Revelations I and II

Today we are let loose on the general public for the first time. The school has organised an Italian food and wine evening for 24 paying customers, with a guest wine speaker, and they have decided that 6 of us are to be allowed to cook and serve the guests. Another way of looking at it is they are using unpaid labour to rake in a massive profit, but that's just the cynical view.

So we are cooking a 5 course meal: canapés; ravioli (one per person, hand-made) with roast squash and hazelnut filling (shown left); braised lamb shank on a bed of beans with pressed belly pork, ratatiouille and broccoli; a plate of desserts and a cheese board (I think the cheese board is served before the desserts). The thing I'm wondering is:- when do we get to eat? We start work at 1 and finish around 11, with no apparent breaks.

Hervé is in charge, with Chris backing up on the fancy bits. According to Hervé, we are serving lomshonk wiff porbellee. He described to us the difference between cooking for a small party, and catering for a large restaurant, where he had once seen 58 pans of risotto on the go at once.
"If zerr is not spess to cook for two 'undred then - excuse ma French - you are fucked!"

On Wednesday we started the wine and spirit element of the course. We will (if we pass the exam) get a basic level qualification in wines and spirits, enought to be able to advise customers in a basic way which wines will go with their choice of food ("I'd go for the Black Tower missen love"). Gill, our admin person, is taking the course, which unfortunately so far doesn't provide us with even a whiff of wine, although we did get to peel and eat a grape. The revelation of the title though, was that we all had to fill in a form which included a column for age (presumably so that they are sure we all all over 18 when we start quaffing the stuff). I happened to notice that Janice, my partner this week, is actually older than me. That's right - even older than me! That's made me feel a whole lot better. Of course it would be rude of me to state her age, but I had her marked as at least 10 years younger than she actually is.

Janice lives in Glasgow, and has a son of 20, and twins of 15, all boys. I'm surprised she doesn't look 70. She is clearly from the posh end of Glasgow, both from her accent, and the range of large cars in which she appears, usually slightly late due to traffic, snow, school runs, etc. She is slightly obsessed with making scones, which she does any time there is a 10 minute gap in proceedings. However, the more often she does something, the worse they get. Her merigues started off quite well, but the latest batch hardly got off the ground. She is one of the quiet and reserved ones. Not sure what she is hoping to do once she's completed the course, I think she just enjoys cooking and wants to know more about it.

So, I rolled up at 1245 ready to go, slightly apprehensive. We were divided into sections, with James (working on his chocolate ravioli in the photo) and I on desserts, Graham and Alex on starters, and Big Graham (the butcher) on mains. The final member of our brigade, Katherine (now known as Kate, as another Kathryn {Irish} has just joined us) was front of house, organising (I use the term loosely) the two Polish waitresses, Anneta and Agnes.

We immediately got shown what we had to do, and got stuck in. My first task was making the tuille baskets. These are made out of an ice-cream wafer-like substance. The trick is to create rounds on a baking sheet, bake them, then as soon as they come out of the oven drape them over a small pot while they are still hot, and press another pot on top of them, pressing them into a bowl shape with a fluted edge. You can see what they look like from the photo on the left. At this point, I had little or no idea why I was actually doing this, and what the final dessert was going to look like.

The only crisis point was when Click started getting in my way by fussing about setting up additional baking sheets on my worktop. Several times I asked her to stop, and said I was fine, didn't want any more, etc, etc, but she just kept on getting in the way. Eventually she gave up and started packing her knives away. Unfortunately, she chose to do this right where I was whizzing around between my two ovens, keeping an eye on my tuille rounds. Several times ( is this getting repetitive?) I asked her to move out of the way. She then threw the cover of her knife set open, knocking over a bottle of oil, which duly fell right into the middle of the tray of tuille baskets I'd lovingly sculpted. In case you're wondering, tuille baskets are very brittle, and I can tell you they create a very impressive cracking and smashing effect which extends for several yards around when attacked by a bottle of cooking oil. As you can imagine, I briefly had visions of attempting the same effect with Click's head. I forced myself to walk away, which engendered a certain amount of respect from those who had witnessed the event. She's only a kid, I muttered to myself repeatedly under my breath.

My next task was to make sugar baskets. This the sort of fancy work you see the likes of Gordon Ramsey doing on the Jonathan Ross show just to show off. And it is great fun! Melt a panful of sugar, get yourself a ladle, grease it, then trickle the sugar thinly over it to create a basket. Again, you may admire the photo. Again, I had little idea at that point why I was doing it.

We all helped each other out as the hours quickly passed. Before we knew it the guests had arrived, and we were ready to serve starters. This is where the stressy bit briefly kicked in, as Hervé chivvied along the starter boys, and the waitresses, to get things onto the table.

Once the mains went out, it was about 8.15, and we had a few minutes to sit down and eat something ourselves. Seven hours without a break, but it didn't feel like it, and I loved every minute. Then it was our turn: the various ingredients for the desserts were taken down stairs, so we could put everything together at the last second, as the alcohol soaked sponges for the tiramisu-in-a-basket had only a couple of minutes before it destroyed my wonderful tuille baskets. The assembled result you can see in the photo - all ready to go out.

Very embarrassingly, during desserts, we were trooped into the dining room to sing happy birthday to one of the guests, for whom a special little pudding (with a candle) had been prepared. Embarrassing not only because we got a round of applause when Hervé introduced us, but also because at the crucial moment we realised none of us knew the name of the guest. "Happy birthday dear hmmm hmmm..."

Still, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and more importantly from our point of view, the food. Comments in the visitor's book were very positive. We all felt great, a real sense of achievement, and , from my point of view, we worked really well as a team. I'm almost coming round to the view that Shootin' Graham is not that bad a chappie after all (I'm sorry to disappoint you on that score). We finally got washed and tided up around 1000, and allowed ourselves a small glass of wine each before heading off home. Guess what folks - I'm a cook!