Chris Ward

Cook your potatoes unpeeled, which helps stop them going soggy and which may better preserve their nutritional content.Then mash them using a potato ricer or a French ‘moulin à legumes’, still with their skins on. The skins stay behind in your chosen device and you get better quality mash.

Yup, that's it.

Nice tip for the glove too, thanks!

Titchy in English English for small.

This one may stir up a little controversy; we live in hope! Titchy vegetables can be difficult, or even impossible, to peel correctly - let alone the New Wisdom which tells us not to peel to take best advantage of the nutrients available.We used to peel veg in order to ensure they were thoroughly cleaned of the animal excrement used as fertiliser; this is less of a problem now. So instead of peeling try soaking your vegetables in cold water for a few minutes and then washing them using a washing up sponge ('A bit of green', as my mother used to call it). You may want to keep one just for this purpose; you can also use a washing up brush, or even a nail brush, to the same effect. A bit of green also works wonders when you have a rack of lamb where you want to scrape the bones clean to impress your visitors/chef.

Being short of time and long on ideas, I thought I’d start up a series of quick tips I’ve picked up over the years. First tip: When you’ve been making pastry, dough, bread – anything like that – it can be difficult to wash your hands and get rid of all the dough sticking to your fingers. Instead of washing your hands with soap and warm water, try soap and COLD water. Works like a charm. The warm water livens up the dough and makes it stickier; cold water calms it down and allows you to rub it off more easily.

Yup, did that in a startup restaurant in Uzes. She filled the menu - overfilled! - with all her favourite dishes, we had 45 items on the menu with 2 in the kitchen, me and the owner's niece who'd never cooked in her life. The kitchen was a bar space with a gigantic pizza oven that we couldn't use because she wanted to do 'pierre chaud' - giant blocks of granite heated up to grill meat on in front of the customers. There were veal chops on the menu which took +- 30 minutes to cook and nowhere to cook them. The fridges were under the dining room, access via a trapdoor which couldn't be opened during the service. The owner was supposed to do FoH but she loved cooking (her words) and kept coming back to the space where there was room for 1.5 people to cook special orders for her friends. I lasted 3.5 weeks and then ran away.

The last restaurant I worked in, a Kyriad in France, was a real case in point. The hotel owner had our margins calculated down to the nearest cent, no overtime, 3 kitchen staff, fixed menus with fixed prices for 2 or 3 courses all to attract enough business travellers to fill his 104 rooms every night. Sure, there are some destination restaurants in hotels but most are there to fuel business travellers.

Same here, they say they're willing to give the 'This will take time' method a try and then want to know why it hasn't worked after a week. I understand that restaurant owners have often invested all and more of their personal fortune in their restaurant, but jeez.

I'm brutally honest, but they remain starry-eyed. I show them extracts from a documentary about Georges Blanc whose Maison Blanc at Vonas in the Ain in NE France has a turnover of €2 million a year and a profit of 2% in a good year. I show how he makes all his money from the souvenir shop, hotel, spa, boulangerie, brasserie and so on - and all they hear is 'So he makes a €2 million profit by owning the whole village". They all think they'll become millionaires. Actually most of them want to become hotel managers and they ultimately realise that most hotel restaurants are a necessary evil - you have to have one to attract customers, and you're happy if they break even. I do an interesting class where they have to create and cost a menu and calculate the number of staff they'll need to cook and serve it in the type of restaurant they want. They ALL employ between a half and a quarter of the staff they really need and make a huge profit on day one, and don't believe me when I say there'll be no day 2 if you're paying someone the wages of a Second and expecting them to do a chef's job, or someone in the dining room the wages of a Chef de rang and expecting them to act as maitre d'hotel. They're money people, which ultimately is the breed which controls restaurants and hotels now.

NOW you see how cooking messes you up!

