Down And Out In Padstow And London

I wanted to thank you for all the great feedback I had to my post ‘Pitching Confidential: How Not To Get A Food Book Published’ on my failure to get my book about training to be a chef published. There was some brilliant advice and ideas, and I went through them in turn to check them out, and I thought I’d give you an update...

The first major decision I made was to write the book (and future posts on this blog) under my real name Alex Watts, rather than Lennie Nash. When I wrote the book - and much of this blog - I was working as a journalist for Sky News. There were contractual regulations, and rules about what you could write on blogs and other social media, which is why I invented the pseudonym Lennie Nash.

Now I’m freelance, I’m free of those obligations. So I thought it would be less confusing (and require far less explanation in the long run) to write under my real name, which I’d wanted to do in the first place. I’ve kept Lennie as the main character in the book, mainly because it’s a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, and I’ve grown attached to him and it seems fitting somehow.

Going back to your recommendations, I checked out unbound.co.uk - which describes itself as a revolutionary new publishing method where readers choose the books they want to see published. Authors post their work on the site, and readers pledge monetary support in exchange for getting their name printed in the book (not a particularly novel idea - Dickens and Thackeray published a lot of their work by subscription in the 19th century) and when there’s enough funding it gets published.

Sounds brilliant. A sort of democracy in publishing. But the catch is 99% of the authors showcased are well-known writers or TV personalities, which rather defeats the purpose of finding new, quirky books that wouldn’t otherwise get the green light from a publishing industry which seems to have lurched towards all things celebrity.

Unbound say they don’t have enough staff yet to roll it out to ‘new’ writers, but plan to at some point. So unless you’re ex-Python Terry Jones (the first author to be published on Unbound), and already have books, operas, TV shows and the odd film to your name, you haven’t really got a shout.

Unbound said they would only consider authors who already had an agent (oh, why did I part ways with my agent?) or had books published, and could supply their ISBN numbers as proof. But they did recommend trying jottify.com - a website where writers show off their work and get feedback and gifted ‘inkpots’ (don’t ask) from fellow strugglers, sorry scribes.

I put the first chapter of my book up there, and was amazed how easy the publishing system was to use. I got a few comments, and the feedback was good, but it was hard to get noticed unless you bought up scores of ‘inkpots’ (don’t ask) to plug your work and give people a fighting chance of finding it on the site.

Meanwhile, I still looked at traditional, albeit painfully slow, publishing methods. I took your advice to send it off to Anthony Bourdain’s new line of books with Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, and home to Bukowski, no less, so I wasn’t confident. Bourdain is to publish four or five food books a year written by chefs and other industry insiders, but I haven’t got high hopes, and HarperCollins didn’t get back to me on how to get the manuscript to Bourdain in the first place, and nor did his agent. One for the no hope file, I think.

I also approached another agent to see if they’d take on my book, and got another extremely bleak assessment of the current (and with book sales the way they are, probably future) state of the UK publishing industry, and its continuing obsession with celebrity.

“It sounds as if your previous agent tried his/her best for you with all the right publishers. The marketplace is exceptionally tough at the moment and publishers are really only taking on what they are convinced will be sure-fire hits,” they said. Which was politer than bugger off, at least.

Most of your advice was about getting my book published as an eBook. People said you needed to demonstrate you had a successful, self-published first book, and had generated some sort of following, before a publisher would give you any kind of advance on a second.

It seemed the way forward for now, and Lulu was highly recommended. Then I came to my second major crucial decision - the title. My former agent and her publishing pals hadn’t liked my original, rather depressing title of “Diary Of A Failed Chef” and wanted to go with “Yes, Chef!” arguing that was a common utterance in the book, and a theme the reader would quickly be familiar with.

But I hated it, even more than My Booky Wook. It was hardly the most original title, and sounded like something you’d call a banal TV sitcom set in a quaint manor house kitchen in middle England. I pushed for “Down And Out In Padstow and London” instead, hoping it might give an indication of the attempted humour within, and some indication of what it was about. The agent had offered me a peace pipe, saying she’d send that off to publishers as an alternative title.

But publishing under my own steam meant I could ditch Yes Chef! and go with Down And Out In Padstow And London. I signed up with Lulu, hearing tales about how some writers had managed to publish their eBook in just one day. But I wasn’t so confident, which was just as well really because the process did involve an unbelievable amount of tedious formatting.

