Day 64: Fries with that?

As if I weren’t dazed enough from the weekend’s thinking, I had to endure an inexplicable hour of alertness between about 4 and 5am this morning, so when I do eventually rise I am almost deliriously tired. Week ten. Almost impossible to believe, but that’s what I wake up to. And just to put the passage of time into perspective, I’m back in Kitchen One, where it all began nine long weeks ago.

Burgers. Spread thinly and revoltingly around the globe by The Scottish Restaurant, but also the plaything of many a three star chef. Burgers with foie gras and truffles cosy up with tournedos and filet mignons on the world’s most expensive menus. Today it is my turn. Except I am making Beef Burgers with Pesto and Caramelised Onions so I don’t think Daniel Boulud need sign up to jobs.com just yet.

My order of work looks thinner than a flame-grilled Whopper today. I squeeze in an extra half recipe of burger buns that are made using yoghurt, of all things. This should help balance out my morning, since the burgers and chips will all cook late. The dough is extremely wet and won’t come together in a mixer, so I have to hand knead it and try and work more flour in. It has a lovely soft, light consistency, so I won’t complain, but it is a bit of a pain in the ass to handle.

It goes in the proving oven and I get my meat. When making burgers it is essential that you use freshly ground beef, and that the beef be from a good source. You can’t make good burgers with shit mince. End of story. The recipe we use here is simple; softened, cooled onions, thyme, parsley and minced beef. That's it - no binding or rusk. But we do, if one wishes, have caul fat in which to wrap them. Caul fat protects the intestines of pigs. It is a quite beautiful, lacy substance - one of those curious wonders of nature. It is not to everyone’s liking, so I only wrap half of my burgers in it. I like it myself, but wouldn’t be in the mood for it all the time.

I make pesto, but with rocket instead of basil as there is a shortage. Doesn’t work for me. Burgers are made and chilling in the fridge, baps are rising, onions are caramelising on the hob, I cut some chips and rinse and dry them, and I am set. The buns take ages to prove and I won’t have them ready by midday. Luckily someone else got a batch started before me, so I nab one to plate up. We are all trying to finish on time now, since we only get three hours in the exam and we might as well get in the habit.

There was an eerie silence at times in the kitchen today whilst all this was going on. It was the sound of people who knew what they were doing and going quietly, confidently about it. It was quite something to witness, and seemed to almost materialise overnight. I have to clean up one of the sinks, so keep my beady eyes open for anyone dumping their crap in there. They don’t. They come and go and wash and dry, and everyone is happy and gets it done. I hesitate to use the word, because it might seem presumptive, or even pre-emptive, but the whole morning had an air of professionalism about it. That’s what nine weeks will do for you I guess.

I have spent the last two hours sat in the middle of my lounge surrounded by sheets and sheets of paper, slowly, methodically organising my recipes. There are two reasons: mainly, because I have to, secondarily, because I am still seeking inspiration for my exam menu.

I am definitely making Boeuf Bourguignon as my main course. No brainer. There is an issue with accompaniments - I want to make baguettes and serve them, but the examiners will want to see mashed potato. This is bollocks, of course, but you have to play to the crowd. There is also a question of balance. I was planning a pink grapefruit and pomegranate sorbet to start, with my orange-improved Gateau Pithivier to finish up. Concern has been expressed that the Pithivier might be too heavy after the Bourguignon. I don’t think it will be - Boeuf Bourguignon is rich rather than heavy (unless you stuff your face with mashed potato at the same time). But enough raised eyebrows have convinced me to change.

So having got all that thinking out of the way, I am now on the prowl for a dessert, and doubtless thereby condemning myself to a night’s sleep punctuated by thoughts of Tuscan plum tarts, bread and butter puddings and lemon verbena ice cream. Sweet dreams indeed.

Days 62 & 63: The F-Word

I set about this weekend with nothing to do, and armed with the steely intent to achieve just that. I needed time to relax, kick back and chill the fuck out. Whilst I managed to do very little to stress or tire me, my attempts to expunge any extraneous thoughts from my fragile mind were all in vain. Two things in particular were weighing on respective parts of my mind.

