world.
Q: One of the things that first got people into American Idol was the early rejections each season. What are we looking for in terms of some of the worst cooks in dishes on your show?
GORDON RAMSAY: There was one gentleman who turned up with applies that he had carved all these faces out of. As Joan Collins rightly said one, “My face looks like the map of Wales.” But I’ve never seen such a wrinkled apple in my entire life! He carved faces, characters into these apples and then presented them to us. He dehydrated them for three months and then he’d give us this apple. Well, I mean I don’t mind looking like that at 93, but at 43, I don’t look that bad and this apple made me look like a prune that had been baked for three weeks. However, then there were individuals that were sort of over-excited and a few little mismatches of combinations. There was a potato and cheese soup that looked like something out of my English bulldog’s bottom. It was pretty horrific. It was like toxic scum on a stagnant pool, almost like it had been infected with yeast. It was bubbling like something out of Harry Potter. I couldn’t quite believe that somebody could make such a bad soup. However, I took a sip and it came straight back up within seconds.
Q: How do the judges react when they taste dishes like that?
GORDON RAMSAY: Not very well. The secret is I know tasting is important and it’s a part of understanding great flavors. It’s called Pepto Bismol. It settles the stomach like no tomorrow.
GORDON RAMSAY: Two reasons really; cooking is about passion, so it may look slightly temperamental in a way that it’s too assertive to the naked eye. But, more importantly, it’s a kitchen and it needs that kind of constant pressure. When you cook under pressure you trade perfection. The pressure tests across MasterChef have been unique, from handling the most amazing wedding to doing a send-off extraordinary dinner at Camp Pendleton for Marines visiting Afghanistan …. For me, I want it right. So, whether you’re standing in the MasterChef kitchen and pushing yourself to extreme on a pressure test, taste test, service test, initiative test, even knowing how to cook an egg perfectly, a laid back atmosphere with a laid back contestant doesn’t really produce a great sparkle. And when you push these individuals to that level of pressure they get to gauge what it’s like to cook under pressure, but more importantly, they understand a lot about themselves. And it’s quite interesting, not just professional chefs, but domestic chefs never get the chance to be under that level of pressure. And, as you know, not everyone is going to make it. But those that do, it’s quite amazing to see how they handle it and sometimes, for the very first time.
Q: Would you say that this is kind of the American Idol of cooking?
GORDON RAMSAY: To be honest, it’s exactly that. I had a chat with Simon Fuller last night. We had dinner together with David and Victoria and I was saying exactly that. MasterChef in my mind is Chef Idol, in a way that it’s discovering unfound talents. And from a chef point of view – I’ve been cooking for 25 years – I have cooked not just in my restaurants and cooks I’ve met across the world that would struggle going up against some of the talent we’ve found.
It’s been that good a search and in a way we’ve had a phenomenal series with Bravo and Top Chef and when you look at Food Network and the phenomenon of MasterChef, this is the first ever mainstream, I suppose, domestic search across America for these little hidden gems and, my God, they came out in abundance. So, I was a little bit taken back and I knew halfway through with my fellow judges, Graham and Joe, that we had to increase the level of pressure tests because they’re becoming that good. And for me, I’ve been given the chance to mentor talent and put my balls on the line, saying, no, you’re going through it because there’s something there that you haven’t shown yourself yet. And having that time, which was great, to spend a lot longer with them and nurse them and put them into those special situations and to sort of guide them on a mentoring base. Yes, I’d say is very much along the lines of Chef Idol, definitely.
Q: Is there one piece of equipment in the home kitchen that people should invest good money in? What would you say is the most overrated ingredients as a chef?
GORDON RAMSAY: Overrated ingredients, we have obsessions with truffles in this country and truffles are like sort of rare, fungi that grow in very short periods of time of the year, so chefs now have summer truffles, which look like real truffles, but taste of absolutely nothing. Now, because they get excited with that sort of glamorous side – wow, it’s a truffle, it must taste phenomenal – it doesn’t. Because you’re doing the actual patch of the truffle bed no good whatsoever. Because they’re summer truffles, and then they’re sprayed with this sort of toxic gas as a subsidiary to the real essence of truffle, so overrated, summer truffles and that strong, pungent smell of truffle oil. Every time I walk into a restaurant and I know there is an amazing, broad bean soup or a delicious salad, the minute I hear or watch truffle on the menu, I change my order. The one equipment, right now I would go for a $45 to $50 stunning pasta machine. The diversity across that is extraordinary.
