So it has been 2 weeks at cooking school – and I have been very remiss in my blog posts. This is partly because I have been exhausted every evening after classes, and partly because I wasn’t sure of the best way to write about this.

One of the things about learning how to portion a roast chicken, say, or cook a stirred custard sauce is that these techniques are hard to describe, but much easier to learn by watching and doing. This is of course, one of the reasons that I am in cooking school in the first place! However, it would make for a pretty dull read if I just described everything we did each day. And I’m sure that many of you are not that interested in the ins and outs of the cooking in any case. So instead, I will try to write around what we are doing, to give you a flavour of what is going on, without all the detail.

Just so you know, I am at Tante Marie’s Cooking School, based in North Beach, San Francisco. They do evening courses and also let people come int o join in the cooking school classes on a one-off basis, so look them up if you are coming to visit. We generally cook in the mornings, and eat what we have prepared for lunch, then have a demonstration of the next day’s dishes in the afternoon.