Urgent Gordon Ramsey Help Needed!!!!!

salduck

I just saw an advert for it ! Starts on 24th October 3 courses live on tv one hour!!
SO the challenge is on!
x

AnnaS

How about either of these, neither really need any cooking

Lemon Flan (looks like a cheesecake)
For the base
4oz crushed digestive biscuits
2oz melted butter
1 tbsp sugar

For the filling
Quarter of a pint of double cream
6oz condensed milk
2 large lemons, zest from skin and also juice

Mix crushed biscuits into melted butter and stir in sugar. Press down into flan case (best to use one which the bases pops out of). Chill in fridge

For the filling - mix together double cream and condensed milk. Add in lemon zest and juice and the whole things magically thickens and sets. Pour into flan case and chill.

Decorate as appropriate. The flan is really lemony and sharp. Guess you could use crushed ginger biscuits instead of digestive.

Ginger log
1 pack of ginger nut biscuits
1 carton of double cream (not sure what size - probably the larger one)
some alcohol such as brandy
Fruit to decorate

Whip double cream. Dip ginger biscuits quickly into alcohol and then cover one flat surface with whipped cream, sandwich to another biscuit dipped in alcohol. Contine until you have used all bisuits in packet and have a large log shape. Cover outside in cream. Place in fridge and leave overnight to soften (not sure what minimum time would be to leave it to soften). Decorate and then cut diagonal slices to serve on a plate.

Good luck

Miss_Piggy_2

Oh, go scrump some apples!!! Nick some from someones tree and make a fab apple and cinnamon crumble. Easy peasy to make and cheap as chips! You could make it up market by serving with clotted cream?

Miss P
xx

Juliepink26

Oh that lemon flan sounds nice ... ill give that a go tomorrow!! Thanks
(Love condensed milk mmm naughty but sooo nice..)

Anwen_2

Oh, also, a lot of markets (such as Ridley Road in Hackney) have stalls which will sell you a big plastic salad bowlful of (usually slightly overripe) fruit and veg, such as approx 7-8 peppers for a quid, and they almost always have tomatoes which are great when overripe for making sauces and soups, particularly the cherry kind as they don't need peeling (IME)

Assuming you had the stock cupboard thingy to back you up (like on that ready steady cook program, so they didn't have to provide eg olive oil, it was just there) you could easily pick out the freshest cherry toms and make a lovely mozzarella-and-tomato salad (with Lidl's mozzarella which is something like 60p) for starter, pasta with a simple tomato and basil sauce for main course (using fresh basil from your *cough* garden, naturally!) and then still have a quid or so left for a couple of lovely ripe mangoes which you could always cut into a very classy hedgehog...

http://www.kirida.com/uploaded_images/mango_hedgehog-731193.jpg

Cherry tomato and basil sauce is dead easy - just get a load of overripe cherry toms, pour a glug* of olive oil into a heavy bottomed pan/oven dish and heat the oil (medium heat) then chuck in the tomatoes along with some seasoning** and either cook on the hob or in the oven for as long as it takes for the stuff to look more like sauce than a load of tomatoes in some oil in a pan (about half an hour, IIRC - if you're feeling energetic you can get the pan halfway through the time and smoosh up the tomatoes a bit with a potato masher/fork/other smashing thingy) and then add some fresh basil. Makes loads, and is also a super base for sauces (eg ratatouille or spag bol) and is lovely on some nice spaghetti. I expect it's probably possible to cook it more quickly than this, but I tend to jsut shove it in the oven on a medium sort of heat and go back when I can smell tasty tasty food... If cooking in the oven, start it off on the hob and 'brown' the skins of the tomatoes before transferring to the oven (a heavy roasting tin should be able to go on the hob) as this seems to make it nicer. When I say brown, I don't mean to actually cook the skin so much that it starts to go brown/black, so much as just to stir them in the hot oil for a bit so that most of the skin looks a bit cooked. There is probably a technical term for this, but I'm blowed if I know it...


