Day 40: Mizuna mibuna

Just writing that title scares me. Day 40. Even Jesus would have been thinking of heading home round about now.

The halfway stage Herb and Salad Leaf Recognition and Technique Exam dominates the day. The first ‘exam’ since my finals way back when. I adopt the standard approach that served me so well all those years ago, and leave everything until the last minute. The exam has several parts. First up for me is the Technique Exam. There is a list of thirty odd kitchen techniques that we should know. We are all tested on chopping and sweating an onion and making a paper piping bag. On top if this, we each get two other techniques, ranging from assembling a magimix (!) to making scones. In between are my two - slicing and sautéing a mushroom and, surprise surprise, making an omelette.

Paying extra special attention to my technique, I chop and sweat my onion. I probably use a little too much butter, but otherwise no real dramas. Next up the shrooms. I slice in the prescribed fashion and sauté in two batches over a high heat, being careful not to crowd the pan. I taste the first batch and I have over-seasoned them. I inexplicably season the second batch, instead of leaving it unseasoned so I can combine the two and be about right. Consequently they are far too salty and are disgusting. I tell my examiner about this, which won’t help my marks any but at least stops her from spitting them out in front of me.

Next up is the omelette. Bring it. I know this is all about their technique, and having never made one before the other day, I only know one way. I make a perfectly acceptable omelette, happy in the knowledge that I have followed all their little instructions to the letter. I had to really, didn’t I….

Leaf recognition is next. Firstly, I have ten herbs to name and then suggest two ways in which I would use each of them. Easy. Now for the salad leaves. They have a lot of different salad leaves in this place. More than I ever knew or cared existed, in fact. Mizuna, mibuna, texal greens, golden marjoram, sorrel, salad burnett, tatsoi, pak choi, lambs lettuce, spinach, mustard greens, red mustard greens, the list goes on. I knew but a mere handful at the beginning of the week. I made the mistake of learning them in groups, by comparison with other leaves, and by taking pictures of them on my phone. Also, there are a number that are so distinctive that I don’t bother tasting them. Real smart.

I start with the ones I know - curly kale, pak choi, rocket, mibuna. Then things start to become a little murky. That mizuna looks a bit wide. Maybe it’s not mizuna. Maybe it’s a really small green mustard green? Doesn’t taste that mustardy. It tastes more like petrol. Like epazote, in fact. But epazote is a herb (according to our list at least), so it can’t be that. The red ones - red mustard greens, surely. Beetroot leaves? No, they’re too big. Er, I don’t know any other red ones. And that thing that tastes like rocket. Is it rocket? It doesn’t look like rocket. By the time I have chewed my way through most of them hoping for some Divine inspiration, they all taste like bloody rocket anyway. In the end, I throw a few wild, and almost certainly inaccurate, stabs in the dark.

To finish off I have to lay a table and present and pour a glass of wine. Nice and easy. The lovely Florrie comes over. “Now Joe, is there anything you’d like to change before you show me.” A couple of quick adjustments later and things are looking a lot better. Not perfect, unless you are right handed but prefer to eat your soup in your left hand, but better. The wine is easy - three golden rules. Don’t obscure the label, offer a taste, and don’t overfill the glass. Two and a half out of three isn’t bad; some would say I poured a little overenthusiastically but I might have just got away with it. Oh well, mizuna mibuna, as the saying goes (or should do, at least).

One day I’m going to open a restaurant. You help yourself to cutlery, add your own salt and pepper to everything and bring your own wine. I’m going to call it Salad is for Wimps and there won’t be a single leaf of the stuff in the whole God damned place.

Day 39: Fool's gold

They must be going easy on us this week because of the exam. My dishes today were crab pâté with cucumber and dill salad and raspberry fool with shortbread biscuits. Piece of piss.

The fresh crabs have either wised up or packed off for the winter, so I have to use stuff from the guys at Ballycotton instead. It is beautiful, though all white meat from the claws. Without the pungent brown meat, the balance of flavours in the pâté will be affected. The recipe stipulates a mixture of the two meats, softened butter, garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper, parsley and a tomato relish. Ballymaloe Tomato Relish in fact, a rather fine condiment from these parts and enjoyed all over Ireland.

The tasting and seasoning is an interesting process, since I do it with my teacher, a lovely lady with the most impressive hairdo in the whole of County Cork. First of all, the recipe states the relish is optional and I question if we need it. We do. First taste - I think the relish has overpowered the crab. Also the parsley is very strong. I wonder if it might need more garlic. She says it needs more salt and lemon juice. It is really interesting to see how the lemon juice pulls out the flavour of the crab and combats the tomato. The parsley’s fresh crisp taste is subdued by the extra acidity, and as the other flavours develop it softens. She continues to tinker, but ultimately we end up adding more crab; the absence of the strong brown meat completely threw all the proportions of the recipe. It was a great lesson in balancing flavours and seasoning, and watching and understanding how she went about it. In the same situation, I would have done it completely differently. I’d never have been so bold with the lemon juice but it worked so well. The seasoning and balancing of flavours is crucial, and no two people will ever do it the same.

The raspberry fool is uneventful. Raspberries macerated in sugar, pureed, strained and folded with softly whipped cream. The shortbread biscuits are dead simple. Flour, butter and sugar in 3:2:1 proportions, brought together in the magimix, rolled to 5mm thick and baked at 180ºC for ten minutes. When you think they’re not done because they still feel soft, they’re done. Get them off the tray immediately. They’re good. I take my time today and in some of the gaps we go over a few of the techniques that could come up on the exam tomorrow. Like segmenting citrus fruit, making paper piping bags, slicing, dicing, chopping and crushing.

The extra time, together with the fact that my dishes are all cold, gives me a chance to make an effort on my presentation. The pâté looks nice with just a little heap of the cucumber on the plate, but then I realise I need melba toast too and the harmony is clumsily interrupted. The fool is a fool is a fool.

Afternoon demo is a struggle. The least effective combination of demonstrator and sous chef means a number of things don’t quite go to plan. I am very glad when it is all over. To combat the lethargy in the evening I do something I haven’t done since I arrived here six weeks ago - I go to the gym. It’s not quite the Virgin Active in Islington, though it does have the usual quota of unfeasibly large, grunting Eastern Europeans. I struggle through like a hundred pound weakling, reward myself with a solitary pint and gracefully hit the hay.

Day 38: Bar de Tapas

A busy day today, kicking off with a wine lecture. We started with an Irishman representing Wine Australia who had us tasting a sparkling Jacobs Creek Rose at 10.15am. After a much needed coffee break he was joined by a charming guy from Hunters in Marlborough, New Zealand (who was in fact an Australian). Whenever someone raised their hand to ask him a question, he invited it by simply saying "hello", which endeared me to him enormously. It got better, since he afforded us the pleasure of tasting this year's Sauvignon Blanc, which was wonderfully dry and crisp with a long lingering finish. His Pinot Noir (2006) wasn't far behind, and was definitely the best so far.

At times it felt like the morning was losing its thread. Whilst tasting the Heartland Dolcetto Lagrein (now my stock drinking wine in the cottage and the source of much self satisfaction when I realised we would be tasting it) we inexplicably began discussing the pros and cons of carbon offset schemes (?). Thankfully someone asked a question about wine which, though welcome at the time, could possibly have prevented the conversation developing further and perhaps solving some pressing world issues. The Middle East perhaps? Given more time, I am sure we would have arrived there eventually.

My lunchtime was marred by duties. Thankfully afternoon demo was an interesting one - tapas. Plenty of outsiders were drawn in for this and had parted with their €70 or whatever it is at the door. Cooking in demo today was our favourite instructor. He has a clear passion for Spanish food betrayed by his accent when pronouncing dishes like huevos estrellados con chorizo (sausage, egg and chips to you and I). It was a good demo, with lots of fresh ideas. Highlights for me were simple things. Almendras con pimenton are dry roasted Marcona almonds mixed with a little olive oil, smoked paprika and salt then returned to the oven for a couple of minutes. Deceptively simple I would say. The marinade for black olives also took me by surprise - garlic and vinegar one would expect, paprika maybe, but the pinch of cumin and the orange rind somehow made an enormous difference. You should try it.