However, it wasn’t as much as I’d feared. And after three days of hair-pulling and medicinal whisky-supping, I finally managed to publish an eBook - and will get round to the hard copy version later. Lulu warned that it would take some time before it was accepted on to Amazon etc (and pointed out that over 50% of Lulu’s eBooks are rejected by the online retail giant because of chapter formatting issues).

But mine seemed to work okay after a number of attempts, and I’ll just have to see whether it gets on to Amazon and other retail outlets. But here it is anyway if you fancy reading it - and for just £1.99 ($3). Go on, you’ll get an amazingly warm feeling knowing you’ve kept me in noodles for another day...

CLICK HERE TO BUY ON KINDLE, IPHONE, IPAD etc...

CLICK HERE TO BUY ON LULU...

Here's the book blurb:

Down And Out In Padstow And London is a humorous account of what really happens behind the scenes of both Michelin-starred restaurants and lesser establishments - and the extraordinary, larger-than-life characters who inhabit them. The book begins with Lennie Nash's decision to give up his job as a journalist, aged 40, and a fateful meeting with Rick Stein, when the cheffing door is opened.

There follow stints in the kitchens at Padstow, a failed audition for Masterchef, work as a commis chef under a crazed ex-football hooligan, 16-hour shifts as a kitchen slave in a gastropub, and the rigours of the Fat Duck. Unable to keep up with the younger chefs around him, he gives up the dream and returns to office life, only to find the itch starting again...

The book is aimed at the umpteen armchair chefs and foodies who would love to learn the trade first-hand from the professionals, braving the stress, 16-hour days, and low pay of kitchen life, but are far too sensible to do so.

Rockpools & Epiphany Moments In Cooking

Guest post by Dom Bailey

It's a proud moment. The biggest prawn-like creatures we've caught rockpooling, and my five year old son wants to eat them. We spent hours rockpooling. Hours. There probably isn't a wriggling, skulking, pinching piece of marine life along the north coast of Cornwall that hasn't been traumatised by the poke, net, and bucket experience that results from us visiting a beach.

But so far, we we’re only doing it for fun - for the 'look what we found' or the 'do captive crabs fight?' factor or the 'I wonder what a marine biologist would earn in 20 years time - and how long do they have to study for?' (the adult role in rockpooling is generally life guard, crab grabber and stone turner, so there is a lot of time for reflection).

But eating our catch had never been part of the equation. Even the Spanish wouldn't go for the tiddlers we scooped out.

Until the day of the prawn.

There are lots of prawny, shrimp-like things in the rockpools, but the biggest we'd seen had been not much more than two or three centimetres long - too small to bother cooking and peeling.

Prawns always seemed to be more exotic - "responsibly farmed in Thailand" or suchlike, not "caught near St Merryn with a £1 net from an RNLI charity shop".

But at the end of a long day of exploring and stone turning we sat on a rock half-heartedly dipping the net into "definitely the last pool or mummy is going to be really annoyed" as the tide started to ease its way back in.

I saw something of reasonable size, for a rockpool, dart under the overhanging seaweed. Being dad allows for commandeering of the net in the event of a potentially large catch. That's just how it is, it's the rules, ask your mother.

Anyway, a deft dip, scoop and twist motion (there is a technique...) and I see two things flapping in the net. Flapping. Not flitting or twitching as the little shrimplets had earlier in the day. Flapping. Two definitely-not-shrimp-sized prawns, a thumb in length.

I'm not sure who was more excited. "Wow let me have a go!"

‘Not likely’ thoughts give way to "of course, here you go." Grit teeth, scan seabed.

Frustration gets me the net back in no time, and I find that scooping along the gravelly bottom returns a few more finger-size prawns.

The incoming tide seems to have brought a bigger bounty. We'd found the rockpool equivalent of a kids’ playground after dark where teenagers hang out trying to look cool on roundabouts and bouncy tortoises.

Then came the "can we eat them?"

Every parent wants the best for their child. The best toys, the best schools, the best holidays. Inspiring the best memories is no mean feat.

And every foodie knows that chefs and food lovers everywhere have their own tale of a gastronomic epiphany. For Anthony Bourdain, it is raw oysters from the gnarled hands of a French fisherman on a family holiday. For a food blogger close to our hearts there is the story of his five year old self finding a scallop shell on a beach in France and asking a local family to cook it for him.

