Day 22: Game on

With my merde en place I stride confidently in the direction of the kitchen. Order of work in hand, knives sharpened, whites clean, apron pressed. First bit of news - I had an 8am duty that I was blissfully unaware of. Luckily some kind soul covered for me, and I will repay the favour by doing her chores later in the day. Merde en place my arse.

I am bullish with my order of work - straight in amongst it. First on the list is cleaning up the chicken livers for my pâté. I get in early and pick nice dark livers that will have more flavour. They’re on the pan in the foaming butter, my thyme and garlic is ready to rock and all is rosy in the garden. You have to be careful not to cook them too slowly, or they basically poach themselves. Too quickly and they crust on the outside. I decant them in the magimix and deglaze the pan with brandy. (The last time I had my hand on a bottle of brandy this early in the morning was after my greatest loss in my previous incarnation as a bookmaker - a couple of times the bottle almost reached my lips but somehow the premonition of a lifetime drinking cheap liquor from brown paper bags held me back). Unfortunately I have allowed the pan to cool as I decant, so it is not hot enough to ignite the brandy, and I lose the opportunity to show off and look like I know what I’m doing. I add the thyme and garlic to the pan and scrape its luscious contents into the mixer. This has to cool before I start adding the copious amounts of butter.

The pâté under control, I begin on my almond tartlets. The mixture is equal quantities of ground almonds, sugar and creamed butter. They go in the oven and come out a lovely golden brown colour. I load up a second tray. They go in the oven and come out a dark brown colour. Fortunately I had been stupid enough to make twice as many as I needed anyway, so passers by eat the burnt ones. I am tempted to put a sign on them saying €1 but there’s enough of that going on as it is.

Meanwhile my pâté has cooled and is ready to be buttered up. I add 10oz of butter to my 8oz of chicken livers. The colour is right but there is a grainy consistency that no amount of whizzing seems to be removing. This means that I probably overcooked them and a crust formed in a couple of places. Naturally I doubt this, but in the absence of any other conceivable explanation I probably have to accept that this might possibly be the case. Eliminate the impossible and what remains, however improbable, must be the truth. The sieve messily comes to my rescue. I pot up some of the pâté and pipe the rest for canapés.

The tartlets are going to be filled with raspberries and coated in a redcurrant glaze. This can wait till later. I now have a bit of spare time so I knock out a couple of loaves of bread. I haven’t actually made traditional soda bread yet, so I make one white and one brown. You can’t fuck around here; the second the alkali of the bread soda mixes with the acid of the sour milk, things start to happen. Making two at the same time means having all the ingredients ready and doing it quickly. This probably helps me - the temptation is to faff around a lot more than you have to, and to the detriment of the bread. They go in the oven, crosses on, and with the traditional slits ‘to let the fairies out’. They come out three quarters of an hour later and they are good. More by luck than judgment maybe, but it appears that I can make bread.

It is getting close to plating up time. I have an opportunity to work on my presentation here. I roll the raspberries around in the glaze and place them on the tartlet bases with a pair of chopsticks I borrow from a fellow student. Then I get my hands on the piping bag again and start working my magic with the cream. I am uncharacteristically ambitious here, and try to create a delicate crown around the top raspberry on each of the three tarts. What I actually succeed in creating is the illusion that an extremely gifted albatross has just deposited three impossibly well-grouped salvos of guano on the plate in front of me. Still, nothing a craftily positioned mint leaf won’t fail to conceal.

I am much happier with my pâtés. I place the canapé size pipes on a small round of cucumber and top with a chervil leaf. I have also knocked up a tomato concasse, with a tiny splash of sherry vinegar and olive oil. I add little groups to each diminutive canapé. If I had hundreds of them to do, it would take me hours, but I have seven, so I make the effort. For the ramekin, I scatter concasse and chervil leaves around the plate with melba toast and make a small pile in the centre. For the first time in my three weeks, I take a photograph of the food I have created. Who says you can’t polish a turd?

After lunch we are treated to a chat from a local gamekeeper. He is exquisitely attired, and I am now considering sewing some leather patches on my elbows and buying a gilet to complement my nascent flat cap collection. He has a range of stuffed, frozen and a few fresh game birds for us to peruse. He demonstrates plucking and singeing techniques, and then spends five minutes with his fist inside a teal explaining how to remove its contents. (If I wish, I can get into school early tomorrow to try my hand at plucking - I’ll have to think about that one). His genuinely interesting and informative presentation builds into a scintillating crescendo with a demonstration of his loyal gun dog retrieving a frozen duck from outside the window. It receives a rapturous ovation.

The rest of the afternoon passes in a whirlwind of sponge cake, roast chicken, parsnip crisps and tomato juice. After demo a few of us squeeze in a bit of ‘exercise’ and get a game of tennis on in the hour and a half we have before the sun sets. I probably burn off the equivalent of a slice of melba toast thinly spread with pâté maison, but it’s a start at least.

Tomorrow isn’t particularly exciting me right now, though I am looking forward to attempting the sponge cake, especially since the demo one turned into a bit of a gun dog’s dinner. No doubt if I do nail it the old €5 a slice sign will be going up. If it does, I’ll try and take a picture first.

Days 20 & 21: Mise en place

A few of us decided to reward our efforts over the week with a nice meal on Friday night. If a restaurant charges €12 for its starters and €29 for its mains, I expect certain things. Actually, I demand them. Having to catch the waiter’s attention after ten minutes to ask if we might be able to order some drinks is not one of them. Having my main course of pan-fried brill expertly cooked is, and they oblige. Having it smothered in four ounces of butter and a mound of lemon zest, sadly, is not.

It wasn’t all bad. I had confit duck to start, which was excellent, except someone had inexplicably added a crust of cheese to it, which I had to peel off before enjoying the remainder. I was actually looking around the table trying to work out where the smell of melting cheese was coming from, when I finally looked down and realised it was me. Well, it was my starter anyway. The wine waiter stepped in with a strong recommendation, a superb Spanish white from a grape none of us had heard of: Albarino. It didn’t quite atone for his smug swagger but it helped soothe some of the irritation.

