You might imagine that it is notoriety which has made Gordon Ramsay one of the best-known chefs in these islands. The controversial television series, the volatile behaviour, the scrambling after culinary stars and the public spats with critics and former chums have certainly kept Ramsay in the tabloids.
But, more simply, and more importantly, there is one good reason why Ramsay is notorious: among chefs, he is a hugely influential cook. Right from the publication of his first book, Passion for Flavour, written when Ramsay was chef at the highly regarded Aubergine in London and before he moved to his eponymous restaurant, this footballer-turned-chef showed a style of cooking which managed to take classical ideas and steer them in exciting and creative directions.
"I had amazing feedback from chefs with the first book," says Ramsay. "They were ringing me up within 24 hours of the book appearing, and I was saying, `Oh, is it out now?'," he says.
Its impact and influence is all the more remarkable when one considers that it contained little that was new. Ramsay called his use of basic sauces and essential elements "building blocks", for example, but the French-American chef, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, had coined that phrase a decade earlier, in a little-known book, Simple Food.
And some of the subsequently influential ideas, such as serving soups cappuccino-style, or adapting the meuille-feuille style for starters, or giving revised recipes for classic sauces such as sauce vierge or sauce antiboise or a vanilla jus, or adapting the tarte tatin technique to work with pears, had - in one form or another - been around for some time.
But, somehow, it was Ramsay who caught the attention of his culinary peers, who flocked to these ideas and have been churning them out in restaurants for the past five years. The attraction for his fellow chefs is easy to see - this food is very lush, yet very rigorous. It shows off technique; it demands hard work; it is rich, special-occasion cooking.
"I had just come back from France after being there for three years, and I was obsessed," he says, matter-of-factly. "I was 26, I had just opened my first restaurant, and I was just exploding with ideas." But if the volatility and drive were always present, what perhaps explains Ramsay's success and his influence is his style: "I have an easy, comfortable style of eating. I like to eat three courses and not have to go to bed for two days afterwards". In other words, his food works because, using classic ideas, it strikes a fine balance between sumptuousness and lightness.
But Ramsay has taken a different slant with his new book, A Chef For All Seasons, for this time out the focus is much more on dishes which the domestic cook and the domestic kitchen can produce. "I wanted to take away any sense of intimidation in the new book," he says. "Obviously I've changed since the first book, so many things have changed, and I want to bring this style of food into the home, I know how important that is."
While the book will influence keen amateur cooks, I suspect that many of its ideas will, nevertheless, be making their way into professional kitchens also. I expect that I will be eating a lot of caramel balsamic ice cream over the next several years, and also that shallot and mushroom marmalade will be appearing on more than a few menus, and Ramsay may even be the person who succeeds in getting kitchens to prepare salt cod, which he makes as a salt cod pate with a cherry tomato dressing.
The book's basic theme is a seasonal one, local produce being used when it is ready, but in fact this is largely a chimera, for in the various introductions, Ramsay admits to flying in foods from overseas, the same as every other chef. In truth, it's another book about Gordon Ramsay and Gordon Ramsay's cooking. "I always put my personal perception in the work," he says. "It's real, it's me and it works."
A Chef For All Seasons, by Gordon Ramsay, Quadrille, £25 in the UK)