Healthy Ramsay
Jun 16th, 2008 | By admin | Category: HealthNo chef polarises people so fervently; those who love him can’t seem to get enough but his critics will surely baulk at another cookbook (his 10th and a spin-off from The F Word television series). Gordon Ramsay’s Healthy Appetite (Hardie Grant, $45) will be released on June 24 in tandem with his appearance at Sydney’s Good Food & Wine Show. It’s a whacking volume of more than 125 recipes that are low in fat and nasty kilojoules, and focus on freshness and flavour.
It’s not all lean cuisine (a decadent breakfast dish of buckwheat pancakes with smoked salmon, for instance, is topped with sour cream). But mostly Ramsay presents delicious-looking alternatives to carb-heavy and sugar-laden fare. There’s a pavlova with roasted rhubarb fool that is concocted without recourse to whipped cream and five desserts made with berries look splendid for alfresco summer lunches.
Recipes that appear particularly tasty and achievable include squid with roasted peppers and cannelini beans; beetroot, carrot and chicory salad with pomegranate dressing; and, in a section designed for healthy kids, turkey brochettes with red pepper salsa and a dead-easy rigatoni with yellow and green courgettes.
Call Ramsay what you like. this man has his food and his target audience down pat.
WHERE do burgers come from (other than fast-food palaces and greasy-spoon diners, that is)? In The Hamburger: A History by Josh Ozersky (UNSW Press, $29.95), the author, billed as “an American cultural historian and recognised authority on food”, delves into the roots and rise to fame of the humble burger and does so with wit and panache.
The slim book reads like a long essay, a snip to devour at a single sitting but nonetheless satisfying. And the origins of “juicy, broiled hamburgers with just the right touch of charcoal taste”? Make no mistake, says Ozersky, this is an American invention, despite being named after a German city. What’s more, a century after its arrival, it remains essentially the same, “a gastronomic endpoint, like sashimi or a baked potato”. A burger’s basic design cannot be improved on.
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