Day 10: What separates us from the apes?

My cooking so far has felt a little flustered and disorganised, particularly towards the end of a session. I put extra effort into today’s order of work in the hope of giving myself more time and space. Instead of weighing out ingredients for several dishes and trying to do too many things at once (my default approach) I separate things out. I want to win this war with small but smug victories in a series of minor skirmishes.

Just to give you an idea, here is today’s order of work, exactly as I wrote it up last night:

GRAPE & MELON with MINT

CRUNCHY RHUBARB CRUMBLE TART

BROWN BREAD

LEMONADE

09.00 Oven @ 200ºC. Weigh for pastry

09.10 Make pastry and chill

09.15 Weigh for bread

09.20 Make bread

09.30 Bake bread

09.35 Clean up

09.40 Make syrup for lemonade

09.45 Line flan tin and chill

09.55 Clean up and weigh for starter

10.05 Ball melon

10.10 Peel and de-seed grapes

10.20 Assemble starter and chill

10.25 Bread out and blind bake tart

10.30 Clean up

10.40 Egg wash tart

10.45 Weigh up for crumble and take tart out

10.50 Make crumble - big lumps

10.55 Fill tart

11.00 Tart goes in

11.05 Clean up

11.15 Make lemonade

11.25 Clean up

11.30 Melon out and plate up

11.35 Tart out and whip cream

11.45 Plate up tart

11.50 Tasting

Have another look at the top of the order of work. Grape and Melon with Mint. How hard can that be? Crunchy Rhubarb Crumble Tart. Okay, a bit trickier, but it’s not like I have to build my own tandoor or anything is it? Brown Bread. Soda bread - piece of piss. Lemonade. Get the picture? It is not that hard. It shouldn’t take three hours, should it? (Incidentally, where it says things like make pastry and chill that means make the pastry then chill it in the fridge, not make pastry then kick back and take it easy for a while). Wanna know what really happened? It went something like this….

09.00 Oven @ 200ºC. Weigh for pastry

09.10 Make pastry and chill

09.20 Weigh for bread

09.25 Make bread

09.35 Bake bread

09.40 Clean up

09.45 Make syrup for lemonade

09.55 Take pastry from fridge. Not cold enough. Put back.

10.00 Nothing to clean up

10.05 Ball melon

10.10 Grapes are fine as they are. Squeeze citrus fruit for starter

10.20 Chop mint. Assemble starter. Chill

10.25 Have another go at pastry. Fuck it up

I might just pause here for a second. I want to win this war with small but smug victories in a series of minor skirmishes. You might win some but you just lost one. The order of work is basically a house of cards. It is unspeakably fragile and you handle it, like pastry, as delicately as possible. The minute one thing goes out of the window, the rest is buggered. If that thing is pastry, and you have to re-cool it, you can forget everything you planned. Three hours indeed.

10.30 Put pastry back into a ball and put in freezer

10.35 Clean up

10.40 Remember the bread I have forgotten. Needs longer

10.45 Try pastry again

10.50 Remember bread again. Cool

10.55 Someone cuts themselves and faints

11.00 Finally get tin lined with pastry. Freeze

11.05 Chop rhubarb and sprinkle with sugar

11.10 Weigh for crumble

11.15 Chop almonds for crumble

11.20 Make crumble

11.25 Clean up

11.30 Blind bake tart

11.35 Make lemonade

11.40 Chill plate and glass for starter

11.45 Whip cream and chill

11.50 Tart out and fill

11.55 Bake tart

12.00 Clean up

12.05 Plate up starter and bread. Ice for lemonade

12.10 Tasting

12.15 Clean up

12.30 Tart out and plate up with cream

12.35 Tasting

12.40 Clean up

12.41 Slice off thumbnail whilst cleaning hob

Now, there is some debate about what actually separates us from the apes. Tea is very high up the list in my opinion. (The PG Tips ads were fakes by the way, like the moon landing). Just think, next time you sup on a brew, “Ah, tea. It’s what separates us from the apes.” It’s not just the drink itself but what it stands for - taking things from nature, harnessing their power, processing them and consuming them for pleasure. In dainty little cups and saucers with pinkies raised to the sky.

Contrary to popular belief, the presence of opposable thumbs does not separate us from the apes, since they have them too. It does separate primates from every other species though. I spend most of the afternoon wondering what to do about my thumb. It is a freak accident. I show people. They either turn away and gag or helpfully comment that they’ve never seen anything like it before. Neither have I. Could my weird thumbnail threaten my anatomical superiority over other creatures? I hope not, I’ve seen what those hens have to eat.

Luckily, it is my right thumb. I am right handed, but that means you are holding big things like knives and spoons in your right. You need to grab and hold with your left what you cut with your right, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I may have to reluctantly visit a doctor tomorrow to make sure it doesn’t get infected and to try and ascertain if and how it might think about growing back. I know what he’s going to say mind you. “Well I’ve never seen anything like that before, now have I?” Maybe I’ll just put the kettle on instead.