Firstly, I have to decide upon a menu for my end of term exam; to be submitted on Thursday. This means working out a three-course menu that can be cooked from start to finish in three hours, in an order that works. It must be balanced in flavour, texture, colour, weight and ingredients. It should amply demonstrate my range of culinary talents, but most crucially, it must be within the remit of those talents. I am edging closer to my final decision, but it has preoccupied my subconscious mind for most of the weekend. Last night I dreamt I was making omelettes again, like in the technique exam. Mon Dieu!

Whilst various dishes have been cooking away in my subconscious, the tiny part of my brain bold enough to peer above the parapet of consciousness has been thinking about something else. The dreaded F-word. My future.

The truth is I don’t have one beyond three weeks. The course finishes on Friday 11th December.I check out of the cottage on Sunday 13th. I have a car, and enough possessions to fill it. Back in Sussex, I have a 7’ x 8’ storage unit containing the rest. I have neither home nor job, nor the pressing need for either. That makes me lucky, but pensive too. There is a big, big gap, and it needs filling. Sometimes, having freedom of choice makes that choice so much harder.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the kitchen at Ballymaloe. I’ve enjoyed it, and learnt a lot. I’ve been wondering if I shouldn’t maybe stick around and try and get a job. The course feels a bit like learning to drive - you pay someone for lessons, and eventually, you take a test, and they give you a driving licence. Only then do you start learning to drive. It’s the same with cooking. Go on a course, sure. Get a certificate - nice one. Wanna learn to cook? Work in a kitchen. I need to work in a kitchen. Somewhere. Here would be good - I know the people, I know I would learn.

There are two ways of learning. You either find someone who knows how to do it, knows how to teach it, and you get them to teach you. Or, you build a big pile of cash, drop your shoulders, charge right on in there, and learn by your mistakes. I think I will try and blend the two. I can afford to do fuck all for a little while longer, so I think I will hit the road, learning as I go. And then, soon, very soon, I will do the stupid thing.

I want to open a restaurant. Or a pub. Whichever it is will depend on where I am. Come the day, I will need a chef. A great one - probably a crazy one (they usually are). I can't do it myself. I want to blend what I think I know about food with what I think I know about running a business. I want to build a mousetrap, and will need someone to make the cheese. Before that happens, first I must learn everything there is to know about cheese. I may as well start tomorrow.

Day 61: Duck surprise

Sure got that Friday feeling today. And I’m definitely not the only one. Another (the ninth) long, long week is over.

I managed an early night last night and slept well, though had extremely vivid dreams, most of which concerned food. Again. I was trying to keep all this out of my subconscious and left my order of work until breakfast. I write my order backwards since everything comes together at the end today (Pan grilled Duck Breasts with spiced lentils and caramelised apples, and sautéed potatoes). Working back from midday, I have nothing to do until 11am. I decide to spend my first hour making some chocolates and praline. Between 10am and 11am I can practice some techniques, like making béarnaise or beurre blanc.

Well, that didn’t happen. The praline took five minutes. Next I heated the cream for my ganache, and tried to find some chocolate case to fill with it. There were six, meaning I had to make some. This is a complete pain in the arse, the kind of thing no one of sound mind would ever attempt. It involves melting chocolate (we use the finest quality Valrhona) and then painting it on the inside of petit four cases which you then later peel off. Except you don’t, since they melt the minute they come in to contact with you. I press on regardless.

Back in my old job, we used to send clients specially commissioned chocolates for Christmas. They were made by a dude called Marc Demarquette, a brilliant chocolatier. One of my favourites was a salt flavoured ganache, which I decided to replicate today. I mean, how hard can it be? I also decide it would be cool to have a pepper one to go with it, so split my ganache in to two bowls to whisk up. I overdo the salt and it is disgusting. I try and bring it back by adding more raw chocolate, but I think it is beyond redemption. It dawns on me later that they were salt caramels, and that without the rich sweetness of caramel, you are basically creating a kind of chocolate saline tablet. (If anyone needs the recipe for chocolate saline tablets, you are welcome to it).

Luckily the pepper ones are a bit better. Not a lot better, but a bit. They have some promise at least. Maybe one rainy day I will embark on a chocolate and ganache experiment (with shop bought chocolate cases). Though to be honest, for all the pissing about it entails, I think I might just leave it to the experts. I chill the pepper ganache and take it away with me, cutting off little pieces to roll in crushed praline, that are fairly well received by anyone who tries them. But then everyone loves chocolate.