32: Epilogue - Afterwards After passing my exam I carried on working at Les Agassins until the season ended in October, and then went on to become Chef de Cuisine (and plongeur, sous-chef, restaurant manager, sommelier and commis de rang) at Chalet Bertie for the winter season in Morzine. This was the year when there was almost no snow anywhere in the French Alps - apart from Morzine. So, it was a busy season both in the chalet and on the slopes. I was responsible for everything to do with the kitchen, from menu writing, ordering and shopping to peeling the potatoes and serving the food. And taking the blame, although luckily there wasn’t much of that. It was a nice step up from Les Agassins. I’d made the move into Personal Service, as we call it, on the advice of Steve and Caroline, two great friends and chefs from my days as a computer technologist at The Times as Dr Keyboard. I had to do a number of trials and interviews, the first of which was very bizarre; when I got there it turned out there was already a chef in the job and the owner just wanted me to spy on him and work out if he was nicking stuff; the second one was for the job I accepted up in Morzine and was great – good people, unlimited food budget, I get to do what I want; the third trial was in a tiny flat near Chelsea Harbour for six, no seven, no make that 11 people. No we’re 10 now. Anyway, they loved the food and promised to get back in touch and let me know by the weekend. They never did, and nor did the agency which sent me up there – despite me sending them several e-mails. So don’t go looking at Alprecruit if you need a job. I do recommend Natives. They found me this job and presented me for several which pay decent money – it seems that most people work up in the Alps because they want to go skiing, not because they want to cook. Well, a little skiing now and then will be very welcome, but cooking is what I went for. After Morzine I worked in St Tropez in the Spring and then again in summer. For me, St Tropez is famous for traffic jams - one gigantic big one which just fills the town from end to end. I cooked for a private French family in their villa overlooking the town; mum, dad and a handful of kids, two other members of staff and a few visitors popping in here and there. Including the lady who’s now nanny to the children of Picasso’s grandson. Which was kinda cool. And Jean-Jacques Goldman, who is World Famous in France. He sings, apparently. I cooked for an English family up in the hills near Grasse for a few weeks in between St Tropez stints but missed being at home in Avignon. I carried on in the same vein through the autumn and winter, including cooking other people’s Christmas, New Year and other festive meals in three different countries in 20 days. Then the next Spring came what promised to be a life-changing event and turned out to be just that, albeit in a different way than I’d hoped. I went to Ireland to work for a member of a very famous beer-and-banking family - after a week cooking for an even more famous Irish dancer and his lunatic wife - on a trial, with the hope and expectation of it turning into a proper, full-time in-service job. I’d already done a weekend cooking for them after Christmas when they kindly flew not only me but Delphine, too, over to Dublin. I worked for six weeks until the end of April when, on the 31st, Delphine announced that she was about to go into labour with our first child. I jumped on the next plane, arriving at home at six in the evening on the 31st, just in time to drive her to the clinic in Avignon at 2 am the next morning. Scarlett was born at 2 pm on the 1st. Good job I didn’t wait a day for a flight. The next month was massive on many levels - new babies, it turns out, are pretty disruptive of your regular schedule. We were packing the house up to move back to Ireland, all three of us, when I found out that the old man’s staff weren’t actually planning on paying me any wages. I’d got on fine with him but he employed at least one plain and simple evil witch. I managed to work out that because he was going to spend at least six months a year abroad for tax purposes, I’d be paid only for the six months when he was in residence. And that car that came with the job? Nope. Not yours. Oh, and no house either. So no wages, no car, no house and you’re living up a mountain in the middle of nowhere with a wife who speaks little English and a one month old baby. OK? Erm, no. I had to sue them for the money they already owed me and travel back to Ireland for the hearing to get it. The lesson is, of course, Get It In Writing First, because other people simply don't care about you and yours. So, not a great experience. But it did mean we got to go on living in Avignon, and I found a job without much difficulty as a Chef de Partie des Entrées in another restaurant in Avignon, albeit one not up to the level of Les Agassins. No jobs going there, unfortunately. That autumn we decided to move a hundred kilometres back west to be nearer Delphine’s family and landed in Sommieres, a really beautiful medieval town 45 minutes from the seaside. Finding a job turned out to be less easy this time, mainly I think because of my age and because I knew too much. But I was eventually hired as Second de Cuisine in the restaurant of a chain hotel in nearby Lunel, and that was OK. Apart from the mad chef, obviously. But hey. Goes with the territory. Then in 2010 my old carpal tunnel syndrome problems flared up really badly and I had to give up cooking all together. I was off sick for six months, completely unable to work, and the government Medecin de Travail, the Employment Doctor, declared me officially Unfit To Work in Restaurant Kitchens Ever Again. It would now be illegal for me to work professionally in a restaurant in France. So, after a government-sponsored retraining and conversion process, I ended up teaching English. Now, I teach English and ‘Professional Culture’ to would-be hotel and restaurant managers at the world-class Vatel school in Nimes. It’s a great job and I love talking about the restaurant world to my students, who are studying for Bachelor and Masters Degrees in International Hotel and Business Management. Delphine and I have a second daughter, Roxanne who’s now 6 - Scarlett’s 8 - and the French life with a papa who still loves cooking suits them very well. Yes, I still cook. In fact I do all the cooking at home, and much of the washing up still. My favorite dish? One of the first I learned to make at Les Agassins all those years ago: a Trilogie - confit tomatoes, goat cheese and aubergines. Plus ça change; my life is now, as it was then, all Eat, Sleep, Cook and, of course, School! End.