Day 9: Blessed are the Cheeesemakers

I normally try and write my daily update after class. I sit down in the cottage and hammer it out on the laptop. I then come over to the main house where there is wi-fi and upload it over a glass of something cold. Even my later posts are normally written earlier in the day. Not today though - today has been long and exhausting.

The once compulsory alarm is becoming obsolete. I woke up just before seven today and immediately knuckled down to my daily stretch routine. By twenty to eight I was rasping along the country roads on my way towards gardening class. By ten to I was leaning on a fence reluctantly watching some pigs rutting. By five past I was suppressing an involuntary gag as the 70ºC heat of a compost heap was demonstrated to the assembled masses.

Today is a theory day, and we are looking at cheese. What’s so special about cheese? Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to all dairy products. The milk of the cow offers us a plethora of delights and at each stage of creation a fascinating bi-product appears.

In eastern cuisine almost every part of the animal is consumed. In the west we are accustomed to using the parts of things we find most desirable and discarding the rest. There are thousands of crabs in the ocean with no front claws or, if they were pulled off long enough ago, small stumps may have grown back, but they still can’t feed. That is because mankind prefers the white meat and unscrupulous fisherman rip off their claws and throw the bodies back. We are lazy, wasteful and unimaginative. Except when it comes to dairy, where we excel ourselves.

Milk comes out of a cow. If you like whole milk, you drink it like that. Otherwise, it goes into a separator, which is around a dozen thin funnels all spinning together. From one tube comes milk, from the other, cream. Let's start with the cream. You can use it in cooking as it is. You can whip it and it thickens and you can cook with it or chill it or eat it. If you whip it a lot, like I did yesterday, you are on your way to making something else. You are making butter. If you whip it, or churn it, enough, two things emerge - butter and buttermilk.

If you take the milk and cream and add the right bacteria, you get yoghurt. If you take whole milk and add rennet, something interesting occurs. Rennet is an enzyme found in the lining of cows’ stomachs. Its function is to break down the milk. Add it to that milk later and it coagulates, splitting into curd and whey. Break down the curd and you have something else. You have cheese, and with it come a myriad of possibilities, each of them wonderful. A morning of this and I am certain that I will devote some portion of my life to the making of cheese.

Something is lurking at the back of my mind though. It’s not the tiredness, nor the hunger, nor the cheese. It’s not even the afternoon’s wine lecture and tasting. It’s the fact that as soon as school is over I am heading home, getting changed into my whites and spending the evening in the kitchen of a very local and extremely reputable hotel. I am excited.

The afternoon passes by without any major incidents, save a very nice Chablis and a wonderfully peppery Syrah that cried out for food to help it. I thought of Simon Hopkinson’s steak au poivre recipe from Roast Chicken and Other Stories the second the first drop passed my lips. Oh well, tough shit.

I decide to have a shave and put on a clean uniform. As I step out I realise my shoes are encrusted with strawberry ice cream and brown crabmeat so I give them a quick wipe. I pick up my knife roll and stroll on over. There will be around 50 people in tonight. There are four people in the kitchen, and about fifteen different dishes to be cooked between them.

I begin by chopping some onions and spuds for tomorrow’s soup. Then I am asked to cut chateau potatoes. A chateau potato is cut with seven sides, each one a perfect arc from tip to toe of the potato. Each one of equal size. It is impossible. Think knife skills and you think chopping an onion or herbs in fast-forward. Pick up a potato and a paring knife and try it for yourself. I whittle a few spuds to nothing before I start to develop the feel for what the knife is doing. My confidence grows. As it does so, the natural equilibrium intervenes, and my spuds start resembling half finished Rubik’s cubes. I throw in the towel having not produced a single one that will pass for service tomorrow.

We move on. I watch and talk to the chefs in turn. They each have their area to work in and a broad responsibility for a number of dishes. Watching them work is mesmerising. There is no shouting, no crashing of pans, no swearing. Just control. I am tempted to say effortless, but it is evidently not. You can see the concentration, but you have to look very closely. It is a natural state. They look up at the board as the orders are scribbled on it, and take their cues. Things are plucked from fridges and pans, seasoned, cooked. Clocks tick round inside heads. Plates appear and dishes assemble themselves simply but magically. It is enchanting.

At the end of service I sit down and enjoy a course myself. A Roasted Cod with Lobster and Beurre Blanc is just being sent out, and I can’t help but ask for the same. It is cooked to perfection and the sauce seems to hover over it while the sweetness of the lobster balances out the meaty fish.

One of the chefs did the same course as me a year ago. He recommends going straight into a kitchen to seal in the knowledge I am gaining. I think about it. I watch the others and ask myself - could I do it? Honestly? I think I know about stress and pressure, but really? I’m not sure. Before I leave I ask the head chef if there is any day when I can come back and make myself useful. There is - this Thursday. There is a big function on and according to one of the chefs it will be "a shitfight." Now that sounds right up my street. Maybe the blessed Cheesemaking can wait a little while longer after all.