There was, as there often is, a flip side to this. The demo was great, but it made me sad too; because I can't think of tapas without thinking of MoVida, my favourite restaurant in Melbourne. I have been to Melbourne a couple of times and stuck around for five months on the last occasion. I love it. Simple really. My first visit to MoVida was on the last day of my first trip to Australia, and it will always have a special place in my heart. Braised beef cheek. Cuttlefish salad. Shark in burnt butter. I am salivating and reminiscing. I'm not supposed to be thinking about the future this week, but I can't help it. Sooner or later I will have to go back.

After demo, and another fisting by the hand of duties, a few of us embark on a little technique practice for Friday's exam. My main focus is jointing a chicken, which passes relatively incident free, although I get annoyed as my friends tell me how it should be done and I, naturally, disagree. We segment oranges, fillet fish, make omelettes. We pick through recipes looking for examples of herb usage. Epazote. Savory. Sweet Cicely. Lovage. I can't think of too many uses for lovage off the top of my head, but what a wonderful word nonetheless.

I become increasingly irritable and short tempered as the evening progresses. Then I realise why. It is nearly 10pm. I walked through the door of the school at 9am. That was thirteen hours ago for God's sake. Thirteen hours of food, seasoned with a little nostalgia and confusion. I need a beer. Four of us, let's call them MS, KJ, EP and I, head to the Goalpost for a quick tipple. I eventually make it home, find time to scribble this shit and delay the inevitable. In half an hour's time I will be lying in bed, thinking of the walk across Fitzroy Gardens, along Flinders Street, turning into Hosier Lane, admiring the graffiti and wondering what earth moving specials will be on the menu today at MoVida, Bar de Tapas y Vino.

Day 37: Coming clean

Old Alan Clark has really got me thinking these past few days. Today I read an article about what makes a great diarist. As well as a few kind words about AC, it discussed the differences between a blog and a diary. I have hundreds of notebooks that (were someone deranged enough, stalking me or being paid enough to do so) if assembled would cover the last fifteen years of my life, in a series of small bursts of activity, most of it drink-fuelled, interspersed with long gaps of perhaps years at a time. I am not a good diarist, because I am not committed enough.

I have been fairly committed to the blog but there are things I can’t say that I might in my own diary. I am sure I could come up with some wonderfully derisory descriptions of my fellow students (very few of them would merit this, incidentally) but sharing a kitchen with them the next day would not be pleasant. And I am, believe it or not, just not that rude. I began under the pseudonym Sebastian Green (kindly chosen for me for another purpose entirely), but as the weeks have rolled by it is quite clear to anyone sad enough to give a shit, who I am. If I upset the school enough with my ramblings on here, they’d know who to look for. So I am outing myself, so to speak.

I finally decided to do so when this photo was taken: Monkfish and I. Beyond question one of the most hideous, ungainly, prehistoric, slimy, pungent and unpleasant creatures ever to grace the planet. Holding a monkfish. I was getting to grips with the little bastard for a delicious fish curry. First of all I gauged his cheeks out, since they are very fleshy. Whilst doing so, all manner of generic slime and detritus oozes from the fish’s many orifices. But there was clearly something foreign in his enormous mouth. I soon realised it was a crab he had evidently been planning to eat just before being bagged for my curry. After the cheeks, I removed his head, which isn't strictly necessary, but I was becoming genuinely repulsed by it. (In the photo below you will see his beady little eyes, just above where I have removed the flesh from his cheeks and the dead crab that was to be his last meal. Nice). I cut the tail, or leg, into its two halves, with my knife running tight to the spine. The outer skin can be pulled away with the hand (it is grotesquely slippery) but leaves the meat with another layer on. This membrane will tighten and contract in cooking so needs to be completely removed. There is a knack to this, cutting the tail into chunks, turning the blade when you reach the skin and sliding the meat off. It came as quite a relief to finish this whole operation and cast his remains into the hens’ bucket. The pressure to make the process worthwhile and actually turn him into a fragrant, robust curry was tangible.

Before the curry I atoned for my choux pastry disaster by knocking up some profiteroles. I learnt from Friday’s mistakes and paid really close attention to the consistency of the panade. I didn’t pay much attention to the piping, since I wasn't presenting the pastry, just making it. I had planned to make a choux pastry cock and balls for amusement, but thought better of it. I’ll leave that to the professionals.

The curry itself is a great recipe. Shallots, ginger and chilli are sautéed in coconut oil, with turmeric, chilli powder, ground coriander and sugar added as they brown, followed shortly after by coconut milk and tamarind water. The monkfish pieces are then poached in the sauce. Meanwhile you knock up a tempering of coconut oil, curry leaves and black mustard seeds, which you add to the dish just before serving. All ingredients you will have knocking around in your cupboards at home I am sure…

All in all, cooking went well today. My dishes were good, particularly the curry, which delighted me since I especially wanted to do the recipe (and the monkfish) justice. Actually, I might have improved it. It stipulates green chillies. I tasted them before putting them in, but they had no heat at all. So I added red ones instead, on the basis that flavour was more important than colour in this instance. It was. And it looked better too. Apparently I could have seasoned the fish before poaching it in the curry. This is not in the recipe, but I am told we need to think for ourselves. (Having been told for five weeks that the recipe is always right and never to question it). Maybe next time.

I shouldn’t say this, because pride comes before a fall and all that, but things are looking up for the week. An early night, a bit of time on the recipes and everything turned out all right. Could be something in that. Only one more day of cooking this week since we have theory tomorrow and Friday is the halfway point in the course, which heralds a scary sounding Herb and Technique Exam. After my morning’s run in with the crab crunching monkfish, I feel like taking on the world, so a few lettuce leaves and sprigs of parsley don’t frighten me. Not now I’ve seen off that Sebastian Green guy, anyway. Poxy little runt.

Days 35 & 36: The Lost Weekend

Today is a bank holiday in Ireland, and I am back at Ballymaloe. It has the strong taste of a Sunday, and with the boozing of yesterday’s wedding, I can’t quite work out what I’ve done with the extra day. Had it not been for the wedding I most certainly would not have returned to England. I am enjoying myself far too much here and flying, even for an hour, is an inveterate ball ache. And three days of rest would have been oh so wonderful. As it is, I must surely now look how I feel: haggard.

I still managed to enjoy a great weekend, albeit sandwiched between two tedious journeys. I saw family and old friends. Naturally, everyone wanted to know what I was going to do next. I answered honestly, that I don’t know, but that food will be at the heart of it. I made a discreet resolution to be clear and committed to my cooking over the next couple of weeks and let the future reveal itself to me, rather than scratching around in the hope of disturbing it wherever it is choosing to hide.

Day 34: Rolling on Shabbos

I am breaking my own protocol here. Today is Saturday, and I don’t blog on Saturdays. I’m not Jewish or anything, I just feel like I (and you) need a rest for at least one day a week. But it’s a long weekend, and they’re my rules so I‘ll break them if I want to. Yesterday was hard work. I made it to the Blackbird and sank a few beers. Not enough to inebriate myself under normal circumstances but they seemed to do the trick in that particular situation.

I slouched my way around Middleton farmers’ market this morning before ‘packing’ and heading for the airport. The whole journey, from start to finish, was a painful experience, made bearable only by the fact that I am reading Alan Clark’s Diaries at the moment. They saved me from a tedium that would have else surely claimed my sanity. Old AC is getting me thinking. I don’t know how edited his entries are, but they are brilliant beyond compare: remarkable for their candour, prescience and brevity. So nothing like mine then, except perhaps for the candour. I make a note to refer to everyone by their initials from now on and use obscure ‘family’ phrases that require footnotes to clarify their meaning. And to deploy the expression ‘poxy little runt’ at the first available opportunity.

I rode a cab across London an hour or so ago. It looked and felt alien. I think that in my heart, I have left that city for the time being.

Day 33: A right choux-ing

With the excitement of yesterday firmly behind me, and a decent night’s sleep under my belt, I was in school by 8am to partake of my morning duties. I was effectively sleepwalking, but I was there. My duties, distributing tea towels, filling sinks and laying down mats didn’t take too long, so I knocked up a quick dough to try my hand at another loaf.

