More lamb please!

Okay, I'm home sick and General Hospital is on, so I'm not going to spend too much time telling you all how delicious this lamb with fried bread recipe is. You'll just have to take my word for it; these photos should help.



I should mention the neat trick we learned from Gordon: Cutting slits through the edges of the lamb steak keeps it from curling up in the pan while it cooks.



Anchovies! Gross!



Home-made croutons! Yum!



Fried lamb steak topped with fried bread and anchovy-parsley paste FTW.

Souffle Skills

If there's one cliche test of a chef's ability, it's the souffle. Will it rise? Will it collapse? Will it be too eggy? Too dry? Gordon sneers at such worries. Gordon puts it in the Basic Skills chapter.



This is the kind of cooking that we generally fail at: taking a pile of ingredients and turning them into more than the sum of their parts through the mysterious alchemical process that is baking.



This time, though, we were paying attention. We like us some souffle, and besides which, this was a challenge. After the cake debacle we couldn't afford another disappointment.



Also, chocolate.



This recipe calls for the eggs' yolks and whites to be separated, whisked independently, and then folded together. Why? Alchemy!



Or maybe it was just so that we could see the beauty inherent in the soft peaks of whipped egg whites.



Once the eggs are recombined, it's into the chocolate-lined ramekins, into the oven, and into the realm of uncertainty. Fingers crossed, now we can but hope.



And sometimes, just sometimes, hope is enough, and your souffle rises, and it is beautiful.



And sometimes, though you might not know what you've done to deserve it, it might not just rise, it might also be epically delicious. But hey, it's just a basic skill.

Japanese Tacos

Webster's Dictionary defines the word taco as "a Mexican food that consists of a folded and usually fried piece of thin bread (called a tortilla) that is filled with meat, cheese, lettuce, etc." Gordon Ramsey's Ultimate Cookery Course defines it as "a toasted corn tortilla" and adds wasabi to the list of ingredients. Apparently, good Mexican food is even harder to come by in England than it is in Seattle.



All the components of this dish were pretty simple to make.

Step 1: Fry up the steaks and leave them to rest in a miso marinade.



Step 2: Prepare the pickled cabbage.



Step 3: Add a dollop of wasabi to some mayo to give it a little kick



Step 4: Fry the tortillas and wrap them around a rolling pin; "in this form they are called 'tacos.'" Thanks, Gordon. Also, this didn't work.



Step 5: Slice the meat while somehow keeping your fingers crossed that it's not totally rare inside...hey, it could have been worse!



Step 6: Put everything together to make something that resembles a taco and enjoy!



There's a reason you don't see Japanese food and Mexican food together very often. The flavor combination was...interesting. It's not really something I'm dying to try again soon.