We skipped dessert, loaded up on espresso and headed to The Blackbird for a few liveners. Since I didn’t have to be in the kitchen until 1pm on Saturday, I gave myself license to knock back a few hefeweizens. I was secretly hoping it would piss down all day Saturday so I wouldn’t be missing much, but woke around 11am to find glorious sunshine burning through the narrow slits that had taken the place of my eyes. I was feeling a bit sluggish after two boozy nights in a row, and regretting my decision to work instead of resting.

When I was in the hotel kitchen last week, I saw service. Service is the bit when people come in, order food, and the kitchen sends it out to them. Watching this is mesmerising. It looks almost choreographed. Little metal containers sit at workstations with chopped onion, tomato concasse, sauces, garnishes, herb butters, nuts and leaves. Hands dip in and out of them, plucking ingredients in eloquent, flowing motions. Pots and pans are flipped and turned and filled with fillets of fish, quails, pork belly. If one were to take away all the little pots and pans and just see the hands, it would be like watching a conductor at work.

You know something? It is choreographed. There is a conductor at work. The chef. You walk in the kitchen at 6pm, an hour before service. He has been there for at least six hours. He has been working on his mise en place. Literally, this translates as ‘putting in place’. Actually, mise en place is French for getting your shit together. It is the key to a successful service - having everything exactly how you want it, right where you want it. I have volunteered for Saturday afternoon because I want to see this happen, and I want to be a part of it.

Take one of the second course dishes from the menu: Confit Pork Belly with Pickled Carrots and Hazelnuts. The day before, the chef salts the pork belly. The carrots are sliced thinly and gently cooked in carrot juice, oil, white wine and sugar, with star anise and coriander seeds. In the morning the belly is washed, covered in fat and slowly cooked. The hazelnuts are roasted and glazed with local honey. Come service, the pork is cooked and cut into portions. The hazelnuts wait in a pan ready to be warmed and added to each plate, and the carrot sits in a cold bain marie. To order, the belly is thrown in a saute pan and heated through in the oven. The dish is assembled effortlessly, the carrot forming the base for the pig, hazelnuts scattered lazily around the fringe and the carrot marinade drizzled over the ensemble. This is one of six dishes this guy is making.

I spend my cherished Saturday afternoon like this: I segment oranges, ball melons and slice grapes for a Melon Grape and Orange Cocktail. I fillet smoked mackerel for Mackerel Pâté and also help make the Pâté Maison which happens to be the same one from the other day that I will be making again on Monday. I wash salad leaves, I finely (think finely, then treble it) chop onions, olives, capers and herbs for the pâté garnish. I am treated to a demonstration of how to debone and roll a shoulder of pork (it was half a pig when I walked through the door). I somehow manage to skip pushing ten boiled egg yolks through a sieve for Mimosa Salad and someone else carries the can for me.

One of the guys is using a Japanese turning slicer to create long shoelaces of potato, which he coils around old baked bean tins and cooks in the oven to create a nest for one of his salads. I have to have a go at that. By the twentieth or so he is really in the swing of it and has refined the process. It has been years since he made them he says, but found the attachment for the mandolin that morning so thought he should give it a go. That is mise en place.

Service was underway when I left the kitchen around half seven, and I tucked into an instant ice cold Boags Premium as a little treat to myself. Followed by another one. The afternoon had flown by. Which meant the day had flown by, since I didn’t get up until 11. So one half of my chance to unwind had been relinquished, but it was a sacrifice I’d make again, though maybe not next weekend. I took it easy Saturday night and was tucked up in bed by 1am.

I turn down a trip to West Cork this morning to afford myself a lie in and to get my shit together for the coming week. I file recipes, hoover, wash and iron and generally bring the practicalities of my haphazard life under control. The filing is a nightmare - we are bombarded with pages and pages of recipes and you file them however you want. Sounds pretty straightforward? So where do you start? Starters, mains, desserts. Breads. Pastries. Cakes. Vegetables. Soups. Salads. Preserves. Accompaniments? Okay then. Dressed crab - starter or main? Mayonnaise - accompaniment? Sauce? Apple and Clove Jelly - preserve? Accompaniment? Do you file Mint Sauce with the Lamb recipes, or under accompaniments? And what about that recipe for pancake batter that has Oatmeal Biscuits printed on the back? I spend half an hour looking for a recipe for Redcurrant Jelly that isn't there before admitting defeat, and spend the next two hours playing table tennis.

I definitely need to formulate a plan for the weeks ahead. There are a number of things to contend with. Tiredness is one. I need more energy. That means controlling my diet and exercise. Diet and exercise? I’d forgotten about them. One of the disadvantages of making dessert every day is that you eat dessert every day. You cook all morning, so you taste all morning. And at the end of a hard day, well, you treat yourself to a little drink or two. This is fine, up until now. But I am now a quarter of the way in. One down, three to go. It is time to take control. As any chef will tell you, the secret is in the preparation. Take the hard work out of things by thinking and planning ahead. Keep clean and tidy. If you know me, you’ll know how hard this is. But it is the secret. It is the magical, unattainable mise en place, and without it, we are all fucked.

Day 19: Cooking-free cooking

One of the many peculiar paradoxes of this course is that the cooking is not the tiring part. Three (sometimes four) hours of non-stop kitchen action doesn’t actually tire us out. We are busy. Our minds are focussed. We concentrate intently, are constantly planning and thinking ahead. We are armed to the teeth with knives, heavy pans, hot trays and boiling water. There are twenty or so of us in each confined space, all of us buzzing around in our own space, but all of us (correction, most of us) acutely aware of the people around us, and what they are doing. The first question you ask anyone in the morning: what are you making today?