Nestled (or should that be nestléd) in amongst all this chocolate nonsense, I have a duck to joint. Luckily the person having the legs of my duck isn’t interested in jointing it, so I get to do the whole thing. You can literally use every single scrap of a duck. Legs off first, same way as a chicken but you leave them whole. Next the breasts, they are much bigger and the breastbone much flatter than a chicken. I take the wings off. Excess fat is trimmed off each part, and then from the carcass as a whole. This is rendered down, the skin crisps up into duck scratchings, and the fat oozes out for the most wonderful cooking liquid. I trim the carcass of any usable meat, hack at it with a cleaver and it goes in to the stockpot.

Naturally this whole sorry little enterprise has taken far longer than anyone would think possible. Suddenly it is 11am and I haven’t even started either of my dishes for the day. I have a hob issue, in that I need more of them than I have. I manage to persuade the lovely Annette that I should oven sauté my potatoes to save hob space. I forget how long it takes to peel potatoes, and so spend the first ten minutes of my hour attending to this. I blanch them on the hob before transferring them to a hot oven and a tray of fresh duck fat.

I cook my duck breasts on another hob outside the kitchen. Although I am not getting to watch them through their cooking, I spare myself being splattered with fat and having my eyes smoked out of their sockets. The lentils get going in one pan and the apples in another. Bringing the dish together is a bit of a last minute juggling act. It goes pretty well, though the apples end up being on a low heat for too long rather than a quick blast on a high one (they burnt them in demo yesterday so I’ll let myself off the hook for that one).

I am on duty serving main courses at lunch. For some reason there is hardly any food. Not only that, but there is nothing but duck on offer. Standing over the spartan plates and asking "Duck?" of everyone who approaches, I couldn't help but think of Basil Fawlty, grinning maniacally and confessing "Well if you don't like duck, you're rather stuck".

It has been an exhausting week’s cooking. I’ve kept up keeping myself busy. I need to think carefully about the extra stuff I do in the next couple of weeks and lay off the stupid pissy stuff like making chocolates. I will be in a different kitchen next week, which is always a good excuse for a change of tactic. For now, I will ponder these changes over a night in l’oiseau noir. I have absolutely nothing to do for the next two days, and I plan to do it well.

Day 60: The Miracle of the loaves and the seafood chowder

I woke up this morning to the horrifying realisation that I had eaten all the food in the house. I was forced to shamelessly pause at the one shop in Shanagarry and avail myself of a sausage roll for breakfast. It was disgusting. Never again.

The dishes I have to make today are seafood chowder and a ludicrous creation named Gateau Pithivier. In addition, I have candied peel to finish off, some sourdough to bake, and ciabatta. I kick off by slicing the orange and lemon peels that had been soaked and boiled for three hours and get a syrup going to candy them in.

Next on my list is the ciabatta. My biga has been sponging nicely overnight, and is looking pretty lively. I decant it into a mixing bowl with more yeast (sponged in warm milk), water and a little olive oil. Mixing this together, I gradually add the remaining flour. I ignore the recipe again and mix half cream and half strong flour. This gets brought together for five minutes with the paddle before I switch to the dough hook for twelve minutes and leave to rise. It is springy, elastic and wet. Perfect.

Gateau Pithivier is a round cake of puff pastry filled with frangipane or a similar almond flavoured mixture. I cut two 10 inch circles of pastry, and chill them in preparation. Next comes the filling. The one I tried after demo on Tuesday tasted boring and vapid. A lot of effort goes into making one of these bad boys, and it just didn’t seem worth it. Armed with the knowledge that almonds and orange make a splendid combination, and with a vat of candied orange peel bubbling away on the hob, I make an executive decision. In goes a splash of Grand Marnier instead of the rum, and I finely chop a couple of tablespoons of candied orange peel into the mix as well. All this goes onto one of the rounds of pastry and is spread out to the edges. The other round goes on top, and the whole thing is egg washed and chilled.

I have to clean up the mountain of crap that’s growing on my station and treat myself to the first coffee of the day. Things are looking okay, but my order of work is staring to look flaky as it becomes apparent that I will have to fillet all the fish for my chowder. Back to the Pithivier, I decorate it with the traditional swirls out from the centre and flute and scallop the edges. It’s looking good. Back in the cold room to chill further, and I can bung it in the oven whenever I feel like it.