I had a mixed bag today - one interesting dish, one boring dish. I decide to start with the interesting one - caramel eclairs. Interesting because it requires me to make choux pastry, which I have never done before. It is now three days since the demo featuring this. I have a quick flick through the recipe and crack on. I distinctly remember one very important point about not allowing the butter and water mixture to boil before the butter has fully melted, as this alters the proportions of the recipe. Unfortunately, I remember this as not allowing the mixture to boil, full stop. Having added the flour and whisking in the eggs one by one, I am amazed to find my pastry is not taking more than three eggs (it can take up to five). I fill my piping bag and watch in horror as the ‘pastry’ flows through the nozzle with just the slightest hint of encouragement from gravity. This should not be happening. I press on and pipe some ‘eclairs.’

I probably don’t need to go on with this story, and I certainly don’t want to. It is fucking depressing. I’ve spent the last few days wandering about with my head in the clouds thinking grand plans of butchery and farmers’ markets and the future of food for civilisation, when I can’t even read and follow a basic recipe. Okay, so choux pastry isn’t exactly basic, but its not rocket science, and I have fucked it up with one very simple mistake. I am not happy. I’ve always been a bit of a perfectionist and held my own talents in far too high an estimation. This kind of reality check hurts.

I attempt to galvanise myself with the boring and easy Provencal Bean Stew. I nearly manage to fuck that up too by over sweating and caramelising the onions as I piss about trying to clean up the disgusting snail like trail my choux stuffed piping bag has left in its wake. I am clearly losing the plot, so Florrie consoles me over the choux incident, and I watch her take another student through it step by step. If I have time after the stew and bread I will have another go.

I don’t have time. As usual, things take forever to happen. My stew is on eventually after much chopping, crushing and bouquet garni making. My laughable and vile ‘eclairs’ are in the hens’ bucket, along with the rest of the ‘pastry.’ I knock back and knead my bread again and put it back in the proving oven in a couple of tins for its final rise. I still need to make some kind of dessert, so try out a toffee apple recipe, since we have a surplus of them following the trip yesterday.

I finally manage to get all the crap together. The caramel for the apples becomes toffee with the addition of butter and a shot or two of sherry vinegar. I get it to the hardcrack stage and roll the apples. I am getting a good feel for caramel, which is something I knew fuck all about a few weeks ago so I take a tiny bit of solace in that. The bean stew is ticking along nicely - I add parsley and olives towards the end of the cooking. I really need to get the seasoning right here. Seasoning is a tough one, as so much of it is about confidence. After the pastry, mine is at a low, so it is really hard to back myself. I think it needs a bit of sugar as the tomatoes are just starting to go past their best. And it definitely needs a fair bit of salt and pepper to free it from excessive bean-ness. I have a go but am really not feeling it. I dump it in a bowl with the lamest parsley garnish, next to a plate of toffee apples and pine for the moment I can get out of here. Thankfully the bread is really good, though it has a few stretch marks so could have risen a bit more. I'm getting there with that, at least.

The weekend is a long one. When I get back in the kitchen next Tuesday, I need to pull my finger out. Things don’t happen by accident round here. You don’t knock up good food without thinking about it. Drifting into the kitchen, eyes half closed with a few skim read recipes is not enough. I need to spend more time on the recipes - reading them, understanding them, learning them. I need to get more rest so I’m not so tired. Standing in the kitchen this morning staring at my car crash of a workstation after the choux-ing, I thought long and hard. If I’d spent more time last night getting ready for this morning, and less time writing this fucking blog, it might not look like that. I’m here to cook, not write. And if I want any of my crazy dreams to have even the faintest brush with reality, I need to remember that.

Still, the weekend’s here now, so I will console myself in the Blackbird before I place my life in the hands of the world’s least favourite airline tomorrow afternoon and prey that they convey me home without irritating me too much. The way my day’s gone today, I definitely won’t be buying one of their scratchcards.

Day 32: An apple a day

It pissed with rain last night. So much that I hardly slept after 4. I pretty much gave up for a while threw the door open and just sat, watched and listened. No cooking or demo today - instead we are off on a school outing. I haven’t been on one of those for many, many years. I felt like sneaking a bottle of Bells in my jacket pocket like we used to on theatre trips at High School. I didn't. The coach left at 8 and, in a variety of conditions, we were all on it.

First up was Frank Hedermann's smokehouse in Cobh. A straight talking guy with a passion for what he does, he explains the various temperatures and procedures for cold and hot smoking. All his salmon is salted for two and a half hours before being cold smoked, the temperature only ever reaching 20-22ºC. Eel, mackerel and haddock are hot smoked. I ask what temperature. He explains that it is gently increased until it reaches a maximum of 72ºC, where it is held for two minutes before being gently decreased again. He adds a caveat. In theory. In reality, he explains, a guy who works for him puts his elbow to the door of the smokehouse and pronounces whether it is ready or not. He took delivery of new smoking equipment and promptly removed all the thermometers and controls. It is simple, he says. You get the finest, freshest fish, introduce the smoke, and when they're done, they're done. I mentally add fish smoker to the growing list of things I want to be in life.

Next up we head to Mahon Point Farmers Market. Last night I had a couple of beers with the guys who run it, and a long discussion regarding the future of food production and distribution. The market is awesome. There are forty odd stalls, selling everything you can think of. All local, all produced with passion and respect. As an added bonus, I get my hands on the best coffee I have had since I left Melbourne back in May. After the best steak sandwich in history, I treat myself to a second cup.

I kip on the long drive to Clogheen in County Tipperary where we visit Anne and Richard Keating, the makers of Baylough Cheese. It's probably become a bit of a cliché, but these guys are true food heroes. Anne, who doesn't look a fraction of her 66 years, used to make cheese and chutneys in a saucepan on the stove while they lived as lettuce farmers. As times hardened (in 25 years the price they got for their lettuce grew just 10%) they faced bankruptcy and eviction. A few friends suggested Anne try and sell her cheese. She did. She no longer makes it on the stovetop. They were driven into their business by necessity. The contrasts with those who pursue such endeavours with a sense of adventure or wanton bravado couldn't be more acute. It is easy to be frivolous, to squander, when you have money. These guys had no choice but to make their business work, and with everything on the line, they succeeded through sheer hard work and passion. The cheese is amazing. Cheesemaker goes back on the list.

We head to an apple farm that supplies the big Irish supermarket chains and presses its own juice from what doesn't make the grade. It all feels a bit industrial but there is something mesmerising about all the machinery. A strange little river bobs the apples round to the Wonka-like sorting room where they are graded by size and sent by conveyor belt to be hand placed and wrapped in supermarket trays or bags. They're not quite oompah loompahs in here, but the main differentials are height and gender, not face colour. Oversized or unevenly coloured apples head to the juicing room, whilst small ones are gently dropped into a revolving crate for sale as Hallowe'en special offers. The contrasts with Dick and Anne's cheese business are more than noticeable, not least when we head up into the fields to see the eastern European apple pickers at work.

I wasn't looking forward to today. The prospect of being stuck on a coach and driven from place to place like a load of Cox’s pippins bobbing their way towards the grading machine didn’t exactly appeal. Yet another reminder that, more often than not, I am too negative. Today was brilliant fun. On the drive across the Knockmealdown mountains we stopped to admire the stunning view and take photos. For a moment I stood and looked in wonder as sixty people of all ages, backgrounds and nationalities, none of whom had met or even heard of any of the others just five weeks ago, laughed, joked and horsed around like old friends.

I have spent long enough ranting over these past few weeks to obscure some of the human angle. Today we were treated to a glimpse into the power of the human spirit. At the same time, it was reassuring to observe people so close and comfortable with one another after such a short time, albeit one in which we have all been thrust together. A common passion binds most of us together. After the trip I head to the Blackbird with two of my best and newest buddies, where an impromptu strum and sing-song captivates us for a couple of hours. In those moments when you sit transfixed by music, and lyrics seem to wash over you and mean so much, it is easy to be thoughtful. I am becoming ever more so, as the days tick by and I get closer to having to make decisions. A welcome distraction is just round the corner, probably just close enough to save me from myself. On Saturday, I am going home.

Day 31: Personality goes a long way

Theory day. So far, this has had a tendency to suck. Today is different. The Art of Butchery says the schedule. After a brief biscuit demo, in comes Philip, a fourth generation butcher, originally from Germany. He tells us a little of his background, how he grew up with butchery but wanted to be different, to be cool, to be rich. So, he tells us, he went into the finance sector. “I wanted to be a banker,” he confesses. “After a week, I wanted to be a butcher.”

