The Chilli Wars

The dish that gave me the most trouble on the starters menu was the slow-roasted, spiced pork belly with apple wontons. It wasn’t the pork belly - it was the fecking wontons.

You put a spoonful of spicy apple puree in the middle of a wonton skin, and twist the sides to form a tortellini shape. After a few dozen, you get the hang of them. But the trouble is storing them. They go slimy in the fridge, and when you pick them out stretch like yellow chewing gum.

I tried putting holes in the clingfilm to give them air, but it made no difference. I took the clingfilm off altogether, still no good. In the end I partially cracked it by laying them in semolina flour. But even then they would never keep for more than a few hours.

I hated making the wontons, but the worst job by far was the balsamic reduction. Luckily it only had to be done every few weeks. I’d boil down balsamic vinegar until it was thick and syrupy, and filled the kitchen with noxious fumes that got into our lungs and made our eyes sting. It took about two litres of vinegar just to fill a squeezy bottle.

When everything was cooked, and I was as pretentious chefs say ‘en place’, I’d set up my station (spoon pot, pans, board, knives et al) and go to work on the garnishes – chopping chives and parsley, picking chervil sprigs, browning pine nuts, making tomato concasse, and blanching green beans for the tuna nicoise salad.

I kept about ten portions of everything in reserve, and more of the goat’s cheese parcels because they were easily the most popular starter, and also the most profitable. They scarcely cost 50p to make and sold for a fiver.

You cut a slice from a goat’s cheese log and egg wash a spring roll wrapper. You lay a circle of spinach leaves in the centre of the wrapper, put the cheese on top, fold the left side of the wrapper into the middle and then the right side over, and finally the top and bottom inwards, to make a square parcel. Egg-wash them well to make them stick, and pull them tight, or they explode in the fryer.

They were served on salad leaves with sweet chilli relish. Graham had given me the recipe for the relish. It had been bequeathed to him like some precious heirloom from his old head chef, who claimed it couldn’t be beaten.

It was simple to make – you just fried chopped whole tomatoes and sliced red chillis in sugar, vinegar and spices to make a jam. It tasted okay, but the twigs of coiled tomato skin looked terrible. I pointed this out to Jules one day and he told me to use skinned tomatoes.

When I reminded him that it was Graham’s precious recipe, he just said: “Well, I don’t think Graham’s thought it through.”

I started tinkering with the recipe, and then Graham spotted it on a particularly busy, sweaty night.

“Why the hell has the chilli relish been changed? That recipe was perfect. I got it off Hugh! It was tried and tested!”

A row started and Jules tried to defuse it.

“Why the fuck did you tell him to change it..."

“I only told him to skin the tomatoes!” he whined.

“Why the fuck did you tell him to skin the tomatoes?” shouted Graham.

“Well...because you...don’t want skin in it...”

“It’s RUSTIC, for fuck’s sake!”

Jules realised the only way out was to soothe his cousin’s monstrous ego. He dunked a fat finger into my relish tub, licked it, and then grimaced like a baboon pissing glass.

“I didn’t tell him to make it like that! Yours was much better Graham...”

We all looked at the neatly-squared tomato concasse in my relish.

The bile rose inside me.

“I fucking love this job,” I said bitterly, and sulked like a five-year-old for the rest of service.

I don’t know why it got to me so much. It wasn’t just pride. I suppose it was because I’d taken so many bollockings for mistakes I’d made, I wasn’t going to take them when I wasn’t at fault. My patience wouldn’t stretch that far – not from bullying twats half my age.

There was no longer such a yawning gulf in our cooking skills, and I was beginning to notice flaws in their knowledge. Maybe Keira had been right – maybe Jules wasn’t that good after all.

Jules and Graham tried to start up conversations, but I ignored them. Then Liz walked in with some dirty plates.

“They loved the goat’s cheese parcels!”

She scraped the empty plates and handed them to Jim.

“Oh, and they asked if they could have the recipe for the chilli sauce.”

“You better ask Graham for that,” I said.

Royal Terrines

The confit chicken terrine was the most ‘cheffy’ recipe on my starters menu, and therefore the most time consuming. Because of the time they took, once I was half-way through one terrine, I’d begin making another.

The first task was to rub 30 chicken legs with salt, pepper and crushed coriander seeds and leave them overnight to draw out the moisture. The next day, you wash and dry the legs, and cook them slowly for a few hours in duck fat until the meat falls away from the bone. Some chefs say the heat should be so low, you see a bubble every 30 seconds.

You then carefully pick through the meat to remove the skin, bone and gristle. After that, you lay out overlapping slices of Parma ham (or leek skins, blanched and scraped to remove slime, if the budget is tight) on a sheet of clingfilm. You lower the sheet into the terrine mould so it covers the bottom and one side.

Then you cover the other side with more overlapping pieces of ham or leek. Next you fill the mould half-way with confit chicken meat, forcing it down to remove the air as you go along, before putting in a ‘middle layer’ for decorative purposes - shredded ham hock, or wild mushrooms fried in butter or something.

You top up the mould with more chicken, wrap the clingfilm tight, and leave it under a heavy weight overnight. I used a 10-gallon vegetable oil can, which pressed it so hard the terrine never fell apart during service. Sometimes I made a confit duck terrine interspersed with blanched green beans for colour.

It soon became my favourite dish, mainly because they were the quickest to serve - and I knew that was the way to burn Graham on sauce. The better my terrines, the more people would order them, and the more I could make him sweat.

He'd fret if a table of six came in say, with two or more terrines on it. He knew all I had to do was cut a slice of terrine, smear the presentation side with olive oil to make it shine, and nestle it on top of a small ball of dressed leaves. Sometimes I put a quenelle of prune d’Agen chutney on top, depending on the terrine, other times a sprinkling of Maldon salt crystals. No dish was complete without the squeezy bottle, and around the leaves went a square of balsamic reduction, and an inner one of green herb oil.

After a couple of weeks, I took over the starters section, and returned from a day off to find my fridge in chaos. The worst of it was the game terrine someone had made with chunks of pheasant breast and venison. It was as dry as Gandhi's sandal, and hadn’t been pressed properly because it kept falling apart when you cut it. Half-way in, I discovered a bay leaf they hadn’t bothered to take out, and that was the final straw.

“Christ who made this? It’s like trying to arrange a fucking jigsaw puzzle,” I said, pushing the pieces of meat back together on the plate.

Jules came over and prodded the terrine.

“Are you blaming the sous chef?”

I saw Stewie move into the corner of my vision.

“I’m not blaming anyone. All I’m saying is maybe the meat should have been cut up, chef."

“You don’t need to cut the meat up.”

“Well, why does it keep falling apart then chef?”

My point had been made. A couple of days later I unveiled a perfectly-pressed chicken terrine. The Parma ham looked like it had been wrapped at Harrods. Stewie was watching.

“Well try a bit, then!”

I carved him a generous slice. The mustard grain, chicken meat, and chopped herbs glistened in the winter sun. Stewie picked up the slice and threw it on my board like a spoilt child.

“Keeps falling apart chef! Wasn’t pressed properly!”

He tried again, but my terrine withstood his spiteful assaults. With ten gallons of weight overnight, my terrines were rocket-proof.

:: This blog eventually became a bestselling book, called Down And Out In Padstow And London by Alex Watts, about my disastrous attempt to train as a chef, including stints at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck and Rick Stein's kitchens in Padstow. You might like it if you're a foodie or have ever entertained the ridiculous idea of entering the padded asylum of professional cooking. It's here on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle book if you want a read...