So the mornings disappear in the time it takes to set light to a tea towel. Cooking for three hours first thing in the morning has to be the most effective way to shake off your bed that I have ever come across. By the time lunch hurtles into view, we are alert, awake and alive. Afternoon demo can change all that. The room can get very warm. I’ve already moaned about the chairs, but we are also packed in pretty tight, making the whole thing pretty stifling. We are typically sat there for around two hours before a break. We have glasses that hold about two mouthfuls of water, so you have to take on gallons of fluid at lunchtime, meaning most of the afternoon is spent busting for a piss but unable to discreetly reach the door because there are ten people and no space between you and it.

It is very easy to tire in this environment. The energy and alertness we have generated in the morning soon evaporates, unless it is a really good demo. We have a few different people giving afternoon demos. They have either one or two sous chefs who prepare all their ingredients and help guide them through the long list of dishes. Some are better than others, and some work better with different people. A poor demo will feel disjointed and is easy to lose your focus in. The dishes will generally turn out poorly, defeating the object, which is, after all, to demonstrate how to cook. We always taste afterwards, to get an idea of what we are aiming for the next day. If the food tastes poor, we lose that guide. Or for some of us, it helps steer our thinking and methods, like in the gratin of cod recipe that was overburdened with cheddar.

Today was always going to be a long one. We had a massive morning demo, fitting in dishes that wouldn’t necessarily slip in easily elsewhere. This was to be followed after lunch by a Coeliac demonstration given by an ex-student. So a lot of sitting down and feeling listless then, especially on the back of three hard weeks. To make matters worse, most of us had a few drinks last night, and failed to spot that we were starting at 9.30 and not 9am as usual, wasting a potential extra half hour in bed. At least I could squeeze an extra coffee in.

Morning demo is, mercifully, given by our favourite instructor. Here is a list of the dishes he cooks between 9.30am and 1pm:

Traditional Roast Rib of Beef

Brown Beef Stock

Braised Short Ribs

Cassoulet (proper cassoulet)

Braised Lamb Shanks with Garlic, Rosemary and Flageolet Beans

Horseradish Sauce

Yorkshire Pudding

Pan Roasted Parsnips

Curried Oven Parsnips

Roast Potatoes

Basic Frittata and variations

Wild Mushroom Frittata

Crudités with Aioli

Tapenade/Tapenade Oil

Hummus bi Tahini

Anchoiade

Dukkah

Orange, Lemon and Grapefruit Marmalade

Not only is he cooking these dishes, he is demonstrating how to cook them. He is showing us in intricate detail what he is doing. He is explaining things and embellishing our recipes with tips, hints and suggestions for accompaniments and combinations. You can learn a lot from this guy. (Assuming you want to that is - tragically, some people choose to sit through the whole morning and don’t even have the recipes in front of them). Most of us agree that this was the best demonstration to date.

Even better, we are starving, and get to tuck in to roast beef, cassoulet and braised lamb shanks, amongst other things, for lunch. I have inexplicably pulled supervisor duty again, so set about making myself look busy while other people do all the work. I find time to get stuck in to lunch though. The cassoulet is magnificent, but the star of the show has to be the braised lamb shanks. That is one recipe I will be making again and again.

So after that lovely light lunch, we haul ourselves into the demo room, knuckles scraping on the carpet, huge black bags forming under our eyes, desperate for the week to end. We are in for a nasty surprise. Coeliac Disease is a genetic disease that is primarily due to a permanent intolerance to gluten. That wipes out a lot of food for a lot of people. Many of them have paid to come and watch the afternoon demonstration alongside us. Unfortunately for the 60 or so 12-weekers in the room, the demonstration is aimed at them and not us. So the recipes we are shown are all gluten-free, but the techniques are the same as regular cooking. I say cooking, but I should say baking since the dishes are all tarts, biscuits, cakes and bread. All of which we have been making in abundance for the last three weeks.

Having spent the whole morning in the demo room we now have to endure this basic repetition. It is an unfortunate scheduling mistake really, and we would have benefitted a lot more from a lecture and not a demo, and maybe a discussion of interchangeable ingredients and correct kitchen practice. Some people are rude enough to leave at the break while the rest of us politely stick it out to the end.

The end, when it comes, shortly after five, is a wonderful feeling. A day without cooking is hard to endure in this place. We need to cook, desperately need to, to keep our minds occupied and our eyes open. Now the weekend is upon us. The forecast is good and I finally get to relax. Except I don’t. Tomorrow I have volunteered to go back in the hotel kitchen, so while the rest of the world enjoys their hard-earned rest, I will be grudgingly getting on with what I came here for.

Day 18: Man cannot live on bread alone

I feel I should put my hands up and apologise for yesterday’s rant. Organic gardening makes for a long day. I can bear it, just, but little things are bound to grind. I actually really enjoyed myself yesterday. When afternoon lectures finally came to an end we went on a spot of foraging around the farm. It was actually more like a leaf and plant recognition lesson actually, but I learnt a good few things I didn’t know before.

I learnt that the flowers of garlic chives are delicious - beautifully intricate, delicate, crunchy and incredibly flavoursome. I will definitely be planting some of them if I ever have a garden. I also desperately want to fry them in tempura batter and will attempt to do so at some stage when no one is looking. I learnt that, without trying, I am learning more and more about herbs and leaves. Actually my leaf recognition could improve. Some people are sneaking about with books and have charts on the sides of their fridges, but I’d prefer to head down the greenhouse and eat my way through them instead.

This morning I was able to rise at a civilised hour. I had to write my order of work over breakfast again, which is never a good idea. I only had to make Black Eyed Beans with Mushrooms and Basmati Rice together with an Apple and Clove Jelly to be jarred up for the production line. It doesn’t sound like a lot but both dishes are pretty labour intensive.

