The Daily Telegraph April 9th 2004
‘Padstow Seafood School – Gordon Ramsay says it’s the only cookery course he can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone.’
Chef Peter Gordon writing in The Caterer April 2004
I learned plenty, I had fun, I ate heaps. The teachers were great and the view brilliant.’
School of fish – Guardian review 24th April 2004
"We're in the chunky era," says Mark Devonshire, resident cookery teacher at Rick Stein's quayside Seafood School in Padstow. He's chopping avocados for a grilled tuna salad, chattering away about the latest cooking trends. "There was a time when we pureed everything, now chunky's definitely in - or rustic as we like to call it."
Sixteen of us are gathered in the school's swish kitchen, where the idea is not to turn us into chefs, but to give us confidence to prepare and cook fish - and let us into a few trade secrets.Mark warns us not to polish off the entire fruits of our labour, but my finished tuna dish tastes so good - depsite the burnt bits - his advice goes out the window. By 10.30am my apron is covered in avocado and we're on to the second dish of the day: risotto nero with squid. It's the sort of recipe I'd usually dismiss as being too risky but Mark makes it look deceptively simple. I make a mental note to track down a jar of squid ink when I get back to London and get on with the revolting but strangely satisfying job of dismembering the squid.
I'd expected the group to be mainly women of a certain age. In fact there are equal numbers of men and women, young and old, the super-cocky (like the bloke who chipped in his tuppence worth from the back of the classroom) and the not-so-confident (a retired teacher, who "never really cooks with garlic").
At 12pm on the dot out comes the wine and a few swigs later we're ready to tackle the John Dory for our filleting lesson. The great thing about cooking good quality fresh fish is it needs very little fussing about with. Warm potato salads ready to go, we synchronise our grilling and a minute and a half later, voila, lunch for 16 is ready. Over lunch Rick Stein makes a surprise visit to sign our course books, and better still, a kitchen fairy nips in and whisks away all the washing up.
The one-day seafood course is cunningly devised so all the cooking is done in the morning. I thought this was a bit of a swizz until the wine, concentration and lunch start to take their toll and I'm perfectly happy to watch Gordon McDermott - our chef for the afternoon - cook a brill with poached oysters and, the piece de resistance, a red thai seafood curry.
At 4.30pm Gordon calls it a day and hands out certificates. I leave with a folder full of recipes, a taste for oysters (it was the first time I'd tried them) and, after watching Mark and Gordon's speed chopping, a promise to myself to buy a decent kitchen knife.
