Thai Can Do

As you will have gathered, last week was a bit of a disappointment, from the boring fish dishes in the early part of the week, to the disasterous assessment on Friday. Even Lizzie admitted she had gone home on Friday thinking "Have the last 6 weeks been a complete waste of time?". We were all demoralised, some angry, some just shocked. Two simple sauces and a couple of poached eggs, I ask you.

Photo above: chicken and prawn thai curry, with rice noodles

But this week, so far, has been the complete opposite. On Monday we had another assessment, this time in pairs. Fours hours to plan a three course menu from whatever was in the fridge, time-plan it, then execute it. This week I am paired with Katherine, or Kate as she now is, given that we have a second Kathryn on board. Noisy Kate, that is. But she is good to work with, if a little OCD/stressy at times. We planned and cooked mushroom soup, pan-fried duck breast with redcurrant reduction on a bed of cabbage with dauphinoise potatoes, and crepes suzette (originally that was going to be citrus cheesecake, until somebody else nicked our ingredients, so a last minute change of plan was required). We sailed through, apart from my crepes, which Lizzie rather harshly referred to as "a disaster". They were exactly the same as the pancakes I've been doing for years (except I set fire to them [deliberately I might add]), but apparently they were still not browned enough. Still, that aside, it gave us all a lot of confidence back.

Photo: chicken and duck spring rolls (absolutely delicious)

Today Pip was back in, and we did Thai cooking. Fantastic! We made red curry paste from scratch, and used it to make three different dishes, which not only tasted great, but presented themselves brilliantly as well. The abundance of flavours was just great, and everyone was allowed to experiment a little bit, and put their own twist to their dishes, which was a welcome change. Unfortunately the photos, taken with my iPhone, are not brilliant, but hopefully give you an idea of what we produced.

Pip is clearly a very good cook/chef (have none of you got a definition sorted yet?), but a poor teacher. His idea of getting an idea over is to repeat it at least 55 times. His favourite phrase is "Listen carefully, this is really important". An Aussie version of Allo Allo's "Listen very carefully, I shall say this only once." Except just the opposite. So taste, taste, taste, taste..., presentation, presentation, presentation, presentation... Then there is such advice as "Just copy exactly what I'm doing"; "Experiment, now is the time to get it wrong"; "Don't try to do your own thing, you're not experienced enough for that!"; "What the f&uck it that supposed to be?"; "You guys have done really well". Well, thanks for clearing that up.

Good moaning.