Day 53: Salad days

It is widely believed that our memories are obscure before a certain point in our childhood in order to protect us from recalling the trauma of our birth. If only the same could apply to my entrance into the waking world this morning. The grand lever it was not.

I worked in the kitchen again last night. More great experience, but it makes for a long day - 9am start, 11pm finish. Two of those in a row require a good night’s kip. Tough luck - today I am on salad duty - a torturous experience that entails being at the gate at 7.30am to pick leaves and prepare dressing for lunch. Consequently, I was thrown unwillingly into consciousness at an ungodly 6.45am. With birth, I imagine it is the sudden change of scene that is so traumatic. The sense of complete alienation, of having been plucked from somewhere warm and secure and thrust into the terrifying uncertainty of unfamiliar surroundings. This morning, that sense of startled bewilderment was caused by the noise. In my confused state of semi-sleep, I couldn’t identify the noise. The alarm was familiar of course, but it was combined with something else. Something unsettling. With the alarm off I listened intently. A few seconds later it dawned on me. Rain. Proper rain. Real salad picking weather.

The guy who runs the farm greets me with the old “Good news, bad news”. Does the good ever outweigh the bad? “The good news is there are no leaves to pick. The bad news is, you could have had another hour in bed”. Of course it doesn't. Still, it's better than "we've amputated both your legs but the guy opposite's offered you £2.50 for your slippers", so I take a little comfort from that.

I have a busy morning planned for myself. I am listed to make sweet dill mayonnaise, a plate of smoked fish, pan-fried steak, pommes allumettes and béarnaise. I decide to make some complicated meringues and a batch of scones as well, just to spice things up a bit. And my sourdough needs baking. The extra hour is a blessing in a sense. I get some coffee down me and start prepping things up. I make the mayo first thing and get my whites and sugars ready for the hazelnut and cinnamon meringues. I make my scone dough while I melt the sugar and eggs together, and bake them in batches whilst the mixer does the hard work. When the scones are done (they don’t last very long as all the teachers eat them) and the meringues are in the early days of their 2-hour life in the oven, I put the sourdough in. I am entering the unknown now. It is ten days since I began my starter. I fed it for a week; refreshed it twice more, kneaded it, and knocked it back. Never before have I made anything that took so long. And now I relinquish control and hand the reins over to the oven.

My béarnaise scrambles on the first attempt. It is an exercise in heat control. The pan was too hot. If the pan is too cold, the butter doesn’t melt quickly enough and you get an oily sauce. I go again. This time everything is fine, but towards the end the sauce starts to look too buttery. I used our own organic eggs, and the yolks were pretty small. I should have stopped adding the butter about half an ounce out. I thicken it up with some mayonnaise, which works for about five minutes but isn't a sustainable solution. Feeding it to the hens is. I’ll have another go tomorrow. I console myself with the fact that without fresh tarragon to add at the end, it's not really béarnaise.

I turn the sourdoughs out of their tins after twenty-five minutes or so. They’re looking good. Five minutes later I take custody of them back from the oven. Holding them in your hand, you just know. They feel light. They have a great crust. You shouldn’t slice sourdough while it’s hot, so I resist the temptation and wait an hour or so to find out. But I already know. I love bread.

Rules for cooking steaks round here - leave them in a warming oven to rest after you cook them. And there's a chart of cooking times (that makes no reference to thickness). I’m pretty good at cooking steaks. I’ve had lots of practice. But this scuppers me, since the oven cooks them on; my medium rare is medium. I cook a few more as we near lunch. The oven has been turned down, so now they’re under done, as I was compensating based on the experience and undercooking them. Consistency. You kind of need it if you’re a grill man. That and a clock in your head.

After demo we have to wait around until 6pm for a wine lecture, well half of us do anyway, since it is not compulsory. Not that 'compulsory' stops a few people from sneaking out of demo every day. Yesterday, two of them were hiding in the cleaning cupboard. Ten grand of mummy and daddy’s hard earned and they hiding in a cupboard like toddlers. Staggering. Anyway, five minutes into the wine lecture and I’m wishing I’d joined them. This woman talks. And talks. And talks. It is agonising.

At 7pm there is a re-run of the pig butchery demo next door. It doesn’t take much to convince me to make the switch from one room to the other. It is good to see it again - things start to become familiar. This takes me up until 9pm though - and I’ve been in the school for thirteen and a half hours. Right now, I’m back in the conservatory at the hotel, sculling a couple of well earned beers. I’ve had about two hours to myself in the last three days, and there is an increasingly familiar, relentless hammering noise providing the soundtrack to my evening. Something tells me it will still be there come reveillez.