My sourdough hasn’t risen a massive amount overnight. I let it come up to temperature this morning in the hope that it will come on a bit more, but it doesn’t. I bake it anyway. It definitely rises a bit more than the usual spring in the oven, so maybe it could have proved a little longer. That said it doesn’t have stretch marks, so maybe not a lot longer. I actually take it out a little prematurely I think, and bake it for an extra ten minutes when I get home. But it is pretty good - sourer than the first and a better shape. At least I‘ve got something for breakfast now.

Once more the morning has disintegrated before my eyes. I need to get cracking with the chowder. Milk in the pan heating up with a bouquet garni. Bacon diced and in the pan while I chop onions. But the fucking pan is so hot I have to decant the bacon and clean it out. Back in with the onion and sweat away while I measure out fish stock and dice potatoes for the next stage. The pan is too hot again, and I have to decant once more. I add flour to the onion and bacon so the chowder has a nice thick base. The fish stock goes in bit by bit. It thickens into a nice looking sauce. Next the milk and spuds go in - I don’t want the spuds to overcook and break up. Meanwhile, I fillet a haddock and a monkfish and prepare nice sized chunks of their meat. I open some mussels in another pan. While I’ve been doing this, the bloody chowder has split, so I have to strain the whole lot and blitz the liquid back together with the wand. All back in the pan for the third time then, and in goes the monkfish, followed a couple of minutes later by the haddock, and finally some cream and the mussels. I work hard on the seasoning. There is mace and cayenne in there from earlier. It needs quite a lot more salt, and I decide on a little extra cayenne to give it a bit more fight. I plate up with fresh parsley and a couple of mussels in their shells. It gets a big thumbs up for flavour, but it has a slightly grainy consistency. Maybe it needed more cooking, especially for the potatoes, but I’m not sure. The spuds felt really starchy, and I can’t help wondering if a rinse would have helped. I don’t see how more cooking could make it less grainy, but anyway.

Now I have to shape my bloody ciabatta. It has risen like the proverbial salmon while I have been buggering about elsewhere. It is incredibly wet and very difficult to handle and shape. You need three things here - a dough scraper, another dough scraper, and a shitload of flour. You may well know that a ciabatta is a type of slipper, from whence the bread derives its name. I make four loaves - two of which have plenty of flour on them and seem fairly well structured. The other two look more like insoles than slippers. They can rise on the tray for another half hour or so and go in when the Pithivier comes out.

My midday target long since flashed past me. The puff pastry takes forever to cook. Once done, it is dusted with copious amounts of icing sugar and shoved under the grill to glaze the top. It receives universal acclaim for its oranginess. A genuine improvement - all that time and effort from hand making the puff pastry to pissing about scoring it with swirly lines - and it is worth it. I discreetly stash it under my counter - half for me, half for the teachers.

The ciabatta is good. My experiment with the strong flour has worked. It has more flavour than their recipe, and is still well structured, bubbled and chewy. Not only this, but it can take more water, because of the extra gluten. Plenty of people had to use less water than the recipe.

Speaking of water, it has been raining for approximately three days now without showing the slightest sign of abating. It took a long time to drive home tonight - two people flooded their cars driving too quickly through the massive puddles and had to be pushed or pulled free by passing trucks. When I did get home I had to park bloody miles away because of the flooding and am forced to make a giant leap, over my new moat, to the front door. I feel like I am not so much straddling the garden path as the Testaments; loaves of bread, fish and a bloody Great flood.

Day 59: Risky business

Not a lot to report today. Survived on coffee, just. Second half of the Cooking for Pleasure and Profit lecture today, so no cooking. Got in early though to do a bit of bread work.

I had refreshed my sourdough starter twice over the last couple of days. This morning I took half of the 40 oz and whisked it up to activate the yeast. The other half goes back in the jar and lives on as the starter for my next batch. I let it settle for a while, and set to work on a ciabatta starter (or biga to use the correct term). In the school's ciabatta recipe, we only use cream flour, which has a lower gluten content than baker's flour. This is to keep the dough lighter and preserve the texture. I had been chatting to someone about this. In Italy they use stronger flour for flavour, and you get the chewy consistency. I decide to experiment, so use half cream flour for my starter, and half double zero flour, that the Italians use to make pizza because of its high gluten content. I whisk it up with yeast and water, and leave it to rest until tomorrow.