Day 8: Do decapods dream of tomato soup?

I had a vivid dream last night. There were four of us in a car driving around an Italian city. Most likely Florence since I was there not that long ago. There was a driver who I didn’t know, an Italian from the course, my brother (who lives in Italy from time to time) and myself, and each of us were making tomato soup as we drove around.

My order of work is ready to go. I am making Crab, Tomato and Ginger Tart and Strawberry Ice Cream. I am determined to improve on last week’s pastry and can’t wait to get my hands on those crabs. But I have to. We are waiting on the fisherman to deliver them, so the order of work goes in the hens’ bucket. I start by making my pastry and chilling it and getting the syrup on for the ice cream.

Ice cream making runs in my family. My grandfather had an ice cream parlour in my home town and apparently made exceptionally good, creamy gelatos. Sadly he not only died before I was born, but also before he’d told anybody else how he made it, so there ended the tradition. I’m ready to step up to the plate though.

The strawberries are frozen so I need to thaw them out first. I whip my cream, but I get carried away and look down to discover something resembling cottage cheese. I start again. Ice cream loses a lot of sweetness in the freezing, and on tasting mine it seems not quite sweet enough (maybe because the strawberries were frozen and not fresh) so I add a little icing sugar to the mix.

By the time the crabs arrive my ice cream is in the sorbetiere and I have lined my flan tin with pastry. The problem is it is now about half past ten. Not only this but the local crab population heard something was up and went into hiding, so we only have six in our kitchen. A volunteer is needed to cook them. I waste no time. The water is tepid (it can’t be any warmer or they won’t be put to sleep humanely) and has about half a kilo of salt in it that helps bring out the sweetness of the meat.

It takes forever to heat up. They eventually reach boiling point and I pour away most of the liquid and put the lid back on to steam them for the remainder of the cooking time. I am now blind baking my flan tin. The crabs are cooked (the claw comes away from the body easily) and we now have to wait for them to cool down enough to be handled. Whilst all this is going on I am making my tart filling, concassing tomatoes, grating ginger, breaking eggs etc.

I snap off the crab claws and legs. I turn the crab upside down and ram him against the worktop to loosen the body from the shell. I take out the dead man’s fingers and pull away the beak and skull like sack. I cleave the main body in half and poke out meat with my fingers. It smells good. No-one’s watching. It tastes better. A lot of people find the brown meat too pungent. I don’t, so I get my hand in the shell and scoop it all out. I crack the claws and the sweetest most delicious meat is revealed. I want to just wade in here and gorge myself but there is a tart than needs filling. I repeat the process on the next one. By the time the filled tart goes in it is noon.

The ice cream tasted good. It wasn’t heart-stopping stuff, but it was good. Unfortunately it looked shit. I forgot to chill the serving plate and so it began melting almost instantly, cunningly camouflaging itself among the coulis. As soon as it had been marked I whisked it away to warmer climes, in the pit of my stomach.

I had an errand to run at lunch so didn’t have time to eat and had to leave a teacher to take my tart out of the oven. She promised to keep a slice back for me. I spent the break wondering. After all my chat last week about the sacred crab, and wanting to do a dead one justice, had I? The tart looked good when it went in the oven. It was well seasoned and I had put extra ginger in. The pastry wasn’t great mind - a little wet and a little thick.

I came back to see a healthy slice on my worktop. There was a lovely, even scattering of colour from the meat, the tomatoes and the chopped chives. It was a good texture too, much better than last week’s quiche. Now this wouldn’t have been my first choice of crab dish. Maybe a simple dressing and served with brown toast and butter or something that would let the crab be the star. But it’s not my choice. I had a recipe to carry out, and I carried it out. Well. The crab Gods would be proud. The ice cream Gods can wait for another day.

As for my tomato soup dream, well, there was a lot of it being made today. Some amongst us feel that the recipe has too much salt and sugar. And butter for that matter. In the dream, we drove around making our own soups, then at the end we poured them all together into a big bowl. It seemed pointless in the context of the dream, but is practical, and practised, at lunchtime in the school.

Everyone has a responsibility to follow the recipe, but there are some things that contravene deep held, almost religious, beliefs. For the fellow student in my dream, the sugar was a step too far. He left it out. The tomato soup Gods can judge him on what he poured in the vat. Just at that moment, when you relinquish control and add your creation to everyone else’s, just look up at them for a second. If you can live with yourself, then so can they.

Days 6 & 7: The first weekend

Despite yesterday being a Saturday, I still woke up at 8am. And that in spite of Friday’s Guinness binge. After a year or so without one, a routine is beginning to establish itself.