31: Result! I now have a CAP Cuisine. Yes, I’m a qualified chef. Believe it or not. Those results in detail: APPROVISIONNEMENT ET ORGANISATION 15.00 /20 VIE SOCIALE ET PROFESSIONNELLE 16.00 /20 COMMERCIALISATION & D.P. CULINAIRE 12.50 /20 FRANCAIS 09.50 /10 HISTOIRE-GEOGRAPHIE 09.00 /10 MATHEMATIQUES,SCIENCES 14.50 /20 LANGUE VIVANTE ETRANGERE : ANGLAIS 20.00 /20 PRODUCTIONS CULINAIRES 175.0 /200 TOTAL de points 394,50 ADMIS ADMIS means I pass. The numbers don’t all add up because some subjects have a ‘coefficient’ multiplier which makes them worth more than others. The important one, though, is ‘Productions Culinaires’, worth 200 points all on its own (out of 400). Fail that and you fail everything. Pass that and one other thing and you have your qualification. And effectively 175 out of 200 means I’m very, very proud of what I achieved. I note that my ‘Commercialisation’ note of 12.5 was the one given by Christian Etienne, he who doesn’t get on with my restaurant chef. Lowest mark of all. Huh. 20/20 for English. Ha! Only 15/20 for ‘Approvisionnement et organization’, how I organised myself while cooking the food that scored 17.5/20. Bit of a surprise that, I’d expect it to be the other way round if anything. Still. Ah. And then the secretary of the Ecole d’Hotellerie d’Avigon where I did my CAP called to tell me that I got the best mark of all my class in our exams. 57 students in all, our class, the other adult class and all the teenagers who took it at the same time. And that my 17.5/20 for the ‘culinary production’ is the highest mark they’ve ever had in the exam. So yeah, I’m pleased with that. Proud, even. Good on me. Cool.

Interesting battle going on over Laguiole, its knives and so on: http://www.centrepresseaveyron.fr/2016/10/10/en-cassation-laguiole-se-refait-un-nom-et-reprend-espoir,1014199.php

Yes! She passed but with a very low mark, just over the 10/20 you need to pass - 10.45 in fact.

No, I did the exam a fair while ago now...so I do know the result already. Did I pass....?

I bought the Terrine Forestière aux cepes, in the end. €3,45 for 250 grammes. It's pork liver paté with cepe mushrooms in it.