Once that's dealt with, I knead my sourdough sponge together with the rest of the flour and water. I try and keep it nice and wet. I let it stand and rise at room temperature during the day, and after class I knock it back and shape it into a basket. Its next rising takes place in the cold room, to slow down the yeast activity and give the bread more time to develop the sour flavour. My last sourdough had a great texture but lacked sourness. The starter is more developed this time and I am keeping it away from loaf tins, as they reduce the crust to crumb ratio, thus inhibiting development of the bread's unique and wonderful qualities. We shall see what the day brings forth.

The lecture is interesting, though a bit frustrating at times. We cover costing, pricing, food percentages and profit margins. I am fortunate enough to be quite good with numbers, and this makes me selfishly impatient with people who are not. After lunch we go through a case study of some dude who was setting up a coffee shop/deli in a little town somewhere in Ireland. We have a good summary of his business plan, copy of his proposed menu and even a floor plan of the premises. We have to digest this and answer questions as a group.

I can't see it myself. The town has a population of 1,200. There is a supermarket that processes just 4,000 transactions a week. He is borrowing shit loads of cash to get off the ground. For me the risk/reward ratio is just too high. His menu is really comprehensive too, and in a town with such low footfall he's going to be throwing a lot away. If I was him I would be downscaling my project, reducing my borrowings and seeing how things pan out. But really, I can't help but feel that he has a vision for a business and is trying to make it fit somewhere where the hole isn't quite big enough.

The second half of the case study looks at the changes the consultant recommended, where the business is now (eighteen months later) and what his latest initiatives have been. He's doing really well. What that means, it transpires, is that he is breaking even. In the downturn he has developed an outside catering business, which is proving to be a fruitful diversification. But his debts from the coffee shop will last for another six years. (This is a success story, remember). It begs the question; should he really have opened in the first place? He is running credit crunch specials in the coffee shop and paying astronomical utility bills. I bet if he moved his kitchen gear to some industrial estate and ran the catering businesses from there he'd be a hell of a lot better off. But sans café. Of all the food businesses that fail, how many of them are driven by blind optimism and reluctance to face (or grasp) reality?

Why do I always approach these things with such negativity? We kind of talked about it today - not doing something will never cost you money, I said. It might cost you an opportunity, but it won't make you worse off. It's true. You might miss a few buses along the way, but it's getting on the right one that counts. It all comes down to risk. To take a big one, you need a lot of boxes ticked. You might have a dream, a vision, but on its own, it won't be enough - it has to work too, and it has to make money. You can't spend three precious years busting your balls to break even. Life is too fragile, and people too fickle, for that.

They say every successful business needs a dreamer, a do-er and a bastard. I never could quite work out which one I was. I can say for sure though, I definitely wasn't the dreamer. Come to think of it, I never really did a lot either...

Day 58: Out damned spot

It's funny what a good night's kip can do. With things back in perspective this morning, the cause of yesterday's mini meltdown was obvious. In a rush yesterday morning, I couldn't find a "Buff" (my usual choice of head covering) to wear in the kitchen. Consequently, and for the first time since the course began, I donned the white chef's skull cap I had previously rejected on the grounds that it made me look like I serve kebabs for a living. Disrupting this kind of routine can have fatal consequences.

In some ways, there was even more at stake today. I had stayed late yesterday to start my Boeuf Bourguignon, and in so doing had placed considerable stock by getting it right. If the wheels came off today, I would be in a bit of a hole. I tried to keep things simple on my order of work, though I have a couple of extra bits to do, including making puff pastry, which is rather time consuming. I get in just before nine, get the beef on the go and prep the extra bits that go in at this stage. There are two key measures of the dish - how well the beef is cooked, and how well it is seasoned. Obviously there are several other areas one could balls up, but these are the biggies. Get them right and you won't have too many complaints.

I nail them all. When you think the beef is ready - soft and tender and melting in your mouth, let it go another couple of minutes. Fortune, as I have said so many times in this blog now, favours the brave. (One of the causes of my derailment yesterday was the Crème Anglaise that took all day to thicken. Why did it take all day? Because the heat was too low. Balls out, turn up the heat and get on with it). Likewise the seasoning - when you think you are there, just a little bit more, and suddenly the whole thing transforms. So what do I feel when I taste my finished dish? Pride? Relief? Well I feel a bit smug, obviously, and vindicated for my efforts last night. But most of all, I just feel glad that I have something nice to eat for lunch.

