Instructions
If you believe the hype, then chefs are a notoriously temperamental bunch. Hot-headed, and prone to fits of incalculable rage.
Well, I won’t say never, but we’re not all Gordon Ramsay you know!
And yet that image of the firebrand pan-handler permeates public consciousness of what it is to be a professional cook.
As it happens, some years back I worked alongside one of Ramsay’s graduates. Darren had been sous chef at the cantankerous master’s eponymous restaurant in Claridge’s hotel. In addition to learning many of Ramsay’s innovative techniques, he’d come to mirror that famous personality. Darren was brusque, hard-edged, and had a tongue that would make a trooper blush.
Darren expected the best, and the human cost of that process was not a factor in his planning.
His signature sauce, for example, was an eschalot jus, made from slow-cooked, finely-diced eschalots (those tiny brown onions). Each plate needed one teaspoon of cooked eschalot, which had started out as four raw eschalots. So, for the 150 plates on which it would be used each day, 10kg of eschalots needed to be prepared – a gargantuan task.
And heaven forbid that the eschalots might not be cut perfectly square. Then you’d find out what Darren really learned form Ramsay!
Of course, eschalots are just a member of the onion family, and their flavour (especially once cooked) is not so very different from large brown, white or red onions. So why, you’re probably wondering, does anyone bother with the maniacal perseverance required to prepare them in such volume? Well the answer is important. It’s about the art of cooking.
Chefs like Darren, and his mentor alike, derive their unabashed rage from their emotional core. It flows from their passionate belief that cookery is an art form that deserves to be respected, and done right. Now I don’t want to be an apologist for tantrums, but I guess I can appreciate the root cause.
Right now, through until summer’s close, the family of onions are on season. Look out for them (complete with their stems) at quality greengrocers. You see a seasonally fresh onion or eschalot is a work of great beauty, so much more intense than an ordinary dried one. The finesse of a fresh vegetable is the same as the finesse that great chefs seek. So hop on the bandwagon and have your own Ramsay moment!
Eschalot and green onion tarte tatin