Day 52: Grand closing

The sun rose again this morning. No surprise there. No cooking today. No theory either. Instead, day one of a two day presentation on making food pay. Our guest speaker is a restaurant consultant, called in to advise start ups and going concerns. A bit like Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, but without the odious, leather skinned twat. I say that, but I actually secretly (and begrudgingly) quite like Ramsey. I especially like the way he deals with the morons whose ailing restaurants he is called in to save. It's a cross between anger, despair and sheer disbelief. The scene where he makes the kid blind taste the pasta dishes, only to pick out the pot noodle as his favourite, is a classic.

It was a useful day, but I wouldn't want to sound conceited when I say I didn't really learn anything new. She hawks an interesting concept; that the menu is the first thing a would be restaurateur should consider. From it, spring all the other decisions one will make: premises, kitchen, staff, equipment, layout, design. You name it. I am not sold on this. Consider the menu first, sure, but before you start worrying about how many fridges you're going to need, think about location and your market. There are more than a few proprietors gazing hopefully through the door of their empty restaurants, wondering where it all went wrong and how they are going to stop the bailiffs in the morning, because they are in the wrong place.

That said, I do like the idea of the menu being the key. With any business you need a really strong concept of what you are trying to achieve. You need a clear vision to sell to your staff and customers. If your business is a restaurant, then that vision is your menu. In an early exercise we divide into groups. Our first task is to discuss food related business opportunities arising from the recession. A number of ideas are suggested, some good, some bad. I resist the temptation to say Restaurant Consultant but this would clearly be the wisest answer. Next, we peruse a range of menus and consider their relative merits. It makes you realise how shit most menus are. How hard can it be?

At lunch I take care of my sourdough. I refreshed it last night before I left, and again this morning. It is lovely and frothy and smells like a mix of beer and blue cheese. Time is pressing, so I knead it in a machine. I feel like a traitor. I can't help but take it out of the machine and give it a good going over myself. I need to feel it in my hands. After the lecture, I knock it back and I have to admit, lazily put it in tins to prove overnight in the fridge. If I really cared I would get more structure in it and lift it into tins. I have my starter siphoned off, so next time I will take more care. It's a learning process after all.

In the afternoon we chat a little more then go back into our groups and consider some case studies. We have an email sent by a couple who owned a garden centre, and were planning to build a new structure to house an 1800 sq ft coffee shop. Their premises were quite remote, but they had a loyal customer base, many of whom had been encouraging them to diversify in this way. Research in a trade publication indicated they could hope to drive their revenue by as much as 10%. Our group digests the email, and discusses. Before we get too far down the path of what their menu might look like, how they could market themselves, grow vegetables and leaves for the cafe on site, have a crèche to look after the kids etc etc, I suggest that maybe they shouldn't be doing it at all. Their plan is holier than a well nibbled salad leaf.

Once we proceed on this tangent, it becomes obvious. By the time our restaurant consultant comes round, we tell her how we would advise them not to bother - keep your money in your pocket, stick in a kettle and a few chairs and see how it goes. She is surprised - most groups don't take this path, but it is exactly what she told them. Who needs Gordon Ramsey? There's a recession on. I can see my future unfolding before me.

Earlier in the day we were discussing the wisdom of a soft launch. Only a real idiot would have a Grand Opening. Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. One of the students remarked, "My father always said we'd have a really big party the night we close."

Day 51: The sun also rises

It rained incessantly yesterday. In the evening I was laid on the bed writing up my day as the stuff pounded down upon the roof. This morning I woke, before the alarm for once, to a blazing autumn sun. I drove out of the yard and down the long driveway that bisects the field at the front of the hotel. The winter barley shoots are a few inches high now and the whole landscapes glows an almost luminous green. There was that wonderful sense of things having been cleansed and refreshed by nature, charged by the glory of the dawn.

Just now I walked across the courtyard to come and sit in the conservatory and scribble. The clearest, darkest sky winked down at me. Out here in the sticks, one can see the stars. How easy it would be to tilt the head back and spend hours just gazing up at them. How much changes in the course of a day.

My morning began with whisking. A lot of whisking. Whisk two egg yolks while making a syrup on the hob. Carefully combine the two, still whisking. Whisk the resulting mixture, whilst softly whipping cream. With a whisk. Got it yet? Ice cream. While that's in the freezer I make Pea and Coriander Soup. My soup seasoning has hitherto been unconvincing. Am I learning? I season at the beginning and middle, and wait for the end.

