RAMSAY OVER OLIVER, EVERY TIME: THANKS TO JOHN

Occasion: Cleaning as usual in one of the student's flat room.

Venue: Sherbourne Residence, University of Warwick

Time: Around 1230 hrs: final hour of my morning shift.

One of the blocks in Sherbourne Residence, University of Warwick. Photo is of my personal collection and under full copyright.

It was summer. I’m cleaning as usual in Block 5, till I went to clean one of the messiest room on this planet, I mean flat. God, imagine all the mess. Luckily, it’s not my responsibility to tidy up the student’s room. A gentle reminder is enough as told by my Supervisor.  It’s the first room on the right as soon after you entered the door to the flat’s corridor. His name is John. A jovial, hippy second year undergraduate student with long blonde hair and loves to wear British military camouflage print tank top with a pair of light blue stone washed jeans almost every time I saw him.

We always had this conversation about all the cool stuff he likes to cook. Since John is an average English lad who just loves to cook, he always had this couple of books in his room about cooking and one of his books I found lying on the floor underneath all his other clothes was by Gordon Ramsay, the MasterChef. I somehow forgot the title of the book but I remembered Mr. Ramsay’s image on the front hard cover wearing his signature chefs’ whites outfit without any traditional chef hat on, showing his spiky blonde hair.

Gordon Ramsay's photo courtesy of www.amazon.co.uk

I then asked John who is in the middle of dressing up to go cook for his lunch, ‘’So, you’re a fan of Ramsay’s cooking?’’. John then answered ‘’ Yeah, of course’’. I then replied ‘’What about Jamie Oliver? I liked Oliver’’ I said which made John quickly responded saying, ‘’Oliver really? I must say I prefer Gordon Ramsay style of cooking over Jamie Oliver. Oliver uses too much of a method and ingredients and stuff every time he cooks. Ramsay on the other hand is much more straight forward and is simple to follow’’ which made me think in a millisecond that John is somehow right about what he said.

This is because of what I learned from watching a couple of his cooking demos on his YouTube channel on how to clean prawns the right way and how to cook Fried Flat Rice Noodle to name a few. To be honest, the demos were indeed so simple, and the steps are easy to follow even for a primary school toddler.

I even had tips from Mr. Ramsay on how to cut a whole chicken into parts like a boss without slicing through the bone but to use your fingers and press against the joints to find the tendon and then cut them using boning knife instead of cleaver like the one that my Afghani Muslim butchers used at the city local market where I do my weekly groceries. Credits go to you John on this one.

Then again, I asked myself why did I enjoy watching Oliver’s cooking show as early from his days on television like The Naked Chef somewhere in the 90s and many years after that and the answer was because I didn’t cook much back then during my heydays. A big exception for breakfast where I was told by my late father that I’m an expert when it comes to making a greasy vegetarian English Breakfast of scramble eggs, butter toasts and sausages without fried tomatoes and mushrooms somehow mysteriously missing from the menu.

This concludes that watching someone’s getting their hands dirty and getting your own hands dirty for cooking are two different things, at least when put into action. Enough talk, to me when it comes to home cooking, it’s always Ramsay over Oliver, anytime of the week. Just watch any of his demos on his YouTube channel on www.youtube.com/user/gordonramsay.