I'm not sure I've got one. There's the reassuring smell of a Sunday roast cooking as the pressure cooker whistles to Pick Of The Pops on the radio. Or the spag bol hurled up the wall by a frustrated parent after my sister and I wouldn't stop bickering. Or just my gran's lemon curd tarts.

What if this was my son's food moment? Having recognised the life changing potential, I was almost duty bound to forego the usual, 'let's put them back now' before tipping sun-boiled marine life back into pools where they would probably prefer to be snapped up by the last crab in Cornwall rather than scooped up by the covetous family of rockpoolers lingering close behind.

"Are you sure you will eat them? Otherwise, it's cruel. Yes?"
Good boy.

Potential recipes instantly come to mind. Fried with garlic. Was that sea beet back near the car park? Clarified butter a la Morecombe potted shrimp variety.

But you can get carried away, apparently, and the water was getting a little too deep between us and the shore.

So, seven in the bucket, and we headed back in.

There is a tendency for fishermen, even rockpoolers, to exaggerate. But the contents of our bucket did attract some admiring and envious comments - from all ages - as we were packing up for home.

I was most reassured by the "bit of garlic and they'll be lovely" - even before I'd revealed our murderous intent.

Parents among them were no doubt thinking "I've put in the same hours and had no more than a morsel".

Homeward bound and I wasn’t too keen on the idea of a bucket of salty water sloshing around the back seat along Cornish country lanes. Or the prospect of finding an escapee in a few months time rotting down the side of the child car seat.

Top tip: prawns slot nicely into a small bottle of Buxton’s water (fresh water replaced by the bucket sea water.)

Back at the caravan it's shower and PJs time before tea (not for me, obviously).

I've given the prawns a quick anaesthetic dip in the fridge freezer compartment just in case - this is a first for both of us remember. I’ve cooked live lobster and river-poached crayfish before but still wasn’t sure whether these English prawn shrimp-like things were going to squeal, jump or just explode and spoil the moment.

Keeping it simple, bit of butter in a pan then in with the dozed prawns.

"What colour do you think they'll go?"

"Pink. Are they dead?" No-one likes a smart ass son.

For the faint-hearted there was a little wriggle by one, but that soon stopped and they settled down to the business of turning a tasty crispy pink colour. Flip over for a few more seconds and, they're done.

I popped one straight into my mouth (distraction is a key parental skill, as is being liberal with the truth - "yes, we only caught six"), crunch and chew, and it was the freshest prawn I'd tasted. A meaty, crunchy morsel, with a splash of the sea bursting out.

Being a responsible parent, I peeled my son's first home caught and cooked prawn and handed it to him.

"What do you think?"

I stood back.

My notebook was in reach, just waiting for the flash of inspiration - the ‘out of the mouths of babes’ universal truth that would lodge itself in our family folklore, that he'd Google in years to come, and chuckle as he recalled how that prawn had set him on course for three Michelin stars.

He chewed and swallowed.

"Well?"

"It's like a prawn. Can we eat the eyes?"

It's a start I suppose...

:: Dom Bailey is a writer and musician. His songs are here on domssongs.blogspot.com.

Thailand: Hallucinogenic Fish And Cobras

Yesterday I had a great day in Thailand’s Rayong Province – an area where tourists are thankfully as rare as nine baht notes. I travelled there with my ex-pat friend John and his heavily-pregnant wife Pla, and on the way we stopped at Khao Chee Chan, which also goes by the name Buddha Mountain (above). Standing at nearly 400ft tall, it's the biggest Buddha image in the world, and was carved into the cliff using lasers and then filled with gold leaf.

Later, we saw a couple they knew, who had built a beautiful house on a piece of land overlooking lily fields near Rayong. When they bought the land it was completely overgrown and home to a pond that the neighbours had stocked with fish. They cleared the jungle and left the tallest trees, and built a prefab house in the middle of the plot.

I was very jealous. Although they were cut off, Jim and his Thai girlfriend Fi were living the good life and had filled the garden with vegetables and fruit tree saplings. Two years later, they were living off the land, eating bamboo shoots, lemon grass, basil, galangal, tomatoes, aubergines, bananas, huge mushrooms grown in boxes, and eggs from their hens and ducks.