30: The exam It’s been around 20 years since I had that Exam Morning feeling - nervous, trying to read notes at the last minute, a feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach because you’re sure the one thing that’s definitely going to come up is the one that you didn’t revise. I have a week - well, three days - of exams starting on Monday, when I’m normally at school. So up at 5 am this morning to leave at 6 for a 0745 exam start all the way over in Cavaillon, about 30 kilometres away. The plan was to meet Pascal at the bus station and take a bus there, but when we arrive there appear to be No Buses Today. I don’t have a car any more since I sold it to pay my school fees, so we end up taking a €40 taxi to our exam to make sure we get there in time. And then the exam doesn’t get underway until 0830 because they were waiting for one of the examiners and two of the students. What? If you’re not there on time for your exam, everyone else will wait? What nonsense. And I then end up waiting all morning to do my English oral exam because of that missing examiner. At midday there are three of us who haven’t been examined yet and the two examiners who did bother turning up have gone, so I wander round and find the secretary’s office. Ah, he says, kindly interrupting his chat with the missing examiners, sorry, your examiner didn’t turn up so come back next time. Next time I say? Tomorrow? No, he says. Next year. Next year? I repeat, a little loudly it must be said, and then launch into a big rant. He has the good sense to look a little uncomfortable and, reluctantly, agrees with me about the injustice of the situation which, unlike him, I do not think can be resolved with a shrug of the shoulders. I appeal to the two examiners still there and ask them to examine us. There’s only three left, I explain, it won’t take long. Ah, says the woman reluctantly, but you have to have 20 minutes to study the text and then 20 minutes each to talk about it so that will take me an hour. Right, I say, I’ll go first without any warm-up which means it’ll only take 40 minutes. Deal? Reluctant deal. So into the exam room and she gives me a text to read out loud about mountaineers leaving rubbish on Mount Everest, which I read through pretty quickly. OK, she says a bit nervously - I'm starting to think that my French is better than her English and she may not understand everything I say in English.. Do you think people leaving rubbish lying around is much of a problem here in Provence? I give her both barrels about litterbugs, whom I hate, and gabble on for five minutes. Right, she says, a little dazed. That seems to be fine. You can go now. Total time elapsed: 8 minutes. I’d better get a good mark for this. Tuesday’s the same story. It’s the presentations of our history or geography projects. I’ve done the influence of geography on food (a subject which I now teach for a living), and the importance of the press in promoting the restaurant industry for my history project. The order in which we’re to be examined is posted outside the exam room, and several students haven’t turned up when it’s their go - we were all supposed to be in place by 9. My turn comes up three times, only for me to be invited to wait as those who’ve turned up late can now have their turn. Same as yesterday - I think frankly, as far as I’m concerned, if you ain’t there on time for your exam then 0/20 and tough shit, organise yourself idiot. It’s a big part of cooking, you know, organisation. If you can’t organise yourself out of bed I don’t want to have you mucking about with my millefeuille d’asperge, thankyouveryymuch. After lunch we do our written French exam and then maths. For the latter I pull out my mobile phone to use as a calculator, as we’ve been told we can. Except this examiner thinks I’m going to be using it to ask someone else the answers and tells me to put it away, so I have to do all the calculations by hand. Luckily they’re not too difficult, but still. I haven’t done a formal maths class in….hmmm…30 years now. Wednesday and we have our practical cookery exam this morning, then the written paper this afternoon. The practical exam is a Big Deal: Fail it, you fail the entire exam. Fail any other exam, you can make up the points exam. It's 'Eliminatoire', as they say here. We have four hours to make fricassée d’agneau hongroise (i.e. Lamb stew with paprika in it) with riz créole (rice with a few bits of pepper in it) and choux chantilly (cream buns). I had a really panicky moment at the start when I thought I wasn’t going to have enough time. I tore, almost literally, through my lamb shoulder (thank you, Chef, for making me practise on so many at work), turned all my veg for the stock and the service, got it all squared away and the stock on the boil and then turned around to see the other students in the kitchen with me all busy deboning their lamb shoulders. Eh? I thought, what have I forgotten to do first? how come they’re only doing their lamb shoulders now when I finished mine half an hour ago? What should I have done first that they’ve all done instead? The observing Chef is a friend of my restaurant Chef. I casually asked, when he passed to observe the state of cleanliness of my workstation, in a jokey voice ‘What are they doing that I’ve forgotten? Ha ha ha….’ It turns out that they were taking nearly an hour each to debone a single shoulder, and hadn’t even thought about veg yet. Which was a relief. ‘Don’t worry,’ said friendly Chef, ‘you’re doing fine.’ I had also thought to check my ingredients – we get given a box of what we need at the start - and I was missing an onion and the paprika so called for them, then asked for a couple of rondeaux (large, shallow saucepans with lids) for my fricassée and the rice. Two hours later Nassima from my class comes along and tries to snaffle one, on the grounds that she needs it. In fact she just picked it up from under my counter and started to walk off with it. Get yer own, I growled, think ahead. She wasn’t happy and said she’d complain to ‘someone’. Well tough shit. Get yourself together at the start of service, it’s all there in the year-long course we’ve been doing. Try paying attention, miss, and think of this as payback for all the grief you’ve cause me this year…Yes, this was the one who kept swapping name labels on dishes in the chilling room to take my dish as her own. Well, now it counts karma's a bitch, miss. The cooking went well, too well almost. I had lots of time to turn my vegetables nicely as required by the photos in our text books, to make some decent stock, to carefully time everything so that it came off the heat at the same time. But in the end I had to send my stuff out first when I’d been anticipating sending it 15 minutes and three people later. Again, Someone Else wasn’t ready so Friendly Chef asked me to step up and keep the examiners happy. So I sent it all too quickly, forgot to add the final salt to my rice and didn’t put enough sauce on the plate. And my choux buns weren’t dry enough so I should have cooked them longer. Huh. Luckily as I was carrying the choux out to table, Friendly Chef stopped me and asked, almost casually, ‘Are you planning on serving them without a dusting of icing sugar? That's very brave of you...’ Icing sugar was listed on the recipe and, hence, a vital ingredient. Thanks again, Chef. Still. Eh? And then I got Christian Etienne as my Marketing Presentation chef. He knows and dislikes my restaurant chef - they’re rivals in Avignon - and when he learned where I’d been working all year immediately wrote down my mark even before I’d started my Marketing spiel. It was my lowest score in the entire exam, 12/20 - my average was 16.5. We had lunch in the school canteen in Cavaillon and then did the written paper this afternoon. It was harder than I thought, demanding a greater knowledge of traditional Escoffier-type dishes than I have. I said that the mystery missing ingredient in the Sole Dieppoise recipe was fumet de poisson (it’s cream), but did remember that it takes 20 minutes to cook a fumet (not 2 hours as everyone else told me afterwards). I think I’ve passed, and I’m certainly not going to do it again if I haven’t. I’ll just lie instead and say I passed, it’s easier and cheaper and I’ve never been asked to produce an exam certificate in my life. Restaurant and School chefs both tell me later that they’re sure I’ve passed, based on what they’ve ‘heard’ from the examiners (Avignon is a small town when it comes to chefs), but more than that I don’t know. Three weeks until the results.

