Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Cookery Course (13 page)

SPICES NEVER PLAYED A HUGE PART
IN THE FOOD I GREW UP ON. I DON’T
THINK THEY DID FOR ANYONE OF
MY GENERATION.

There was the occasional curry or chilli con carne, of course, but they’d have been made with generic mixes that did little to excite my palate beyond the initial hit of heat. Once I started cooking professionally, though, I slowly came to see how exciting they could be, how they could take dishes in a totally new direction. We’re all familiar with cloves in a bread sauce, or grated nutmeg on a rice pudding, but the time I first tried star anise in a navarin of lamb it blew my mind. I couldn’t believe what a difference it made to a dish I thought I knew. From then on I was hooked and loved experimenting with unusual combinations, but always within the context of classic French and British cooking.

It wasn’t until I went to India a couple of years ago that I was exposed to spices in all their glorious colours and varieties. I remember visiting a market in Cochin and seeing all the ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, cardamom and saffron piled up and knowing I had to learn the art of spicing. We still tend to view it in a one-dimensional way in this country, as a way of delivering an addictive heat, but it’s so much about fragrance, flavour and subtlety too. If you learn to use spices confidently they can add a new dimension to your cooking. The trick is to find the balance of flavours that really suit you.

Let’s start closer to home, though, with the two most common forms of seasoning: salt and pepper. These are like the cement that holds your cooking together. They help to meld all the other flavours and make them stronger for it, and provide the backbone on which the other ingredients will rest. By seasoning confidently, and early on in the cooking process, you lock in the flavours and allow them to permeate the whole dish.

People are sometimes shocked at how much seasoning professional chefs use. When we say a pinch, we sometimes mean a handful. But as I say, this is what helps to develop a depth of flavour, and although it looks a lot, you probably end up using less than you would if you had to add salt at the table. There was a rumour that I had CCTV installed in my restaurant at Claridge’s in order to see who was adding salt to their food so I could have them thrown out. It wasn’t true, of course – we did have cameras, but they were to see when customers were finishing their dishes so we could time their next course – but I do think that if the kitchen is doing its job properly, by the time food leaves the kitchen it should be perfectly seasoned.

SALT

I never have refined table salt in my house, not even for salting vegetable water. I always use sea salt – fleur de sel from Brittany out of preference, but Maldon salt from Essex is very good too. I find the minerals in it give it a more complex flavour, and again you need less of it. If you watch Italians cooking pasta, you’ll see them actually taste the boiling water to make sure it is seasoned properly. They will use 10g salt (2 teaspoons) for every litre of water. It should be a similar ratio for boiling vegetables.

PEPPER

All pepper is not the same either, although the three types – black, green and white – all come from the same bush. Black peppercorns are fully mature and have the strongest flavour. Green peppercorns are immature berries that are either dried or brined. They are milder and much used in Asian cooking. White peppercorns are black ones with the husk removed. They tend to have a more nose-prickling quality but lack the brute strength of black ones. They are generally used for aesthetic purposes – in a white sauce, for example, where you might not want to have black specks. You certainly don’t need to worry about stocking both, but, as with all spices, it is better to keep them whole and grind them as and when you need them. The recipe for Sichuan Dan Dan Noodles (
see here
) uses Sichuan pepper, which is not actually pepper at all, but the pod of an Asian berry. It has a mild lemony flavour and causes a slight tingling around the mouth when you eat it.

BASIC SPICE KIT

We’re probably all guilty of having a few jars of spice festering at the back of our cupboards, but you should really have a clear-out at least every 12 months. Spices deteriorate very quickly, and after six months they’ll have lost most of their flavour, especially if they are already ground. So the first rule is not to buy in bulk. Only purchase what you think you will need within the next six months or so. Keep them in an airtight container, away from direct sunlight and heat (a tin is better than a jar for this reason). Whole spices will stay fresh longer than ground ones, so, where possible, buy whole and grind as and when you need them. Listed opposite are the basic spices I keep to hand. They’ll allow you to make your own Madras powder for the Curry-spiced Sweetcorn Soup (
see here
), for example, or a Moroccan-style ras el hanout mix for the Roasted Squash Houmous (
see here
).

CARDAMOM

A versatile spice with a warm, sweet flavour. You can either add the pod whole, or crush it to extract the seeds, which can then be ground if you like.

CHILLI POWDER

Made of ground dried chillies, the powder can vary in potency, so treat with caution. Cayenne pepper is specifically from the cayenne chilli.

CINNAMON

The rolled bark of a Sri Lankan tree, cinnamon goes particularly well with sugar. It’s also used a lot in meaty savoury dishes such as Moroccan tagines.

CLOVES

These dried flower buds, with their medicinal flavour, are essential in dishes as diverse as bread sauce, roast gammon, apple crumble and mulled wine. Go easy with them, as they can easily overpower.

