Every so often, someone brings out a cookery book which is so lavish in its production that it seems entirely inappropriate to bring it into the kitchen and risk getting gravy on it. If ever a cookbook seemed to fit this category it is Gordon Ramsay’s *** Chef.

Encased in its own silver slip case, it looks like something you might open at a wedding and get the bride and groom to sign. Its pristine white cover has nothing but the title and Ramsay’s name embossed in silver on it, and it’s so big and heavy that it should come with its own lectern.

Reviewers on Amazon warned that only a foolhardy amateur cook would try and cook a recipe from it at home. “I really wouldn’t suggest anyone other than a professional cook attempt any of them,” said one. But what was the point of three Michelin stars if it meant the cookbook didn’t function as a cookbook? So I did what any normal, irritated person would do and invited six friends to supper.

To be fair, my irritation had already been triggered by a cookery book also recently published that seemed to fit the egotistical-to-the-point-of-diminished utility category even more, Melanie Dunea’s My Last Supper. Dunea, a New York-based photographer (for Vanity Fair among other things), asked 50 of the world’s most famous chefs to describe the meal they would choose to eat, with whom and in what setting, for their last meal on earth.

The answers are mostly predictable. Jamie Oliver opts for a big pot of spaghetti all’arrabiata, homemade rice pudding, the sofa with Jules and the telly in the background. Instead of photographs of the meals there are glossy portraits of the chefs in the naughty-but-glamorous style of Vanity Fair covers – Anthony Bourdain, chef at Brasserie Les Halles in New York and author of Kitchen Confidential, for instance, is pictured naked holding a large uncooked bone – while the recipes are squeezed unceremoniously into a few pages at the back. Mustering up any sort of appetite when you’re being asked to contemplate a naked man holding a bloody bone is surely beyond the stretch of even the most ardent foodie.

So it was *** Chef I pulled from its sumptuous sleeve the night before my dinner party to select a menu. Ten minutes later I called my guests telling them dinner was rescheduled for four days’ time. “Yes, you need to set aside four days to make anything in Gordon Ramsay’s books and even then it’s a risk without a committed sous-chef,” one guest e-mailed back.

*** Chef begins with a mouth-watering photographic portfolio of 16 starters, 17 mains and 17 desserts, presented as they are served at Ramsay’s eponymous restaurant in Chelsea. Then come the recipes, a double-page spread devoted to each one.

I chose by a process of elimination. “Cooking fish is one of the biggest tests of any chef,” I read. “It needs a deft touch and is much less forgiving than a piece of meat.” That ruled out fish. I also ruled out carpaccios and anything with more than one meat/fish ingredient.

I ruled out anything that looked like it should be entered for the Turner Prize (the raspberry, lemon and basil millefeuille) and anything with the words “time-consuming” in the recipe. I ruled out ravioli of lobster, langoustine and salmon as I knew that was Ramsay’s signature dish and my confidence was waning fast. I ruled out anything involving foie gras and snails because – well, just because.

In the end I went for roasted loin of venison with braised red cabbage and parsnip chips, because my mum is good at red cabbage and I could always ring her if things got sticky.

To start I chose scallops with sweetcorn purée and quail’s eggs, on the grounds that it had the words “simple” and “quick” in the description, and for dessert there’d be caramelised apple tarte tatin with vanilla ice-cream, which was comfortingly familiar.

The next couple of days were spent hunting down the best ingredients, with various Ramsay rallying cries for perfection ricocheting around my head. (“Every fillet of beef, every saddle of hare, every basket of truffles is a fight you have to win. You’re up against yourself every time.”)

I made stock from a kilo of raw chicken bones and a kilo-and-a-half of pre-roasted veal bones. I read that in Ramsay’s restaurants the stocks are left to bubble overnight, so I took this as permission to go out to a party and came home four hours later to an intense, wonderful smell – and barely any liquid left in the pot. Aha, I thought, the battles with myself have begun.

“In a three-star restaurant we expect cooking of the highest quality – for it to show flair, finesse and balance,” I read, so far with just 200ml of red wine sauce to show for nearly two whole days of work. “But more than that, we expect the cook’s personality to show through.” Fine, I thought, putting my feet up. I’ll just let the knackered side of myself come through.

But anxiety and pride won out. By the afternoon of the dinner I had sweet, buttery red cabbage, I had smooth parsnip purée and lumpy sweetcorn purée. I had olive oil infused with truffles. I had dried porcini standing in as fresh ceps. I had quarters of Pink Lady apples and precisely measured 20in puff pastry rounds chilling in the fridge. The only thing I didn’t have was a sous-chef.

When he finally turned up, three hours late, he found me lying prostrate on the kitchen floor. “Tread carefully,” I told him. “A spell in Gordon’s kitchen has been compared to a tour of duty in Vietnam.” He took one look at my devastated kitchen and went, bizarrely, to get the toolbox.

As soon as guests arrived they were enlisted as commis chefs, given truffles to grate and parsnips to peel into strips. My sous-chef redeemed himself by his inventive use of limited resources: an upside-down egg cup trimmed the fried quail’s eggs into perfect rounds, a teapot ensured the red wine sauce poured smoothly, a pair of pliers lifted hot handle-less pans from hob to oven. I started to develop aspirations I hadn’t planned on. Not only would this meal taste good, it would look good. “A good meal is like a well-orchestrated piece of chamber music,” Gordon had written. Yes, yes, so it is! I thought.

By the end of the evening I’d fired all but one of my commis chefs for incompetence, or for eating parsnip chips ahead of time. We’d used every utensil and piece of cutlery I possessed. The garden was strewn with washing-up that wouldn’t fit in the sink.

The meal itself had its faults – the scallops were cold by the time we’d fried the last quail’s egg (you try frying 21 in a row without getting shell in the pan), and the main course didn’t arrive until 10.30 – but the food was, though I say so myself, completely awesome. We talked about little other than the food and wine (three superlative ones from Berry Bros) all evening. “That was off-the-charts wonderful,” said a friend-turned-fired-commis-chef the next day. “Dinner at your place will never be the same again.”

And there’s the rub. I would now categorise *** Chef as a fully functional cookery book. The recipes are clear and easy to follow and the pictures show you exactly how each dish should look. Yes, you need to balance the book on a chair with a doorstop to keep it open, give up several days of your life, use expensive ingredients, and have friends who don’t mind doing half the work or being told off for doing it wrong. But this book taught me that an average chef can cook restaurant-style food at home. The thing is, what sensible person would choose to put themselves through the ordeal?

Susan Elderkin’s latest novel is ‘The Voices’ (Harper Perennial)
‘*** Chef’, by Gordon Ramsay, Quadrille, 256pp, £40;
‘My Last Supper’, by Melanie Dunea, Bloomsbury, 216pp, £25

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Star suppliers
The venison, bones and quail’s eggs for this meal were supplied by Lidgate, 110 Holland Park Ave, London tel: +44 (0)20-7727 8243; the groceries and scallops by Kennards, 57 Lambs Conduit Street, London www.kennardsgoodfoods.com; and the wine by Berry Bros Rudd, 3 St James’s St, London www.bbr.com