urban cooking crew - want to cook with Gordon Ramsey?

[pembrokestephen]

Less young women know how to cook, true – but that applies to a lot of men as well. Around the world the majority of cooking is done by women, for the family, at home. I remember Ramsay making some disparaging off-the-cuff comment about a dish being "the kind of thing my wife would knock up at home", implying it was inferior to what is produced professionally.

I didn't see him making the comment, so maybe there are nuances I'm not getting, but any professional chef will draw a very big distinction between the stuff they make for their customers, and "home cooking", and I don't necessarily mean that they're implying that one is better than the other.

Anthony Bourdain, in "Kitchen Confidential", makes some comments about this, and it is clear from how he writes that going to someone's house and eating home cooking is a qualitatively different experience, in his eyes, from going to a restaurant and eating chef food. He's very clear that neither is "better" than the other: they're just different things, to be enjoyed and appreciated in a different way. As I recall, he was actually making the point that he doesn't WANT to go to someone's house and have them knocking up some complex, highflown restaurant dish: he'd rather eat casserole or a simple joint.

 

[gaijingirl]

I know that you are all hedgerow connoisseurs and would much rather be at some lovely homemade elderflower champagne.

ooh.. now there's an idea!!

 

[Fruitloop]

I think that with the women and cooking Ramsey was bemoaning (tactlessly) the loss of culinary knowledge that has happened since women stopped being the household cook - even though there were desirable social changes that accompanied it. My granny, f'rinstance, must have known hundreds if not thousands of recipes - cakes for different religious holidays and other calendar events, Yorkshire specialities etc etc. My mum, the first working professional woman in the family, knows a tiny fraction of them, and the rest are just gone forever.