Our Verdict: Ramsay in 10

Maureen: This was a surprising success.



I say surprising because I wasn’t quite sure this would deliver when I suggested we give it a try. Would it be another sloppily-produced cookbook that sells because of the celebrity chef on the cover? Would the premise of getting dinner done in 10 minutes actually deliver?



Once we muscled past the idea that we needed to get every dish done in 10 minutes– honestly, it was too stressful– we had some really good meals. But Gordon himself says in all the YouTube videos that we shouldn’t worry about the deadline. It should also be noted for the record that he has everything prepped and ready before he starts cooking, so really this cookbook ought to be called, “Cooked in 10 minutes” instead.



Gordon Ramsay, to be fair, has attracted his fair share of controversy. Kirstin wrote about his somewhat problematic approach to making a curry . I lost a lot of respect for him when he wrote that women can immediately be classified into “divisions” like football (premiere, first, second, third) . (I met him in 2005 at one of his restaurants. I’ve spent more time than is strictly healthy trying to guess where he put me.) His reputation seemed got a bit of a boost when people said how nice he was to the children on Masterchef Junior, but I would argue that the bare minimum a human being can do is be nice to children.



Back to the cookbook. Like I said above, it was a surprising success. We had a lot of tasty meals. All the recipes worked. But would I recommend it to a friend for them to buy it? I’m not sure I would. It didn’t reinvent the wheel, and there wasn’t anything in here that I haven’t seen a million times before.



If I had a cookbook classification for, “It was fine, it fed us,” (which is what we say about meals that were good, but didn’t blow the doors off), that would be the one I’d use for this one. In fact, I think that phrase works here too: “It was fine. It fed us.”