A Great Gift for a Wannabe Chef

By John Powell

A birthday present with a hidden agenda is what my friends thought of my wife's gift to me - a half day cooking break at one of the country's best cookery schools, Prue Leith's in London and the opportunity to learn to cook a delicious sounding 3 course meal.

The whole set up was made to be an enjoyable experience. All the naff parts of cooking such as weighing ingredients, washing salads, etc is all done for you in advance - plus the repairing of disaster zone area that occurs after I've been playing around in the kitchen i.e. cleaning tables and washing up is done by some poor "student chef". This means, you just  do the fun bits and eat it afterwards!

I arrived at 9:50, was given coffee and eagerly awaited my instructions from the top chef. Soon we were split in to groups and shown our kitchen. I was paired up with another person lucky enough to have been given this kick-back gift day. The teacher in our room was throwing terms around like "we all eat with our eyes" and "chocolate doesn't like steam", etc. This sort of stuff goes over my head but I agreed knowledgeably at the time. Soon we were chopping, mixing, wrapping, blanching and being shown tips such as how to "properly" crush garlic (there is a technique to this!). To be honest, everything was really easy. The pace was nice and steady, and you're basically just following a recipe like you would at home but with a very knowledgeable tutor at hand to guide you and to answer all the questions you've always wanted to ask someone.

One thing I noticed though was that although we were following a Prue Leith recipe (in the season book), our instructions were  different to those in the book. Perhaps these little differences are the missing link between a good meal and a fantastic one.

After a couple of hours cooking we were basically told to leave the kitchen whilst the staff cleaned things up. After about 15minutes we were allowed back in and low and behold the kitchen was turned into a little restaurant. With wine and first courses laid out  my fellow students and I began enthusiastically tucking in to the food we had cooked. (Note: you have to label everything you cook so that you don't eat somebody else's burned mess- and they don't have to eat yours!)

Over an hour and half you savour all three courses of the delicious mouth watering meal you so simply created hours before. Leaving the school with a goody bag of the remaining desert and feeling slightly drunk from the half bottle of wine consumed with the  lunch, I felt confident to cook the meal again at home.

All in all, it was a great morning and I would recommend it to everybody and anybody!