Easy Roast Beef Recipe Biography
Source:- Google.com.pkGordon Ramsay is telling me how he is going to win his next triathlon. “I need all the participants kicking my a--- [before the race] and secretly, while they’re sleeping, I’ll be training.” The television chef, 47, doesn’t just like competition; he can’t live without it. “I’m useless unless I’m under pressure,” he says. “With pressure, commitment is healthy. When I don’t have pressure, I’m unhealthy. That’s the way I drive.”
During our interview at Bread Street Kitchen, his restaurant in the City, I find that Ramsay has a love-hate relationship with pressure. He needs it to focus, but too much can push him into profanities and the search for a release.
As well as the restaurants, the TV shows and the family trips out with the Beckhams in Los Angeles, Ramsay is an amateur but serious athlete. He has raced in 15 marathons, three ultra-marathons, three half-Ironmans (a triathlon ending in a half-marathon) and the world’s toughest Ironman competition in Hawaii. He is now preparing for another half-Ironman in Staffordshire next June, and is asking 100 members of the public to compete with him. Members of GR100, Ramsay’s team, pay a fee and receive training days and kit. The money raised will go to charities, including Cancer Research and Scottish Spina Bifida Association.
Ramsay already has his first participant: his wife. “Tana wants to beat me. She doesn’t have much time on her hands, but she’s dedicated. You’ll see her in Richmond Park on a Sunday morning, running, with all the kids [they have four] behind on their bikes. She’s seriously disciplined.” Ramsay won’t train with her because she is competition. “She said last week, 'I’m so excited about the 70.3 [the half-Ironman]. Could we do the bike on a tandem?’ I said, 'Are you kidding me? We are not doing a tri-tandem. It’s not happening. No chance.’ ”
There’s no doubt that Ramsay is strong willed and driven, but today he does not come across as the fierce, impatient ogre you might expect from Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. Instead, he is charming and open, proud of his children, passionate about cooking.
He talks fast, as if racing to keep up with his thoughts. He is funny, self-deprecating and an engaging storyteller. He rarely swears (by his standards). At 6ft 2in, with his shock of blond hair (the result of an impressive £30,000 hair transplant) and black biker jacket, he has an imposing presence.
Ramsay worries he currently looks like “a bodybuilder” because he has been doing so much weight training. He has had to give the bike and the running a rest after pulling his hamstring. “Tana keeps saying to me, 'You’ve got to start wearing baggy T-shirts because you look like you’re going through a midlife crisis.’ It’s not me. It’s just the training.”
Without the training, Ramsay fears he would be a wreck. “I’ve seen so many chefs crash and burn,” he says. “Training is my release. I would be lost without it. It gives me a reason to pull myself out [of the restaurants]. It’s given me time to myself.” Ramsay recalls being in the water at Kailua-Kona, the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii last year. “I thought, 'S--- this is extraordinary. It’s 5.15am. We are about to swim 3.8k. I look under the water and it’s like Finding Nemo: there is this amazing array of fish. I knew then that if I was going to continue to run all these restaurants, I needed to stay fit. This was the way to do it.”
Ramsay was born in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, and grew up in Stratford upon Avon. Sport, rather than cooking, was his first love and he dreamt of becoming a footballer. Such was his desire, he even once claimed he had played for Glasgow Rangers, before getting an injury. He was actually a trialist. Football was a way to escape – and impress – his violent, alcoholic father, a Rangers fan: “I focused on it to block out the s---storm going on at home.” His ability to focus was his way of coping with a tough childhood. “I don’t get depressed,” he says. “I can avoid it. I’ve got that instinct.”
Ramsay ran his first marathon in 2001. “My father-in-law [Chris Hutcheson] told me I was putting on weight. He was right. I ran the London Marathon that year in 4.57. After the finish line, he said, 'You did well. It wasn’t a good time, but it wasn’t a bad time.’ I like that tough love. I took it as a challenge.” Ramsay has been running marathons ever since. In 2004, he missed the sub-3.30 mark by 14 seconds. “I put that down to stopping for photographs and autographs,” he says. “Had I not said yes and taken some water and stolen a Jelly Baby, I would have done it in under 3.30. I am going to break 3.30. I won’t stop until I do.”