I start by stewing the apples. Meanwhile I cook the beans that we soaked a couple of days ago. Then I get the ingredients together for the main course. This takes ages. There are tomatoes, onions and garlic to peel and chop, mushrooms to slice and spices to grind and carefully measure out. I am trying to stay really clean and tidy too, since I always seem to make the last hour more difficult by having tons of crap to clear up. There are lots of little things to remember today - like sterilising jam jars and lids and putting a plate in the fridge to test the jelly for a set. The Black Eyed Beans with Mushrooms requires a lengthy, staggered adding of ingredients: the onions until they brown, the mushrooms until they wilt and so on. This takes up a lot of my time, because I am not confident enough to just leave them without burning. But I should be. You know why?

Wanna know the best piece of kit you can buy for your kitchen? No, it’s not a knife. By all means go out and buy yourself a Tojiro Senkou chef’s knife and be just like Heston Blumenthal. But I bet if you gave him the choice he’d go for a top quality thick-bottomed saucepan and a knife from Tesco’s rather than the other way round. Things don’t burn easily in good saucepans, so you can leave them while you get on with other stuff, like practising your high speed chopping skills or carving chateau potatoes using a blunt Swiss army knife, or digging ten foot by ten foot cavities in your yard to cook a whole horse in or something.

By the time all this is done and the beans are happily simmering away, my apples are stewed and have dripped through the muslin so I can get my jelly on. I heat the sugar in the oven to minimise the time it takes to dissolve into the hot apple liquid. Then, in a staggering act of counter-productive and mind numbing stupidity, I pour it into my apple sauce before it has even begun to heat up. I put the lid on, crank the gas up and hope that this doesn’t hinder some chemical reaction way beyond my simple comprehension that is crucial to the making of jelly. You don’t need to add anything else incidentally, like a thickening agent or gelatine. The natural pectin in the apples does it all for you. Luckily, I get away with it, though my jelly has to stay on the heat a lot longer before attaining the necessary set. It has a wonderful colour, with the clove giving the glowing apple a glorious pink tinge.

Back in the real world, I team up with one of the few males in my kitchen to combinate our rice making (my new favourite word). All goes pretty swimmingly form here on in. At lunchtime I am on supervisor duty, which basically means trying to ensure that all the shit gets done and everyone else who pulled duties is chipping in. I get my hands dirty too, even doing a bit of extra curricular hoovering at one point. (That’s definitely hoovering and not hovering by the way). All in all this consumes my entire lunch break, and I eventually sit down in the demo room shy of one coffee and suddenly remembering the series of important emails and calls that required my urgent attention over lunch.

Afternoon demo is good. We make chicken liver pâté that has a heart-stopping amount of butter in it, but tastes incredible. Just don’t eat it more often than Jack Reacher changes his toothbrush. We make deceptively simple almond tarts with glazed fruit. And we make a poached cod with mornay sauce, breadcrumbs and piped mashed potatoes. I will probably just use a béchamel when I make mine. (Mornay is just béchamel with cheese added). It tastes all right though, and will offer another chance to hone my filleting skills if I get to make it on Monday.

Best of all though, we are shown how to make bread. Real, white, yeast bread that you have to knead and manipulate and let rise three times. It is wonderful to watch, almost magical really. The way the dough springs and responds and complies as it is bashed and kneaded. Then how it rises and responds when left alone. I guess it is this paradox - the way the dough responds to both action and inaction - that makes it so special.

Who thought of that? Who realised that you pummel for a while, rest it for a while, pummel it again, rest it again. It’s like the carrot and the stick, but for bread. The result is an incredibly light textured, golden-crusted loaf that I would happily eat to the exclusion of everything else if I had to. Or would I? Maybe just a couple of generous spreads of that pâté wouldn’t do me too much harm....

Day 17: Chilli sin carne

When I go on holiday I like to avail myself of the latest ‘Jack Reacher’ novel by a guy called Lee Childs. They are hilarious. Sometimes I wonder if he isn't actually serious, but I am sure it is just a brilliantly effective parody of the whole action hero genre. Reacher: men want to be him; women want to be with him. One of Reacher’s great skills, together with surviving in life with only one possession (a toothbrush), is his ability to tell the time, exactly, without the benefit of a watch or clock. Reacher always knows what time it is. Obviously, being a man, I want to be him. So I regularly test the clock in my head. This morning I woke from my slumber, reached for my watch, and checked myself. The clock in Green’s head ticked past three minutes to five. The watch says: 06:59. Two hours out and one minute till alarm time. I am nothing like Jack Reacher.

And why would I want to be anyway? The guy changes his underpants once a novel, and even the prolific Childs struggles to turn out more than two a year. There's no way I could live in the same pair of grits for six months at a time, even if it did mean always knowing what the time was. And I’d love to see Jack ‘who cares what the fucking time is anyway’ Reacher tackling organic gardening class in the morning before sitting through an entire theory day in those fucking chairs. He’d be doing roundhouses and stabbing people with his toothbrush halfway through the Tabbouleh recipe that kicks off our Dynamic Vegetarian Cooking lecture.

Now what, for the love of God, is dynamic about it? You know that something is basically a crock of shit when they start embellishing it with pointless adjectives. I am equally mistrustful of acronyms. Lurking menacingly amidst the dynamic vegetation is something called TVP: Textured Vegetable Protein. Mmmm mmmm. The animal in me takes over. I feel the involuntary rush of enzymes in my cheeks as the saliva materialises and collects in tingly pools on the tip of my tongue. Textured Vegetable Protein. Oooh, the sensuality of food. Someone usefully points out that TVP sounds like a sexually transmitted disease. They have a point - it just sounds wrong, doesn't it? “What’s for dinner honey?” “Oh, I don’t know - there’s some TVP in the fridge if you wanna heat that up?“

We are shown an All Purpose Chilli made using the STD. The list of ingredients is longer than the list of books of the Bible. In fact, of all the foodstuffs known to man, there are fewer that don’t make it into the All Purpose Chilli than do. Basically, so long as it never breathed itself and you can reach it from your kitchen before the pan melts, chuck it in. After the STD has been added you put the lid on, get on your knees and pray. Towards the end of the recipe it suggests checking for flavour and offers a couple of suggestions should there not be any. Now I am sorry, but if a recipe requires that many ingredients then you shouldn’t be writing in caveats for it lacking flavour. In fact you shouldn’t be writing recipes.