On the huge chopping board is one half of a pig. The head is detached and is on a separate board. He begins by explaining the journey of a pig’s life, with the assistance of a small plastic animal from a child’s farmyard set. The point at which it meets its maker is especially important since a stressful death will impair the flavour of the meat. The pig we have lived a happy life, completely organic, regularly moved to fresh ground. (I can vouch for this, having watched them rutting one morning on my way to organic gardening). The day before slaughter it was fasted and driven to the local abattoir. It spent the night there, allowing it to relax and ‘chill out,’ as Philip puts it, before being humanely terminated in the morning. The one we have today is still smiling.

The pig consists, in layman’s terms, of three broad areas: front (nearest the head), middle and back. These are the neck and shoulder, belly and loin and the leg. The leg is detached first, taking care not to damage the fillet, or tenderloin, that runs from the aitchbone to the kidney. Next the shoulder is detached by cutting around the trotter and onto the shoulder blade. The shoulder is basically a tennis racket shape, with the foreleg being the handle and the blade the head. So now we have removed both the limbs and their associated bits.

The fillet is now removed from the loin by cutting along the spine. The fatty outer lining is removed and the fillet cleaned up. This is the most expensive part of the butchered animal, so extra care is taken not to damage it. Next, we separate the belly from the loin. First of all we rip the inner layer of fat away from the leg end of the belly, with the kidney attached. This makes wonderful lard. Given the trendiness of pork belly these days, the cut could well be made higher up than in the past, but it is down to the individual. Think of your back bacon. The rounded part comes from the loin, the thinner, streaky part from the belly. You decide where to make the cut. Today we make it four finger widths from the spine. Starting from the neck, we saw a few inches, bend the spine to straighten the animal and then carry on straight through to separate the belly.

The neck is then separated from the loin (which is now basically the spine with meat and ribs attached), by cutting 6 ribs down from where the head once was. The short ribs are removed, and the main ‘rack’ of ribs has the chine bone removed allowing it to be easily roasted and carved or butchered into chops. The front, or spare, ribs are removed from the belly. The cheek is removed from the shoulder. Philip gradually whittles away. It started as one. It became three. Then six. Now seven, eight, more.

We graduate to the head. Philip gauges out the lean cheek, and talks us through the process of making brawn, or headcheese. I’m sure they could have thought of a more appetising name for a terrine made from the boiled insides of a pig’s head, but apparently not. Some people, when making headcheese, get a bit antsy about the possibility of earwax, so remove the whole ear first. God knows why -in for a penny, in for a pound I say.

We move on to what we can do with all these body parts. We salt the belly to make pancetta. We could also salt the neck to make coppa. Philip has been cleaning up as he goes, trimming away. He has three bowls on the go: lean, fat and mixed. Scraps are thrown into them throughout the butchering. He talks us through a basic sausage recipe, gets the grinder out and quickly knocks some up before lunch. By 1.30pm we are eating sausages made from the animal that lay whole, smiling, before us only four hours earlier. Now it has been reduced to its constituent parts. The inedible removed, and every last usable scrap extracted, cleaned and prepared.

The whole process is an extraordinary thing to witness. I was madly scribbling notes, annotating diagrams; drawing new diagrams when my scribbles obscured the printed ones; asking questions, telling the whisperers to shut up. I was transfixed. I wanted to know more. I wanted to know everything. I wanted a whole pig waiting on the slab when I got home so I could have a go myself. I wanted to be a butcher.

And so here we are again, the circle continues. First I want to learn about food. Next I want to be a cook. Then I want to be a chef. Then I want to be a baker. Now I want to be a butcher. A couple of weeks ago I wanted to be a cheesemaker, but that just ain't cutting the mustard anymore. There is something mystical, enchanting and elusive about the art of butchery. What the hell am I going to want to be next? I feel like a child again.

The afternoon was never going to live up to the excitement of the morning. It had a good go though, with a South African winemaker giving a quick talk and tasting session after lunch. She was brilliant as it happens - really passionate, informative and straight talking. Her father decided he wanted to plant Sauvignon Blanc on particularly inhospitable terrain that is 70% quartz stone. After getting his hands on a bulldozer that didn’t even scratch the surface, he had to bribe the local council to lend him a breaker so he could punch holes in the ground big enough to plant the vines.

You have to admire that kind of tenacity. That guy saw something, believed in it, and didn’t stop believing in it until it was done. I hope to God that's what I'm going to be like. Just as soon as I've finished working out exactly what it is I'm going to do when this is all over, I can’t wait to get on with making it happen.

Day 30: What time’s breakfast?

We’ve all been there - you’re staying overnight in some snide hotel and you’ve got ‘breakfast included.’ You come down in the morning, starving hungry. The word continental, when preceding the word breakfast takes on a new meaning. It is now a euphemism for Tesco Value. ‘Orange juice’ in a big jug, a few stale Weetabix, maybe a couple of ski yoghurts or Kellogg’s variety packs, if you’re lucky. A loaf of Mighty White and one of those rolling crematorium toasters, perhaps. Or some croissants that were freshly reheated last Thursday, or worse still, a platter of cold meats and cheeses that have been processed to the point that they require labels to identify them. Maybe you would prefer the cooked option? Mushrooms that have boiled in their own liquid for several hours, baked beans that have congealed with other items on the plate, some floppy rubber bacon, a sausage of mechanically reclaimed pork (no more than 30%) and an egg laid by a chicken fed a daily cocktail of medicines that includes an antidepressant to stop it from wanting to kill itself because it has never seen the light of day.

Fortunately, in yesterday’s demo, we learnt how to cook a proper breakfast. A Full Irish breakfast, no less. So those of us who are flung into the furthest depths of the universe and set up guest houses and hotels and B&Bs will not have to force our guests to digest the indigestible before checking out at 10am. The problem with this demo and the cooking that followed this morning is that, having cooked a few fry-ups in my time (sans oeuf, naturally), I generally prefer them a) for breakfast and b) when I am still drunk from the night before so I can’t think clearly about the horrific damage they are about to inflict upon my arteries.

Everyone has to cook and plate up a full Irish, which then becomes his or her lunch. There are also other breakfast foods to be made. Luckily, I get granola, that I make all the time at home. I am determined to make it kick ass. At home I generally make it to sight but here I am supposed to be following a recipe. I’m not sure about it though: it contains 200ml of oil for the 2lb of oats, and you add the seeds after toasting the cereal. I manage to procure a bottle of agave syrup, which is organic and has the lowest GI of any syrup. I use a combination of it and honey, and substitute most of the oil for water, which is curiously missing in the recipe I am supposed to be following. I always add fennel seeds to mine; you get little bursts of flavour from them every few mouthfuls. And I add a little salt too, which (unlike most dishes round here) they don’t. And my seeds go in the oven too, otherwise they won't cluster with the oats. All goes swimmingly, except I fuck it up by adding too much salt. And it is much sweeter than the one I make myself. Too sweet. I need to sort out a recipe. I’ll let you know when I do.

I managed to get an early night last night, and had the alarm set for 8am. I woke naturally just before 7, and remembered I was planning to go in early to make bread and pick the brains of an extremely good baker, who also happens to run the school, with his wife. Another hour under the covers is pretty tempting, but I’m here, and I can sleep another time, so I brace the cold and get up an hour earlier than the alarm. He shows me a new kneading technique and imparts some general bread wisdom. (I found out why my second loaf was too wet last week - I used the wrong flour). So much of it is about learning the textures and consistencies. He is around from 8am every morning, and I think I will go in early whenever I can to get the most out of it. I am determined to leave this place a baker.

I was also on biscuit duty today. A recipe for chocolate chip cookies went round a couple of weeks ago. Every time I have tried them they were too brittle - I like them a little softer and doughier myself. Someone recommends an American recipe that I look up. I use it to lever a few things up and down in the one I have - namely less flour and raising agents and more chocolate, and I follow their method of fully melting the butter before beating with the sugar, and also of chilling the dough before baking. They turn out okay; not perfect but an improvement. I sneak out some of the dough so I can practice at home.

