There is an adage that all good things must come to an end. In our case, we will no longer be allowed to take the food that we cook home from cookery school. Truth be told, Westminster Kingsway College has always had a rule of forbidding students from taking the food, and this was communicated to us on day one. So the fact that we have been taking home our food ever since the course started was because our lovable teddy bear of a teacher (Chef), in his usual generous spirit, turned a blind eye.

But someone (not from my class) snitched, and the powers that be came down on Chef. Therefore doggy bags are to be no more. The food is to be sent to the cafeteria for sale so that the college can recoup some of their costs. This is understandable given how little our cooking course costs in comparison to the courses at other notable cookery schools such as Leiths School of Food and Wine and Le Cordon Bleu London. But you could imagine the collective chorus of groans that echoed across the room when we were told; and the disappointment that formed on our faces when at the end of the day, after plating and tasting the output of our work, we then had to relinquish ownership of the dishes: plaice florentine, grilled sardines with herb butter and deep fried sprats (a small oily fish) with paprika and cayenne pepper.

Plaice florentine

I know I was a little naughty and that I missed blogging about last week’s class. Somehow, time just passed me by. We also covered fish last week: salmon fish cakes, supreme of pollock with a herb crust, pan fried mackerel fillets and a supreme of salmon with a herb beurre blanc. I am glad to say that my filleting skills have definitely improved, but next week we will move onto meat; and I am also glad to say that I won’t be missing that fishy smell that just stays on my hands for hours after the class is over.

Westminster Kingsway College:
Web: http://www.westking.ac.uk

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We have now migrated from vegetables to fish, and I’m delighted that we’re starting to cover the meatier, more substantial stuff. As much as I appreciate some good veg, I do like my meat, or fish as the case might be. Filleting and skinning were the order of the day. The former requires good knife skills of course. As for skinning, once you find the angle at which you ought to guide your knife along the fish, well, it isn’t really so hard after all. Patience and care are what is needed.

We covered how to poach a darne of salmon, which is the middle cut of the fish; in a court bouillon made from water, malted vinegar, onions, carrots, bay leaf and peppercorns. As for the filleted fish, a plaice, we churned out deep-fried goujons and shallow-fried fillets finished with beurre noisette (a brown, nutty butter sauce). At what seemed like a quarter pound of butter going into the pan, I mildly protested at all the calories. “Yes” said Chef, “but it tastes so good”, as he contentedly laps up my sauce for grading with a happy grin. I can’t help but agree, but then, he is a little rotund after all, and that is a state I want to avoid becoming. But truth be told, Chef has had many more years of cooking and eating than me, so hopefully it will be a little while longer before I too, become more round.

Plaice with beurre noisette

Chef started his professional career in the kitchen of the Savoy Hotel and he occasionally regales us with some of the stories from that time. The hotel is currently under refurbishment and is scheduled to reopen later this year, but Chef was there in the 1970s, before even the last refurbishment. Back then, there was a long corridor that ran from the kitchen to the pot wash. All the chefs avoided this protracted walk, preferring instead to funnel the pots that needed washing down to the pot wash by way of rolling them down the corridor. Oh what fun! But rue the day you got in the way of one of those pots as it barrelled towards you. Nowadays, with health and safety regulations, no doubt a time honoured tradition is unlikely to ever see light again.

Westminster Kingsway College:
Web: http://www.westking.ac.uk

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Yesterday was day three of my cooking course, and I have to confess, I love it. I talk, cook and eat food all day so what is there not to love? What could be more nourishing and comforting for the soul and stomach then being in the presence of food? Being surrounded by hundreds of other students in their chef’s whites also gives me an added sense of purpose. It’s as if we are all part of one big brotherhood and sisterhood, uniting together with a common goal. My lecturer’s (Chef) jokes also continue to provide me with great amusement and entertainment. His funniest joke of this week was so morally offensive and politically incorrect that it caused me to grimace. But it was really funny, and 24 hours later, I am still giggling at the thought of the words that passed his lips.

