Crunch Time

Friday dawned and a fair number of us headed in at 8 to supposedly help with the prep for the pizza demo at 09h30 but more to fire a whole lot more last minute questions to the teachers about the exam and which herbs go with which dish and what have you - if anyone will need a drink tonight, it'll be them, they must be sick to death of us by now.

So in between rolling pizza bases - which by the way I'm rubbish at, as bad as tortillas which are my benchmark for a torturous experience - we tested each other and then had a quick cup of coffee just after 9 before heading in for the pizza demo which was fantastic. I've so many ideas for new pizza toppings - these have been a bit of a favourite for us in Tanzania, as with any good South African household on a Saturday the girls slog away in the kitchen and produce food while the "men" hover on the edge of the couch watching the rugby game and swear frequently at the ref/coach/players, tick as preferred.

I used to buy ready made fresh tortillas from a fab little shop in Arusha and use those as bases and further to my pizza dough rolling efforts this morning, it's likely that I'll remain a loyal tortilla customer going forward, but just listen to some of these for toppings - caramelised onions with blue cheese and rosemary, roasted red onions with gruyere and thyme, grilled aubergine with pesto, parmesan and pine nuts, brie with cranberries and watercress, roasted butternut with pumpkin seeds, red wine shallots and sage, goats cheese with tapenade and roasted red onion, mushroom a'la creme and marjoram, smoked salmon with crispy capers, cream cheese and chive flowers, chorizo with rocket and mozzarella..............OK, I'll stop, it's not just you who's getting hungry!

My favourite is still your good old Margherita - wafer thin crust, sweet, herby tomato sauce, mozzarella and fresh basil leaves, cooked till crispy in the wood fired oven, heavenly. The focaccias were wicked too, there was one in particular that I'm going to have to try and reproduce, topped with potato and rosemary, I know it sounds a bit odd but trust me, it's worth every carb. To be honest, I didn't manage to try much because the demo finished at about 12h45 and my exam was at 13h30, too nervous to eat and I thought it was far more important to pace the hall and talk to myself - I know, of all days to have missed lunch, it doesn't bear thinking about.

I didn't even get pics, sorry, but I must tell you that the actual pizza base making was impressive - instead of endless rolling with minimal results, these guys take a ball of dough and turn it into a pizza base that you can almost see through just by flinging it around the place and throwing it up into the air - it's the Cocktail of the cusine world. I tried for an action shot but all I got was a blur and so this is the best I can do.

And so, crunch time - I did my salad and herb exam first and it wasn't too bad, there weren't any of the really odd leaves which had me confuzzled for the last few days - Texel Green, Purple Choysam, Winter Purslane and all their buddies, at least I know them now - and of the 20 I had to identify and suggest recipes for, there was only 1 that really had me, the rest were OK I think, we'll see. And then from there it was straight onto the Technique Exam and phew, that walk through the kitchen until I reached my designated station was like the Green Mile - Mr. Cod and his glass eye checking me out from the left, a sneaky bowl of sugar waiting to be burnt to oblivion dead centre, Mr. Crab and his many limbs eyeing me from the right - I avoided eye contact with them all and just hoped and prayed that the teacher would do a Johnnie Walker and keep walking and thank God she did until we reached my spot which featured, wait for it, a big fat kuku, YAY! I've never been so pleased to see poultry in all my life, I almost did a little Irish jig right there and then - so, so happy I'd parted with €11 for a chicken at Tesco's last weekend to practice, best money I've ever spent. Granted it still took a while and I'm sure I'll lost points for faffing with him for so long but at least I found all the ball and joints without it looking too much like a combine harvester had paid a visit and my other tasks were easy ones, the sheer relief, I can't tell you!

And so that was that, my weekend started early since I'd been in the first group and got it over with, so happy not to have been slotted in for the 16h30 exam, all that waiting around - I headed home (and incidentally found a few souls still gazing at the now rather dead leaves on the table and muttering to themselves) and poured myself a celebratory glass of wine.

We - and by that I mean pretty much the whole school - headed for the Blackbird at 9 and did the place proud, record takings for them I would think. In my excitement, I forgot that Jager Bombs are the devil and had a few, why, why - got home just before 2 and slept like a baby, the Jagermeister must have fought off the competition from the Red Bull thank Heaven!