When it came to fry up time things got pretty hectic. It had been a busy morning anyway, with the bread, cookies and granola, though I can’t help thinking, looking back, that I made it far busier (and messier) than it should have been. I really must try and stick to my order of work. Twenty people all cooking breakfasts in the same kitchen can be quite a sight. I bet it’s not like this at the Savoy on a Sunday morning. We get there eventually, my partner and I teaming up to save pan abuse, and assemble the happy dish of back bacon, streaky bacon, two sausages, black pudding, white pudding, tomato, mushroom and fried egg, sunny side up. If only it were 11.30am on a Saturday or Sunday and I’d just crawled out of bed, knocked my phone into a pint of water, kicked over a couple of half drunk beer bottles and pissed for twenty minutes, I might even feel like tucking in.

Obviously my teacher feels the same, since I lose marks for not having my egg in the centre of the plate, which is the preferred arrangement in these parts. It is not ‘The Xxxxxxxxxx Way’ as they are fond of saying round here. It’s not my way either, of course. My way, I have breakfast when I wake up, and not at lunchtime. The plate sits there for a while as I busy myself around it. That bit of streaky bacon is going cold. And those sausages. And the old pudding noir. Oh fuck it, go on then. What time is breakfast anyway?

Day 29: E-Day

I’ve been keeping a secret from you all weekend. Normally I am terrible at keeping secrets, and would have been hopping around biting my lip, arms flapping, desperate to tell someone. But it’s not that kind of secret. I held this one back for dramatic effect. You might have noticed that I didn’t mention demo on Friday; that’s because I didn’t want to let the cat, or should I say chicken, out of the bag. Today is E-Day. Today we are making omelettes.

In a way, I can’t believe today has taken this long to dawn upon us. If you watch Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares you will know that the first thing he asks the chef to do in any restaurant desperate enough to enlist his help is to “cook me a fucking omelette.” On Saturday kitchen they time celebrity chefs making omelettes for a leaderboard. It is a kind of barometer of culinary prowess. I am surprised we weren't lined up doing it on day one.

Before the egg-a-thon I kick off my day by making marzipan. I’d never really thought about marzipan before - I didn’t realise you could make it. I thought it came out of the ground in little yellow bricks or something. Anyway, it turns out you can. You make a syrup, add ground almonds and when it has cooled a little you fold in a beaten egg white. For today’s purposes, I take my marzipan and stuff it inside some cored and peeled apples which I then roll in melted butter, sugar and cinnamon and bake in the oven for an hour or so. I also stuff a few dates as petit fours. The apples come out looking disgusting but tasting great. I have a big gap to fill in my morning so bake up a couple more soda breads. I’m beginning to get the hang of these and they turn out pretty well.

Meanwhile, the omelette cooking is about to begin. My teacher (a wonderful lady named Florrie) takes three of us and puts us to work. They teach a very specific ‘technique’ here, that involves drawing a non-stick fish slice from the outside of the pan towards the centre as you tilt towards it, allowing the wet egg to flow to the edges and rippling the centre of the omelette, giving it body. Rather than working around the pan, you do this on the points of the compass. Then, leaving the omelette for a few seconds, you flip it over towards the centre before turning the handle through 90º, taking an underhand grip, lifting it to almost vertical and allowing the omelette to slide off the pan and onto a warmed plate.

Having never made an omelette in my life, all this seems like witchcraft to me. I have my first go. It is ok. I mean, it looks a bit anaemic and not remotely appetising, and I felt a bit like Johnny Five Thumbs stabbing around the pan with my blunt spatula, but it was ok. (Incidentally, I learnt on Saturday that kitchen slang for a spatula is a Maurice, and hereby resolve to henceforth only refer to it as such). I galvanise myself for a second attempt.

Is that pan smoking hot? In goes the tablespoon of clarified butter. My two eggs are whisked together with a little drop of water and seasoned, ready to make the giant leap from oeufdom to omelettehood. There is no turning back. The centre of the pan receives them gratefully and they spread out towards the perimeter. As they reach the limits of their new world, my Maurice heroically intervenes and scoops them up, dragging the cooked parts to the heart of the omelette as the runny eggy bits are drawn irrevocably to the naked Teflon. I coax and cajole my way around the pan through north, south, east and west, before flipping and turning the omelette onto the plate like a wizened old pro.

Now I was deliberately romanticising there because I am trying to distract you from what happened next. I have to taste the omelette. I don’t really give a shit about this - its no big deal; I just don’t like eggs. I try it. It’s not bad. I mean it’s not repulsive or offensive. I just don’t get it. I try another bit. Still not bad. Actually, I think it might be growing on me. I’m pretty hungry as it goes. I have another bit. I bet it would be nice with a filling of some description. Some mushroom a la crème perhaps? Florrie is loving this - she is straight to the other side of the kitchen stealing mushroom a la crème from someone and ordering me to make another one. And I do. And I eat it. And it tastes good.

I pondered only very briefly over the Making Omelettes, Breaking Eggs title for this blog. (Incidentally the sansoeuf bit is taken from an impromptu rant in Franglais at a Parisian waiter who brought me a croque madame, adorned with a fried egg, as opposed to a croque monsieur). Pretty much all my friends know I hate eggs. But more than that, I wanted something that would evoke the chaos and destruction of my presence in the kitchen, and the creations that would emerge from it. And, in a wider sense, my life perhaps. The egg and the omelette provide the perfect metaphor.

Today’s example just goes to prove it. I don’t like eggs, but this morning I happily wolfed down an omelette. Because once those eggs hit that pan, they are no longer eggs. They change. They transform. They transfigure. Something magical occurs, almost quasi-religious. So much of cooking is about this - it is the taking of one thing, doing something to it, and changing it into something else. (The rest of cooking is about the opposite; taking something, doing hardly anything to it, and making it even more like itself). For me, with the humble egg, it will always be a case of the former. Without the alchemy, an oeuf is just an oeuf.

Days 27 & 28: Asbestos fingers

Four weeks. How did that happen? Four weeks that seem to have passed in both a heartbeat and a lifetime. They have flown by, yet what came before seems so distant and far removed that I wonder if any of it ever happened. By the time Friday night came spluttering to the rescue and I had loaded up on the Cake I was feeling pretty drained. I was planning to man up and get on it in the Blackbird, but fate kindly intervened. A stolen hour or two in the Middleton Garda Station waiting for my friend’s passport to be stamped came at just the right time to stop me from getting too hammered.

As I was driving out of the hotel around 7.30pm on Friday I saw one of the chefs coming back from the glasshouse armed with a giant cauliflower. I wound the window down for a quick chat. By the time I wound the window back up, I had offered my services at 10am to help prepare canapés for a 130 strong wedding party on Saturday afternoon. How did that happen, you might ask? I knew it was going to happen. I wanted it to happen. I know I need the rest, and a lie in, and last week I lost half of my weekend doing the same thing, but I don’t care. It’s as though I am desensitising myself. I already know how to sleep. I am here to learn to cook. So the Middleton Garda distraction is not the end of the world, because when the alarm goes off at 9am on Saturday morning, I actually feel alive and well and not like some angry shovel-wielding adversary has caved my head in.

The last few times I have been in the hotel kitchen I have made a point of wearing a clean uniform. This time I am on my way over when I notice I have donned the flour encrusted apron I have been wearing all week. I don’t bother changing it. It’s not that important. Canapés are being served from 2.30pm and I am going to help out by making tomato tartlets. Naturally, most of the hard work has been done for me. I have to make two batches since we only have trays to hold 90 at a time. I make a caramel that is stopped with sherry vinegar. Luckily I made caramel yesterday, so this is not too daunting. Then, I had a recipe to follow for the ratio of sugar to water. Here there is no recipe: take as much sugar as you need, and wet it. You have the right ratio, and it is a lot quicker. I drip a tiny quantity of the caramel into each of the 90 cases in the tray. On top of each goes half of an oven roasted cherry tomato, cut side down. Once that is done, I get the pre cut puff pastry circles from the fridge. They go over each tomato, quickly, and the rest returned to the fridge. With floured hands I then press each one around the tomato, and the whole tray goes in the fridge for a couple of hours. Once they are cooked, I will make the next batch straight off.

Between all this I help a fellow student fill small tins with scallop mousse for the second course and slice red onions on the mandolin to go in the smoked salmon pancake canapés. We also fill piping bags with duck liver pate to be piped onto croutons and dusted with ground pistachio. Meanwhile I mix the herbs into the stuffing for the main course of guinea fowl, and spend twenty minutes ramming handfuls of it into seventy of the little buggers' cavities.