But marathons aren’t enough to keep Ramsay going. “You can rock up and wing that stuff,” he says. “I’ve come off a plane before from Melbourne and the next morning ran a marathon. I’ve been round Richmond Park three times with Jack [his son] on his bike the night before a marathon. It’s in your mind after you’ve done a dozen.”
Three years ago, Ramsay met Will Usher, now his triathlon trainer. Usher was giving him self-defence classes before Gordon Behind Bars, a series in which the chef showed prisoners how to cook. He mentioned triathlons and offered to take him cycling. “One of the first rides we did was on the first Sunday in January,” says Ramsay. “It was as frosty as hell. Everyone else had those covers on their feet to keep them dry. My toes were frozen for four hours because I didn’t have big enough covers [his feet are size 15].”
He describes it as if it was a pretty miserable induction. Did he not want to give up? “No, no, no. I didn’t want to go home. The one thing I don’t do is quit.”
Ramsay continued with the Sunday morning pedals and put a triathlon in the diary. He chose the hardest one, Kailua-Kona, last October. “Before Kona, someone said to me, 'Have you ever done a triathlon?’ I said, 'I’ve never done one of f------ these things in my life. But I’m very determined; I’m headstrong. So don’t worry, I’ll get through it.’ They insisted I did one first.”
Ramsay signed up for the Ironman 70.3 Silverman in Las Vegas the month before. “It was insane,” he says. “The heat was incredible. I had no idea about the hills. Afterwards, I sat in my bed and thought holy c---! In three weeks, we’re going to be in Hawaii. So I put my head down [and trained]. If it’s easy, I can’t do it. I’m not interested in going for a 5k run.”
Kona is certainly more than that. “We were up at three in the morning, and I hadn’t got to sleep before half 11 the night before. I remember being at the start. It was this extraordinary moment. It was quiet and you could hear everybody’s footsteps in the sand pounding away as they moved towards the water. I thought, 'S---, this is insane.’ ”
Ramsay swam against currents – “There were all these turtles and the seals were biting some of the athletes” – and pedalled against headwinds and crosswinds until he reached the run. “It was ridiculous. It was 95 degrees [35C] at eight o’clock in the evening. I lost 22lb in a day. 22lb! I drank at every water station. 22lb! My hamstring went at mile 15. I was limping over the finish line. It was extraordinary, amazing.”
To celebrate [he finished in 14.04.48], Ramsay went back to the hotel and ordered tomato soup, a Kobe beef burger with chips and cheesecake. “Do you know what happened next?” he says. “I lay on the bed and fell asleep. I woke up four hours later. Everything had solidified and was stone cold. I was so p----- off. I had to settle for a bowl of porridge. It was the only thing they were serving at seven in the morning.” To finish the world’s hardest triathlon, Ramsay has been through rigorous physical and mental training. He likes the discipline and can find the time because his day starts early. “I am awake as soon as I open my eyes, whether that’s five past four or five past three,” he says. He trains on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and goes for a big ride at the weekend.
It’s easy, he says, to fit training around travelling. “The turbo trainer comes everywhere. I carry this thing through airports and everyone looks at me as if I’m some weirdo with my breathing apparatus.” Abroad, he can always find pools, too, or go for a run.
Back home, Ramsay enjoys running along the Thames at dawn (“There’s something quite stunning about London when it’s peaceful”). He doesn’t run to music (“I get irritated by it”). And he’s not, he says, the most graceful runner. “I don’t run like a gazelle. It’s impossible. I’ve got size 15 feet. It’s a big advantage swimming. But when it comes to running, my feet are monstrous.”
The main joy of cycling appears to be the opportunity to sample village tea rooms. “It’s like I’m on The Great British Bake Off. I’m finding these amazing little tea rooms in villages with these carrot cakes and Victoria sponges that are beyond belief.” About three months ago, he did something “really naughty”. “I’d been cycling for five hours and I ate the whole f---ing cake. It was a 9in Victoria sponge. I felt so bad.”
Ramsay does have a food regime aside from cake. “Fuel is so important. The triathlete’s lifestyle is like the chef’s. I don’t have breakfast, lunch and dinner. I eat small portions five times a day. A chef is always tasting; they would never sit down for three meals.” Ramsay has cut down on dairy, is using more chilli for flavour and prefers slow-braised meat. “I’m very picky, very finickity,” he says. “I can tell you 500 ways to serve a bowl of porridge. I have the most amazing fig rolls and granola. I love Gu Salted Caramel Gel.”
