I afforded myself a rather nice drop of cognac before retiring to bed last night, on account of the fact that today was my 32nd Birthday. Or Borthday, as my fat fingers seem to hammer out every time I try and write it. I am usually quite serious about not working on my birthday and have, in the past, been known to throw lavish and unnecessary celebrations to commemorate the occasion. Today, I have no choice in the matter.
My cook ahead for the practical exams is scheduled for 9am, so there goes my lie in and any sniff of a piss up the night before. I have to make Ruby Grapefruit and Pomegranate Sorbet and get my Boeuf Bourguignon started and marinating in preparation for tomorrow’s exam. Each of us has three hours to cook a full three-course meal. Any time spent on cook ahead is deducted from the total. There isn’t a great deal for me to balls up this morning, so it’s all about speed. I get in just after 8.30 so I have time to get all my ingredients ready and my mise en place. I have written out moron-resistant instructions for the few small steps I need to take.
At 9am on the dot I turn the heat on under the pan and pour in some oil. I dice bacon into half-inch cubes and chuck it in. I have 3lb of stewing beef that I dice into 2-inch chunks. Meanwhile I am turning the bacon so it goes crisp and golden and not black. I am also halving grapefruits and squeezing them in the electronic juicer as I go. The bacon goes into the Le Creuset and the first batch of beef goes into the pan to brown.
In the interests of expediency, I am using a large frying pan. The cost of doing so is that it is non-stick, which makes things a little more interesting. As I turn the meat and squeeze the grapefruits, the clock ticks slowly round. I am seasoning the final batch of beef when, in an act of Clark Kent like inadvertent strength, I wrench the top off the pepper mill and send black peppercorns everywhere. This is only a mild turd strewn in my path, and I quickly chuck them out of the pan and carry on as before. But my workstation now looks like the bottom of a rabbit hutch.
All this has dried the pan out completely, so I have to chuck in some more oil to brown the carrot and onion in. It won’t make any difference to the flavour since the whole thing will sit in wine for 24 hours before being slow cooked anyway. That done, it is time to flambé the pan, and I add a generous measure of acceptable, though vastly inferior to last night’s, brandy. The flames nearly take my eyebrows off, but they manage to remain attached. In goes the wine. As it comes up to heat I whisk all the encrusted juices and bits of meat off the bottom of the pan. There are a lot of them, so I whisk them around to disperse their flavour and decide to sieve the wine before I add it to the meat. This is the price of using the non-stick pan and letting it dry out.
I sieve the grapefruit juice over the sugar I have already weighed out, bash out the pomegranate seeds and chuck them in the bowl too. A quick whisk brings it all together and I can stop the clock as it is ready for the sorbetiere. It is 09:23. Job done.
I spend the rest of the morning loafing about waiting for the sorbet machine to work its magic. The one I am using takes three times longer than any other but produces a vastly superior texture. I while away my time looking at pictures of fish for the exams on Friday, and stroll down to the glasshouse to look at salad leaves for the same purpose. A few people are quizzing each other on various topics. I quickly realise that I know very little of what I will need to know in two days’ time. Not exactly the first time that’s happened so I won’t lose too much sleep.
After a long (and late) lunch, I do a bit of filing and set about my order of work for tomorrow. It needs to be extremely detailed. It takes ages. Wanna read it? Of course you don't. It won't happen like that anyway. But just in case it does, I reckon I can squeeze in a quick beer or two before bedtime…
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