I got to practice a bit more butchery tonight. It is difficult - you can watch other people doing it and look at diagrams, but there is no substitute for getting stuck in yourself if you want to learn how to do it. I have to take my time (not something that comes naturally). I have a whole lamb to deal with. Not quite whole, since his shoulders have been removed, but I have the rest. Firstly, I saw across his back, in the dip at the end of the loin and where the legs begin to fatten out. (Across the top of his arse basically). With the legs detached, I divide them in two by sawing through the spine and tailbone. Each in turn, I trim away the tailbone, and then set about removing the aitchbone. This is relatively simple, but somewhat ponderous. I feel like the archetypal blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat. That isn't there. Except it is there, and I find it. And doing it is great fun. It is strangely relaxing - in the way that some people might find doing the Times Crossword relaxing I guess. With the bone out I trim up and tidy the leg before tying it up.

Next, the ribcage. First of all I remove the fillets. Now I need to split the cage in two, which means coming down either side of the spine and breaking through the ribs. Which means using a cleaver. There are a few nice shiny new ones lying about, but the weapon of choice is an old wooden handled one that wouldn't look out of place in my Dad's garden shed. You have to work down both sides together, since if you remove one completely it becomes impossible to stabilise the animal for the removal of the other. Scott starts me off on my wrong side (he is left handed). Then I take the cleaver. My thumb and fingers are dangerously close, but they have to be. I hack away tentatively to begin with, without really getting anywhere. I make a small saw cut to get myself started. It is a bit weird - the temptation is to chop brutally and maniacally. But that doesn't help. You need short strokes, arcing the blade back in towards yourself, so you cut through the bone rather than just splintering it.

By the time I finish it looks like the blind guy has been chasing the black cat with a hatchet. But job done, I have two racks of ribs to prepare. I trim and clean, cutting away any excess fat. I remove the short ribs and remove a few inches of flank, to enable me to replace the fillet and roll and tie the end of the loin. I then choose my line and cut across the ribs, which creates the biggest bastard job of them all - cleaning the protruding bones. You scrape and scrape and scrape. My hands are bloodied and the skin rough and stained, but I am secretly loving every second of it. Time is ticking away and around me the other guys are beginning to clear up. Someone offers to do the other rack for me, but I decline. I'm having too much fun.

Sat here in the conservatory, the weather having taken a turn for the worse, I look at my hands. How different they appear now. Once they were soft and smooth. Now the lines are dark, stained with blood. I scrub them all the time as filthy hands are not appealing in a cook. But it doesn't make a difference. I have half a thumbnail on one hand, and cuts and nicks all over the other, from shards of splintered bone and the odd one from the knife. What hairs remained have been burnt off. The fingertips are beginning to harden and desensitise to the heat. And the smell of meat, of a butchers shop, has survived several washes. I'd scrub them again before I go to bed but it won't make a difference. Even great Neptune's ocean wouldn't wash them clean.

Day 57: Losing my religion

Not for the first time in the last couple of months, I desperately wanted to roll over and go back to bed this morning. My nightcap in the Blackbird turned into a whole hatstand full of them, and I was up scribbling until well gone midnight. The week is so knackering round here, and last week particularly so, that a restorative weekend is imperative. When you wake up feeling like I did today on a Monday morning, you know you’ve shanked it.

Last week was a good one. I could feel myself coming of age in the kitchen. I was thinking back to the first day when they gave out gold stars to the beginners. I wasn’t sure if I was a beginner or not, and wrote “I humble myself before the culinary altar and add a star, bottom left.” That self-abasement has long since evaporated. The altar I was humbling myself before, I now tower arrogantly over, like a life size Plastic Jesus. Only problem is, a bit like that daft twat Icarus flying too close to the sun with his wax wings, (what must he have looked like?) if I float too close to the great hob in the sky, I am in serious danger of going up in flames. Nothing to fear though, the culinary Gods intervene and send me wafting gently back from whence I came.

