Formerly Gordon Ramsay’s right hand man, Marcus Wareing‘s star seems to be on the up as that of his former boss takes a battering. Wareing’s restaurant at the Berkelywas recently named Best Restaurant in London according to Harden’s Guide while Restaurant Gordon Ramsay was voted the capital’s most over-priced. Having had a well publicised and bitter fall out with Ramsay, Wareing wouldn’t be human if he didn’t feel the slightest shiver of schadenfreude.
Having said that, revenge is one dish that is not on the menu in Nutmeg and Custard, Wareing’s latest recipe book. Instead, the handsome tome contains over 150 wide-ranging recipes that run from rice crispie squares to rather more exotic Vietnamese fish cakes. The glue that binds them all is that Wareing reckons all the recipes are easily accomplished by even the least experienced kitchen hand.
I’m not entirely sure about that claim (his custard squares look simple but offer plenty of opportunities for the unwary to cock it up) but certainly the vast majority are easily do-able by anyone who recognises which is the business end of a whisk.
The recipes are divided into slightly arbitrary sections such as weekends, orient, popcorn and grillroom. This isn’t the easiest to use if you are looking for, say, a starter idea rather than a random dish that falls into Wareing’s definition of the spice route, another of his chapter headings.
That said, it’s fun to browse and recipe titles such as hot and sour sweet chilli crab or chocolate and hazelnut meringues are the sort of thing likely to push you towards the kitchen whatever heading they come under.
The real value of the book, for me anyway, lies with the tips in which a home kitchen can produce the more restauranty dishes without resorting to overly cheffy techniques. Before reading Nutmeg and Custard, I would have thought long and hard before attempting to make Chinese style crispy duck but Wareing’s recipe looks fairly straightforward. Impressive results for easy techniques sounds good to me.
Nutmeg and Custard is published by Bantam Press, £25.