Sorry, it's https://eatsleepcookschool.wordpress.com/2016/07/02/trilogies/

When you cook a terrine de foie gras, you let it cool and then remove the half centimetre or so of fat which has congealed on top, keeping it in a safe place for later use. Then you put a weight on top to 'tasser' it, to compact it. Being careful, of course, to put a cover the size of the top of the foie gras on top of the foie gras so that the litre or two of cream you use as a weight doesn't sink into it, since it's narrower than the width of the terrine dish. I forgot the cover the size of the top of the terrine so my litre of cream slowly sank into the foie gras. As for not having to be told what to do, I guess that comes with experience; I've written something I'll try to dig up about how, one day, I suddenly realised I was slicing some gravlax salmon into perfect, thin slices without really thinking about it, and realised that I'd developed new talents along the way. I almost always consult recipes still these days though. There is a great book, Le Repertoire de la Cuisine, which is all of Escoffier's recipes from Le Guide Culinaire distilled down to its ingredients which I saw in every kitchen I worked in. It literally just lists the ingredients, not quantities or techniques, as a sort of aide memoire for cooks - just to remind you what goes into such and such a soup or sauce because, obviously, you know the techniques and quantities. In fact my personal recipe book normally only has ingredients and quantities for each recipe, I usually always remember the technique. And when I was working in kitchens the recipes for, say, madeleines or Potage du Barry were familiar enough to not have to look them up at all. I was cooking six or more days a week, making the recipes all the time so they became muscle memory. Even now some are like that - the famous Trilogies for example. I've made thousands of them and no longer need to read a recipe. In fact, I don't think I've eve got it written down now. I also find that I can gauge to within a ten grammes or so most things I weigh, and time things to within a few seconds - I often arrive in front of the oven or whatever as the timer clicks down from 5 seconds to zero. It all comes from having done it so many times over so many years.