Poires Belle Helene is a classic Escoffier dessert, so I dare not tinker. Pears gently poached in syrup with lemon juice, rind and a vanilla pod, served with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. While they're poaching I retrieve my brioche dough from the cold room. Hopefully a night in the fridge will have rectified my butter issue. Merde! It hasn't - the dough is too wet and almost impossible to handle. I make the best of a bad job and fashion it into a few impromptu, unorthodox shapes. It might not look too good but toasted and spread with butter, or better still foie gras, and mon Dieu! C'est brioche, n'est pas?

Pears are poached and delicately fanned. Chocolate sauce is made and in a dainty jug on the plate. Ice cream still a bit soft but I have a scoop ready and waiting in the freezer to complete the ensemble come tasting. The soup is reheating and I am seasoning. More salt, a tiny bit of sugar, and a generous helping of pepper. I am trying to retain the delicate sweetness of the peas. It probably needs a little more salt. I can be careful here, pour some off and season to check. But no, I back myself. It needs more salt. I add more. Taste. A little more? I do it. It's perfect. Leave it. I'm getting there: minute by minute, hour by hour.

Immediately after demo I drove home, got back in the whites and headed to the kitchen. It was a busy evening, making Boeuf Bourguignon for tomorrow's lunch, with a bit of lamb butchery thrown in for good measure. I finished up just before eleven and sank my customary bottle of Boags that I had chilled in the fridge in preparation. Nearly bed time.

The sun also rises and the sun goes down. And when it goes down, it hastens back to the place from whence it rises.

Day 50: Get stuffed

Another Monday morning and I am far from done with sleeping when the alarm does its evil work. Will the tiredness ever pass? I feel trapped in a vicious circle - I know exercise will help, but can’t find the resources of energy to get myself down the gym. The only possible time is straight after class, but with the days drawing shorter and the weather deteriorating, it is a big ask. And class always ends with a tasting - hardly the perfect prequel to a gruelling workout. I’ll start with an early night tonight and see how I get on.

Despite the lethargy (my knuckles were grazing the carpet for the first half hour), there is plenty to stimulate the mind. With the dawn of a new week comes the opportunity to consolidate my progress and kick on further. To do that I need dishes that excite me, and today I have one.

Stuffed Loin of Pork offers a nice combination of challenges. Firstly, I make the stuffing, using butter, onions, breadcrumbs and chopped herbs. Seasoning is important with the stuffing - you only get one chance to get it right. I crush and chop a few juniper berries into mine to lift it above the butteryness. I like the thought of this being restricted to the inside of the roast - I think it will help to keep it subtle.

My pork eventually arrives - a six-inch long section of the eye of loin and belly. I score the skin at ¼ inch intervals with a Stanley knife, then flip the joint over and begin de-boning it. I scar along each rib with my trusty boning knife and push the flesh to each side. Then I work down along the edges of each rib and gently underneath until they are free from the flesh of the belly. At the very bottom is a bone running perpendicular to the ribs that is more awkward to remove and I patiently cut around it until it comes free. Then at the top of the loin I work around the bone and between the protruding ribs to remove the rack, leaving me with my filleted joint for rolling. The dual challenge is to work as efficiently as possible, leaving clean bones free from meat, but without spending all day doing so. I really enjoyed it. There is something spellbinding about even this basic level of butchery.

Time is working against me now, so I line the meat with my cooled stuffing and roll it together. I tie three lengths of string around the scored skin to keep the joint together. They are fairly tight, but not too pulled too taut, as you want the meat to retain a natural shape in cooking and not resemble the Michelin man (or any other fat person you might happen to know).

The joint goes in just before half ten and I switch my attention to the apple sauce. I add a couple of cloves to the recipe, which consists of just apples, a little sugar and a splash of water and leave them to break down in a pan. Meanwhile I have some time to kill, so start making brioche dough to work with tomorrow. The butter is rock hard, so I leave mine in the warming oven to soften slightly. I overdo the softening however, and dough doesn’t come together as it should. Zut alors! It’s due to spend the night in the cold room anyway, and I am assured that this will remedy the situation.

The rest of my cooking comes together late, as is always the way when you roast anything, it seems. I mash parsnips with the addition of a little honey, and keep them and my sauce hot whilst I work with the meat. The heat goes up for the last ten minutes to create the crackling. It has held its wonderful shape. There are scarcely enough juices for a gravy, and they are very oily. We are out of chicken stock by this point, so I attempt a compromise and make it using duck stock, fully aware that this will almost certainly fail, which it does.

Upon carving the meat, the very inside of the joint is still slightly pink. People generally baulk at the thought of undercooked pork, so it cannot be served in this condition. The meat comes from organic free-range pigs in this instance, meaning it is actually perfectly fine (I eat it and it is delicious). This is also the cause of the undercooking, since these pigs take notably longer to cook than those reared in less genial conditions. There is also the possibility that I tied my string too tight, which would make it harder to fully cook out the centre, but it wasn’t that tight. Either way, another ten minutes in the oven is all it needs.

