Rise Dammit Rise

With my arm recovered, it was back to the kitchen and time to tackle the white yeast bread and oh my, you almost do have to tackle it, rugby-style - for now we've to hand make it, apparently later on once we've mastered the technique we'll be able to simply chuck it into the food processor, roll on! In the traditional way though, it took me about 3 hours - granted most of that time the dough is simply sitting in it's bowl in a nice cosy corner slowly doubling in size before you squash it back down again, pull a few more dodgy high tackles and fling it around your work surface for a while - excellent by the way if you've any frustrations to vent, I think they should introduce yeast bread lessons into anger management classes, you'd be well sorted in no time. Then it goes back to it's bowl again, into the cosy corner, another rising, a bit more beating up, more rising and eventually......................I made yeast bread, a few little cocktail rolls and a plaited loaf, does it not look good??

Whipped up a bit of fish pie with a fresh whole haddock who was a bit of a cross between my former friends, Cod and Mackerel, better than the latter but not quite as easy as the former - once again it was all a bit mangled by the time I'd got the fillets off the bone but thankfully we're still on pie mode, I'm going to have to improve somehow before we get to the whole pan frying malarkey, my minced version ain't going to fly (or would it be swim) then.............I forgot about the grill for a few minutes, God you have to watch it like a hawk, brown almost became the new black but whipped it out just in time, sort of, nothing a bit of garnishing couldn't help, I was looking more for complete ground cover to disguise the charred bits at the back but the best I could find was this piece of dill.

And then YAY, onto the fun staff - small almond tart bases topped with raspberries, a tiny bit of cream - please excuse the pink-tint, they look a little as though they were customised for the Spice Girls, it's because you've to glaze the fruit and then I fannied about for too long before taking the picture, anyway I'd still have scoffed the lot, they look so sweet.

It was quite an odd day really, bit of a "Grey's Anatomy" vibe going on in the kitchen - yesterday my partner, and a few of the other students, had an awful reaction to the chillies, swollen stinging fingers and they spent the afternoon demo sitting with their hands in pots of buttermilk and yoghurt to try and calm everything down. There was chilli on the menu again today, part of a tomato dish and no one was prepared to take a chance and everyone was decked out in surgical gloves for chilli dissection. Add that to the fact that a few pairs of tweezers were being bandied about to try and get Mr. Haddock bone-free and then bowls of chicken livers lying all over the place - honestly, mucking about with organs first thing in the morning, all a bit much - anyway the voice over in my head was saying "scalpel please nurse". I tell you what was missing - a few McDreamys and McSteamys, the boys on the course would no doubt argue with me vociferously on that point so I'll just leave it there and say no more.

Afternoon demo was with Rory and we had quite an eggy day - Provencal terrine, souffle omelettes, frittatas, all sorts of salads to go with them, wild mushroom soup, fish cakes, a few petit fours like stuffed dates and walnuts, the most wicked baked apples with almonds, butter and cinnamon, and classic French omelettes with all sorts of fillings - Rory was whipping those out in under 30 seconds and rolling them out the pan with military precision, I fear that won't be the case come Monday morning, classic omelette vs scrambled egg, it's such a fine line.

He also showed us how to make homemade marzipan - I've never been a fan of marzipan to be honest, always makes me think of dodgy old fashioned wedding cakes but if you make it yourself, it's actually brilliant in small doses - the key is remembering to add some whipped egg white to it at the last minute otherwise you end up with an almond-flavoured mess that'll set so hard you'd have to call in a first class miner to shift it, lots of multi-coloured and bold highlighting on that point.

And that was it, another week over and we're a quarter of the way through the course, theoretically I'm a 25% chef, OMG!!! Simply can't believe that in 9 weeks time we should, on paper, be able to hold our own in a restaurant kitchen - so much still to learn, right now I'd be Gordon Ramsay-ed out of there in double quick time, pots and pans flying through the air behind me...........................