Photography: Christina Simons

p>Do I need say anymore about Bourdain’s blog apart from I found this via Slashfood?

Perhaps I should also milk the archives:

Part 1: A beer and a fag with Anthony Bourdain

Part 2: On Ladro

Part 3: Eating in Melbourne

Part 4: No hippy shit

Part 5: casual eating

Part 6: Putting the boot in

Part 7: A year in nam

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Having recently spent an afternoon in the kitchen with Robin Wickens, a local chef of a similar ilk, I’ve become quite interested in the whole idea of molecular gastronomy. I’ve decided to try a few experiments of my own – the first of which will be cooking a steak the traditional way versus the scientific way, something I’ve learned from Wickins.

One steak will be griddled and then left to rest. The other will be sealed in a ziplock bag and cooked until rare. I’ll then brown it briefly in the griddle. I really want to see the difference.

Of course, this experiment is easy compared with what I have planned for Heston Blumenthal. Following in the path of Julie Powell who spent a year cooking Julia Child’s recipes (and wrote a book about it) and closer to home Sarah who did a similar thing with Nigella Lawson I’m going to cook every recipe in his book.

That gives me eight recipes including Roast Chicken and potatoes, pizza, steak and a Black Forest gateau that involves a domestic vacuum cleaner (a journalist challenged this gateau in The Independent with hilarious results).

Easy huh?

Not exactly. After I source the correct steak it takes some 18 hours being cooked at 50C (122F). The chicken takes somewhere between four and six hours and requires a fairly efficient blow torch (not the namby pamby type used for desserts). I’d estimate that each recipe probably takes about three days to prepare.

Wish me luck.

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For her next series she will be filmed watching the football and visiting producers.

This got me thinking. We all love watching the crazy Japanese kitchen stadium over at Iron Chef. But by and large some of our best known names in Australia are just a bit wooden in front of the camera. In fact some could do with an injection of the kind of class A drugs that are usually reserved only for our top footballers.

Not everybody on this list is wooden and it’s up to you to vote in the inaugural wooden chef awards. If you fell I’ve left anybody off leave a message in comments and I’ll amend the voting.

Anybody outhere fancy sexing up a wooden spoon as a trophy to send to the winner?

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Gordon Ramsay: “Ladies, I’m 100% real, there’s no need to pinch quite THAT hard!”

Ellie the Kitchen Wench received a pack of Monsieur Truffe raspberry truffles for her winning entry (above) to my Gordon Ramsay caption competition.

I think she liked them. She says: “…oh lordy, I don’t think that taking a bite of chocolate has ever made me whimper before…”

Food fascist

1. No more Gordon Ramsay this year please

2. Enough of Monsieur Truffe. Gorged on 15 yesterday

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I’ve a bloody awful headache but it went something like this:
Tomato: “My friend Neil wants to know why you didn’t just kick Marco Pierre White in the bollocks.”
Gordon Ramsay: “We scrapped a couple of times times…”
Tomato: “I read Marco’s book and it’s a bit crap. just settling scores and telling everybody how good he is.”
Gordon Ramsay: “Yeah, he brought it out as a spoiler because he heard I had mine coming out.”
Tomato: “the foodbloggers who’ve met you in Sydney are likening you to Mr Darcy. Helen from Sydney wants to know if you have you ever galloped really fast on a horse and dived into a lake and swum across it…”
Gordon Ramsay: ‘Who the fuck’s Mr Darcy?”
Tomato: “Why don’t you open up in Melbourne. We’re fed up with ponytails.”
Gordon Ramsay: “I’d love to but I don’t want to be a ring in…”

We were at Lamaro’s gastropub (courtesy of nab Private Bank) at an event knocked together in two weeks, as a favour for his mate chef Michael Lambie. Pam Lamaro was the consumate host and ensured that everybody got to meet the man. The place was rocking, especially in the bar later. Ramsay’s enjoying himself too. He tells me it is unlike The Age events, which he says are full and grannies and blue rinces.
In real life Ramsay is a real charmer, a good bloke even though he seems like a nightmare on the box. And the girls do love him.

Put away the fucking notebook.

Gordon Ramsay: ‘That John Laws. What a knob. What a fucking knob.”
At this moment he tells us – pointedly at me, in fact – that this is all off the record so I can’t tell you what exactly Kerri-Anne Kennelly needed through which particular orafice. Or which chefs and other media types are twats.

Meanwhile, Kylie (single) disappears. It turns out she was getting her book signed even though she doesn’t even cook and hates celebrity chefs. Ramsay recognises here from earlier: “Nice blouse. Are you coming into the bar from a drink later?”

So there we are in the bar Gordon on one side of the room – Mr Darcy, whoever the fuck he is – and on the other Elizabeth Bennet (Kylie), her bosom heaving.
But Ramsay’s whisked away by his publicist. I find that he’s staying in The Como, South Yarra. So Helen, there’s still time to get on down there beofre somebody else does. Tonight he’s taking his shchtick to The Botanical.

Oh, and the food? It was nice enough – creamy pumpkin risotto, perfectly cooked lamb – but it wasn’t really about that.
And Matt, I’m sorry I failed to cut a lock of his hair so you are going to have to survive without being embued with his superhuman fucking cooking abilities.

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Lookalikes: Susan Sontag and Anthony Bourdain

Part 1: A beer and a fag with Anthony Bourdain

Part 2: On Ladro

Part 3: Eating in Melbourne

Part 4: No hippy shit

Part 5: casual eating

Part 6: Putting the boot in

Part 7: A year in nam

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REMEMBER: You read it on Tomato first!

More chef Gossip:

Who created a kitchen nightmare for local ABC TV when he missed his recording slot after a night out shagging a blond? Apparently he’ll soon be back in Australia.

Was something fishy going on between the publicist of leading a local food glossy and this chef. (If you read the papers you’ll know this one. Easy! And this guy is also back here soon. Gourmets Travel so well.

No toadstools here. But there wasn’t mushroom much room in this chef’s hospital bed where he spend most of his tour with a boil in an embarrassing place.

Answers in comments please!

A bottle of the finest Aussie sparkling to the first with the correct answers. Postage cost no object!

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