Q: Did you feel like you treated these contestants on MasterChef any differently than those you do on Hell’s Kitchen?
GORDON RAMSAY: First of all, they’re two different scenarios. A chef in a professional kitchen spending the rest of his life in this industry is completely different than how you treat a truck driver or a tank driver coming out of a canister. These are domestic individuals that have all full-time jobs outside of their cooking passion. To be honest, to begin with they were put under intense pressure with the pressure test and having to cook their signature dishes so, as the competition got narrower, of course it increased the pressure and naturally so. But like I said, I got halfway through the sort of final cut and already I could match 75%, 80% of those domestic chefs as good as any professional chef that I’ve met in brigades.
Q: Do you ever have flashbacks of your early days when you’re judging cooks on the show and you’re thinking, oh my God, they’re doing the same thing I did or whatever?
GORDON RAMSAY: Yes, I can relate to them, very much so, whether it’s my first day getting my ass kicked overturning sorbets and sticking the ice creams in Guy Savoy’s restaurant in Paris, or over proving the bread with the… brothers at Gavroche or even poaching a Dublin Bay prawn or a lobster for 30 seconds too long and watching; you need to make these mistakes to understand that you learn through your mistakes. I’m fine on the first time; I’ll always forgive first time. The second time, I’m going to get a little bit cranky as there’s no excuse. So, yeah, I do and I can explain that, so if it’s a chocolate souffle that comes out of the oven three minutes prior to being cooked I would turn around and say, that’s it, you know what it’s like. Don’t throw away; taste something that’s undercooked – you should never go there again – don’t just throw it away because you’ve undercooked it, taste it. Taste the mistake and it registers. We had one individual across this competition; I had never seen this person cook a souffle like this in my entire life, ever. This individual put the souffle in the oven, hadn’t even tested it beforehand and knew exactly when to pull it out. And there was a lot riding on it, and the souffle came out and it was on the money with 100% perfection. I’ve never seen that kind of confidence together, not even in a professional kitchen let alone a domestic kitchen. Natural, whether you’re a natural writer, journalist, football player, basketball player, natural cook in terms of your found ingredients, you’ve got the natural flair; that’s exactly what MasterChef has drawn up in a way that has cultivated all that excitement, that passion where these individuals have these full-time daytime jobs and they’re cooking has been a huge distraction and it’s a passion that rekindled that has opened the heavens.
Q: Graham mentioned the American Idol comparison. He compared the three of you to the original judging panel with you as Randy, him as Paula and Joe as Simon Cowell. Do you agree with that comparison?
GORDON RAMSAY: Graham is a sweetheart. My skill is definitely not in that area, that’s for sure. I’ve never thought of it that way. So, I’m Randy Jackson? Hold on a minute, my trousers are a 32 waist, not 52. We have highs and lows across this competition and we argue and I argue with Graham and I argue with Joe and Joe argues with me and he puts his balls on the line because he thinks that person should go through. So, I suppose it sort of blows both ways really. Graham is the big, cuddly one, the one they all want to come and run and confide in and sort of love and cuddle and he gives that nice, sort of teacher’s pet affection. Joe, while Joe is a phenomenon. He has an amazing mom, a phenomenal background and I suppose I just call it as a I see it, I just say there and then, so I’ve never really looked at it that way, to be honest, but the fact that I’m not Mr. Nasty, oh God, am I getting soft in my old age?
Q: Did you feel that you ran into some contestants here that actually were more talented than some who have made it on to Hell’s Kitchen?
GORDON RAMSAY: Let’s be honest; some of the contestants on Hell’s Kitchen it’s not hard to base, the domestic scene across America, there are some wannabes; I think that’s in every walk of life, but seriously, of course. Listen, it’s taken us all by surprise and it has been an eye opener.
