Not Very Qualified? You’re not fucking kidding

Today I was at college, as I am every Monday. Today is theoretically my favourite day of the week as we only do pastry work. For those of you that don’t know, ‘pastry’ in reference to ‘pastry chef’ or ‘the pastry’ section of a kitchen is a catch all term for desserts, pastry, bread, and in a quality establishment, petit fours and chocolates. The NVQ in hospitality and catering that I am currently completing is in some ways good, in many ways bad, and in many more ways totally bizarre. I understand that I am not the usual candidate for this course, having completed a degree and worked in finance for two and a half years, however even at the age of 16 I think I would have felt the same way. I want to start by saying how hard I know people in Education work, and this isn’t a personal attack on any of my tutors at college, because I know that for the most part they work to very strict guidelines set by City and Guilds. However, last Monday, amongst other things we were taught how to make a layered blancmange.

I know, I couldn’t believe it either. I had never even seen blancmange before this lesson. I thought it was a joke food that your parents talked about being served when they were at school. But I can confirm that it does exist, and it is as grim as it sounds. I will admit that my Portuguese work partner was a bit over enthusiastic with the flavourings and essences:

Me: ‘Christ Seb, what the hell did you put in that??’

Seb: ‘Orange, passionfruit, mango..... chocolate.... almond.....mint’

But I tried someone else’s that was just a simple vanilla, and even that wasn’t particularly nice. I know that many retro foods are coming back in fashion (recently on the ‘Great British Menu’ Tom Aikens included semolina in his dessert. It was a spectacular looking dish, but the judges hated it), but seriously, blancmange? Can you imagine having that conversation with your Head Chef if you were Chef de Partie (in charge of the section) on pastry?

‘See what it is, I’ve been thinking about looking backwards for some inspiration, you know, jumping on the whole ‘retro food’ bandwagon, and I think I’ve got it: layered blancmange’

‘Get. Out. Of. My. Fucking. Kitchen’

However, this isn’t the worst of it. Blancmange is bad, semolina is worse, and teaching us how to make trifle with packet jelly, no fruit and ‘meadowland’ cream (not actually cream at all) is a total joke. But none of these items come close to the lesson where we were ‘taught’ how to ‘make’ the below:

I did ask my tutor why this is contained in the NVQ syllabus, and was told that it is there because there may be a situation where someone who has completed the course goes to work in a nursing home or similar and needs to know how to use convenience food products. The instructions (add cold milk, stir, leave, eat, shoot yourself in the face – you might as well) are written on the back of the bloody packet. Are we to assume that these people will be un-able to read? Even my two year old niece would be able to knock together some ‘Angel Delight’ without any instructions. Most importantly, If I was in a care home dying of some terrible disease or just being ‘old’ and waiting for death, I think I would rather the chef over-arm threw apples and oranges at me from the kitchen than serve me this shit.

On a far more positive note, I did learn how to make lemon meringue pie this morning which is actually delicious, and tomorrow, the Sous Chef at the company I work for is holding a cookery school evening based on ‘molecular gastronomy’. If you’re not familiar with the term, just think Heston Bluemental (although I really should point out that Heston isn’t comfortable with the phrase ‘molecular gastronomy’ – far too little time and space here to explain why). We bought the chemicals a few weeks ago and have been playing around with them in the kitchen ever since. I’ll be going along tomorrow night to ‘help’ a.k.a. have fun making apple foam and walnut dust and wasabi ‘air’ and all sorts of other crazy stuff which is now possible. If any of you are interested in further reading (ha!), I can seriously recommend: Herve This ‘Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor’. It’s a bit heavy and science based (definitely not a cookbook), but fascinating, and he has been named by Heston as one of his ‘inspirations’. I’ll be honest; I didn’t need any more persuasion than that.