Removing the cooked tomato tartlets from their trays is not easy. The bottoms are basically molten caramel at this stage, so plenty of them stick and have to be prised away with the fingertips. This is fucking painful, but has to be done. The head chef explains how over time the nerve endings on your fingers just get burnt off, pushing the pain threshold higher and higher. Once they reach a certain point, he says, it just becomes mind over matter. If you think about the pain, you will feel it. If you don't, you won't. Something to look forward to, I guess. By the end of the second tray I am getting used to it, and you know what? The pain is worth it: they look and taste great. I finish up around half past three, with enough of the day left to make the most of. It has been another great experience: fast, pressured and for once I had more than one thing to think about at a time. I walk across the courtyard to the cottage, crack open a Boags and promptly fall asleep.

Today has been nice and relaxed, despite the relentless drizzle. After a healthy lie in, three of us headed out to Kinsale, about an hour away, south west of Cork. We wandered about the little streets, in and out of shops and cafes, taking things pretty easy. Lunch of just about passable fish and chips was dragged down to new levels of gastronomic woe by the most repulsive ‘mushy peas’ I am yet to encounter. I refuse to comment further upon them in fear that their stench may return to the banks of my memory.

Right now I am sipping on a beer and indulging in my weekly reflections. I feel a bit stupid saying it, but it hasn’t been the most exciting week’s cooking. It was only really the bread and the Cake that made it special. In between these I cooked up cabbage soup, a bacon chop, curly kale, sponge cake and leftover Mexican chicken with Doritos. It’s not that exciting is it? I know it is arrogant and conceited and stupid, since I can’t even cook cabbage soup, but I want to learn the impossible. This week is looking a bit more interesting - fish filleting, choux pastry and a butchery demo on Wednesday that should have the squeamish ones reaching for the exit.

At times in the last couple of weeks I have touched upon rumblings of dissent among some of the students. Now we are four weeks in this all comes into slightly sharper focus. We need to know what is coming next, how the following weeks will develop, so we can identify the gaps. What are they not proposing to teach us? From my first day in the kitchen and the teaspoon incident, through the over use of butter, cream and salt, we have known that there is their way of cooking, and our way. We have paid €10,000 each for the privilege to learn their way, so that is what we are learning. But we want more. I want more. I want to learn the shortcuts. I want to learn how to make syrup without weighing the sugar. I want to learn how to be a chef. But I can’t. No one can teach me that - there’s really only one way, and it will involve scalding the flesh from my fingertips over a period of very many years. And mind over matter. A lot of mind, over a lot of matter.

Day 26: Soup of the day

Today I am going to make up for the lack of Tunisian Orange Cake (“the Cake”) in my dream the other night by making one in real life. I should have plenty of time to squeeze it in amongst Savoy Cabbage Soup and Bacon Chop with Whiskey. I have a confession to make here - I have never made soup before in my life. I resolve to make it today using reduced vegetable stock, and to garnish it with some deep-fried cabbage strands (also known, inexplicably, as crispy seaweed).

There is, it transpires, another reason why the vegetable soups are made with chicken stock. There isn’t any vegetable stock. So I have to make mine with chicken stock. If there had been vegetable stock I’d have needed to get it on first thing to reduce it and thereby enhance its flavour. Never mind, the soup can wait a while anyway. I put my bacon in a pan of water to begin cooking it and draw the excess salt from the meat.

I crack on with the Cake. As well as being delicious, it is also flourless, so easily adaptable for coeliacs. Here’s how you make it: mix 7ozs sugar, 3½ ozs ground almonds, 1½ ozs stale breadcrumbs (gluten-free ones for a coeliac) and a level teaspoon of baking powder. Whisk four eggs and 7 fl ozs oil. Add them all together, with the zest of half a lemon and an orange. Fill your lined cake tin or, if you prefer, four small loaf tins. I fill three and a tiny loaf tin for tasting. For reasons that elude everyone who comes into contact with the Cake, you place it in a cold oven and set the temperature to 180ºC. While it bakes you juice the fruit and add 3oz sugar to make a syrup, brought to the boil and simmered for three minutes or so, flavoured with a couple of cloves and a stick of cinnamon.

The pan with the bacon in it is taking all fucking day to heat up. There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. My partner notices that I have forgotten to turn the gas on. He also bails me out on the hot water/cold water issue for desalting the bacon, after we spend the first twenty minutes playing musical saucepans with my bacon and his strawberry jam. Shambolic.

Things start to come together as the morning, relentless and unforgiving, whittles away before my eyes. The Cake is in the oven, the syrup is made. I have all the work yet to do on the soup, but that should be pretty straightforward. This fucking bacon though is still refusing to cook. There is some rumbling elsewhere, and the truth slowly emerges. The meat of a pig when it is slaughtered is called pork. If that meat is cured, in salt, it becomes bacon. The cookery school has bought in a quantity of loins of bacon. Except they are not all technically bacon. Some of them have not been properly cured. They are technically pork. My piece of meat has come from one of these loins. Hence it is taking a lot longer to cook than it should.

While this situation is being discussed, I start on my soup. Sweating onion and potato, destalking cabbage leaves and so on. I stop to take the Cake out of the oven, skewer the top and pour copious quantities of the syrup over it. I garnish with the cinnamon sticks and leave to cool. I siphon one of the cakes off for myself, leave two for them and plate up the small one as a dessert. You must make this bad boy. It rules the world of cakes.

Back to the soup, I am anxious not to overcook the cabbage and rob the broth of what little flavour it is likely to enjoy anyway. I take my soup off the heat and pass it through the liquidiser. I taste it and correct the seasoning. Wait a minute. I haven’t seasoned it at all yet - a big mistake. The golden rule when seasoning a soup is beginning, middle and end. This enables the flavours to develop throughout the soup’s lifetime, rather than just thrusting them upon it at the end. Bollocks. All I can do now is get it right and hope for the best. The soup from yesterday’s demo was too salty, so I am nervous about adding too much. I get it to where I am reasonably happy with it (cabbage soup tastes pretty bland anyway).

I also make the whiskey sauce for my bacon/pork chops. This is a caramel sauce that could equally (more equally some would say) be served with dessert. The key with caramel is getting it to stop cooking at just the right time. Too early and it will just taste of sugar, with none of the bittersweet flavour you are looking for. Too late, and it will just taste burnt. I time it about right and add water to the pan to stop the cooking. Once the caramel and water are fully dissolved, in goes the whiskey. At this point, I am told to abandon the pork chops, and the joint goes in the oven to be roasted. It would have been sliced, egg and crumbed and pan-fried in clarified butter. Fortunately for me I have made enough veal Milanese in my time so I am not missing much.

Come tasting time, I plate up my soup with a small dollop of cream and the shredded cabbage that nearly burnt my arms off when I added it to the deep fryer (there is a lot of water in cabbage, even if you do dry it properly). I am papering over the cracks here - cabbage soup does not look appetising. Neither does it taste so apparently. The cabbage is fractionally under cooked, so it hasn’t pureed as fully as it should, meaning it is a little stringy in places. I actually prefer this, since I want my soup to have some texture and not feel like a smoothie. But they don’t.

Next, a discussion ensues regarding seasoning - my teacher thinks it needs more, I don’t. She adds more. I taste. She is right. My determination not to over season it has caused me to cajole my taste buds into under seasoning it. The best way to overcome this with soup is to ladle some into a small bowl and season minutely; if you do go too far you haven’t ruined the whole pan. Oh well, we live and learn. That’s what I’m here for after all, and it is nice from time to time to remind my over-inflated ego that by no stretch of even the most overactive imagination am I any kind of cook. Take it in, suck it up and deal with it next time. Hold on. Next time? Cabbage soup? There ain’t gonna be a next time….