The rest of the kitchen has been roasting ducks (a weakness of mine) and a goose, so lunch is fantastic. Not only that, but dessert includes some enormous meringues made by two alternative (some would say laborious, painstaking even) methods, from the Ottolenghi cookbook: rosewater and pistachio, and cinnamon and hazelnut. By 2pm and the start of demo, I have that Bond feeling again. Stuffed.

Days 48 & 49: A delightful weekend in the countryside

Weekend embraced. On Friday night we ate at Ballymaloe House (my first meal in the restaurant despite the fact that I live here.) Dinner consists of five courses - a buffet of hors d’oeuvres, a soup course, main course, cheese course and dessert trolley. By the time I am pouring Pedro Jimenez sherry over my coffee ice cream and sipping on my Uroulat dessert wine that the sommelier, Colm, has kindly donated to the cause, I am reminded of a passage from Goldfinger. Bond and Du Pont have shared a meal of stone crabs washed down with tankards of pink champagne:

With a slight belch, Mr. Du Pont for the last time wiped butter off his chin with his silken bib and sat back. His face was flushed. He looked proudly at Bond. He said reverently, "Mr. Bond, I doubt if anywhere in the world a man has eaten as good a dinner as that tonight."

Bond is disgusted - a glutton. I don’t feel quite so guilty but the sense of having gorged oneself is the same. Three of us seek refuge in the Blackbird, whilst the other heads to Cork for a night shift working in a bakery. Dedication.

It was gloriously sunny when we left Ballycotton on Saturday morning, but horribly Irish by the time we got to Middleton farmers’ market. I wanted to cook for six of us, and was scouting around for options. Frank Hederman, the genial fish smoker, suggested Haddock. I took his advice. He offered some more: “Just don’t fucking overcook it.” I took that too.

How pleasant it has been to have friends to visit - sharing the things that I have been enjoying so much: the people, the food and the place. We managed to squeeze in a quick drink in the Blackbird tonight before I drove them to the airport. Some of the locals were having a singalong, as they do every Sunday. During the odd melancholic number, I often find myself drifting; a little lost in thought perhaps. Looking at the pictures on the walls and the people lining the bar, listening to the lyrics, and reflecting.

This life, the one I am living right now - it’s a bubble. But what a bubble it is. What a thing to be shielded from all the bullshit for a little longer. The stress and the pressure, they come from doing something I love. And they are so tempered by my surroundings - by the peace and tranquillity one only really finds in the countryside, and by sharing it with people bonded by a common passion.

We are seven weeks in. There are five to go. Two weeks ago I wrote this:

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.

The future has not stirred in the slightest, and I sense that I am getting to grips with the kitchen. Spurred on by my friend’s all-night bread baking effort, I am heading back into the kitchen at Ballymaloe this week. It might not leave me a lot of spare time, but in seven weeks, I’ll have plenty of that. Somewhere between then and now, one of my clumsy footsteps might inadvertently cause a ripple strong enough to wobble the future and, who knows, it might just wobble me back.

Day 47: Pheasant plucking

In yesterday’s wine lecture we briefly touched upon biodynamics: the symbiosis that governs man's relationship with nature; seed days, root days, fruit days, flower days. My visiting friend turns to me with a quiet aside; “That’s got to be bollocks, hasn’t it?” Today, one of the guys was sat outside plucking a pheasant, when a seagull shat on him. To me, that’s biodynamics.

The male pheasant is a beautiful creature. I’ve eaten a good few in my time, and seen plenty more, either prone by the side of the road or clucking aimlessly about the countryside. This morning I took one from the cold room and carried him delicately by the neck, his vivid plumage still intact. Once outside I began ripping feather from him, working over his whole body, trying to avoid the obvious cavities or areas that may yield squeamish results. Bit by bit his bare flesh was exposed, small remnants of feather and light hairs remaining behind. Plucking down his neck I was a little too forceful and inadvertently de-skinned his whole neck. I plucked the wonderful fan feathers from his tail in order to better expose his nether regions and thus avoid any nasty surprises.