Should you fear from all this talk of races that Ramsay is running away from the kitchen and on to the track, I can assure you he is even more passionate talking about food than he is about training. “Jaffa Cakes are delicious. They’re comfort food. For the GR100, I’ll design a Victoria sponge/Jaffa Cake and I’ll eat that the night before. Then I’ll have my son riding alongside me feeding me quarters at every stage.”
The hardest thing about the physical side of triathlons, says Ramsay, is pacing himself. “I’m like a rat up a drainpipe. I go for it. But I will get better. I have to remind myself that even beating my swim by 10 minutes is nothing at the end of a 12-hour Ironman.”
He has taken to the mental training well. Both cooking to Ramsay’s level of perfection and competing in long races in extreme conditions demand focus. “During a race, I take all the negatives of the week and I knock them off one by one,” says Ramsay, “and then I look at all the positives for the following week and I go through those.” There’s also “the three-second rule”. “DNF, Did Not Finish, is something our coach screams at us: the thought goes in for one second; it sits for one second; and it goes out for one second.”
Both the mental and physical aspects of training have given Ramsay energy and perspective to work on his restaurants. He talks about a grouper that he ate last week in Singapore with intensity and vivacity. “It was with this amazing merguez sausage and came with a roasted cauliflower purée. It was the most delicious thing I have had in my whole life. Within 24 hours of landing [in the UK], I had started to re-create it. It won’t be done for another couple of weeks. But I will not let it go.” Ramsay’s chefs say he is easier to work with after he’s been training. “They always ask my PA if I’ve trained this morning. If I’ve trained, then it’s great for them because I’m less hyper.”
Racing gives him a reason to step back from the stove. “I keep that level of excitement so that when I do cook, it’s magical. Cooking’s relaxing. I can lose myself in it. It doesn’t matter who’s chasing: the Michelin Guides, Fox Television, MasterChef. I can close the doors and cook.” He has been able to spend more time with his family – particularly by encouraging his children to train with him. Jack, his 14-year-old son, “swims brilliantly” and loves freediving. “He’s got no fear.”
Ramsay has also been helping his youngest daughter, Matilda, 12, with her first cookery show, Tillywood, which airs on CBBC early next year. “She says to me, 'Daddy, your food’s posh; mine’s real.’ At the end of every programme, we have a heart to heart. We talk about dos and don’ts, and then we always come to the topic of boys.”
All the Ramsay children cook. Tilly’s speciality is a sausage and lentil casserole; Jack is “obsessed” with omelettes; and Holly, 14, and Megan, 15, make “the most extraordinary blueberry muffins”. “Cooking sets them up for life,” says Ramsay. “Even if they don’t pursue it as a career, just knowing how to cook for yourself is as important as geography, history and French. I never had that opportunity. My escape was football. They haven’t had the same insecurities, but they still have to find their passion.”
With Gordon and Tana both taking part in the Staffordshire event in June, the Ramsay house in south London is already buzzing with triathlon fever. “There’s a countdown in our house. Every day, Jack is like, 'Dad, it’s 222 days until Mum kicks your a---’. The kids have got their bets laid out. It’s insane. I’m the fittest I’ve ever been. I’ve got to go to Staffordshire thinking I’m going to f------ win, even though I know I’m going to get my a--- kicked.”
The Gordon Ramsay Foundation is offering Telegraph readers the chance to race in the new Ironman 70.3 Staffordshire 2015. Members of the GR100, an exclusive club led by the chef, will benefit from training days with experts, meetings with Olympic triathletes and top-of-the-range kit. While this is hardly for the faint-hearted, Ramsay is not looking for seasoned athletes, but dedicated, passionate and driven people who want to take on a life-changing challenge. There is a £2,500 fee if you are successful. You will be expected to raise a further £2,500. To become part of the team, go to gordonramsay.com/GR100telegraph.
Gordon Ramsay will be sharing training recipes and tips in The Telegraph in the run-up to the Ironman 70.3 Staffordshire in June. Follow @TelegraphLife
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