All Purpose Chilli. You have thirty seconds in which to list all the different uses for chilli - GO!.............How did you get on? Me? I got one - you eat it. Now I can only presume that as this particular dish is inedible, they had to invent some new purposes for it. Having gone to all that trouble, you’d think they’d tell us what they were. Plastering walls? Insulating lofts? Cat food? Rat poison? Insect repellent? Fossil fuel? Rocket fuel? Filling in potholes? Who knows? Maybe it’s the only substance known to man that can make Jack Reacher change his smalls more than twice a year.

The other thing about the STD is that it is made from soya. And soya contains a high proportion of oestrogen. So say Jack Reacher is so damn tough that he can dine out on All Purpose Chilli with Textured Vegetable Protein every night of the week. Within two months he will have grown a pair of tits to rival Dolly Parton's. Women won’t want to be with him, they’ll want to be him. Maybe that’s one of the purposes? If so they should say so on the recipe. Jack Reacher’s Dynamic All Purpose Tit-Growing Chilli for Vegans. Does exactly what it says on the tin.

Day 16: Another day, another euro

I have always found something curiously sedative about the sound of raindrops on a roof. I often dream of sitting out on the veranda of an old Tuscan farmhouse in my twilight years as a storm rolls in, the hammering of the raindrops on the old tin roof softening the gentle blows of life. It is just as well really, for since I woke up five minutes before the alarm this morning, that is pretty much all I have heard. It has pissed down all day long, and shows no sign of abating.

Having made a main course yesterday I am doing a starter and dessert today, amongst other things. To start with I am making Shrimps on Brown Bread with Mayonnaise. For this I will need, er, shrimps, brown bread and mayonnaise. The shrimps arrive first thing, so I just need to make my own bread and mayonnaise. I knock up my first ever yeast bread, a quick, once risen, no kneading recipe with black treacle and wholemeal flour.

I also make my first ever mayonnaise. No on uses the H-Word around here, preferring to refer to it as the leading brand. Making your own is piss easy and far, far superior. I will break copyright here and tell you how it’s done. You need a pinch of salt, a pinch of mustard powder, a tablespoon of white wine vinegar and two egg yolks in a bowl. You then need a measuring jug with 6 fl oz of vegetable or groundnut oil and 2 fl oz of olive oil. With a whisk in one hand and the jug in the other you whisk the egg yolks and slowly pour in the oil at the same time. This way it gradually emulsifies. When the oil is all in, you are finished: mayonnaise.

But wait. Something is wrong. Something is seriously wrong. You must have fucked up: it is yellow. It looks disgusting. Mayonnaise is white, just like the leading brand. Er, no it isn’t: it’s yellow. Wanna make it white? - slowly add water and whisk. There you have it - mayonnaise with water added for no other purpose than to change its colour. Just like the leading brand.

Now I think a plate of boiled shrimps (they’re tasty but not exactly bursting with flavour) on a neutral (but expertly baked) brown bread needs something to lift it from obscurity. When we tried the shrimps in demo I felt like I was noticing something that wasn’t there rather than something that was. Like there was a window of opportunity for something else to add flavour and make it stand out. I add paprika to my mayonnaise. It looks different - it looks cool. And it is feisty, but without taking over. Innovation is not normally rewarded in this place, because their way is the right way.

Later on I make some simple biscuits to which I add orange and cardamon. I also have to make a Fluffy Lemon Pudding but am keeping this back as late as possible to preserve its flavour and texture. The components of my shrimp starter are made and waiting and all I have to do is assemble it. Except I have overlooked how long it takes to peel the little bastards, so a tricky job is waiting for me right when I have the least time.

As well as all this, my partner and I are making Tomato and Apple Chutney. Chutneys are a great way of preserving things that are about to go out of season, so we use fresh tomatoes and apples and pile on the sugar and vinegar to enable them to keep for months. We are making a recipe that will yield about half a dozen jars.

There is another angle to this, much discussed around the school and worthy of mention here. There are 60 people on the course, and we cook four mornings a week. We produce shitloads of food. Some of it goes to the hens because it is rubbish. Some of it we eat. Some of it, well, it gets taken away. Quietly, secretly, surreptitiously. Then it reappears in other places, with labels on it. And the labels, they start with a mysterious sign, like a strange character from some ancient alphabet: €.

You like my scones - great. I can take a few home - brilliant. The rest? - they’re 80 cents each in the shop. Farmers Market on a Saturday? €7 for a tub of Mushroom a la crème. That Crab and Ginger Tart was good. €4 a slice. Jar of Tomato & Apple Chutney? Not sure? €3? €4? Now then, I don’t object to this in principle, but there is an issue with transparency. Everyone knows it’s happening but no one’s telling us it’s happening.

I weigh out my 4lb of tomatoes for the chutney. They need skinning and chopping. 4lb of tomatoes. That is a lot of tomatoes. I feel a bit like I am being drafted into a sweatshop. I think of Happy Gilmore and Ben Stiller’s sinister character talking the to the old dears in the nursing home making patchwork quilts for him to sell: “Good news: we’re extending arts and crafts time by four hours today.” I understand how the world works, and that this is a school and a business. But I came here to learn, and I already know how to chop tomatoes.

I plead with them: who cares about using fresh tomatoes when a ton of sugar and vinegar is going in the pan? I am missing the point. We are preserving. They have to be fresh or here is nothing to preserve? I mellow out a bit later on, when I taste the chutney. It is extremely vinegary, of course - it needs a couple of weeks in the jars for that to subside. But beneath that, the flavour is sublime. And chopping tomatoes - it’s not like I’m sewing Man United kits seven days a week, now is it?