When they fancied a change, they caught a few fish from the pond and fried them in breadcrumbs or made Thai curries. They were living there happily with their three huskies and two cocker spaniels, and no children.

As I say, I was very jealous and envied the fabulous climate they lived in and the oranges they picked each morning from the trees. Until they told me about the snakes that is. They were being plagued by cobras from the wet lily fields at the bottom of the garden. They had put up fine mesh fencing, but still they came in.

Only the day before, Fi had screamed as they were letting the dogs out and Jim turned to see a 6ft black cobra a few feet from them. Jim had killed quite a few with his hoe, but this was much bigger. He threw a heavy stick at the snake, but missed, and it rose up and made lunging motions at them. Fi kept screaming and eventually it slithered away into next door’s garden.

The dogs had been less lucky at times. Despite their size, the huskies gave snakes a wide berth but the bravest cocker spaniel liked to grab them and shake her head violently, and batter the reptiles to death. A couple of months before she had run into the house howling in pain and pawing at Jim’s leg, her eyes swollen after an encounter with a spitting cobra. They had just got her to the vet in time, but she still lost an eye.


But it was the stories of the king cobra that most worried them – and whether it had any offspring. Years before they moved in, the neighbours said they had seen a 20ft-long monster near the pond. They were alerted by the sound of frogs being eaten – apparently frogs make a particular shriek when eaten by snakes. Knowing how deadly and fast the world’s biggest venomous snake is, and its enormous striking range, they took no chances and blasted the thing to death with a shotgun.

Poor Jim and Fi were clearly still shaken by the cobra encounter when they showed me round their land, but then I suppose it was one of the downsides of living in a beautiful country.

We fed the fish and I promised to catch a few and barbecue them that evening. Then we packed up the cars and headed out to Khao Chamao National Park to visit the waterfalls. We stopped on the way to buy food for the trip - beautiful roast duck and rice that came with bags of satay sauce and soy sauce with chillies.


And then we bought dried, salted pork similar to biltong and parcels of rice, minced pork and lily seeds wrapped in leaves.


But when we got to the park, the guards on the gate spotted the food and confiscated it. They were flabby and greedy-looking and looked like they hadn’t bought a meal for years. We handed over our delicious food, and my beloved ice box full of Chang beers, and the guards went through the motions of writing down our number plates saying they would return it on the way out. They even said we weren’t allowed to take water in, which considering the heat was ridiculous.

We paid the entrance fee (which was seven times more for foreigners) and prepared for the steep ascent into the jungle. Thai families were openly carrying water bottles and huge picnic hampers up there. Some even had ice boxes. I thought about those guards and my lovely ice cold beers. The buggers would probably be on their second one by now – can in hand, munching on a duck drumstick, waiting for the next farang to arrive.

I hadn’t come prepared and had to walk through the jungle in flip flops. After 20 minutes of climbing over rocks and vines, the sweat was pouring off me, and I thought about those lovely cold cans again. Ten minutes later, I had a pounding headache from dehydration and began to lag behind after stubbing my toes numerous times. I tried not to think about cobras. If they were that common in Jim’s garden how many would be out there in the jungle? They're not in the trees - they ARE the trees! Flip flops would offer no protection. If I was bitten, I’d be dead by the time I got to the bottom.


Eventually, we got to the Khao Chamao waterfall, stripped off our clothes and plunged into its deep ponds. The water was filled with black fish, which I found out later were a species of carp called tor soro. There were so many of them, you brushed against them as you swam, and if you sat on the rocks by the side they came up and nibbled your skin. Some must have weighed 6lbs and would easily have fed a family of eight.


But their numbers and size were down to the fact the Thais didn’t touch them. The locals said if you eat the fish you become dizzy, which is how the waterfall got its name Khao Chamao - meaning “to get drunk” in Thai. The fish apparently eat berries from overhanging trees, which don’t affect the fish but cause humans to hallucinate.


Now, I’ve always considered myself an adventurous cook, and it would have been easy to catch one of those fish. And I did think about getting some wood together and cooking one by the side of that waterfall just to see what would happen. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Maybe someone a lot madder and braver than me, like Anthony Bourdain or Bruce Parry, would have done it. Or at least have got one of their film crew to try it first. But I was too worried about getting back in flip flops as it was without running around being chased by imaginary cobras.

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