29: Last day at school Last day at school today. We cook poulet chasseur, chicken in mushroom, tomato and wine sauce, pommes au four (roast potatoes) this morning and do it without having to be told much. This afternoon we spend going over a few basic techniques, ideas and problems to revise for our exam next week. Chef says he’s pleased with us and doesn’t think anyone will fail. I’m nervous, not because I think I’ll fail but because I don’t think I’ll succeed well, which I want to do both for him and for Jean-Remi my restaurant chef. I have mixed feelings about the year; I’m very glad I went, but the whole process has literally worn me down to a state of permanent and total exhaustion. I’d originally intended to go on and do a second year straight away in Patisserie or Traiteur, but (a) I don’t think I’ll ever be good enough to be a patissier and (b) sod that for a way to kill yourself, Armagnac is much more fun. Really, 10 months of having just one day of rest a week is not recommended, don’t try this at home. Tonight I’ve just got back from school half an hour early and, unlike last week, don’t have to go to work. Last week I got only Thursday off and spent all that writing two ‘dossiers’ – reports for my exams. And not cooking exams either, I have to do French, Maths, Physics, Geography and, best of all, English. My first exam, in fact, next Monday – a 20 minute English oral exam. I shall be complaining if I don’t get 20/20. So, what next? Well, Les Agassins (not the Chef, the management) are buggering me about this year over contracts and it looks like I simply won’t be able to work there after September for financial reasons (i.e. they won’t pay me). Much as I’d love to stay, it’s really time to move on. I don’t want to let Chef down now so I think I’m going to do my very, very best to finish the season unless something super-startling turns up. Then my plan is to find something, anything to do until the winter and then go and work in the Alps for the season there. Dunno if I want to do a restaurant or be a Chalet cook-and-maid. The latter attracts me more but I would probably learn more doing the former. We’ll see. Still, back in the restaurant I’m now a proper cook. Chef de partie des entrées, it says on the newest line of my CV. I’ve even managed to persuade Chef to put something on the menu – smoked quail eggs. OK, it’s only one item in a dish with a number of other ingredients, but hey, you have to start somewhere. We smoke the eggs ourselves and serve two (one cut into quarters, the other plopped inside the star-shape created) in a nest of alfalfa sprouts surrounded by ‘waves’ of smoked salmon. Looks very pretty, the nest presentation was my idea, too. Yesterday we did 70 covers for lunch, me, Fabien - the new Second de Cuisine - and Carole, the stagiaire patissier who, for once, is within simmering distance of competent. It was Chef’s half-day off (he chooses carefully) and I’m proud to have gotten through it without forgetting or f-ing up anything. The waiters, on the other hand, were all over the place – especially when the group of 13 from Radio France (who should have sat down to eat at 12h30 but who arrived at 13h30) announced that they were going to be eating outside, necessitating 20 minutes of table and cutlery moving. A-holes, I didn’t even send out their starters until gone 2 o’clock. Tonight was even worse. Everyone turned up at half past seven, when they normally arrive between 8 and 9 in discrete lumps. I was in the middle of farting about with my Trilogies (dried tomato, goat cheese and aubergine caviar in layers) and hadn’t even put my amuse bouches in place. Luckily Chef was there to jump in and do my orders for me and he managed to do just about everything while I was just cutting up tuna for six tartares. Embarrassing and an indication of just how much I have to learn still, notably Get Your Arse In Gear. If it had been the plonge I wouldn’t have had a problem, partly because the mise en place is easy (Squeezy bottle full of washing up liquid? I’m good to go!) and partly because, having done it for 18 months, I know how to do it quickly. I’ve been in the kitchen doing services less than 18 days, so that’s a good excuse. Reason. Whatever. Still, it felt shitty not keeping up. I later learn that 45 covers last night didn’t leave until 4 am in the morning, inconsiderate a-holes. It was a wedding party, so in France 4 am is a pretty early finish. This is why I’m glad I’m not a waiter. Still, I’ve learned the very hard way that getting my mise en place in place BEFORE service starts works well, along with putting all the amuse bouches onto dishes before service starts. That way I can keep up with the flow of orders, I think. Lunch is easier as the menu has only two starters – evenings there are up to six starters, depending on what kinds of guests we have in the hotel, which can go out as Menu items (miserly portions) or à la carte (splendiferously generous portions). Then again, I managed to embed a box containing litre of cream inside €180′s worth of foie gras tonight (although it was Chef’s fault), so perhaps I should shut up. School is only the beginning; I’ve had a great opportunity and feel in turns over-confident and full of self-doubt. I see what I can do compared to some of my classmates and I’m clearly better than them; then my chef takes over my station and does in five minutes what I’ve failed to do in half an hour. And he does it better. That level of competence can only come with experience and I’d like to gain it here but know I won’t.