Day 15: Workin' nine to five

Most mornings I have been awake before the alarm, but it caught me on the hop today. I hate it when that happens. And it is certainly not good for a Monday. In my previous life, I never had a Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, routine, so weekends didn’t really mean that much to me. Consequently, Mondays never felt that bad and Fridays never felt that good. I am beginning to appreciate all those things now. And Mondays are hard here.

Now correct me if I am wrong, but don’t most Mondays go something like this: roll into the office half an hour late, have a cup of tea. Maybe read a few emails, flick through the paper. Do a few laps of the building chatting about the weekend. Waste your weak coffee machine chat on the hot chick who is way out of your league. Have another brew. Start thinking about lunch. Mondays here go like this: roll into the school before 9am. Start cooking for three hours solid with no break. Eat lunch, if you’re lucky enough not to have duties. Sit in uncomfortable chairs for between three and four hours being bombarded with information. Go home.

The key word is solid. Cooking for three hours solid. You can’t just go for a stroll or take a fag break. (Thank God I gave up smoking two years ago or I’d never get through it). You can’t pretend to go for a dump, clamp a toilet roll between your knees and have an impromptu nap (you know who you are). It is three hours minimum. Standing up. Three hours of fat trimming, flour weighing, tomato peeling, garlic crushing, onion chopping, meat basting, gravy making, bone sawing, pastry rolling, bread kneading, oven hopping, pan thrashing insanity and there is no respite whatsoever.

Today was surprisingly calm and collected all things considered. I am in a new kitchen this week and it feels roomier, lighter and better ventilated than the last one. The advantage of moving around like this is that you get to work with new people and get to know them better too. (Good for me, bad for them). Today I am cooking Roast Lamb with spuds and carrots. That isn’t what it says on the recipe sheet but that is what I am cooking.

I start by removing the aitchbone from the leg of lamb (I don’t remember what I ended up dreaming about last night but it wasn’t this). I use my specialist boning knife, which has a sturdy, narrow blade that curves round under the handle. I like it. The problem is I don’t really know what I’m looking for as I scrape it around the bone. I am reminded of the Peter Cook quote about the blind man looking for the black cat in a dark room, that isn’t there. Fortunately for me, it is there, and so I find it. Next time will be more straightforward. Then I get the hacksaw out and divide the joint into two halves for my partner and I. There is something incredibly satisfying about looking at a piece of meat and knowing that you have had a hand in its butchering.

I make holes in the skin and plug them with sticks of garlic and sprigs of rosemary. (Some of the others are following a recipe using crushed coriander seeds that I am a bit dubious about but am proved wrong later). The whole preparation phase takes ages, and it is 10am before my joint goes in the oven and I start clearing up. I’m on lemonade duty again so knock up some syrup and get prepping the spuds and carrots.

It all goes pretty swimmingly. The gravy wasn’t great. I was told to put two pints of chicken stock in and I did, but I should have used about half that and seasoned it better. The spuds were good but it’s hardly the first time and the glazed carrots were passable but will improve next time. It is a good recipe, but just needs a little getting used to. The lamb is very good.

By the time lunch comes around I have already eaten the equivalent of about two roast dinners. A third comes and goes and I avail myself of some summer berries in the hope that the natural sugar high will carry me through the afternoon. Through the three to four hours of unspeakably painful chairs that would probably be more comfortable upside down, assembly type whispering, unbearable stillness of air and tiny glasses that hold half shots of water.

The demo is pretty dry today, so it is a real struggle. We are shown how to cook shrimps, shepherd’s pie, moussaka, a couple of average looking puddings, and mashed potato that, frankly, is just wrong. In between all this I manage to get told off for talking and chow my way through a few tonnes of boiled sweets. Tomorrow I’ll try matchsticks in the eyes.

A bracing walk along the cliffs at Ballycotton after school helps restore a little normality, but with the sun setting at half seven we didn’t get too far before having to turn back. As for tonight, it has to be an early one I think. The phrase ‘school-night’ hasn’t meant a lot to me for a good few years but it is beginning to resonate pretty forcefully now. I hope it will do so enough to beat the alarm clock in the morning.

Days 13 & 14: Notes from a very small island

On Friday, the Irish electorate had the opportunity to vote in a referendum on the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. I had known about this since I arrived on these shores, but somehow I had managed to avoid the issue entirely too. That is because the only thing occupying my mind for the last two weeks has been food. Every moment of every day: food. My dreams: food. Those subliminal thoughts that flit in and out of your consciousness: food. It is as though the rest of the world has ceased to be.

The last newspaper I read was on the Fishguard to Rosslare ferry. I haven’t turned the television on in my cottage. I may have looked at the BBC website a couple of times the week before last, but nothing much was happening so I wasn’t encouraged to return. Now, in conversation I hear of terrible events unfolding around the world. Will I dream of them tonight? Or will I dream of removing the aitchbone from a leg of lamb?

It is now Sunday night and I have returned from a night in The Blackbird of Ballycotton. It is not the closest pub to me but it is the best by a few country miles. Sunday night is a sort of jamming session - one of the guys from the school got his guitar out, one of the teachers was playing. Our favourite chef from demo even turned up and had a couple of beers. It was everything a Sunday night in a country pub should be.

On Saturday morning I fought off the sluggishness and headed into Cork. Our main focus was the curiously named English Market. I had a real urge to cook steak, and so perused the offerings of about a dozen butchers. One was head and shoulders above the rest - there was some tired looking meat on display. I got some sirloin, €12 for about 2lb. Next I bought a bag of spuds and some salad leaves from an organic grocers. €13. I realised why they called it the English market.