Before my binge, six of us dined in a restaurant in a nearby fishing village. It was funny listening to us talking about our meals, the menu, the wine. Already I am thinking about food in a new way. I was torn between the cod and the special - monkfish. I went for the monkfish. My friend across the table ordered cod because, he said, monkfish is always tough when roasted. I knew my fate.

On Saturday morning a few of us headed to the farmers’ market in the nearest ‘big’ town, Middleton. Back in London I am a regular at Broadway Market in Hackney. Middleton is far less gentrified. There are no Maclaren pushchairs blocking the cake stall here, though there is a queue round the block for the hot chocolate, meaning I have to wait for my long black. I pick up some smoked eel and mackerel and a few bits of veg. It has one thing in common with Broadway - it is fucking expensive.

After the market we stroll through town and grab some lunch, followed by a visit to the country outfitters. It has only been a week but I try on a range of flat caps before reason takes hold and I walk out sans chapeau. Next in the high street is the off licence, and I let out a shriek of delight when I see James Boags Premium, my favourite beer in the world, in the fridge. I buy their entire stock.

It is now Sunday evening and I am sat outside my cottage joyfully sipping one, tapping away and reminiscing on my week. Today has been beautiful. Three of us drove to the seafront and walked a few miles along the beach, picking up pebbles and shells and at one point stopping to have a horse drawing competition in the sand. It started out overcast but cleared as we walked back. It is always a bonus when the weather changes so dramatically in a day, like getting the best of both worlds.

There is now a wonderful twilight and before the sun sets I will go for a stroll around the grounds and look for a gate to lean on. For now I am content to sit back and enjoy my surroundings. Last night I walked to the village, about two and a half miles. On the way home it was pitch black and I took a detour through a harvested field. I picked my spot and walked, turning off the torch. Every now and then I would turn it back on to check my progress. Each time I would pirouette, and marvel at my solitude.

For someone used to being in a city, it is an extraordinary sensation. As a teenager growing up on the coast I would walk out as far as I could at low tide. When I finally reached the first gentle waves I would look back and feel like the only guy left alive after some terrible apocalypse. It felt like that last night, compounded by the darkness and the occasional arc of light as my torch beam sliced through it - true peace and an overwhelming sense of harmony.

Looking back on the last seven days it is hard to piece all these things together and say which has meant the most - the people, the place or the cooking. It doesn’t matter. All three are great and I already feel like I have been here for months. The coming week is taking shape; I have a lot of extra things on and next weekend to think about. Before all that though there is an order of work to pen and a uniform to be ironed. Tomorrow I kill my first crab, and I want to look my best.

Day 5: The black stuff

Yesterday was Arthur Guinness day and I had planned to drink several pints last night to mark 250 years of the stuff. However I had to settle for just a couple in order to guarantee that I made it in time for voluntary organic gardening class this morning. That’s right - voluntary organic gardening class.

It is a little after 7.45 and I, along with 20 others, stroll through the farm. We approach some bushes staked out in rows. “Are they roses?” I enquire of another student. “Raspberries” comes the reply. It’s going to be a long day. Later on I plant a tray of radishes. It is the first thing I have planted since watercress in cotton wool on the kitchen shelf. Hopefully they won’t go the way of every other piece of foliage unfortunate enough to pass into my custody over the last couple of decades.

We are not cooking today. Today is theory day. Wine and cheese in the morning, fire and food safety in the afternoon. Well that’s the theory at least. We run through a couple of quick demos to get warmed up. The pub in the ‘village’ was pretty busy last night and a few people look jaded, not least the gardeners. We are drifting and are only an hour in.

Mercifully, Hugh Johnson comes to the rescue. Yes, he of the Pocket Wine Book once starred in an educational video about wine. I say ‘starred’ but I mean ‘appeared.’ Actually a couple of times he ‘disappeared’ (using ingenious camera technology from the early 1980s) before reappearing to advise a young and oenologically retarded John Fortune (who, incidentally, was sporting a rather fetching knitted sweater with a parrot on the front). This kind of painful attempt to initiate the excruciatingly ignorant through the use of light comedy is obsolete these days. Thanks to the fragility of videotape most examples, especially of this ‘quality’, are all but extinct.

This is a classic of the genre. Not only for its appalling production quality, script and dialogue, but also its content. Firstly, the bow tie wielding Johnson spends ten minutes pointlessly talking us through a range of medieval bottle openers (his personal collection no doubt). He then pours champagne into glasses that are quite clearly not flutes, before recommending cleaning decanters with household bleach. Despite all this, because of it in fact, the next hour flies by and a coffee break comes to the rescue.

After coffee we are treated to a talk from a charming German wine producer. He shows us a four-minute film that imparts fifty times more information than Johnners in a fraction of the time. He speaks good English with some wonderful inaccuracies (combinate instead of combine - why not?) and despite getting sidetracked by a barrage of questions on the cork or cap debate (who cares?) we manage to progress to the wine tasting.