28: A little cheffy common sense If you’ve never started your day by sticking your hand up a chicken’s bottom I heartily recommend it as a way of waking yourself up, clearing a muzzy head and getting yourself to the head of the queue for the loo. Well, it’s not that bad really. Today we’re doing ‘Habiller une volaille affilée’, dressing a drawn piece of poultry – in this case, a chicken. Volaille almost always means chicken, but can mean turkey, guinea fowl, even rabbit – which is very handy for serving rabbit to those who think they won’t like it but who will, once they’ve tried it. As in ‘volaille surprise’ – which looks like breasts of chicken wrapped in bacon and served with a tomato sauce. The surprise, of course, is that it’s rabbit not chicken. We learn how to ‘vider’, empty the chicken – most of the guts are gone, it’s just the heart, lungs and delicious liver left. I do like a good chicken liver salad, sautéed until they’re just pink inside and deglazed with some raspberry vinegar. Tasty. And we also get to learn how to tie up a chicken with the giant darning needles we all bought at the start of the year because they were on the list of ‘must have’ kit. Actually I didn’t buy mine, my Restaurant Chef gave me one of his since he had several spares. He’s kind like that. We learn how to do this even though it’s now been taken off the list of required things to know for our CAP exam – nowadays all chickens are tied up with elastic string which is cheaper and quicker. You can also slip off the elastic to poke around inside an allegedly PAC, Prêt à Cuire (ready to cook) chicken to make sure it’s been properly emptied before seasoning the inside and then slipping the elastic back on to hold it all tightly together. The idea is to hold the legs and wings tightly together so that you have as compact an item as possible which will cook evenly – if you leave extraneous wing tips and feet sticking out they’ll cook more quickly and even burn before the rest of the bird is done. Perhaps not too important at home, but in a restaurant where you serve every bit of the chicken, it counts. It’s just a detail and one I hadn’t really thought about before; I’ve bought hundreds, even thousands of chickens in the past all tied up like this and never really known what to do with their bondage gear – leave them tied up, set them free, what’s the difference? It never says anything on the label about the string so I’ve always considered it optional. But a little cheffy common sense points to the right answer, so leave it on it is. We roast these chickens – and thanks to my Restaurant Chef I already have this one down pat; 15 minutes on one thigh, 15 minutes on the other, 15 minutes on its tummy and finish off with 15 minutes on its back to crisp up the skin over the breast. This avoids cooking the breast too much, exposing the thighs to more heat – when we do a dish with a chicken cut up into portions we cook the breast for 12 minutes and the thighs for 15, since they need it more. To go with the roasts we do Pommes Dauphine, a mix of pâte à choux and mashed potato, both of which we’re now expected to be able to produce without any further information from our School Chef. He wants us to add 400 grammes of mash to a choux pastry based on a quarter of a litre of liquid, which ends up as a roughly tant pour tant mix – equal amounts of each. My Restaurant Chef thinks this is wrong, we should be putting a quarter choux to three quarters spud. Last year’s Seconde de Cuisine had it the other way round. Oh, how the French do love to argue about recipes. All agree though that these are piped into attractive shapes on a baking sheet and baked, unlike last week’s recipe in which we piped a different pastry/potato mix into a vat of oil. Lunch, and the fried fish in the school canteen at lunchtime has gone through all four levels of the Kitchen Kids ‘Make it inedible’ regime, and they’ve succeeded once again. France’s future cooks – I’m bringing sandwiches. Luckily, most of these individuals won’t be let loose on my lunch without the supervision of a proper chef. We start this afternoon with a nap. Sorry, with our Hygiène class, talking all about Water and its various roles. Its first role is Plastique, one of those Faux Amis French words – it doesn’t mean plastic. Indeed, I’ve never really got any sort of handle as to what it means. In this case it means that water aids in the construction of our billions of cells and in repairing wounds, so I guess it means something to do with building. Water also has, it turns out, a role to play in blood. Yes, it’s the water in blood that makes it so liquid. Well, you learn something every day. If you’re 16 and stupid, that is. For a classroom full of adults it’s not the best way to start an afternoon in a sunny classroom after lunch which may have included a glass or two of red wine. Well, unless you like to start your afternoons with a siesta, that is, which it seems most of us do.

I'm afraid I find them delicious, as does every single person who eats my tapenade. I will try harder to find discerning friends and family.

Oh, the reason I buy them like this is simple - I'm poor. Buying olives on the market costs 5-10 times more per kilo. I do buy expensive olive oil for this sort of purpose though - see the link above. I cook with cheap olive oil though.

Not here.