Day 25: Another day in paradise

Only a real idiot would think they could engineer their dreams. My attempt to dream of a rare Chateau d’Yquem and Tunisian Orange Cake had a most unexpected result. For the first time in a long time, I failed to dream of food. Instead, I dreamt of the thing that dominated my dreams and thoughts for eight years: horse racing. It was extremely lucid. I had travelled alone to some remote racecourse and backed a horse in an amateur riders’ race (unlikely). Needless to say, the muppet swinging on the bridle on my horse clouted the last flight, surrendering the lead. Managing to galvanise his charge the hopeless fool got him back in front, before mistaking the winning post, then realising and having to pick up the bit once more before finally getting his nose in front just on the line. It was an exhausting way to win a couple of imaginary grand. And just as I was heading out of the racecourse, presumably to splash some of my winnings on that elusive d’Yquem, the bloody cockerel went and woke me up. Anyone who thinks they know what that dream means, please do enlighten me. I can only assume that today’s dishes were not sufficient to whet my dormant appetite. I certainly wasn't drooling over Chilaquiles Rojos and Curly Kale

I decided to sneakily swap my Brown Bread Duty for another attempt at the real bread from Tuesday. I really, seriously, want to learn about bread. I make my dough a little wetter today. It rises more, and quicker. I make the same plaited loaf and a few rolls just as I did before. The plait doesn’t hold its shape as well and so is a little flat. Also, to cook the wetter dough through, the longer cooking time means a heavier crust forms. It seems to take more kneading too, since there are a few lines on the outside of the bread that would indicate it needed more attention, and I had given it plenty. That said, it still looks and tastes good, just not as good as Tuesday. The key is learning the consistencies and textures, and understanding how the climate and humidity affect your dough. From now on, whenever I can, I am going to bake bread and learn.

When I actually read the recipe for my Chilaquiles I notice there are a few time consuming stages that I hadn’t fully appreciated. Chilaquiles is basically Mexican peasant food - a sort of lasagne using tortilla chips, shredded chicken and salsa. There are some lovely ripe tomatillas in the weigh up area, so I am going to make Chilaquiles Verdes and not Rojos. This means making my sauce in a wonderful thing called a Molacajete. It is an oversized mortar and pestle that is made from lava rock and has an incredibly rough texture. Whilst my tomatillas are gently poaching I use it to grind onion, garlic, chilli and coriander into a fine paste. There is only one way to gauge the amount of chilli required, and that is to know exactly how hot the chillies you are using are. And the only way to do that is to taste them. They are pretty hot.

In go the tomatillas, skins and all, and the grinding continues. I add some of the cooking liquid to thin the salsa out and put it to one side. Next I cut and fry tortillas for the base and top of the dish, then shred the leftover chicken. I assemble it in layers, pour over the salsa and top with grated mozzarella and cheddar. I stick it in a hot oven for ten minutes and plate it up neatly with two little bowls of extra cheese and sour cream. It looks all right - the top is crusted nicely and it has held its shape, and I know the salsa is good because I tasted and seasoned it properly. But the actual ensemble is pretty uninspiring. My teacher likes it. She thinks it could be a bit wetter - I protest that then it would just be a sloppy mess, and she tells me this is the idea. I am happy to be marked down for these kinds of errors. I begrudgingly try some. I am astonished. It is nice.

I also have to take care of my curly kale. Here is the recipe: ‘Bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil. Add the curly kale and boil uncovered on a high heat until tender. Drain off the water, puree in a food processor, return to the saucepan. Season with salt, pepper and a little nutmeg if you fancy’. I do fancy, thank you. I taste and season. It is delicious. But wait. There is more. ‘Add a nice lump of butter…’ okay, I add a little butter. ‘…and some cream.’ Now why would I want to go and do a thing like that? I leave the cream out. My teacher and another in my kitchen taste it and think it is delicious. But the recipe says add cream. I don’t add cream. I won’t add cream. It doesn’t need cream. The recipe is wrong.

During the afternoon, there is further dissention in the ranks. On the demo today are green soups. They are made using chicken stock. Someone asks why they’re not made using vegetable stock. We are told it is because the chicken stock has a superior flavour. But surely, with all these organic vegetables, the vegetable stock should be of an extremely high quality. Tasting the veg on their own, they are alive with flavour. So should we not be making vast quantities of fantastic organic vegetable stock which we can reduce down until it is as flavoursome as we need it? And would any restaurant in the world sell a watercress soup that wasn't suitable for vegetarians?

On the subject of which, we dined this evening in a very highly regarded vegetarian restaurant in Cork called Café Paradiso. I think I mentioned before that when dishes cost a certain amount, I expect certain things. They don’t sell beer so I have to get mine from the pub next door. Didn’t expect that. The starters cost around €13 and the mains €25. Didn’t expect that either. (Although I know from the English market that organic vegetables cost more than meat anyway). Two of the starters take my fancy - the vegetable sushi and a terrine of carrot, almond and feta. The sushi comes first, though a good three or four minutes after everyone else’s starters. Other dishes, most notably a portobello mushroom stuffed with cashel blue and pecans, are excellent. Bravo. My terrine is good, and the service remains admirably consistent, since it too arrives significantly later than any other dish. While I’m waiting I pop next door for another drink. Hardly my idea of paradise.

A couple of people have ordered the sweet chilli glazed tofu with coconut and lemongrass broth and soba noodles, a snitch at only €23. It receives mixed reviews due to its spiciness. I take issue with its price. It cannot cost more than €3 to produce. Or can it? The waitress returns. “Do you make the tofu here?” I ask. “Yes we do,” she replies. “You actually press it yourselves?” asks someone else. “No, we buy it from the English market and cook it here.” They must be shitting money.

But guess what? The place is packed and everyone raves about it. The food is good, I’ll give it that. But getting away with charging big bucks for dishes like that says more about the competition, or lack of it, than the place itself. If it were my restaurant I’d charge less on principle. And I’d give the walls a lick of paint while I were at it, it looks like a fucking funeral parlour. And I’d bring sugar with the coffee. And not let my guests have to get up themselves and get it. And I wouldn’t charge €8 for the olives. But then I don’t put cream in my curly kale or use chicken stock in my vegetable soup, so what would I know.

Day 24: Cake. Cake and wine

Clambering into bed last night I had a decision to make regarding this morning’s organic gardening class. In a typically cowardly act of procrastination, I decided to decide nothing: set the alarm for 8am and if nature should chose to wake me in time for the 7.45 start, well then who am I to argue. Luckily for me, my subconscious was never one to pick a fight with nature and I slept blissfully through until 8. When I made it in, one of my friends told me how her day had begun. She was up and getting ready for organic gardening when her roommate stirred in her sleep. She asked her if she wanted to come to gardening class too. “Hmmmm,” came the thoughtful reply, her eyes still firmly shut. “I think I'll garden in my sleep.” I felt a lot better. That’s exactly what I’d been doing.

I was still knackered of course. Today is the dreaded theory day. No cooking; just watching and listening. It’s not as bad as it sounds though as the sommelier from the local hotel is over giving one of a series of wine lectures that last throughout the course. Today we are covering France and have a guest speaker in, a Frenchman from Burgundy named Pascal who is a wine merchant and importer. He has also been a wine producer and sommelier at various times in his life, and is extraordinarily knowledgeable.

He is talking specifically about Burgundy and the South West. We have six wines to taste, three from each region. They are all extremely good. In particular, he is trying to show us what great value is to be had with wines from the relatively unfashionable South West region. He succeeds. A couple really stand out. There is a 2006 Chateau du Cedre from Cahors. Predominately Malbec, it is a big, multi-layered, complicated wine. It will hold up well for the next few years and at under €20 a bottle is a complete bargain. As Pascal points out, it would cost three times that were it from Burgundy (which would be impossible since it is a Malbec).

A year or so ago I was fortunate enough to have my first taste of Chateau d’Yquem, the most famous and expensive sweet wine in the world. I was doubly fortunate, since I was drinking the 2001 vintage, which is considered to be among the best four or five of the last century. As I reached out across the table to take up my glass, the man to my right, a huge Geordie with an unlikely but encyclopaedic knowledge of wine, clamped his shovel like hand on my wrist to stop me. “Have you ever drunk d’Yquem before?” he asked, in his almost indecipherable accent. “No,” I replied, with trepidation. “Then be carfeul,” he said. “What you are about to do is going to be very expensive.” I really wasn't prepared for what followed. There would be no point trying to describe its colour or viscosity. The bouquet? Who knows? Which one of the many complex aromas could I be conceited enough to try and isolate and identify? And the taste? Why squander words trying to describe the indescribable when just one will suffice? Nectar. Very expensive nectar, if you care to add two more.