It is now midday. Most of us are either hungover, still pissed or knackered. Some are all three. Wine tasting before lunch in this condition is madness. We press on with a buttery blanc de noir before upgrading to a couple of really classic Rieslings. The first was a 2007 of lesser quality than the 2008 that. The 2008 tasted very young and had a long lingering finish of elderflower that would develop very nicely in time I’d have thought. We finished with up with a Pinot Noir. The tastings were generous and the winemaker happily garrulous, so it was almost 1.30 before we sat down for a lunch of roast pork. After that, everyone was ready for bed.

What you need in this situation is a quick adrenalin hit or some excitement to shake you out of it. Not a lecture on fire safety. A demonstration of how to put out a fire promises to liven things up though so I dig deep. The ‘fire’ we put out is actually a gas hob burning in the usual manner. Not that exciting, and certainly not as exciting as when the bouncers in the Cottesloe Beach Hotel put out a fire in the gents that I had alerted them to whilst I was still taking a piss.

We reluctantly trundle on into food safety, our knuckles scraping on the carpet. It somehow morphs into a rambling discussion of obscure topics as the questions pour in and take us on a number of implausible tangents. Washing your hands. Freezing ice cream. Turkey stuffing. Stainless steel or wood? Local or multinational? Food labelling. Free range or battery? Metric or imperial? E-Coli or C-Coli? Cats or dogs? Cork or cap? Black or white? White or red? Red or brown? Home made or organic? Freezing ice cream. Cork or cap? The clock ticked round, we plodded on. Five o’clock came and went. Behind me an Irish voice, in desperation, steals then whispers the words from my mind: “Stop asking fucking questions.”

His prayers, and mine, are answered. The undiscussed cheese goes back in the fridge and we go home. The first week is over. What a week. If I am still awake, I might tap out a refrain on Sunday to put my rambling in some kind of context, if I can find any. But I really must be going now, for there is a row of glasses with some black stuff in them that is 250 years and a day old, and they have my name, along with His, etched all over them. God knows I've earned them.

Day 4: Subordinate claws

I forgot to put my earplugs in last night, but the cockerels still didn’t get me. I got them, the little bastards. The last time I was up and about at 6.45 I was pushing Daily Mails through letterboxes. Today I am on herb and vegetable duty. Which means heading into the acre of greenhouse and picking and chopping the day’s requirements.

Not a bad start, though it was pretty cold. And it meant I was there on time. Today I was down to make Brown Soda Bread, Raspberry Jam (can’t say it out loud without thinking of Sean Bean in Ronin) and the aforementioned Penne with Chorizo. Yesterday was good but I had little to do really and found myself twiddling my melon baller from time to time. Today I wanted to put a bit of pressure on myself so I left a half hour gap in my order of work into which I hoped to squeeze another recipe.

I start by sterilising jam jars and warming sugar. Then I make my bread and bake it. Heat the raspberries, add the sugar, make the jam. Jar it up, take out the bread. All good. An hour and a half gone. I plan to start my pasta dish at 11. So I have time to make some scones. Or at least I think I do. By the time I have fucked about getting the ingredients it is pushing twenty to. Also, I am running out of room and pots and pans because I have cleaning to do. I waste another five minutes tidying up. Five minutes later I need to do it again because more faffing about, sieving and folding has ensued.

I need to get the water boiling for the pasta too as it is a bloody big pot. My scone mix is sitting there begging to be rolled. I get it done, but the pressure is on my pasta now. No emptying tins here of course so I have to peel and chop my own tomatoes, which takes a lot longer than opening a tin. The sauce suffers. I have to crank up the heat on the tomatoes, which everyone knows is a bad idea. Cook them slowly and gently over a long time for maximum depth of flavour.

Suddenly the clouds part and a bright shaft of heavenly light shines upon me. Since I have left it so late to start my sauce, we have run out of chorizo. Hallelujah. But wait. What is this? Another cloud? A rain cloud. Shit. Salami. There is salami instead. Oh well, the sauce tastes like shit anyway so in it goes. I add a quarter of the cream in the recipe. My bread looks and tastes great. My scones too are light and tasty. With the decadent raspberry jam spread on top you would marry me if I promised to make them for you every day. (I won’t). I plate up the Penne with Salami. It looks good. Someone asks if they can try some. “You can, but it tastes disgusting and I wouldn’t feed it to my dog” is my honest reply.

Deep down, I knew last night. I knew this morning, when I went out to wake the cockerels. I knew my pasta would be vile. Because I didn’t believe in it. I didn’t care about it. In fact I wanted it to taste like shit to vindicate my opinion of it. If I hadn’t had my head stuck up my arse I would have started it earlier, let the tomatoes cook slowly and develop their flavour. I’d have got the chorizo, which was milder than the really strong salami. I’d have tasted and seasoned it properly. And it would have tasted good.

