Day 2 - The awakening

"Tomorrow we're making, amongst other things, wholemeal bread, lemonade and candied peel. Easy!" I said.

How wrong could a person be. Not only did we not make the above, but what we did make, certainly wasn't easy. Now on paper, what we did have to make was easy (Mushroom a la Creme, Carrot and Mint soup, Apple Crumble amongst other things), but i promose you, if you mix 8 anxious students, at least 1 with cigarette withdrawl, and a dash of where the feck do I start. And you get me, a dazed and confused trainee chef slowly messing up something as simple as frying some mushrooms with seasoning and a small squeeze of lemon. Okay although I didn't actually mess it up, I wasn't exactly assured.

It's worth pointng out that when we actually cook in the morning, we're actually cooking for at least 20 of our fellow students to eat at lunch. So it really has to be edible, or else you have to listen to such insults as too much salt, too soggy, no flavour. And I can imagine that doesn't feel too good.

Okay so when that was finished and we'd all eaten lunch, I had a cigarette, then another one and then put a patch on. I'll be wearing a patch all day tomorrow. I felt like having a kip in the car, until I looked at the watch and saw that it was only 20 minutes to the evening demonstration where we are shown how and what to cook in the morning for lunch. With my partner this week, we tried to decide on what to cook. So typically this was done by heads or tails ( I might suggest scissor, paper, stone tomorrow), i flicked the coin, and then realised I didn't actually know what was heads or tails on a Euro. He didn't look amused by my lack of knowledge on the Euro so I think i might have put Anglo - Irish relations back a good few days, so sorry about that guys. Anyway, the result being that I'm making a French Onion Tart and a Mediteranean Salad, he's doing Poached Plums and and Potato Soup. I think he got the easiest one there.

Mark's Tip of the Day
Potato is used as a base in soups to act as a thickening agent.