And I suppose what I’m more excited about is being given the chance now, for the next three or four years to sort of nurse that talent and help catapult them even further, whether they want to write their own books – which they will do, of course, as a winner – run their own restaurant, bistro, café or whatever it may be, I want to make sure that we’re following that mentoring stage through. So, I have been wildly shocked in a way that it’s become a bit of a shock, to be honest, and that’s no kidding.
Q: If I’m hearing you correctly it kind of sounds like you’re saying some of the best cooking that’s happening in this country is actually happening in home kitchens.
GORDON RAMSAY: The transition has been ridiculously brilliant because there has been that necessity because it’s been hard felt and everyone’s been feeling the pennies in terms of cutting down, so you put that extraordinary amount of time and energy and money you haven’t got into a humble star ingredient. We had one challenge; that was to do something unique with an egg, one single egg. Well, my God. You want to talk about scrambled or poached or egg white omelet, trust me, this was better than we’ve ever seen before and it was a level of creativity from a coddled egg to a baked egg to this amazing brioche with a baked egg inside the brioche with rashers of turkey bacon. It was just what you didn’t expect from a domestic cook, so, yeah, I think the timing and the climate has been suited to MasterChef because the level of concentration in the domestic cooks now, at home with a little bit more time on their hands and a little less disposable income has become evident and I can see that in the standards of what these – I hate that word contestant because they’re not contestants, they’re cooks. And one of them becomes a chef. So, it’s been a little bit of a, not a wakeup call, but we sat there on those stools after getting that close the final cut and we just looked at ourselves after tasting those dishes and went, oh my gosh, we’re in for a roller coaster here.
Q: How much mentoring is going on? Are they actually learning or is this an opportunity for them to show skills that they already have?
GORDON RAMSAY: Yes, that’s a good point. As you know, there’s no service running. So, they’re not running a restaurant. They get put into the restaurant environment and they even get to go up against Beat the Chef, which is just extraordinary where they actually go on and take on a chef and go head-to-head with a phenomenal chef. So, they get a lot of mentoring. There are books, there is a MasterChef kitchen, they have access to us and then we sort of don’t pick our favorites; but I look for the weaknesses because once you’ve got a weakness in an individual, you turn that into something extraordinarily positive and so we all took it in turn and sort of harbored our own sort of styles and we sort of carried it across the cast and honed in on them, so quite interesting mix.
Q: I’m just curious about the kind of mistakes that are made at the chef level with a certain amount of experience and the amateur level. Do chefs and amateurs make versions of the same mistakes? Maybe amateurs make them in a more grandiose fashion, or are they a completely different level of mistakes that are made? Are they doing different things?
GORDON RAMSAY: That’s a very good question. I suppose a chef gets carried away with the flashiness of ingredients. A domestic cook will always cook with a humble approach because they don’t understand that level of sort of trimmings, and they don’t want it oversaturated with little bits of micro herbs and shavings of foie gras and truffles. They have no access to that level of quality that professional chefs search for. So, the domestic chefs know where to stop. They know where to stop because they don’t have access to the sort of inconvenience of Angus beef and fresh loads of foie gras and hand-dived scallops, so there’s a level of core taste in a way that they become a lot simpler, but a lot more exact on their combinations because they’re uninterrupted with the flashiness of cooking. Sometimes a young chef as a professional will look at sourcing the best ingredients from around the world and because it’s all sounding absolutely amazing it’s going to taste amazing. I’ve seen a domestic cook take something like a shin of veal, braise it, press it, fry it and serve that with a caramelized onion marmalade and I’ve seen a fillet of veal served with a foie gras sauce completely bastardized and you’ve been charged $45, $50 for, so it’s quite an interesting comparison. The domestic side knows where to stop. The executive level, the professional chefs, sometimes get a little bit too carried away and that’s the access to ingredients.
Q: What advice do you have for home cooks who might just be average, but they aspire to be on your show one day. What’s the best way the average person can improve their skills?