We wandered about town, I got a haircut and succumbed to the urge and bought myself a flat cap. Well, a couple of flat caps actually. I pass on the Barbour jacket and the cords for the time being but no doubt by the time this is over I will look like an extra out of the Ted and Ralph sketches on The Fast Show. Dinner is fun. Five of us have steak and I make roast potatoes the only way I know how. We drink a few nice wines, one that two of the guys picked up in Burgundy on the drive from Italy and a Heartland from South Australia that blends Italian grapes - Dolcetto and Lagrein.

For dessert one of the guys makes an instant tiramisu. It is great, sponge fingers are arranged on the plates, chilled espresso poured over them and mascarpone cream added to the top. I am a massive fan of tiramisu. I almost always order it when I see it on a dessert menu - it is a kind of barometer for me. It is reassuring to see it being made in such a fashion and with such simple success. And without alcohol, which I have always considered a prerequisite but didn’t miss this time. I have never made it myself, but will begin my researches this week I think.

This morning was punctuated by small but meaningful victories. Washing done, cottage tidied, recipes filed, order of work written up. My internet connection is down, so I had to post Friday’s blog today from the school (this one won’t go up until Monday). We had ‘lunch’ at 4pm. Mushroom risotto followed by a whole chicken, jointed and with its four different component parts cooked in different ways. For dessert we had another tiramisu assembled last night and chilled (better) as well as warmed berries and figs with ice cream. I love desserts.

On Tuesday night when I was in the kitchen, one of the waitresses was discussing Julie and Julia. A conversation ensued regarding blogging. One of the chefs wondered how anyone could be conceited enough to think that anybody else in the world would give a flying fuck what they got up to day in day out. I thought for a while, but I couldn’t think of a reason.

Why am I doing this anyway? Does anyone care? Is anyone reading this nonsense? I probably spend between half an hour and an hour getting my thoughts together and writing this blog. It is a lot to take out of an already crowded day. If I was keeping a journal, I’d have stopped by now. The blog is the reason to continue. To gather, harness and direct my thoughts and experiences each day. To take stock, reflect, relax even, and look forward.

My field of vision has narrowed so much in the last two weeks. For the best part of a year I have had no focus, no routine. Now I am snapped into a rigid routine and have the steeliest gaze fixed upon something right under my nose. It is a compelling juxtaposition. When I think about it, in context, my daily ramblings are totally meaningless. An earthquake wipes out thousands of Indonesians but fails to muster a flicker on my seismograph, too wrapped up in crab tarts and gratins of cod am I. I am isolated - truly isolated.

I should have a bit more spare time this coming week since my evenings are mostly free. I am committed to cooking Bucatini all’Amatriciana one night, but apart from that it’s a blank page. I definitely need to do some exercise to counter all the fucking food I am eating and, if I can tear myself away from my daily broadcast of irreverent minutiae for long enough, I might even think about picking up a newspaper.

Day 12: When ze seagulls follow ze trawler

The cod didn’t materialise today, but we had pollock instead. I really enjoyed filleting it. It’s a strange sensation as you glide the flexible knife through and the flesh yields, pulling it back on itself with the one hand as you feel along the bone to guide the knife in the other. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t a bad effort either.

For starters, I was wearing a surgical glove to protect my dodgy thumbnail, which made the fish a lot more slippery in my grip. Twisting the head off was consequently much trickier than it should have been, and one of its eyes bulged with blood to a frightening extent. One more squeeze would have been interesting, but luckily its neck snapped just in time and the head went into the stockpot. I got along the backbone fine, and through the back half of the fish. Filleting over the pin bones is a bit trickier, you have to push them back with the blunt edge of the knife to make sure you don’t cut through them.

Once you’re over them it’s just a matter of taking the belly with you and not slicing through it too early. It is described to us as like reaching the top of a mountain - you want to glide down the other side, and not fall off the edge of the cliff. For today’s dish I need the skin off. This goes pretty well, surprisingly, until two thirds of the way through when I involuntarily change the angle of the blade and cut through the skin. It is now very difficult to get any purchase on what remains to remove it. I get there in the end but it is a bit of a mess.

I am making the cheese-laden Gratin of Cod that we were shown yesterday. I use two thirds of the cheese and cream that the recipe prescribes, mainly because you couldn’t find the fish in the one we tasted after demo yesterday. I am pleasantly surprised by the result. It actually tasted good. I cooked it for a couple of minutes longer than I should have, but luckily not so much that the fish disintegrated or lost any of its meaty structure. Maybe I’ll make it again I think. Really? I’m sure I could think of better things to do with the fruits of my filleting labours.

At around 7pm I get my second chance of the day to fillet fish. Real practice this time, because I am on a small trawler chugging around a beautiful island lighthouse as the sun begins to set, and the fish I am gutting are mackerel that I have just caught.

Now I am definitely no fisherman, but my first cast goes like this - I drop the line with its three feathered hooks. I hold the reel with my thumb and let line out for about ten seconds, which should get me somewhere near the bottom. I tug on the line three times to flash the feathers. I feel a bite, I reel in. I have a beautiful shiny mackerel on each hook: a nap hand. Within thirty seconds I am dispensing advice like an old pro. Do people really believe I know what I’m talking about? Almost certainly not. Do I? Not really.

I want responsibility for my own actions, so I object to not unhooking the fish myself. The hooks are barbed, so this is an unpleasant experience. With three on each line, you regularly double tag them as they squirm away, and mackerel are beautiful fish. My tenth or so comes in double hooked. I carefully remove the first from his lip. I work on the second that has pierced his skin about halfway down the body. He whips around. The line tightens and the hook I have just removed from his mouth flicks back and embeds itself under my already fucked thumbnail. I take a second or two here to appraise the situation. I am looking at a hook that a nanosecond ago was impaling a mackerel. Now it is impaling my most recent, fascinating and novel wound. Luckily the barb stays outside my flesh, so I delicately remove it and pray to the God of fishhooks that he will let me off.