Half an hour or so later and the plucking is done. I take him inside and on a chopping board decapitate him with one foul swoop of the Wusthof. Next I cut round his ankles and remove his feet, taking some tough cartilage with them. I trim up the wings. He is beginning to resemble the chicken straddling the oven brick in Withnail & I, but one crucial stage remains. JC, my teacher for the day, helpfully advises me to cut just above his arsehole, before turning away to excuse himself from the spectacle about to unfold. I make the necessary incision. I take two fingers and plunge them into the cavity. They follow the breastbone, scraping the pheasant’s organs away from his skeleton. I can feel them detaching themselves, one by one. I am trying not to inhale, as I am sure the smell is repulsive. I’m not looking either - I can imagine what this must look like. Each in their own time, his organs emerge from the chasm, beckoned forth by my bloodstained hand. Lungs. Gizzard. Liver. Heart. Intestines. Blood and entrails bond them together. I have to look. Disgusting. I am disturbed, but comforted by a scream behind me. My fellow plucker is performing the same operation upon her pheasant when it shits all over her. Biodynamics.

All this plucking has left my order of work in tatters. I reduce my day’s work to Pheasant with Bacon and Chorizo and Goat’s Cheese Bruschetta. This means making tomato and chilli jam to drizzle over the bruschetta. I’m halfway through the puree for this whilst gutting, cleaning then jointing my pheasant. I need to crack on. JC helpfully reminds me that I can do two things at once. I brown the meat whilst getting the puree together for the jam. I sweat the onions and garlic while I skin and chop the tomatoes. I start burning the onions and garlic while I’m looking for the chorizo. It’s not over though. I’m staying in the saddle here. I get the onions out of the pan as quickly as I can. I get them in a fresh one and add the tomatoes and chorizo. They won’t carry any of the burnt flavours with them because I extracted them in time. Just.

After this brief flirtation with chaos in the middle of the morning, order is quickly and confidently restored. Even when the onions were burning I stayed calm. If you lose control, the downward spiral is both immediate and final. I cannot stress how important tidiness and cleanliness are to this sense of control. When you cannot see beyond the backlog of pans, Pyrexes, mixers and wooden spoons, it is impossible to conceive a way out. When you are tidy - when you deal with the detritus step as it arises - the path is clear, and you exude confidence. It may not come naturally to me, tidiness, but I am getting there nonetheless.

The pheasant takes a lot of pepper, but you need to be careful with the salt. I taste and tweak. This particular pheasant isn’t that strong, but there are big robust flavours in the dish - paprika, chorizo and tomato. I add sugar (the tomatoes are tinned), plenty of pepper, and the salt, a little at a time, giving each addition time to work its magic before adjusting again. It is very good. A little thyme and parsley went in towards the end and give it all a delicate lift. I tasted the chillies before making the tomato and chilli jam and they weren’t that hot, so I kept all the seeds in. It has a good balance of heat, sweetness and saltiness, provided by a little fish sauce. I plate up a neat bruschetta of Ardsallagh goat’s cheese and rocket leaves and drizzle it over the top.

I’m all done and dusted by noon. Five days of cooking draw to a satisfactory close. The weekend extends its loving arms and beckons me hither; I run towards it and embrace it like a long lost friend.

Day 46: Noted for its brevity

It is late and I am tired. Were I less committed to this endeavour, I would not be writing this. I will keep things brief. A leaf out of Alan Clark's book.

Nice easy morning. Strolled into kitchen around half eight, exchanging pleasantries with all and sundry. Knocked up Granary Loaf dough for the first time. Followed recipe to the letter, but felt way too dry. The grain is heavier. Kept adding more water until it felt right. Putting it away to rise when Timmy (resident bread expert) walked in and gave it the nod of approval. Getting the hang of bread making. Red Thai curry with beef and pumpkin is simple enough. Recipe a bit scatty though. Smoked chilli powder dominates. Needs more red curry paste, which I add with wanton abandon. Have to increase the tamarind and fish sauce to keep it all in check. A good exercise in tatsting, seasoning and balancing flavours.

The morning is notable only for the great cavernous depths of patience, tolerance and sympathy into which I am forced to delve in order to survive until lunchtime. Souffle makers have Kenwoods going all morning. This should annoy me but in a way their relentless whine helps to obscure other noises and, with the aid of several cups of average coffee, I make it through.

The gamekeeper returns for demo, sans chien, who is at home with his leg in plaster. I'm not sure why I find this funny, but I do. (Have other dogs been autographing it for him?) Rest of demo is fun but uneventful. People talk throughout and my already exhausted reserves of patience are tested further. I am tired back then. What must I be like now?

After demo I abscond to retrieve my newly arrived friends (TC and LH) from Ballycotton. We sit through an evening lecture on Italian wines before dinner in Cloyne. The talk is co-presented by one of the students, who has an extensive knowledge of the subject. He speaks with great passion and clarity, and we taste three fantastic wines he has procured for us.

It is nice having friends to visit.