*technical term. 1 glug = 3 splashes
*technical term = salt and pepper. I once read about someone who went into several shops looking for 'seasoned flour' for a recipe before someone finally told her that this just meant 'obviously you know that I mean add some salt and pepper to the flour so I won't spell it out for you'

Edinburghlass_2

Another thought, phone your Grandmother and get her chicken soup recipe, I'm sure she'd love to talk you through making it and indeed watching you make it on TV.

lil_me

I think aswell that he'll be doing an under £5 for a family meal, allowing £5 for a desert isn't money saving! Think I would go for

Savvy salad - some form of salad, pasta and maybe chicken sliced with a nice dressing
or
Penny Pinching Penne - a penne pasta dish (usually the cheapest pasta) with tinned tomatoes (cheap and cheerful) other vegetables and possibly chicken or even turkey as this works out cheaper, with some garlic toasted sliced crunchy bread
followed by
Credit Crunch Crumble - a mixed fruit crumble (making the most of any in season fruits) to serve with custard, cream or icecream if necessary

To save money the chicken can be cooked in the oven with the crumble.

morwenna

My best recipe for dessert is Orange meringue cake:

2 egg whites
1 scant tsp cornflour
Ditto vinegar
4 oz caster sugar

What you are doing here is making two small pavolva type meringues - whisk the egg whites in a very clean bowl. There needs to be NO YOLK and the bowl has to be grease free. Once the egg whites are stiff, (easiest with a machine, freestanding mixer or similar) mix the cornflour & vinegar together and whisk in along with half the sugar. Fold in the remaining sugar. (add sugar and using a metal spoon, lightly mix, with a figure of eight movement until combined, but hopefully without knocking out the air.)

Draw around the base of an 18 cm sandwich tin twice on baking parchment and place upside down onto a tray. Pile the meringue into the drawn circles and bake at gas 1 for 45 mins.

You also need to make a cake base:

Weight of one (free range) egg (weighed in the shell)
Same weight sugar
Same weight butter or marg
Same weight SR flour
Grated rind of 1/2 an orange

Make sponge as follows
Cream together butter & sugar till pale and fluffy. Add the egg and orange rind (none of the white pith as it is too bitter) Add the egg with a spoon of the weighed flour. Mix to combine, gradually adding the rest of the flour.

You can do this as an all in one mixture if you have everything at room temp and have an electric mixer to do the work - bung all into bowl and mix. Bake at Gas 4 for 25 mins or so, until well risen and golden.

The assembly makes this special:

One tub of whipping or double cream, whipped
A few squares of (good) dark chocolate, melted
Tin mandarin oranges, drained

Sponge on the bottom, top with cream and drained mandarins - use any broken ones here. Top with one meringue circle and top that with more cream and mandarins.

Slice final (and nicest looking) meringue circle carefully into six triangles, (into half and each half into three) drizzle melted choc over each segment. (I have used a teaspoon to drizzle, also into plastic food bag with corner cut off slightly.)

Put rest of cream and the best mandarin segments on top of dessert, place meringue segments at 45 degree angle on top. (Sort of Sydney Opera House)

No idea of cost - but it doesn't break the bank and has impressed in laws

Whatever you do - practise first as no-one cooks anything for the first time with an audience

rosieben

If you need something to cook quickly how about a pasta dish?

1. boil pasta

2. mix together
- pre-cooked chopped chicken/ham/bacon/sausages or tin tuna/tin salmon
- chopped/diced veg of your choice - sauteed onions (in butter), peas, mushrooms

3. make a sauce - based on mayo/cream cheese/white sauce/tin condensed soup

4. mix it all together and heat through thoroughly

5. grate cheese on top (can brown under grill if you have time)

quick, nutritious and money saving because the recipe is so flexible and you can use up leftover peas, sweetcorn, meat etc - very OS!!

sophistica

I think you need a restaurant style meal to impress Gordon Ramsay and one which is so simple you can talk at the same time. I can see Ramsay grimacing at sausages and mince and asking where they come from. You could try a pasta pesto with a twist.

Ingredients
1 packets of basil or one large pack of basil 79p
50 grams of ground almonds (this is traditionally made with pine nuts but these are very expensive. Buy the almonds from an Indian shop.) £1.50
A cup of olive oil 75p
2 cloves of garlic 10p
a small chunk of parmesan £1
sea salt
Value pasta 29p
A squeeze of lemon juice 20p

Put the pasta on to cook and warm a plate.
Set up the food processer with the blade and pulse the basil with the salt, garlic and almonds for about 20 secs. Slowly add the olive oil on the food processor. When it looks like a puree but not a completely smooth paste stop the machine and switch to the grater blade. Cut off a chunk of parmesan about 2inches and feed it through the funnel. add a little squeeze of lemon and check for seasoning. Use to dress the pasta. You can garnish this with a ltittle grated parmenan and a whole basil leaf.
Some points to make are that supermarkets sometimes sell basil cheap at the end of the day. I got 4 packets for 15p each last week. Ground almonds are much cheaper to buy in an Indian supermarket or after the cake baking season in January and they keep for a long time.
You could experiement with other herbs e.g. parsely and other nuts. The sauce would keep for a few days to a week in the fridge and you need no cooking skills. In fact if you cook regularly all you really need is the basil which you could grow at home and a chunk of parmesan.