Food Heroes - Gary Rhodes
The anniversary of Gary Rhodes’ sudden death three years ago on 26 November 2019 prompted me to finally write a few overdue words about the man who had a huge influence in making me a more adventurous and serious home cook.
Mrs Cheoff worked much harder than I did in her career. I began to take over much of the cooking of our evening meals so that she could eat reasonably soon after completing the ‘overtime’ which came with her teaching of children and the management of other teachers.
The first series of ‘Great British Menu’ came along in 2006 just as I was gaining a little confidence in the kitchen. Gary Rhodes faced Atul Kochhar in one of the rounds.
At that time I mostly recognised Gary Rhodes from a daft TV advert in which he scaled a cliff to earnestly inform a sausage-cooking camper "the secret is not to prick them." I must have been aware of him from his BBC shows since 1994 but I probably limited my attention due to silly jealousy over the fact that he was just a bit more of an alluringly handsome bugger than me!
Gary didn’t make it past this stage in the competition but his dessert impressed me enough to wonder if I might try to make it at home. I soon decided to cook it as part of a meal to celebrate Mrs Cheoff’s birthday a few weeks later.
Here’s a clip from the original programme showing some of Gary’s preparation for ‘Kentish Apple Mousse with Toasted Honey Syrup Apples’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YkyDgM94Oc
Some - perhaps not all - recipes were available on the BBC Food website soon after programmes had aired. I was able to access Gary’s dessert details.
This was the most complicated recipe I had attempted so far. I read through unfamiliar techniques and processes and bought ingredients. Several hours spent over two days left me with all elements ready for final cooking.
The almond sponge base seemed to have worked very well. While not completely in the dark, I was working in very dim territory with Italian meringue and a jelly preparation. The mousse was poured on top of the sponge and chilled in the fridge to set.
The jelly was prepared last and poured over what I hoped was a successful mousse. The jelly mix, although cool, immediately began to seep into the mousse. I persevered with more setting time in the fridge.
With already pin-pricked confidence I finally attempted to serve a portion. On unfastening the spring-form tin a disaster waiting to happen began to happen. We were not in burst dam territory; more like the realms of a mudslide with sweeter components.
Oh dear. Even the sponge was now soggy from contact with a far too fluid mousse. Jelly simply added itself to the slurry. I remember Mrs Cheoff insisting we try some. After chasing it round the plate we quietly nodded in downcast agreement. I’m not even convinced that I’d managed to extract full flavours from all elements.
My crest had fallen way below a Gary Rhodes hairdo without styling gel. I have never attempted the recipe since.
In any case, I had stupidly lost Gary’s dessert recipe and it had disappeared from the BBC website.
The Great British Menu kept on coming to TV screens. I didn’t make Mark Hix’s 2007 pudding winner immediately but Glynn Purnell’s was served from our kitchen just weeks after the recipe was released in 2008.
So, you see, I hadn’t lost heart. However I had been made painfully aware of the care needed to understand and make a successful recipe with new, tricky process and technique. And was determined to still have a go.
A slim insert from ‘Good Food’ magazine had been in our kitchen since 1998 as the only printed sample of Gary’s cookbooks. All the other books you see below have been catch-up purchases in the last four years.
Gary’s voice comes through in all those books. He is not afraid to introduce a little food history or to include some details from his own personal and professional life which underpin his recipes.
But there on the right is the book which, 15 years later, after nagging away at the internet, I found to contain ‘the’ recipe.
No. I still have not tried it again. Yet. I will. I really will.
Two books, ‘Spring into Summer’ and ‘Autumn into Winter‘ make up ‘The Cookery Year’, published in 2002. I am so glad I also bought the revised single volume paperback ‘compilation’ edition which gathers all safely in and contains something like a hundred further recipes.
In his introduction Gary leaves us with these lines which, he feels, reflect the message to be found in the four seasons.
“My father was a blacksmith... the tender bouquets of vegetables he brought were so full of flavour and aroma that all that was needed was the addition of a few of the big rosy strips of pork fat which sizzled in the cast iron pot.
This was the ‘cuisine heureuse’, which consisted of marrying natural products with one another, of finding simple harmonies and enhancing the flavour of each ingredient by contact with another complementary flavour... It is the very antithesis of cooking to impress.”
If I ever need grounding in the kitchen, that reminder of the earthy basics which should be at the heart of cooking will always serve me well. But I still know damn well that I’ll attempt a fancy pants, show-off dish at regular intervals.
Gary’s iconic hairstyle, in meringue form. And what many, including my 95 year-old mother (!), might describe as ‘come-to-bed’ eyes. For me they are also sending a clear, calmer but still sensual message.
”Go on. Get in your kitchen and cook something special…”
My copy of ‘Gary Rhodes’ Sweet Dreams’ (Ah, yes, indeed. Sweet dreams to you too, Gary) was bought at a National Trust bookshop. Most certainly signed by Gary for someone else. But. ‘Happy Cooking’? Gary must have written that to me. Most certainly. My cooking has been made so much happier by exploring his legacy of food writing and especially his food ideas.
Hmm? Oh. Of course. You’ll be the first to hear it when I do finally make ‘Kentish Apple Mousse with Toasted Honey Syrup Apples’!
As far as I understand, the portraits of Gary used here were taken by photographer Sian Irvine
@sian_irvine_photography