Day 45: Six types of people

There is something fascinating about watching people conduct themselves around the kitchen. The environment strips things bare - little nuances and characteristics, impossible to conceal amidst the hive of activity, reveal themselves. In time, themes emerge, things people share with others; categories. Now, any exercise whose stated aim is to group people according to broad criteria has, by definition, already failed. Just to prove it, here is my doomed list of six types of people one might expect to find at Ballymaloe Cookery School:

The Don’t Give a Shits

The course costs €10,000. For some of the people here, this was their money. They are excluded from this category. Any of them that pretend they don’t give a shit are either lying or a lot richer than me. There are some amongst the others who simply don’t give a shit - the guys who leave halfway through demo or don’t read their recipes. They can’t give a shit. It is not possible. They make the place ugly and take the places of people who couldn’t get on the course but would have given a shit.

The Stupid People

They undercook things, they overcook things. They weigh things incorrectly and don’t notice. They leave hot pans lying around and knives in sinks. They don’t know which vegetables are which. They don’t know how many grams there are in an ounce (or some of them a kilogram for that matter.) They’re not really passionate about food. They burn things. (I have a toe dipped in this category - I can’t differentiate between mizuna and a mustard green and I add double quantities of liquids to recipes.) They are not necessarily always stupid, but they have dangerous potential.

The Inconsiderate People

They don't wash up. They leave their shit everywhere for other people to deal with. Many of them Don't Give a Shit, and most of them are Stupid People.

The Worrriers

Kitchen worriers have a vein of perfectionism running through them - they don’t want to fuck up. Actually its more than that - they are afraid of fucking up. Me, I don’t want to fuck up, but usually it’s the quickest way to learn. Be bold and brave and learn from your mistakes. The worriers are constantly questioning themselves. Some of them are quite open about it, others paper it over with bravado, or worse, pretend they Don’t Give a Shit. Others are actually very good cooks.

The Nearly Men

They know and understand food. They want to learn more; they ask questions, take notes. But they are not experienced or composed enough to quite make the grade. Some of them improve, some of them don’t. Some of them will improve all the way. Those that want to will probably make a decent living out of cooking. This is my category: the 2.1 brigade.

The Professionals

There are some people on this course who really can cook. They are calm, confident and controlled. They are in early and they finish on time. They follow their recipes. They handle ingredients and equipment with assured ease. They season things properly and they present their dishes with panache. Almost every day, whizzing around in a great panic trying to bring your courses together, pan in one hand, pyrex in the other, looking for the plate you put down somewhere, you will see them - adding a final delicate garnish to a perfect looking dish. The bastards.

It’s right that the categories should not be defined solely by prowess. I remember on my very first day in the kitchen watching one of the girls chopping. The knife looked so unnatural in her hand, like it was sticking out of her arm. I seriously questioned if she had ever held one before. This shiny new blade, jabbing and prodding around an onion like an out of control lawnmower. But watch her now. Edward Scissorhands might not be shitting himself just yet, but she looks confident and composed. And all in six measly little weeks.

I look at myself. Am I a better cook now than I was six weeks ago? Probably, but I don’t really see or believe it. The problem with being one of The Nearly Men is that to improve - to jump up, you have to clear the highest bar. You have to be in control all the time. You have to exude the crisp swagger of someone who doesn’t doubt for a second that they know what they’re doing.

I got in early today and made up a white yeast dough. While it was resting I knocked up pastry for my apple tarts. I got beans on the go for my winter vegetable soup and prepped all my veg. I kneaded my dough for a good fifteen minutes. I made it pretty wet - fortune favours the brave. My soup was good, but it needed more salt. I am reticent about adding salt at the moment - I need to be bolder and stop pussying about. The apple tarts were great. They have to caramelise without burning, and most people’s went too far. (I walked past one of The Professionals. Her apple tarts looked like mine.) When all the ovens were empty I put my bread in. The loaves looked nice - no stretch marks this time and a lovely even bake. When I got home I cut myself a slice. The best bread I have ever made in my life by a long, long way. Maybe, just maybe, I could be a contender.

Day 44: Groundhog Day

Many years ago, when I first moved to London, I shared a house with a bloke named Murrance, whom I worked with at Ladbrokes. For some reason, he started work half an hour earlier than me, and every morning for three years I would walk down the stairs to be greeted by the sight of him ironing his shirt in his boxer shorts and singing along to All I Do by Stevie Wonder. Bill Murray never experienced anything so traumatic.

Today I had to endure that same terrifying sense of the days repeating themselves. Thai Vegetable Green Curry and Basmati Rice are hardly taxing dishes, but like yesterday, they are a test for me. Stick to the plan, stay clean and organised and get things done.

