Leiths - a series (1)

Well my first week at Leiths is well and truly over, and my goodness what an eye-opening week it has been. The sheer pace at which we are expected to work is relentless, far more brutal than anything I've faced in a pro kitchen in the past, I just hope their teaching is actually sinking in whilst I'm running round like a mad march hare trying to get all stages of my recipes done in time, whilst fighting for space on hobs and ovens with half a dozen other eager and competitive students. It looks like there have been drop-outs already, and plenty of disgruntling from others who thought the pace was going to be much more leisurely. All the students who did the 'beginner' term last September return to the school on Monday, so the pressure and pace are expected to increase as our class sizes double, so it will be interesting to see how it works out. I can certainly expect that once I've got used to working at Leiths' top speed, any future work I do will seem like a walk in the park!

By the way, if you're reading this and wondering what on earth has happened in my life all of a sudden, the introductory article is here.

Getting used to the lecture-room atmosphere of the 'dems' - daily demonstrations of techniques and recipes we'll be doing ourselves later on - is a challenge too, my attention span is not what it once was! The dems are fascinating though, and watching a lot of the action via a giant room-width angled ceiling mirror is very interesting, as it allows us a birds-eye view of what's going on. It does give some odd perspective though, at a demonstration on stock-making on Tuesday there was a vat of flat-fish carcasses simmering away, and looking at them through the mirror the fleshy skeletons brought to mind the shots from Alien with face-huggers in laboratory jars!

On the subject of fish, it's widely known that I'm not a big fan, and in fact one of the many reasons I wanted to do this course was so I could be taught/cajoled/forced into learning to work with fish in a professional capacity, even if my tastebuds never conceed to it as a menu option in my private life. It's all very well for John Torode to insist to the Masterchef wannabees that they should never cook something they don't like to eat themselves (it's one of his key winges in fact, along with 'what makes you think soup is good enough for Masterchef?'), but for those of us in the real world, we sometimes have to do things which we wouldn't choose to do under normal circumstances. Fortunately we've started with sole, which is about as inoffensive and un-fishy a fish as one could hope to get, so I've had no problems there (apart from the gag reflex when I have to pick one of the blasted things up whole), but I'm not looking forward to getting to my pet hate of the piscine world - salmon. Perhaps I'll just throw in the seasonings and hope for the best.

It's no secret that Leiths teach classic cookery of the 'old school' (i.e. French), and although they work hard to bring a modern feel to lots of the recipes, and pay due care and attention to 'healthy eating', there is a hefty emphasis on the joys of butter, cream and salt. This seems to be causing some concern amongst some of the more self-conscious female students, and whilst I'm all for moderating one's fat intake and the like, I feel the fashionable healthy cause could be taken too far. Watching a dem on the classic sole meuniere - a dish which consists of pan-fried fillets of sole, served with a sauce of molten butter and lemon juice - one fashionista asked the chef if you could use something other than butter to fry the fish, in order to be more healthy. Predictably enough the answer was 'well you could, but there wouldn't be much point, given the sauce is almost entirely butter'. With a classic recipe, in which the second-largest ingredient is butter (and there are only 5 ingredients), there really is no point trying to make it more 'healthy'. Either eat it and accept the fats involved, or don't. Right? Or perhaps a sole drizzled in 10floz of olive oil would be better..........

New year, new beginning

My my my....such a long time since I last posted, I feel quite out of practice writing! Today is the first day of my new life however, and I hope to mark it with regular blog posts as I explore an exciting new career in - of course - food. I've worked in professional kitchens on a small-scale previously - back at school I did my work experience in a lovely little Bistro/Brasserie, and as part of my University degree I worked both front and back of house at the open-to-the-public restaurant there. Both these experiences confirmed to me that as much as I love cooking, I'll never want to work full-time as a restaurant chef: the hours, the backbreaking pain of 12hour shifts on your feet etc etc. Not for a soft one like me.

Today however, I have taken a step closer to making my food-writing passion a profession, and started the prestigious Diploma at Leiths School of Food & Wine in London. Although a thoroughly competent cook in many ways, I lack the formal disciplines of proper 'chef' training, and Leiths is an excellent springboard to the future. Like many of my fellows who started today, I've skipped the first term (designed to turn people who haven't so much as picked up a wooden spoon into 'snow bunny' chalet girls in 3 months) and now start a week of orientation, which could also be described as an opportunity for the teachers to check you really do have all the beginners skills you said you had when you were approved to jump ahead ;)

It's big and scary reentering education when you've been away from it for a long while, although the age range of my contemporaries is so vast there are several who wont have been at University/College since I was born, and I had proper 'first day of school' nerves, so I can't have had it worst, even with butterflies in the tummy and clutching my bag rather tighter than necessary, as it it was the only barrier between me and playground bullies, or some such. I've never been great at starting conversations when thrown into a room full of people I don't know, but fortunately the course is full of people who are and by the end of the day I'd started to get to know a substantial number of them, which is good as we'll be working quite literally cheek-to-jowl for the next 6 months (space near the stoves is at a premium!).

A new course always means a lot of information to absorb, and there was certainly no lack of it for us today. The managing director and also the principal spoke to us for so long I felt sure their throats would give way under the strain and there were certainly plenty of surprises in what they had to tell us - like the 3 periods of work experience involved (not mentioned previously); or the group work, which could see me feeding the whole class (50-odd) with 3 almost-strangers for a team, in less than 2 weeks; or the fact that our theory exams require us to memorise such things as how many egg yolks make 150ml mayonnaise, or identify the 5 key criteria in browning meat. I suddenly began to wonder when I was going to find the time in evenings and weekends to do a part-time job to pay for the damn course, what with all this homework, on top of a 9-5pm daily schedule actually at the school!

Fortunately for me, Leiths is full of the most excellent staff, who I'm sure will help me muddle through. We were in the kitchens prepping after lunch - a great surprise to many who (like I) had assumed today would be mostly admin. This week is plenty of the more basic stuff - in order to let the staff assess our skills - so we did basic veg prep (onion - slice & dice - the proper way, carrots three ways - julienne, brunoise and baton, and chiffonades of herbs); we learnt to use the giant industrial stoves by sweating onions (not as easy as one would think, there were eight of us, using hobs side by side, with only enough space really for 5 at a time); and trimmed a rack of lamb - a very satisfying procedure including removing the hefty chine bone, skinning the joint and scraping the rib bones in such a vigorous manner the room filled with a screech not unlike fingernails on a blackboard. My lamb bones were pronounced 'beautiful' by our teacher B - always nice to hear - she manages a wonderful balance between serious professionalism and friendly approachability, but then I have yet to meet a teacher at Leiths who isn't like that, which is wonderful.

Tomorrow we are in the kitchens first thing, and I expect to come home with some really lovely food (we are making Quiche Lorraine and Herb-crusted lamb cutlets - the herb prep and onion sweating today will be used here). We get to eat/take home everything we cook and prep, and anything we don't want or use goes to a local homeless charity, so none of the students' waste is actually wasted, which I think is fantastic. I have a freezer full of all the lamb bones from today, which will enrichen many a stew and bolognese to come (I've found if you make a stew/sauce with beef, but include a raw lamb bone from the beginning of cooking it adds a wonderful rich flavour!).

It's a whole new way for me - cooking to a prescribed style, following a recipe without tweaking it, learning new skills - I can't wait to see how it goes!