Product Description

THE DEFINITIVE BOOK ON DESSERT MAKING FROM BRITAIN'S MOST EXCITING CHEF

This superb new collection from Britain's most talked-about chef features over 100 of his recipes for delicious puddings and desserts. Illustrated throughout with mouth-watering photography, Gordon Ramsay's Just Desserts will be the definitive book on modern dessert making for years to come.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4358 in Books
• Published on: 2002-12-17
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Just Desserts is a very fine book of puddings from energetic three-star Michelin chef Gordon Ramsay, expertly marshalled for the domestic kitchen by Roz Denny. Ramsay's imagination is obviously caught by the sweet course: he expends a great deal of innovative thinking to it with fascinating results. He is inclined to roast his fruit, for example, caramelising it for greater intensity of flavour; or he might deep-fry it, as in the elegant and fantastically nonchalant Fruit Tempura. His ices and creams include voluptuous nut creams and lavender, orange flower water or liquorice ice cream. Oriental flavours appear in ethereal dishes like the Thai Rice Pudding with Coconut and Lemon (serve with mango coulis) or Banana and Passion Fruit Sorbet. Cheesecake is light and flavoured with pumpkin. Proper homage is paid to comfort food, with recipes for Bread and Butter Pudding (Ramsay makes his with baguette and laces it with Baileys liqueur) and Steamed Toffee, Banana and Pecan Pudding. The chocolate recipes are particularly fine, with a Chocolate Mocha Tart standing out. Just Desserts is also an excellent primer of patisserie techniques, its explanations and illustrations of the standard syrups, pastes, sponges and pastries of the restaurant kitchen, here translated into domestic terms, being particularly lucid. The professional mysteries of the mousse, the parfait, the bavarois and the various manifestations of the meringue are made wonderfully clear. No holding back, then. --Robin Davidson

Synopsis
Here, Gordon Ramsay aims to demystify the art of dessert-making. There are the basic building blocks - fruits, ices and creams, mousses and souffles, crepes and batters - that can be served alone for everyday meals or in combination to impress. Then come the stand-alone dishes - homely favourites and special-occasion desserts - and a final chapter on vital accompaniments - biscuits, sponges and meringues. Throughout the book Gordon offers the benefit of his short cuts and tricks of the trade.

From the Publisher
PRAISE FOR GORDON RAMSAY

I think Gordon Ramsay's a genius - a chef at the top of his game Jamie Oliver

Gordon Ramsay's puddings are perhaps the best in London Jonathan Meades, The Times

Anthony Bourdain, bestselling author of Kitchen Confidential on Gordon Ramsay's Just Desserts

Desserts, in a restaurant setting, usually require a level of precision and delicacy which ordinary line cooks - and most chefs - find intimidating. I've called pattissiers the neurologists of the kitchen, strange and often obsessive perfectionists who move outside of the normal rythms of kitchen life, dancing to music only they can hear. When I discovered that Gordon Ramsay, a chef whose food and relentless drive I have come to greatly admire, was, at one time, a pattissier, (for Guy Savoy no less) it explained a lot for me.

Chefs, we have come to believe, are modern day alchemists, part magician, part personality - artists and madmen. In these food and chef-crazed times, where great attention is paid to the comings and going of our culinary demi-Gods, Gordon has certainly been referred to, spoken of, written about as having exhibited all of the above qualities; England's Greatest Chef or England's Greatest Bully - depending on what tabloid you're reading at the time.

The truth is far more complex - often incomprehensible to outsiders, but perfectly reasonable to professionals. When you want to be the best, insist on being the best, when you're the only three star chef in London, for instance it's not enough to cook brilliantly. You have to cook brilliantly EVERY night. Every plate has to be perfect. The food has to be sublime, creative, gorgeous to look at, unwaveringly consistent, whimsical on occasion, evocative of other times, other places, happy moments, childhood memories. A sensitivity, a gentleness is required - a degree of understanding of both human nature and the physical forces of the universe which a brutish megalomaniac is unlikely to possess. A pastry chef, on the other hand....

What makes these recipes and these presentations so magnificent are what makes all his food - from ameuse geules to entrees so strikingly good - the tone and tenor of these pages inform everything he does. If you are looking for the real roots of Gordon Ramsay's perfectionism, a window into this particular chef's soul, look no further. It's all here.

Customer Reviews

Will Make You Fat, But You Won't Care
Just Desserts, is written by the accomplished and talented three Michelin star chef Gordon Ramsey. As the name suggests, it's a cook book filled with recipes for the best part of a meal - - desserts.

It is the first book written by Gordon Ramsay I've ever purchased, and if his other books are as impressive as this one, then I guess I'll be buying the whole lot. While it's not the single best cook book I've ever seen, it is definitely the best dessert book and puts all others to shame. Gordon Ramsay is very passionate about food in general, and while I don't really picture him being big on desserts, I found almost all his desserts to be... mouth-watering to say the least, even the desserts I don't like, sound and look great. I can't imagine that photographing food especially desserts is an easy thing to do, but in this case the photographer has really done it justice. I've tried most of the recipes in the book and found them to be generally easy to produce providing you have some prior knowledge of cooking. There are some basic recipes included which came as a bit of a surprise but I guess these are necessary.

Just Desserts will make you fat (or fatter) - but you won't care as your taste buds will be in haven, so click that Add To Shopping Basket now as you won't regret it.

