Humble Pie Read Online Free PDF Page A

had worked out that I was working at Harvey’s , too. He went mad, but he’s an amazing guy. He lent me some money so that I didn’t have to go to Harvey’s any more.
    ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Just pay me back later.’
    At last, I could concentrate again.
    Albert asked me if I would go and work with him at a place called Hotel Diva, a ski resort in the French Alps, in a place called Isola. I went for one season and it was amazing, a kind of working holiday. It was somewhere to start learning French, and to start understanding France. I was only twenty-three, and it seemed like a miracle. At Stratford High, lots of the kids wouldgo off on skiing trips – but never us, because we couldn’t afford it. Finally, I was skiing!
    The kitchen was a challenge, as my French was so poor – I couldn’t tell anyone what to do. Jean-Claude, who’s now my head waiter at my restaurant Royal Hospital Road, worked at Le Gavroche . He came out to Diva with us, and he’d have to translate what customers said. But it was a great experience. There was a cookery school there as well, and people would ski during the day, take cookery lessons at night, and then enjoy a gourmet dinner.
    One night, we had to put on an eight-course tasting menu for a massive group of Mail on Sunday readers. I was running the fish and the meat, and my head chef, Alan, was running the starter. It was a French fish stew. He’d made it that morning, but instead of putting it in the fridge to cool, he put it in these stainless steel buckets outside in the snow. The stuff was freezing over on the surface, while beneath, it was still warm. This made it fester.
    Champagne and canapés were served, and everyone sat down for dinner.
    ‘Fucking hell,’ Alan said. ‘Get me the starter, Ramsay.’
    That was when he remembered that it was still outside. I scraped the ice off, pushed my fingersinto a bucket, and it was horrible, like hot cheese. I came running in with the buckets.
    ‘You’d better take a look,’ I said.
    Then in walks Albert, screaming that he wants to taste a cup of the stew.
    Then, rather than admit his mistake, Alan brought it to the boil, skimmed off the froth and the natural yeast, and tipped in a bit of brandy. Then he gave it to Albert. Well, fuck me. He went ballistic. He got hold of the bucket and he just threw it. He was aiming for Alan, but it was the kitchen porter who took most of it. There was saffron and tomatoes bubbling across every wall.
    What happened next? Albert went out and made a speech. And while he made that speech, we made fish stew from scratch. I spread it between six pans, and there were fourteen of us dashing between them, crushing it, blitzing it and skimming it – eighty portions in all. What a nightmare!
    From the ski slopes, I made my way – at last – to Paris. There, I went down to an even lower salary, but believe me, as a Brit in a French kitchen, they weren’t going to pay me proper money. It worked out at about £480 a month.
    My first job was at the Guy Savoy restaurant, which had two Michelin stars. There, I learned total respect for food, and how you can make something out of nothing. Take a leek. At Harvey’s , we would take a fourteen-inch leek and use half an inch of white stuff to finish a soup. The rest of it would be binned. In France, you’d use the best white bit for the soup, but then you’d use the rest for a sauce, and the very top in a staff meal. Nothing went in the bin. It was all about precision and freshness. My eyes were opened by the way that they roasted the most amazing capons and guinea fowl, and by the way the chef would order in such small quantities: sixteen tomatoes, or a dozen shallots, or just two sea bass.
    It took me three months to get upstairs. They put me on fish, one of the most difficult stations of all. It was a baptism of fire. Fish demands precision. Thirty seconds’ too much cooking can mean that bass is dry, ruined. But the minute I was there, I was away, there was