Apparently it did taste all right anyway - according to my teacher at least. She thought the salami was too strong and the shorter cooking time explained the lack of flavour. And she told me to cook the pasta more, which is right, because it was extremely al dente, how I like it, and I wasn’t making it for myself. Still, everything else went really well, I applied more pressure, saw a few cracks and now I know where they are. No more cooking until Monday now, and to be honest, I’m not sure I can wait that long.

The afternoon demo promises a lot. My favourite instructor is in again, and he is cooking, amongst other things, crab. I love crab. Now when our man takes the lid off the cold pan of crabs and they move about, a few people (let’s be honest here - girls) make strange noises. They get louder as he picks one up and it wriggles around. “Always use a live crab. If it is deceased, you need to know that it is very recently deceased.” The humane method for bringing down the curtain on a crab’s life is to cover it with cold water and bring to the boil. As it passes a certain temperature, the crab goes to sleep. He puts the crabs back in the pan and covers them with water. As the lid goes on, one of their claws climbs over the rim. With a wry “Sorry Fred” he pushes it back in under the lid and our crab cakes and tarts begin their journey, just as another is about to end.

It is true that I once ate a tempura king spider crab claw that made me cry. The tears didn’t roll down my face as such, but my lip wobbled, I stopped thinking, and I cried inside (like you did at the end of Bambi). It was so unbelievably sweet. And simple. Nothing but the lightest batter and the finest sprinkling of green tea salt. The crab must have been a big bastard because his claw was about a foot long. I hope He had a long and happy life to have gotten that big -swimming around in rock pools, hanging out with lady crabs, that kind of thing. He deserved it for the divine gift He bestowed upon me shortly after his death.

The Japanese man who prepared that dish wasn’t born knowing how to make it. At some stage in his life someone taught him the very same thing I was taught today. It is about learning. Layers and layers of learning. Maybe one day I will have learnt enough to be able to honour a dead crab’s life with the kind of cooking that we mere mortals dare not begin to think ourselves capable of. We are. We just have to believe.

Day 3: Real hens don't eat quiche

An order of work is an apparently essential weapon in any chef’s armoury. It details what you are going to do and when. You start with the moment you serve your food and work backwards. You will generally be making at least two or three different dishes so you need to interweave their components. Some things should be left very late, others should be done first. How hard can it be?

Well, it isn’t actually that hard. But it took me a lot longer than I thought it would - 6 sheets of A4 before I really nailed it. My dishes today were Quiche Lorraine and a Red and Yellow Tomato Salad with Basil. As you will quickly learn, I don’t really like eggs. So I don’t eat quiche, let alone make it. In fact I loathe it, not least because it seems to me that pouring a load of eggs over some bin-fodder that you have prised off the bottom of the fridge is no way to carry on a gastronomic tradition. However, even I would be pushed to make a quiche sans oeuf.

We are broken down into four kitchens and in each kitchen you work as pairs either side of a hob, with another pair facing you across the worktop. There is plenty of camaraderie and lots of support and sharing of ingredients and advice. And there is so much space to work - it is a completely different experience to anything I have encountered before.

I kick off by making pastry, which I haven’t done for years. I think we did it in Home Economics at High School too but we were too busy frying kippers trying to stink the first floor out to notice. So, pastry in the fridge and it’s time to break some eggs. No drama here, I can handle the handling. In a little while I face a dilemma though - with all the ingredients in the mix I need to taste for seasoning. I can do this raw, or get out a frying pan and drop teaspoonfuls in there to taste when cooked. I can’t be arsed to do that and I’ve never been one to waste a pan so I go raw. And it tastes fine. Actually it tastes better than fine. It tastes good.

It tasting good can be attributed to two things - the fact that I am a culinary maestro who instinctively seasons everything perfectly (or just got lucky), and the fact that the recipe contains rather a lot of cream. Cream that three hours early was sloshing around the inside of a cow’s sagging udder. Also, the bacon was excellent and I blanched it very quickly before frying it taking a slight edge off its saltiness. I never do that at home.

It gets a bit tight towards the end of the cooking time, mainly because I omitted a cooling stage from my order of work. The pastry holds up okay though and the quiche has a lovely browning colour on top. It lacks a little firmness but makes up for it in taste. It gets a slow nod of approval from my taster as I stand and watch like some headlight blinded Masterchef contestant and I have nailed my first quiche. I even tuck in myself.

Now, everyone in the world bangs on about ingredients. Everyone. You can’t polish a turd, they say. Well, you can actually, but it is still a turd. The tomatoes in my Red and Yellow Tomato Salad do not need polishing. They are the sweetest, juiciest, tastiest tomatoes I have ever encountered (we have the hens to thank for that). I under season them as a result, and tear my basil leaves too early so they blacken. The whole thing still tastes great, no thanks to me.