Disappointing. These are not Michelin Star Desserts!
Gordon Ramsay is a great chef and there is no doubt that his Chelsea restaurant is worthy of its 3 Michelin stars. It is a shame therefore that this status is not reflected by his book 'Just Desserts' which I have recently purchased.

The book is 211 pages long.

Pages 6 to 119 comprise 1)roasted fruits, 2)fruit salads 3) jellies 4) ice creams 5) parfaits 6) sorbets 7) mouses 8) souffles 9) crepes.
These are all very basic recipes and in any event repeated multiple times with just different flavours presumeably to pad out the book.
Pages 168 to 189 are how to make biscuits and petit forts.
Pages 190 to 211 are entitled 'basics' (ie how to make meringues , pastry etc).

What most people would think of as proper dessert recipes are only from pages 120 to 168.
That is only 49 pages of a 211 page book.
It gets worse however because pages 120 to 145 are entitled 'homely deserts' e.g. rice pudding, rhubarb crumble, creme brulee. These are all easily available from any standard cook book.
Only pages 146 to 167 contain desserts for 'special occasions'.
So do these mere 22 pages contain the holy grail Michelin 3 star desserts? As you've probably guessed the answer is no.
These recipes are also disappointingly dull eg chocolate tart (2 pages) and then a recipe for Dark chocolatte torte (another page). Strawberry tart (another page). Meringue nests with berries (2 pages). Profiteroles (2 pages). Pumpkin cheescake (2 pages).
There is perhaps 1 recipe 'sabayon topped fruit gatin, pannacotta and a hot raspberry souffle' which is Michelin standard but that is it.
One useful recipe out of 211 pages.

As a basic recipe book there are much more comprehensive books out there (eg Delia Smiths Complete Cookery Course).
As a Michelin star recipe book it simply does not deliver.

I do not think it unreasonable that when you buy a book from a Michelin star chef that there is a level of expectation that the contents of that book will reflect this level of cooking.
Clearly this is not an expectation shared by Ramsay.

If you want to cook Michelin star food try 'Essence' from the 2 star Le Champignon-Sauvage in Cheltenham or 'The French Laundry Cookbook' from the world famous Napa Valley restaurant. The recipes in these books though complicated are stunning and definitely Michelin Star standard. Interestingly Ramsay writes the forward for 'Essence' and comments that ' the keen amateur cook and dedicated professional at last have a chance to recreate part of the Le Champignon Sauvage experience'. Something that could certainly not be said about this book.
Note: As of Oct 6th 2007 Gordon Ramsey has released recipes of a 3 star chef which is a truely superb book.

No other dessert book comes close
I work as a pastry chef and own dessert books by authors such as Rose Levy Beranbaum, Maida Heatter, Marcel Desaulniers, etc. But none come close to this book. Maybe it is unfair to compare "baking" books to this cookbook, which could only be classified as a "dessert" book, but other "dessert" books (ie Michel Roux's Finest Desserts, Jacques Torres' Dessert Circus) still fall short of this book.

Gordon is clearly in a league of his own, his flavour combinations are original, creative, and ahead of their time, whilst still retaining a simplicity that allows any intermediate cook to approch them. I say this from experience, because I have owned this book well before I started my pastry apprenticeship.

To give you an understanding of why I admire this book so much, I will compare two fairly standard recipes from two different authors. Rose Levy Beranbaum's "Pie and Pastry Bible" contains a fairly comprehensive recipe for an apple pie. Those who are familiar with Beranbaum's books will no doubt be aware of the extensive research and time she would have spent in search of the "perfect" apple pie recipe. Her recipe is quite complex, although still straightforward, for an apple pie. The chunks of apple are basically "macerated" in sugar, lemon and spice for several hours, so that excess liquid (which may result in shrinkage during baking) is released from the fruit. This juice is then reduced to intensify flavour, then combined with the apple chunks, which are coated lightly with cornstarch. This mixture is placed in the pie shell as per any standard apple pie recipe, then topped with pastry and baked.

Rose's recipe is quite technical, almost overly technical, and while the result is very good, I believe that Gordon's approach is far more effective. Gordon's book contains a "Deep Dish Autumn Fruit Pie" which is essentially the same thing as an apple pie, except he used pears and plums as well as apples. The method Gordon employs to maximise the flavour of the fruit is faster and more intense; a knob of butter is heated in a large frying pan until stinking hot, then the chunks of fruit are tossed into the pan. A combination of sugar and chinese five-spice is sprinkled directly over the roasting fruit to encourage caramelisation and depth of flavour. Once a rich colour is achieved the fruit is sprinkled with liqueur and left to cool, then placed in a pie shell, topped and baked. Even if the recipe was made using only apples, the resulting pie would still be fantastic. Gordon's cooking is straightforward yet exciting, with maximum flavour being the top priority. While I respect the effort and love Rose Levy Beranbaum has invested into perfecting her recipes, Gordon's passion and intensity is far more inspiring to me than Rose's precise measurements and lengthy preparation times.

This is just one example - I could write pages on why I believe this book is best, but I hope this review has given some insight into my strong feelings regarding this book. In short, it isn't so much the recipes that set it apart from other dessert/baking books, but Gordon's enthusiastic, passionate approach to even the most simple of desserts, such as baked apples, right through to elaborate preparations such as "Orange Pannacotta, Honey Roasted Figs, Fresh Orange Sections, Orange Zest Confit" to the fun, colourful desserts such as "Caramelised Banana Bavarian" or "Roasted Baby Pineapples". The wait for a better dessert book will indeed by very, very long.