CORIANDER

These dried berries have a sweet aromatic flavour that bears no similarity to the herb that produces them. Great with cumin in home-made burgers or poaching liquor for fish.

CUMIN

These small seeds have a strong, pungent aroma that lends a familiar backnote to many Indian and Mexican dishes. A little goes a long way.

FENNEL SEEDS

The seeds of the fennel plant have a more pronounced aniseed flavour than the bulbs and go particularly well with pork.

FENUGREEK

A bitter Mediterranean seed used in curry powders, with an aroma similar to celery. An essential part of home-made ras el hanout, a Moroccan spice mix also containing cinnamon, cloves, coriander and cumin.

GINGER

I use fresh ginger where possible because it has a much more lively, zingy flavour. But ground ginger is also useful, particularly in baking.

MUSTARD SEEDS

We are used to seeing these in wholegrain mustard. Their natural fieriness is tempered when they are roasted and they become nuttier in flavour. Essential in Indian cooking.

NUTMEG AND MACE

Both these spices come from the nutmeg tree, mace being the outer lattice covering of the nutmeg seed. Both have a warm, earthy, aromatic flavour, but mace is slightly stronger and sweeter; it works particularly well in custard-based desserts. Nutmeg is essential in a traditional white sauce or rice pudding.

PAPRIKA

A bright red powder made from dried peppers. It can be sweet or hot, smoked or unsmoked, and is a characteristic feature of Spanish and Hungarian cooking.

STAR ANISE

I love star anise more than any other spice. It has a fragrant, slightly sweet aniseed flavour and is a key ingredient in Chinese five-spice powder. It lends itself to everything from lamb casserole to tarte tatin.

SUMAC

A dark reddish spice, sumac is widely used in Middle Eastern cooking, imparting a tangy, lemony flavour.

TURMERIC

A bright yellow spice that comes from a dried root. It gives curry powder its hallmark colour and has an earthy, mustardy flavour.

HOW TO USE SPICES

Toasting spices before cooking with them releases their oils and aromas, making them much more fragrant and easier to grind. Place them in a dry pan over a medium heat and shake the pan until the spices give off a warm, nutty aroma – about a minute. Take them off the heat and allow them to cool before crushing them with a pestle and mortar.

Alternatively, if the recipe calls for leaving the spices whole, you can fry them gently in oil. The oil will then take on all the spices’ flavours and pass them on to anything else that is now added to the pan, such as chopped onions or tomatoes. Be careful, though, as spices can quickly burn, so you need to keep stirring them. Add more oil or a little water if they start to catch.

CHILLIES

As with most ingredients, we are really spoilt with the range of chillies we can buy now. Not so long ago, you’d be lucky to find a choice between red and green. Nowadays most supermarkets stock a choice of varieties and there are lots of chilli farms that will do mail order. (Who’d have thought England would turn out to be such a good place to grow a tropical plant?) The best chillies deliver a wonderful fruitiness alongside a liberal dose of heat.

Which chillies you use in your cooking depends on how spicy you like your food. The heat comes from an alkaloid called capsaicin and is measured in units known as Scovilles. The bird’s eye chilli – the small red one used in a lot of Thai cooking – measures 225,000 Scovilles, while the Scotch bonnet, which I use in Jerk Chicken (
see here
) comes in at 350,000. If that all sounds too much, the green jalapeño is just 5,000, although the heat does develop the longer it cooks. When smoked and dried, the jalapeño becomes the chipotle. Sold dried, or in a sweet adobo sauce, it adds a rich spiciness to braised meats and sauces.

If you want to reduce the heat of a chilli, remove the seeds before cooking as these are the fieriest part. To do this, hold the chilli between the palms of your hands and rub them together backwards and forwards. This will break the membrane holding the seeds. Now cut the top off and shake the chilli to release all the seeds. To chop chillies finely,
see here
.

Curry-spiced sweetcorn soup

Spicy pancakes

Grilled corn with chipotle chilli butter

Roasted squash houmous

Noodles with chilli, ginger and lemongrass

Spicy beef salad

Vietnamese-style beef baguette

Sichuan dan dan noodles

Jerk chicken

Shawarma spiced chicken wraps

Chilli beef lettuce wraps

Pork neck curry with mango salsa

Chocolate mousse with chilli and mango

Fragrant spiced rice pudding

Olive oil, for frying

1 onion, peeled and finely diced

1 large potato, peeled and cubed

1 litre vegetable or chicken stock

1 × 420g tin creamed corn

2 × 200g tins sweetcorn

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

FOR THE MADRAS CURRY PASTE

1 tbsp coriander seeds

1 tbsp cumin seeds

2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

1 tsp chilli powder

1 tsp ground turmeric

2 tsp peeled and chopped fresh root ginger

½ tsp salt

Olive oil