I am making the Thai curry by half. As yesterday, this means buggering about with weights and measures, the pain exacerbated by the list of fifteen different ingredients. The whole dish is incredibly labour intensive. Each vegetable has to be prepped and cooked individually, then you make the curry and add them back in at the last minute. I line everything up in neat little piles in the order I am going to add them. I am staying in control. As the curry takes shape, I taste along the way; add a little more paste as it needs more heat. All good.

Towards the end of the cooking time I get my rice on. I’ve always struggled to consistently turn out decent rice, but even a total imbecile can follow this recipe. It’s especially good if you want a nice stickiness as you probably do with a Thai dish. Put your quantity of rice in a Le Creuset or casserole dish and add enough water to cover the rice by half an inch. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer on a low heat until the water has evaporated, probably just over ten minutes. Too easy.

But there is something not quite right with my curry. All the flavours are there; the lime leaves, the paste, the chilli, the lime juice, the fish sauce. They’re just not leaping out at me. They are subdued and listless. Rosie tastes and looks puzzled. It needs salt, she says. It can’t do - there isn’t any salt in the recipe; it gets its saltiness from the fish sauce, and I can taste that. We decide it needs to thicken up, so put it back on the heat to reduce. While I am pissing about transferring it to a wider pan, I realise what I’ve done.

The twelve fluid ounces of stock that went in right at the end - they should have been six. Recipe by half. The curry is dull and vapid because it has been diluted. I have made exactly the same fuck up as yesterday, only this time it actually matters, since it is too late to rectify. Once is careless, twice a coincidence; three times, you’re a fuckwit. Or something like that. If there is a third time, I will commit hari-kari with my 10” chef’s knife.

There was a flurry of excitement this afternoon as exam results from Friday became available. An eager queue formed. I waited, since I already knew mine would be shit. I’ve read all about dumbing down, and back when I took my A-Levels getting three As meant you did more than just spelling your name correctly. But how anyone could judge my performances last week as worthy of 80 and 83% respectively is completely beyond me. Not only that, but it transpires that most of the things I got marked down for not doing, I had actually done, though not, it would seem, whilst anyone was looking. Staggering. I live to fight another day.

Buoyed by this unmerited success, I quickly recover from the curry-induced sense of shame and defeatism. Normally curry induced traumas take at least 24 hours to pass, but this one passes with no such nastiness. It was actually very good until I ballsed it right up, and eventually recovered to be a perfectly good dish. I take comfort in that fact. I still have my shit together: my merde en place. Tomorrow’s order of work is done and we shall see what the day brings forth. Unless the alarm clock is playing I Got You Babe by Sonny and Cher that is, in which case I’ll just reach straight for the Wusthofs.

Day 43: Doing things by half

Today felt like the begining of something. I am in a new kitchen today and have an easy line up of dishes. This is the perfect opportunity to start afresh. Not only that, but for the first time since the course began, we are cooking every day this week. That may not sound like a big deal but we’ve only cooked for five mornings in the last two weeks and are suffering kitchen withdrawal. I need to start making things happen.

I was banging on about baking and bread the other week, yet I haven’t made any for a while. I make a brown yeast bread this morning to start off my day. I’ve made it before - it’s pretty straightforward. I also begin a starter so I can make sourdough. There are stories of bakers having the same starter for years. The deal is you mix 2ozs flour with 2 ozs water. You add the same quantities every day for a week. The dough absorbs natural yeast in the air which enables it to rise, and gives it that wonderful sourness. When you bake a loaf, you keep back some of the dough to start your next one with, and so the cycle begins again. I wonder how long this one will last…

I superset the brown yeast bread with the Gingerbread I have to make today for dessert. I’m not 100% sure about the recipe, as it seems to have too much black treacle in it. But another resolution is to stop fucking around with their recipes, so I follow my orders. I am making one half times the recipe, which will fill one loaf tin. This is a slight pain in the ass, since it means some fiddly measurements. A level teaspoon of bread sods become ¼ teaspoon. 1½ teaspoons of ground ginger becomes ¾, which is an especial ball ache. One egg becomes half an egg. Having got all my dry stuff together, I weigh up half the quantities of butter, sugar and treacle in a saucepan and gently heat them through.

Once they have all melted (the sweet smell given off by the pan is almost intoxicating) you take it off the heat and pour in half a pint of milk. I let that cool a while, before adding it to the dry, stirring in my half a beaten egg. Just before I mix the wet and dry together I have a quick scan down the recipe to make sure I have everything in there. 3/4lb black treacle became 6oz: check. 6oz butter 3oz: check. 8oz sugar 4oz: check. Half a pint of milk became aaaarrrrggh. Fuck it. Whilst this is not the end of the world, it is a real bloody nuisance. I have no choice but to make one times the recipe now, which means going back and repeating all those poxy little measurements and weigh ups again.