My other favourite wine from today was also a sweet wine. A 2006 Clos Uroulat from Jurancon. It had a wonderfully deep, amber colour. The nose carried sweet honey and melon and rich white fruits. They flooded over onto the palette - apricots and figs with a lovely mineral flavour that stopped the sweetness from overpowering the wine. This was the great thing - the sweetness wasn't its most remarkable quality, it was its freshness and cleanliness. There was no cloying sickliness. It didn't feel like a thick, syrupy dessert wine. Pascal is a big fan. He suggests that its refreshing qualities impart upon it a wide remit, and recommends it with foie gras. At €25 a bottle I’ll take a case or two and do exactly as he tells me.

In an earlier rambling I discussed what separates us from the apes. After lunch today we have a lecture on the very thing. It is, after water, the second most consumed drink in the world: tea. The theme of the session is Afternoon Tea. This means, after the Camelia Sinensis lecture, more bloody cakes. A lot more. Sponge cakes with no butter, Moroccan and Tunisian orange cakes, rum and raisin cake, Christmas cake, fairy cakes. Granny’s cake, great granny’s cake. Aunt so-and-so’s cake, that old Doris down the road’s cake, you name it, we make it.

Aside from the cakes we are shown a Treasure Chest of Sandwiches. It goes something like this: take one rectangular loaf of good fresh bread. Carefully slice through the top of it, just under the crust, but leave one of the long sides still attached, like a flap. Prise the flap open and cut down the four sides of the loaf but not all the way through the bottom crust. Now take a very long, thin, sharp knife and insert it in the bottom of the loaf, just above the crust opposite your flap. Use it to work down the two long edges and free the centre of the loaf from the bottom. Hey presto! You have removed the centre of the loaf and are left with your 'Treasure Chest.' Now, and assuming you have not died of old age during the time it has taken you to do this, slice the crustless loaf lengthways into an even number of slices. Make interesting sandwiches out of them. Now cut them into finger size pieces and delicately fill the original loaf. They will take up more space now of course, so the 'lid' of your 'chest' is held open, revealing its sandwich treasures to the assembled crowds. It is a genuinely spectacular, if utterly pointless and ludicrously time consuming endeavour that only the terminally love struck or clinically insane would consider undertaking. Thanks to this, amongst other excruciatingly painstaking demonstrations, such as the icing of the Christmas cake with homemade marzipan, the entire demo takes us to almost 6pm, and we didn’t even stop for a break. You cannot imagine.

The butterless sponge cake tasted like cardboard. The rum and raisin cake was good, but then it had two of my favourite things in it, so it should be. The Christmas cake wasn't all that. It lacked structural integrity. It certainly wouldn’t stand up to the Pineapple and Brandy cake I made for my sister’s wedding. (Admittedly my first attempt at that didn’t go entirely to plan, and I smashed a few things in the flat when I decided to ice the finished article in the middle of the night after a particularly heavy session, but we got there in the end). The fairy cakes were good. But the orange cakes, and I do not exaggerate here - they made the whole day worthwhile.

The tiredness felt particularly acute today. Maybe it was the inactivity, or the morning wine. Or maybe it’s just the cumulative effect of the past few weeks. I honestly cannot remember the last time I had a dream that wasn’t about food. I see no reason why tonight will be any different, so I think it is time I took control. I might treat myself. A big fat slice of Tunisian orange cake; the hints of cinnamon and clove emerging from the sweet syrup that seeps through the pores of the sponge. And when it's finished, I think a dusty half bottle of d'Yquem. Perhaps a 1929 or a '67. Very expensive, yes, but it'll sure beat the hell out of gardening in my sleep.

Day 23: Let them eat cake

A couple of years back I had lunch at The Fat Duck in Bray. Everyone knows about the Fat Duck and its enigmatic chef, Heston Blumenthal. And everyone knows about the painstaking lengths he goes to in order to achieve results. If you’ve seen his TV show or read his books, you’ll know what I mean. Recipes that begin with instructions like ‘First breed a cross between a cow and a sheep’ will always remain the domain of a small but select few. Most of us struggle preheating the oven, without having to build the bloody thing first.

On each table in The Fat Duck is a little pile of cards that diners are invited to fill in and leave behind. On them, Heston asks us to record a food memory. It is an wonderful concept. A lot of the quirky dishes and mise en bouche at The Fat Duck are variations of kids’ sweets and simple, playful foods: popping candy, miniature packets of parsnip cornflakes, bacon and egg ice cream that actually comes out of an egg. Heston is toying with our minds, using taste and texture to invoke memories of our childhood and (presumably, though surely not for everyone) flood our minds with happy thoughts.

I left behind gooseberries as my ‘food memory’. I would pick them from the bushes in the garden of our old house and eat them like sweets, as well as having them in delicious crumbles. The taste of a gooseberry, especially a sour one that hasn’t quite ripened yet, will always remind me of the house I grew up in, its garden, and of my childhood, free from all the cares in the world.

Today I retrieved a similar memory from the annals of my short past. I was on white bread duty. Having made soda breads yesterday, and been mesmerised by the white yeast bread on Friday, I decided to attempt my first ever proper bread. It wasn’t until the first kneading stage that the memories began to stealthily return. It occurred to me that I had done this before. I didn’t know how to do it of course, but there was something about the texture of the dough: its springiness and elasticity. There was something about the smell of the yeast and the warm moist droplets that formed on the bowl that had covered it. I had definitely been here before.

I couldn’t tell you how old I’d have been when my mum would have let me help her bake the weekly bread rolls on a Saturday morning, but she did. And I remember it. Making scones the other day, I felt a faint, almost imperceptible sense of déjà vu. I didn’t quite realise it at the time, but now I do. His is how we slowly recall things, how we bring them back to life from the dark recesses of our minds. One memory succeeds in forming itself, making itself recognisable, and it encourages another to emerge from the fog of time. Now I know for sure that I had been there before too. The smells, the tastes, the textures. The little bits of mixture left in the bowl. And I suddenly feel guilty for shit canning my mum’s cooking for all these years. She started this.

All this reminiscing doesn’t stop me from thrashing around the kitchen like a madman. My teacher foolishly shows me a method of kneading that involves repeatedly and aggressively slam-dunking the dough into the worktop. It looks slightly less likely to give me carpal tunnel syndrome than the traditional method, so I get stuck in. About twenty seconds later I am asked to stop, not just because of the noise, but I think things may be in danger of falling off the walls.

Whilst my dough is getting some much-earned rest in a cupboard somewhere, I crack on with the sponge cake we were ‘shown’ yesterday. I get all my dry ingredients together: 6oz flour, 6oz sugar and a teaspoon of baking powder. I cream my butter until it is almost pale (very important). Next instruction: beat the sugar and butter together. Er, would that be the sugar that I have here in this bowl with the flour? So now I am making the sponge cake and some lemon squares.

Back to the bread. Rolling it out for the plait I am in full flashback mode. It rises once more to double its size, and I egg wash it and sprinkle on the obligatory poppy seeds. It finally emerges from the oven, and when it has cooled a little, I taste it. It tastes wonderful. Light yet firm and with a faint saltiness that somehow lifts its freshness to new levels. And it looks almost good enough to eat.

I weigh up for the cake again and crack on. It goes in the oven with no further dramas. But the delay means I won’t get to fully load it with cream and fruit, since only the first two ready in the kitchen will have that honour. By the time I am finished it looks good, but it tastes great. In demo today our favourite instructor is waxing lyrical in his own inimitable style about cake. He is extolling the virtues of these particular recipes and the cakes they produce. “They will blow you away,” he says. Then he pauses and thinks again, as is his wont. “More importantly, they will blow your paying customers away.” He pauses once more. “Well, maybe not away, hopefully they will blow them away in a circular fashion, so that they come back and buy some more.” Genius. And he is right.

The secret is in the colour. The sponge cake I baked today is almost yellow inside. Somewhere else in the kitchen is the same cake, made to the same recipe, with exactly the same ingredients. It is very pale, almost white, inside and it tastes inferior. Why? Because they’re not exactly the same ingredients. The anaemic cake is made using free-range eggs and mine is made using fresh organic hens’ eggs from the farm. Want your cakes to be so good that they blow people round in circles? Get yourself some hens.

Hens. Hens that lay eggs. Eggs. We know I don’t like them, but we don’t know why. Locked away with all those other memories, is one more. I am about five years old. I am sat at the kitchen table in our old house. In front of me is a boiled egg in an eggcup and a little plate of toasted soldiers obediently lined up waiting to be dipped and gleefully devoured. Somewhere between then and now, something must have changed. I just don’t remember when.