By lunch I have just about had enough of quiche, so I take on some soup, a little mushroom tart, salad and coffee. I have to skip out early as I am on hen feeding duty today. Basically, everything compostable and organic gets thrown in buckets in each kitchen, which then get emptied into an old skip. The hens feed on this (99% of it probably just goes straight in your bin at home) then shit it out and it gets used to fertilise the whole farm. There are, quite literally, hundreds of the little fuckers.

It’s a cliché of course but the whole circle of life thing is very much at work here. It is easy to achieve in this environment - once the effort of setting everything up subsides it is actually far more convenient to recycle and re-use than to waste. Translating that to a city or a busy house gets a lot harder. Unless you have a couple of chickens pecking around your living room of course.

After lunch a cheese importer rolled a 40kg Parmigianino Reggiano wheel into the room and talked us through its origins. From a producer called La Villa in an exclusively organic valley outside Parma. Each one is made from 160 gallons of milk, with the cream and ricotta removed before it is packed in the moulds. It sits a while then spends 14 days in a salt solution before being transferred to racks where it remains for two and a half years at 16ºC and is cleaned every week. Needless to say it tasted incredible, less salty than you would expect, but creamy and lingering and worthy of being sprinkled over something special or gorged on its own.

The highlight of the rest of the afternoon was our instructor’s dry wit and wonderful turn of phrase. Sadly it was not enough to light up the shadow cast by what seems to me an abusive use of cream and chorizo in a pasta sauce that I have to make tomorrow.

As I sat there watching this unfold in the mirror my mind began to wander. I thought of the bacon I used this morning, and how much finer it would be to take some of the crushed chillies that were inveigling their way into a pasta of zucchini, French beans and peas, mix them with some lardons of that bacon in a pan with some onions and those tomatoes and rustle up my Monday night favourite Bucatini all’Amatriciana.

I came here to learn how to cook, and that is what I am being taught - the techniques of cooking. I didn’t expect to fall in love with every recipe I have to make, and I am not the only one questioning the cream, butter and salt approach. But if I sharpen the tools then I can cut my own way later on. There are a lot of hungry hens round here that need feeding and a few shredded recipes won’t harm them in the least.

Day 2: Johnny No Stars

Day Two means dressing up day. Out come the checked trousers and the white tunic. And the knives. The big fat shiny ones. I have to say it felt slightly peculiar strolling out to the car this morning looking like a contestant on ready steady cook, but there we have it. There’s a slight issue with the hat too, in that it makes me look like I serve doner kebabs for a living, so I am ditching it in favour of a buff, which is basically a bandana, only without skull and crossbones and anything else that might identify me as a member of a minority biker gang.

The day begins ominously - it turns out that the things that look like mosquitoes are indeed mosquitoes and have gone to work in their usual fashion. Just killed one of the little bastards now actually so will use the extra blood I have to fuel the rush of typing.

So, it is back to the demonstration room. Chicken and vegetable stocks are first, followed by how to lay a table, followed by a green salad. Making stock and green salad are on the list of daily “Duties” that the students share. These “Duties” will become a theme here I think. I lucked out today since I was scheduled to make…green salad - and someone else has done it for me. Nice.

After the demo, it is kitchen time. It was a strange, in fact daunting feeling, walking into the kitchen. Yesterday we were given the option of adding a gold star to our nametags if we were “beginners.” Now I don’t really know what that means - I’ve never worked in a proper kitchen before (though I pot washed and microwaved for a summer once). But I cook at home and I know a few things, most of it gleaned from books and TV and infused with my own arrogance and determination to do things differently anyway. However, I humble myself before the culinary altar and add a star, bottom left. Like a medal. Or a negative medal if you like - almost a scar where a medal should be but isn’t. Just a big gold star incongruously taking the place of no stars at all.

Twenty odd people in a kitchen and you work in pairs, except today we are working in sixes. The cliché couldn’t be more accurate if it tried. Between us we slice our own flesh, together with a few vegetables. We confuse carrots and potatoes. Get bollocked for “measuring” teaspoons without the use of a, er, teaspoon. Fall behind, get in front, sweat, chop, dice, sauté and boil. Someone overcooks some pasta (surely a lesson for day one) and I am subjected to sloppy penne a la mushroom avec beaucoup crème et beurre. Or something like that.

I should point out here that we cook what we are shown the day before and then we eat it for lunch. We’re eating later today as the schedule gets elbow dropped by the all the hectic shit we have to cram into the first couple of days. By 1pm I am chewing my arms off for a feed. Carrot and coriander/cumin/mint soups are okay but lack a killer punch. Pasta is not good but to be honest I am so fucking famished that I don’t care and would gladly eat another bucketful. Dessert is a macerated summer fruit salad with some pretty good ice cream and a mercifully bearable cup of coffee follows it all down.

So how was it? Well, it was painful at times, but it was a relief too. It turns out I already knew how to chop an onion, though not with a knife that fucking sharp. Cue blue plaster. But I have to say I felt pretty confident and actually, vindicated, because a lot of the instincts I have picked up along the way are probably right.