Gutting a mackerel is pretty straightforward. You locate the fin near its head. On the tail side of this fin, you slide your knife in. When you hit bone you turn your knife. You cut into the flesh and along the cage of bones at a 45º angle. The quicker you do this the better. The guy whose boat we’re on does a whole mackerel in less than five seconds. It is a sight to behold. We proceed to hack into the bodies of the multitude of fish we have landed. We eventually get into the swing of things, but it doesn’t come naturally.

The seagulls have cottoned onto us by now. There are hundreds of them, squawking and flapping their wings menacingly. We cast off the filleted detritus and they swoop and dive and fight over it. Looking at them, I think I can understand why some people would be afraid of them. I also begin to understand the sentiment of the karate kicking Frenchman Eric Cantona as he attempted to portray himself as the new Albert Camus, but sans style, grace and content.

We caught a shitload of mackerel. One of the girls bagged a 5lb pollock to take catch of the day honours. We headed home and indulged in a massive cook off. Lemons were squeezed with wanton abandon and we indulged in the primeval pleasure of devouring food that an hour earlier was living and breathing and happily going about its business until we rocked up on the scene.

And with that, week two passed into history. Two down, ten to go. Exhausted, listless, confused, eyes glazing over and reeking of fish, we head to the pub en masse. We have reached the top of another mountain. We divide into two groups - some of us glide gracefully down the other side whilst others, myself included, head straight over the edge…

Day 11: A bastard behind the eyes

In my first post on this blog, on day one, I wrote that I didn’t think I’d be turning up in the kitchen with many hangovers. Secretly, I guessed I probably would. That it took until day eleven is an extraordinary achievement. I should qualify this slightly - I wasn’t that hungover. But I was waking up every twenty minutes gasping for water and thinking of the paragraph in Lucky Jim. Also, in my wisdom, I had decided that instead of doing the order of work last night, I would do it over the morning bran flakes and have a couple of extra nightcaps.

So shortly after 8am I swap the stretch routine for order of work writing, my head pounding and my body craving a blue Powerade that isn’t there. What is worse is that today I have nowhere to hide. Nowhere. No respite whatsoever. I am straight into the hotel kitchen after school. I have to go to the doctor at some point, so I think about using that as an excuse and skipping off for a siesta in the afternoon. But demo is too interesting for that. And anyway, I am hard as nails. Bring it.

I can’t start my Cucumber and Yoghurt Raita because someone forgot to pick the cucumbers, so the Kelloggs powered order of work/house of cards needs re-stacking. I start on my Spiced Chicken with Almonds instead. I roast and grind some cumin and coriander and prep my veg. At 9.30 I phone the local doctors about my thumb. I am booked in for 11.30, so I need to speed up and taste at 11.15 instead of 11.45.

The cucumbers arrive and I quickly knock up what to me is a great raita. Clean, fresh and light, rounded off with a little crushed cumin seed. I really like it. It goes in the fridge. Meanwhile, I blanch almonds, crush garlic, slice ginger and whip them into a thick paste in the blender. I inhale its wonderful aroma. Hang on, there isn’t one. I add the spices I ground earlier. That’s better.

I use my boning knife for the first time to debone the chicken thighs. My filleting knife is too flexible for this job and I found my finger working along the blade to stabilise it yesterday. This is much better. The chicken goes in, my workstation is spotlessly clean, I have half an hour to spare and I am totally in control. A rare but wonderful sensation. I plate up nicely and taste.

The chicken dish was a little watery but I am finishing early and I would have reduced it with more time. When I tasted it before serving it wasn’t quite right. All those wonderful spices and flavours that had gone into it were a little quiet and suppressed. It needed salt. Seasoning is such a hard thing to gauge, but salt is a flavour enhancer. If you have put flavour in a dish but you cant taste it, you need salt. I add salt. It tastes great. I also added a little more cayenne than the recipe because it lacked balls. My teacher tastes the raita. One mouthful. She turns and walks away. She looks back quickly. “That’s beautiful.”

Do you know what the doctor said about my thumb? Of course you do, I told you yesterday what he’d say. I drive a couple of villages to the pharmacy and get some cream and am back in time to fulfil my “duties” over lunch. Though why anyone would want to be served his or her main course by a man with a thumbnail like mine is anyone’s guess.

In the afternoon demo we are, amongst other things, but most interestingly, filleting round fish. We have cod, haddock, whiting, hake and ling to look at. We are shown two fish dishes. An en papillote and a gratin. Now I have to stop here. I love cod. I mean love it. If you present me with a 6oz piece of cod fillet, the last thing in the world I would want to do is grate a pound of cheddar over it. Because then it would taste of cheese, not cod. Tomorrow I will have to. The rest of the demo passes without incident, and I rush back to the cottage and head straight over to the kitchen.

There is a function on tonight. 90 people are being catered for in a big outbuilding. There is no kitchen in the outbuilding (it is being built, next to my cottage), so a portable hob is set up and dishes are almost cooked up top in the main kitchen and finished down there. For the starters I assemble tomato salads and pour soup (much harder than it sounds). For mains I am on vegetable duty - boiling, heating, dressing and serving as the waiting staff pour back and forth. I help plate up desserts, and make hundreds of trips to the main kitchen and back.

On Tuesday when I offered my services I was told it would be a shitfight. Now no one wants to bring a fart to a shitfight, because you’re going to lose. I was lucky - it wasn’t a shitfight. It was hectic at times, and hot, and stressful. I rolled my sleeves up and worked harder than I have worked for years probably. I got in the way, and learnt how not to get in the way. I dribbled soup everywhere, and learnt how to pour soup properly. I saw things too, and acted upon them - keeping stuff hot, working out what to serve and when. It was an incredible experience. I offered my services again at the end of the night.

The end of the night is now. I went back to the cottage desperately in need of two things, both of them cold. I couldn’t decide which should take precedence, so I took my beer into the shower. I guess if there was one other lesson I learnt today, it is that cooking is just like everything else - no one wants to do it with a hangover, but you will have to sooner or later. And when you do, you might as well do it in style.

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.