Having finally got the bloody gingerbread in the oven I progress to my next dish, poached plums. Nothing too exciting here, I get them on and all is good. We also have to all plate up a dish of Irish Shellfish. I get a Dublin Bay prawn, a handful of shrimps, a couple of mussels and clams and an oyster. There’s not a great deal can go wrong with this, unless you don’t check any open molluscs before cooking them or stab yourself with an oyster knife, so it is really about presentation. I can’t help myself. My Dublin Bay prawn has massive pincers and is just crying out to be made the centre of attention. I manage to curl his tail under and have him sort of rearing up like some crazy horse, with his head hovering above the mayonnaise. I apologise for this ridiculous arrangement, but my teacher - another wonderful lady, called Rosie - thinks it’s great. Hilarious. Maybe it will catch on.

So we’re all done and dusted. My bread came out really well. I don’t want to tempt fate but I haven’t made a bad bread yet, with the exception of one white yeast where I used the wrong flour. The gingerbreads were also good, though a little treacly but we knew that anyway. Maybe molasses or a bit of golden syrup in place of some of the treacle next time. The plums were delicious. I poached them just until the skins burst then left them in the liquid. The great thing about them is you can drain off the poaching syrup, add some gelatine and you get two awesome desserts for the price of one.

Apart from dropping and smashing a Pyrex bowl then, a pretty successful morning, just when I really needed one most. The irony is of course that on a day of trying to do things properly, by the book and with fastidious care and attention, the only real mistake I made was when I had to do something by half I ended up doing the whole thing. I reckon I can live with that.

Days 41 & 42: Sans roue

I had an incredibly vivid dream on Friday night. I was driving along in the Corrado when the bolts on my offside rear loosened and the wheel detached itself from the hub. I definitely don’t need Sigmund Freud to solve that one for me. We all know what it means when the wheels come off.

I guess it was the exam that did it; the recognition that I am not as good as I like to think I am. That small things, like knowing the names of your ingredients, being able to sweat an onion or season some mushrooms are important. They are the bricks you use to build dishes. I often moan about the course and its composition (tomorrow I am poaching plums and making gingerbread!) But how can I really complain when I can’t even sauté some mushrooms when put under a bit of pressure.

And hence we come to the crux of the matter: pressure. I have spent most of my working life as a bookmaker. I knew not to stress day in and day out about winning and losing - that long-term trends were what mattered and what made you money. But the residual base from which the peaks and troughs emanated was one of very high stress. I swore every other word. I kicked bins. I chain-smoked, shouted, drank and gambled my way from one confrontation to another. I’d been out for a couple of months when I realised that I hardly ever swore anymore. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but I was swearing a lot less. And drinking less too. I was calm and happy and at peace, with myself and the world.

I probably first noticed it a couple of weeks ago. The superfluous fuck and fucking slowly inveigling their way into the most passive sentences. I am stressed. The exam was a case in point. I have never really worried about exams, interviews, anything like that. Know what you need to know. Have your mise en place, be calm and confident, and never write or speak without thinking first. So what happened on Friday then? I didn’t know what I needed to know, and when the chips were down (well the mushrooms actually) I acted without thinking.

Maybe it is because I have cooked at home for so long. Here, you need to keep your brain engaged all the time. It is so easy to lose a moment’s concentration, or to be flippant or casual with ingredients or seasoning, and you are fucked. On Friday the pressure was obvious, and when I knew I had to be on top of my game, I wasn't. I’m not used to this, even less so to admitting it. But I am only halfway through, and I have six weeks to turn things around. The swear jar will tell me how I’m getting on.

It’s not all bad though. The weekend has been fun. Dinner and a few beers on Friday, a trip into Cork Saturday followed by a Halloween party in the Blackbird in the evening. I don’t normally go in for fancy dress and all that, but everyone got involved. My Scream mask was pretty lame but I backed it up with a wife beater and some drawn on Bogan tats. I especially looked the part since I’d just got a haircut from some Japanese dude who didn’t speak any English and clearly misunderstood my instructions, thinking I’d asked him to make me look like Jake Gyllenhaal’s character in Jarhead.

I might be swearing a bit more than I was but I still get glimpses from time to time of how much has changed in the last couple of years. Driving back from Cork on a dark and winding country road some boy racer tailgated me then overtook on a very short stretch. I saw his lights approach in that menacing rush. I knew instantly what I would have done. Wait. Drop it into third. Wait a bit longer. Then, just as he starts to make his move, drop the pedal and fuck him off out of it. But I didn’t. I pulled over a bit more to give him room and let him right on by. He must have been in a rush, poor guy. He probably had some plums to poach when he got home or something. Or, worse still, maybe his wheels were coming off.

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.