Nothing too demanding today, though I am mildly interested by the prospect of making a gooseberry tart with the flaky pastry from Friday. I love gooseberries. As I have mentioned before, they were my food memory when I went to the Fat Duck. As is so often the case, the thing you look forward to most shafts you. Poisoned chalice of gooseberries. They are frozen, obviously. I lay them out flat above the ovens when I walk through the door to get them defrosting - if they go in the tart frozen they will shed pints of water. I make shortcrust pastry for the base and, while it is chilling, make a crème Anglaise. I have allowed half an hour for this. It involves a mind numbing stretch of standing over the hob stirring. For some reason, the fucker doesn’t want to thicken. I am stuck by the pan stirring, desperate for a coffee and watching the morning’s precious minutes slip through my fingers like grains of cornmeal. Finally it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon but it looks thin and anaemic.

I’m still waiting for the bloody gooseberries to thaw out but they’re as hard as walnuts. I roll out my shortcrust and chill it ready for them. I make my Caesar salad dressing while I wait. Pretty simple really; an exercise in tasting and seasoning. Mine needs more lemon juice and garlic. (I can’t work out why it has anchovies and Worcester sauce in it though, since the former is the flavour of the latter)?

By now it is pushing 11, and my tart should be going in the oven, but the fucking gooseberries still aren’t there. I can’t wait all day, so I roll out my pastry and fill the base. I give them plenty of sugar as they are extremely sharp. The pastry goes over, and I delicately slit the edges to encourage the puffing up, and scallop around the rim. I then cut dainty little leaves to decorate the top. Even if I do say so myself, it looks mighty fine. Fanny Craddock would be proud. In it goes, about an hour later than planned.

I half-heartedly knock up my Caesar salad while I go about cleaning up all my crap. At no stage today have I felt in control. My station was messy; I had loads of menial tasks like stirring custard and defrosting gooseberries that took far longer than they should have. Instead of coping with this like a professional, I sulked and moped about like a spotty little runt. Consequently my salad was poorly presented, and by the time I whipped it out from under the counter for tasting, the dressing had run off the leaves and it looked shit. Meanwhile the fucking tart had cooked on top but the bottom hadn’t been touched, since the gooseberries were shedding copious amounts of liquid. It finally came out of the oven at well gone 1pm, when I finally accepted that if it stayed in there until Christmas it still wouldn’t have browned underneath. Fortunately it still looked good, and tasted grand too. But that was scant consolation and I went outside to look for a small animal to kick.

The afternoon was fairly torturous. A slow start to demo, I still wanted to kick the cat, and the chairs were feeling particularly ill humoured. Tomorrow I am cooking Boeuf Bourgignone (the same recipe I cooked in Ballymaloe House last week on a much larger scale). It is a far superior dish if the meat is browned and marinated in the wine overnight. We can stay behind and take it to this stage tonight after demo if we wish (yeah right). When demo finally grinds to a spluttering halt, just shy of 6pm, there are no takers for this option.

Except one. Because it just isn’t the same if you don’t. And maybe I just need to rekindle that respect for the food I am making, how I go about it and how I conduct myself in the kitchen, if I am going to get my Plastic Jesus away from the hob before his beard melts. Got to get it back, JC. Got to get it back.

Days 55 & 56: Plastic Jesus

After lunch, but before demo, on Friday, we were treated to a live performance by two crazy Belgian musicians who happened to be passing through the area. One of them played the guitar the other the harmonica. They were brilliant. After the lamb butchering on Friday, I popped in to catch the end of their concert in the Grainstore at Ballymaloe. It felt like a gentle way of unwinding into the weekend without causing myself too much damage. By 4am, I was sipping a gin and tonic from an empty jam jar, and the weekend had unwound into me. (You only seem to get Cork Dry Gin round here - it’s not in the same league as Tanqueray, which is probably a good thing since it stops me making martinis with it).

Saturday morning passed me by, and I was in the kitchen in time for lunch. One of the chefs, who also happens to be a brilliant baker, showed me his method for making focaccia. Vastly different to the one we learn at the school, and with far more impressive results. I chip in during prep but leave before service starts. Partly because I am exhausted, but mainly because there are plenty of people in and I get the feeling that I may just get in the way if I stick around.

