COOKING:A men-only cookery course in Dublin's Cooks Academy almost lost CONOR POPEhis finger – but did he get blood in the panna cotta?
I’M THE FIRST to bleed and am only scarlet. Despite all the warnings about the sharpness of the blades and their gentle hints that we’d all be as well off using the small serrated-edge knives when chopping our onions, I’ve instead gone straight for the proper cook’s knife and, within seconds, taken the top of my finger off. Nearly.
The instructors in Cooks Academy, which opened on Dublin’s South William Street at the beginning of this year, are unfazed by my near-death experience and, in a businesslike fashion, find me a bright blue plaster to patch the wound, and I’m soon up and chopping again, albeit a little more gingerly than before. Luckily, I can blame the tears on the onions.
The academy has just relocated from a Georgian building in Dún Laoghaire that, for all its character, had grown too small for Vanessa and Tim Greenwood, the fiercely but charmingly ambitious couple behind the enterprise. While the old school could hold no more than 35 students, the new venue can easily accommodate twice that number and is fitted with more heavy wooden islands than a Pacific archipelago and dozens of state-of-the-art cookers.
The academy runs more than 20 courses that vary in duration from a few hours to several months and, while I was tempted by the knife skills course – and clearly need the practise – I instead went for a one-day men-only workshop.
There are 24 of us gathered in the bright and airy workspace, ready to be taken through our paces. “Who can cook?” Vanessa Greenwood asks. A shyness descends. Everyone shuffles uncomfortably and stares at their shoes. “Who can make a Thai curry?” she persists. A couple of hands are tentatively raised. “Who’s an absolute beginner?” Six more hands go up.
“He’s been sent here by his missus to learn to be the naked chef,” one of the gang of 24 says, gesturing at his mate. It is just the first of many mentions of Oliver. Sweary Gordon Ramsay is also popular but it is Come Dine With Me that appears to have captured this group’s imagination, and it comes up in virtually every conversation.
Normally when you put a bunch of blokes who don’t know each other from Adam into a room, it take about 15 seconds before the talk turns to sport – it is the default topic and the glue that holds uncomfortable social situations together. Not here, though. It is a sign of our changing times that these men from middle Ireland are as comfortable talking about how to perfectly poach a piece of fish and what makes a good Hollandaise sauce as they are talking about whether Torres will ever improve at Chelsea and who’s likely to win the Six Nations.
Greenwood says the type of would-be-cook coming through her doors has changed as the recession’s death grip has tightened. “Before, we were getting people who had fitted out very posh kitchens and wanted to get the most out of them,” she says. “When we opened, we assumed it would be mostly women between 30 and 50, but we actually get a lot of retired men and a lot of men in their 30s and early 40s. We get a huge number of people saying they don’t want the technical stuff and want to be taught the Jamie Oliver just-chuck-it-in method.”
But they do teach the technical methods. There are two instructors as well as Greenwood and they run a tight ship. As one cook shows us how to make perfect gravy – and, having spooned it into myself in a most unseemly manner over lunch, I can testify to its perfection – the other shows us how to carve a loin of pork. As the carve-up begins, the room falls silent, save for a few rumbling stomachs.
The demos are short but very informative and the emphasis is on hands-on learning. What you cook in the morning, you eat for lunch and what you make in the afternoon, you can bring home for your dinner.
Over the course of my day, I learn how to dice an onion like a pro, perfectly mulch a garlic clove and make amazing roast potatoes – the goose fat I knew about, but the semolina was new. I also learned the secret behind julienned carrots, how to chiffonade herbs – and how to spell chiffonade – and how to make salmon in a paper bag, or salmon en papillote as I call it now, without the bag bursting open and spilling its guts all over the oven.
The instructors demystify desserts and, within minutes of putting on my apron, I’d made a dark chocolate panna cotta that was, if I say so myself, awesome, The oat-topped apple and raspberry crumble was pretty sweet, too. “We are trying to teach people, get them to do it and help them to enjoy it,” says Greenwood. “People know their food and want to be able to replicate the restaurant experience at home.”
The new building is spread over three floors, only one of which is currently in use. As the year progresses, the Greenwoods plan to open a wine academy and a barbecue centre on the roof. At a time of unparalleled economic gloom, with businesses shutting down all over the country, is such an expansion a bit risky? “I feel very calm about it now and have no sense of risk. This is our dream. This is what we wanted. The gamble would have been to stay in Dún Laoghaire – things have got more competitive and we just felt we had to go to another level.”
Liam Boland is 31 and, like most of the 24 people on the course, he was given the class as a Christmas present from his partner. He loved it. “I have a huge interest in cooking, and hopefully this is the first course of many. Mostly I cook things like your typical Sunday roast, but I think this will make me more ambitious.” Is he going home to cook his girlfriend an amazing meal? “No, I’m going home to have a sleep – but tomorrow will be D-day for me in the kitchen.”
I’m not sure what has him so tired, mind you. I definitely saw him slacking off when it came time to do the washing up – as part of the course we wash as we go – and it’s not like he nearly died of blood loss at the beginning of the day, now is it?