The problem I now face is the approach I have to incorporate. Truth is, I can’t measure teaspoons without a teaspoon. Well, I can but I can’t, and they’re right. It pains me to say it, but they are. There is a very strict and ordered way of doing things, and it is handed down like the sacrament. You just have to close your eyes and eat it and believe in it. By all means, get outside and spit it out or eat something better, or believe whatever you want, but while you’re under the roof you have to respect its God I suppose.

I will have to learn to suppress my natural urge to cast aside authority and do things my own way. The right way, that is, of course. But this isn’t a dick-swinging contest, and thankfully I have learnt a lot over the last couple of years about control, and self-discipline and peace and composure. There were a couple of moments today when I could see how the old me would have reacted. But not this one. Oh no.

All I have to do now is gently peel that star off my name badge and hope no-one notices as I sidle into the kitchen in the morning in my pristine whites and with an as yet unwritten (but unquestionably perfect) order of work creased neatly in my pocket. Meanwhile a couple of teaspoons will rattle idly around back at the cottage.

Day 1: A perfect place for a beginning

I thought a cockerel might wake me this morning, and I haven’t thought that for a while. I put in the earplugs just in case, but was woken instead by something else - a sense of excitement and anticipation of the day ahead. The first day of Cookery School. Twelve weeks of Cookery School.

It began with a couple of hours walking around the grounds of the school and the farm - a nice way of easing into things and getting a chance to chat to some of the 60-odd other students. We walked through fruit orchards, hen houses, a beautiful kitchen garden, amongst the cottages and through three stunning gardens demarcated by majestic beech hedges ten foot deep. We traipsed through a giant greenhouse home to every vegetable you can think of and many you cannot. We were introduced to the principles of growing and invited back at 7.45am every Wednesday for organic gardening classes. I’m there.

There was a lot to take in, most of all the strong organic and environmental principles, which I think most people had probably already figured and got a little bit tiresome after a while. A huge rat darting out of a vegetable patch in the greenhouse woke a few of them up.

Before lunch we had to endure a round of “My name is Jimmy and I am…” style introductions. Most surprising to me is the international mix, with students from at least a dozen countries. There are far more girls than boys (about 3:1), or should I say far more girls than men, as there seems to be an age differential here too. Basic categories are school leavers, university graduates, people experienced in the catering industry, career breakers, those recently made redundant. There are plenty of crossovers in there and those categories span the generations and continents. But everyone is extremely open, warm and friendly, and all of them, it seems, love their food.

Lunch, when it arrived, was good. A simple, not too overpowering, tomato and basil soup followed by a plate of assorted canapés, Pick of them for me was the locally smoked mackerel, salmon and eel, or a really smooth and creamy chicken liver pate. Dessert of Pavlova with berries and ice cream didn’t hang around long. We sat in small tables and filed up obediently for our servings, then back again with our dishes. Haven’t done that for a while…

After lunch began some demonstrations. The room is crammed with an assortment of uncomfortable chairs. At the front are a couple of ovens and fridges. Two large hobs straddle an enormous work surface. Suspended above it is a mirror angled down to give an aerial view, flanked on both sides by monitors showing close ups. We will need to get used to this place. Basic stuff today - chopping vegetables, making soup, creamy mushrooms (too creamy for me), roux, flapjacks, syrups, lemonade, and soda bread (giving away my location there). The startling thing was the pace at which we go through things. Fine when you are making soup but it is going to get a lot more complicated and we will need to eat a lot of Pavlova to keep the concentration going through the weeks ahead.

There wasn’t a bell that rang when we finished up at 6pm, and had there been you wouldn’t have heard it anyway over the collective sigh of relief. Any enthusiasm was tempered by the imminent inventory taking in the residential cottages so the celebrations will have to wait for a little while yet. It has been a hectic day. Lots to take in, but hardly time to catch your breath or stretch out amidst the barrage of information and, it must be said, repetition. I don’t think I’ll be turning up in the kitchen with many hangovers.

I am in an incredibly beautiful place though. The thing that struck me most from today was walking around the grounds this morning and garnering a real sense that things - nice things, beautiful things - take a long time come to fruition, and need care and nurture to respond. Too often we demand immediate rewards and are almost always the poorer for it.

In the grounds we walked through a stunning ornate herb garden. It started out life on the back of an envelope after a visit to Villandry in the Loire Valley - a pencil sketch of little hedgerows and plots and the paths that run between them. Then the soil was turned and toiled and fertilised. Then the ground was staked out and the pencil drawing began to take shape. Next, the planting: delicate, precise and painstaking. Then weeks and months of watering and pruning as the hedgerows and herbs grow. Then tending them constantly, for hours and hours over years and years. And it is not just for what they bear us directly, but the growing and nurture is an end in itself. Beauty, peace and tranquillity are its bi-products. It will definitely be my sanctuary when the kitchen heats up.