We are taking gentle strides at the moment, covering the easiest topics first, with the view to building up to the harder ones in the weeks to come. This will give us a chance to slowly ease into the routine of cooking school and to familiarise ourselves with the layout of the kitchen, etc. We cook in pairs and the pace can get quite hectic in the kitchen, especially when Chef is yelling out orders and we’re all busy scrambling for the pots and pans.

Ratatouille

This week, our main dish of the day was ratatouille. And if I may be permitted to say, ours turned out wonderfully. Our vegetables were cooked to a perfect doneness, not too firm and not too soft. It was seasoned nicely, and fragrant with the beautiful aroma of fresh basil. Chef lavished such high praise on it that I couldn’t help but clap my hands in glee.

I have also discovered that I am more adept at ‘turning’ carrots that I was at piping mashed potatoes, but I need to improve my carrot glazing technique. We also cooked cauliflower and broccoli which we finished in a beurre fondue (butter melted in water to create a creamy emulsion). Now why does butter taste so good?

Westminster Kingsway College:
Web: http://www.westking.ac.uk

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Yesterday was a day filled with potatoes and pancakes, a day that I am going to call ‘P’ day. The day started with my cooking course which is proving to be really enjoyable. My lecturer is great. He’s jolly and jovial with a cheesy sense of humour, and I like cheesy. He will probably always be guaranteed a laugh from me with his jokes, even if he doesn’t get one from any one else for I am obviously easily amused. At one point our discussions turned to a potato ricer. It’s what you mash potatoes with and it’s akin to a large garlic crusher. You operate it by putting a cooked potato inside its head and pressing down on one of its arms to produce the mash. You release the arm, and then continue on with the next potato and so on. Describing it as ‘arm pressing’ exercise, he livened up the proceedings with a reference to a phraseology that he and his colleagues use to use when he was a junior chef: “hickory dickory dock, I must increase the size of my arm muscle!” See, he’s funny.

Crispy, fluffy potato croquettes

The highlight ingredient of the day was the humble potato, hence the reason for our discussions on the potato ricer. In the hot, steamy kitchen, we baked, boiled, mashed and piped potatoes, to then turn out potato concoctions of all sorts: duchesse (piped mash potato spirals); marquise (piped mash potato with tomato concassé on top); macaire (mashed potato scones/patties) and potato croquettes with Japanese breadcrumbs. Piping takes patience and skill, and I do not profess to have much of the former.

Banana, ice-cream & maple syrup pancake

Still, my potatoes turned out to be really yummy. And in the evening, in honour of Shrove Tuesday, my friends and I capped the day off with pancakes topped with whatever our ‘hearts’ desired. My heart desired banana, vanilla ice-cream, and Canadian maple syrup, and lots and lots of it. Make no mistake, it was a lot. So potatoes and pancakes came to make ‘P’ day. ‘P’ for piggy.

Westminster Kingsway College:
Web: http://www.westking.ac.uk

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I recently enrolled in a professional cookery course, the NVQ Level 1 at Westminster Kingsway College. This particular course is a one day a week course over 30 weeks. I have no desire to be a professional chef for the hours are too gruelling. I know as I had first hand experience of this growing up in my family’s Chinese restaurant. But I love food, and I want to further pursue my passion for it which is why I have decided to do this course.

Day one was highly anticipated and hugely enjoyable. We had a short day and there was no cooking involved. That will come on day two. Day one was introductions (everyone is lovely) and vegetable theory (potatoes are tubers, courgettes are fruit, etc). Excitedly, I was the only one in my class that recognised salsify which I attribute to watching Jun Tanaka on Market Kitchen.

The library at Westminster Kingsway College contains an amazingly extensive collection of cookbooks and food reference materials. Some of these are antique cookbooks and date back to the turn of the century which is unsurprising given that the cooking school at the college is about 100 years old. I cannot wait to explore the library further when I have more time to slowly meander and lose myself in the wonders of the knowledge that lie within those books.

Tomorrow we will cover potatoes, but the best bit will be the tasting. Yum.

Westminster Kingsway College:
Web: http://www.westking.ac.uk