GORDON RAMSAY: The one way we can all improve is just asking a friend, family member, boyfriend, girlfriend to cook something simple. It could be a penne aviata, it could be the most amazing spaghetti Bolognese, it could be a stunning smoked chicken Caesar salad and unknown to you, make sure that you don’t know what the dish is. Put a blindfold on and start tasting food with your eyes closed. The level of sense and the speed of acceleration of identifying flavors, textures, contrast is extraordinary. I take my professional chefs and we dine in the dark and when a new cook arrives at Claridge’s, we’ll go out and we’ll dine in the dark and we’ll eat three or four courses and then they have to memorize those dishes and write down – because we can write down in the dark quite easily – write down those particular flavors. If they don’t get 80% of what they’ve been fed, then they shouldn’t be cooking it. And it’s very similar when you’re training at home and you want to become excited and understand, if you don’t know what it tastes of, you shouldn’t be cooking it. So, we play those sort of initiative tests where you blindfold each other, and trust me, from a partner, I do it to my wife, it’s very sensual, you know, great fun, sometimes you didn’t get to finish the dish would you believe; however, that’s a different chat for a different time, but try dining in the dark or with a blindfold, you’ll be surprised how quick your senses work.
Q: Have you seen any actual marked differences between the MasterChef U.S. show as opposed to the U.K. or the other show that you have in Australia, and I mean like in personalities, creativity in the dishes or ingredients? At the end of the day, what would you like the viewers to walk away with after seeing the show?
GORDON RAMSAY: First of all, the whole MasterChef, as you know, is in 110 different countries. It originated out of the U.K. and it was put to bed, literally, ten years ago. Liz Murdoch revitalized it and put it back on the map. So, it’s been a huge hit here, not only as a domestic set up here, MasterChef also goes to a professional MasterChef as well, for young professional chefs, a Junior MasterChef as well and a celebrity MasterChef. That’s all happening here as we speak. Australia was a huge hit because it’s a country that absolutely is infested with excitement with food. And the comparison between what we’ve done in America, I’d say we’ve been at the cutting edge because the pressure tests have been so much more significant in a way, and I’m not saying that to … on the MasterChef in Britain, but we’ve just been a lot more creative because of the scenarios with the troops, the scenario with the wedding. I mean, this is real stuff, so it’s been more of a mentoring aspect there from all three judges, which has been, again, full of highs and lows because it’s very hard to get that message across to someone that doesn’t do it for a job and hasn’t done it for 15 or 20 years, but they love cooking from their heart. And to take it to the next level then, it’s a painful exercise, but it’s worth breaking in, I can assure you. And what would a viewer gain? For me, this has all been about that level of simplicity, how the better the ingredient, the little it needs doing to. But combining four or five ingredients becomes magical; eight, nine, ten becomes confusion. And then I want the viewer to go on that journey because I want them to shout, “I can do that!” And they will get up and they will go and they will try it literally 15 minutes after watching it, whether it’s creating the perfect salad, making a stunning pasta sauce or… a chicken or making a wonderful chicken Parmesan, it’s done with class. So, we had a chili con carne tasting session where we had to get the contestants and the young chef to taste on this taste test and identify the ingredients. It was extraordinary. There were nearly 20 ingredients in this chili, including all the spices, and there was one individual that got nearly up to 15 ingredients right. That’s not normal in the professional world, let alone the domestic world.
Q: One of the things that first got people into American Idol was the early rejections each season. What are we looking for in terms of some of the worst cooks in dishes on your show?
GORDON RAMSAY: There was one gentleman who turned up with applies that he had carved all these faces out of. As Joan Collins rightly said one, “My face looks like the map of Wales.” But I’ve never seen such a wrinkled apple in my entire life! He carved faces, characters into these apples and then presented them to us. He dehydrated them for three months and then he’d give us this apple. Well, I mean I don’t mind looking like that at 93, but at 43, I don’t look that bad and this apple made me look like a prune that had been baked for three weeks. However, then there were individuals that were sort of over-excited and a few little mismatches of combinations. There was a potato and cheese soup that looked like something out of my English bulldog’s bottom. It was pretty horrific. It was like toxic scum on a stagnant pool, almost like it had been infected with yeast. It was bubbling like something out of Harry Potter. I couldn’t quite believe that somebody could make such a bad soup. However, I took a sip and it came straight back up within seconds.
Q: How do the judges react when they taste dishes like that?
GORDON RAMSAY: Not very well. The secret is I know tasting is important and it’s a part of understanding great flavors. It’s called Pepto Bismol. It settles the stomach like no tomorrow.