I felt properly refreshed by the time I woke up this morning. I wanted to go somewhere different today, and with the washing on, a coffee in the belly, and spurred on by the sunshine, I headed for Youghal, east of Cork, with my best buddy. We walked about the place, climbed a hill through a graveyard and traipsed along the city wall. There was a plaque by some ramparts alluding to the guy who had fortified the town. Turning round, looking out to sea from our vantage point, I was slightly taken aback. The thought of the guns going off - the smell, the smoke, the confusion. History. What my country subjected this country to. The inscription read: Just hear what the old fellows say - When trenchmen landed at Monatray one of us made them scamper away.

Back in town we pondered lunch options, and after an abortive attempt in the Rendezvous Café, wound up in Capri Bay, an ‘authentic Italian trattoria’. Of course it is. But no. It actually is. Bresaola could have had a bit less balsamic on it, but the mozzarella salad was perfect. Crisp leaves and the best Mozzarella di Buffalo I have tasted outside of Italy. My lobster linguine arrived with the lobster cracked and on the plate, and was sublime. Delicate and fresh, fishy but not fishy, if you know what I mean. Eclipsed only by the panna cotta, which just edged out my tiramisu in the dessert stakes.

After this enormous lunch I spent the rest of the day with that gluttonous fat feeling. I desperately want to sleep when I get home around half six, but settle for a quick powernap to replenish my reserves in time for the Blackbird. The usual suspects, plus the Belgians, treated us to a great evening’s music; the highlight being a rendition of Plastic Jesus that brought a smile to my face. Just got home from there now, probably had too much to drink for a Sunday, but the full stop has been drawn at the end of yet another week. If only I had a Plastic Jesus riding on the dashboard of my car, I might just about be ready for the next one…

Day 54: Multi-tasking

Time is short so I will keep this brief. One normally feels like exploding into the weekend on a Friday, but I barely have the energy.

Cooking was good again today. I made flaky pastry (like puff pastry but with less butter). This involves rolling out into a rectangle, dotting butter on your pastry, and folding into three, like a letter. You turn it 90º, roll again fold again and return to the fridge. You do this four times, each time adding another 2oz of butter. By the time you are finished, your pastry has 729 layers within it. Neat huh? It sounds like a right pain in the ass to make but I found it strangely cathartic. The key to pastry is temperature - everything has to be cold. If it is, it can be quite enjoyable. Or maybe there's just something wrong with me.

In between rolling pastry I make confiture d'onions (very French theme today). It's not hard but it does involve slicing a pound and a half of onions. Short of buying onion goggles (I recently saw a pair for €20 - can you imagine breaking them out in the kitchen?), the best way to avoid the tears is to fight fire with fire, or acid with acid in this case, and sprinkle them with vinegar. I also have a batch of crepes to make. Not a problem there either, though it is quite time consuming. I take over a cheese souffle that my partner doesn't have time to make, and intersperse stages of this with the crepe making, onion jam reducing and pastry rolling. I like testing myself with a few things on the go - the pressure focuses your mind. You don't just stand there stirring a pan looking out of the window, or spend half an hour chopping an onion ( I watched one girl spend an hour slicing onions for confiture a couple of weeks ago). You don't have time. You have to leave things, and know when to come back to them. It is more like being in a proper kitchen.

There is one minor hiccup when a ring is on under the souffle mixture, which I wasn't aware of. I thought I was leaving it in the pan to cool, but was in fact welding it to the metal. Luckily Rosie spotted it while I was rolling pastry. In such situations, you can usually just decant and carry on. I had to add a little more milk to compensate for the evaporation but it didn't make the slightest difference to the dish. Another minute or so might have been interesting though.

Everything works out in the end. The jam is good (I used grenadine instead of creme de cassis just to be different), the pastry will be tested on Monday, the souffle was great, and will definitely get rolled out again as people always assume it is harder to pull off that it actually is, and the pancakes are pancakes, but when I smear nutella and chopped roasted hazelnuts in them and throw in a bit of my vanilla ice cream they improve dramatically.

After demo I popped into the kitchen to be shown how to prepare a rack of lamb. I am really enjoying the butchery side of things and want to learn more. The more you watch, the more you get to understand what it is you are looking for and trying to achieve each time. All these things; butchery, baking, patisserie - there is something magical and enchanting about them. Learning their secrets is intoxicating. In four weeks, the learning stops. I need to find another way to feed the addiction.

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.