It is totally unbelievable to me that I have already been cooking for 3 weeks. It has absolutely flown by! I’m currently sitting on the floor of a train to Wales, completely wedged in by the stinky toilets, absolutely exhausted and covered in Swiss meringue that has harderend like a very sticky plaster of paris on my forearms. Worst of all perhaps is that I dropped my lemon tart as I struggled to get through the barriers at Paddington with my little suitcase and school bag. A very unfortunate state of affairs. But here is the good news folks; I have 5 hours to tell you all about what went down this week.

Update: The wales-bound public are extremely conversational and I have been heavily involved in all manner of discussions with the toilet queue for an hour and a half. I have been asked for cooking advice, legal advice and even been proposed to. Not such a tranquil voyage, but it is certainly very entertaining. Back to cooking.

This week started off with some soups! We then moved on to eggs. Pretty much every way.

The hardest for me was the poach. My yolk was too exposed and needed to be protected by the white by holding a more spherical form. We use the swirl and hurl method (my words not theirs). I have a feeling getting the technique right for this will involve a lot of practice. Hope you are hungry for eggs T and G.

Chef’s scrambled eggs with salmon, caviar and toast

Chef’s french omelette. Cigar shape, no colour and not fully cooked on the inside was the brief.

The omelette process was more stressful than one might imagine initially. The first steps involve proving a pan, by cooking salt in it, scrubbing with said salt, cooking oil in it, and finally scrubbing it with said oil. This process is supposed to give the pan magical non stick properties. Mine had something unpleasant and tacky cooked onto the bottom to start with. Bit of a non starter really! The omelette cooking is tricky to get right but not as tricky as the gymnastic style dismount. The omelette is bounced out half way then rolled and finally flipped out onto the plate. Yeh. I don’t get it either. Did I mention we were only allowed to use a dinner fork for the whole process? Such fun. At least the chef’s got a good laugh.

Midweek we transitioned from pure eggs to tarts and had a crack at the much anticipated Lorraine. This class went a lot better than eggs and it was very therapeutic making shortcrust pastry by hand! We made one large and one small tart each and on the whole everyone seemed pleased with their products.

My quiche Lorraine! Not too shabby I reckon. Chef said my 90 degree angle on the pastry was excellent. It’s a nice little dish but I will be swapping the lardons for smoked salmon in future. It should give the same smokey salty taste and work well w… — My quiche Lorraine! Not too shabby I reckon. Chef said my 90 degree angle on the pastry was excellent. It’s a nice little dish but I will be swapping the lardons for smoked salmon in future. It should give the same smokey salty taste and work well with the creamy texture.

Onion tart by chef in the demo. I am very keen to try making this cutie-pie at home as it looks really lovely in mini form!  We had our first cheese lecture by the country’s leading cheese expert and got to try some amazing cheeses. — Onion tart by chef in the demo. I am very keen to try making this cutie-pie at home as it looks really lovely in mini form!
We had our first cheese lecture by the country’s leading cheese expert and got to try some amazing cheeses.

This cheese was very sweet, almost a hybrid of cheese and fudge! An acquired taste, but definitely something I can see myself craving at an inconvenient time in the future!

That’s all for today folks, but stay tuned to find out what I will be making next week!