Fassnidge - Four Kitchens

I felt I needed to learn a lot more about cooking before I could share my ideas. Since then, Ive had two children, Lily and Maeve, and its because of them that I fell in love with cooking all over again and finally felt ready to write this book. MY JOURNEY TO HERE Family is almost always responsible for your initial feelings about food, and Irish family life revolves around the table. Growing up in Dublin, eating was a serious business, and my parents had designated days for cooking duties. My dad was Wednesdays and Sunday lunch, and my mum pretty much cooked the rest of the time. My connection to food was fostered through my mother.

Her day revolved around feeding the family. My brother Andrew and sister Elaine and I would get up, and Mum would make us breakfast. The weather was usually cold and miserable, so food needed to be hearty. Delia Smith was the celebrity chef when we were kids, and Mum tried to get trendy and cook things like courgettes. She succeeded, but what we really loved was the food that came naturally to her: offal. It was a treat.

We always looked forward to it because she cooked those dishes so well tasty and full of flavour. Dishes like liver and onion still take me right back to my childhood and I am still very heavily influenced by the food I ate as a youngster. My dad was also a good cook. Super-organised. Our favourite Dad dishes were marrowfat peas (mushy peas), golden roasted potatoes, and roast beef (always well done Im not sure why, but he liked it that way). Prawn cocktails were huge in the 80s but he also made a mean trifle.

Men in those days were hard: they didnt make trifles. Nevertheless, it was Dads speciality and he was really proud of it. I think its because of his appreciation of cooking that he encouraged me to become a chef. In those days, cooking as a career choice wasnt looked upon very well it was seen as a bit of a drop-out job. Yet from the age of about twelve I wanted to be a chef. Or a zookeeper.

Or a rock star. You could say that cooking professionally involves a combination of all of those things, so I reckon even back then I was on the money. As much as I wanted to be a chef, I was a keen drummer. I worked part-time at my dads shoe shop in the summer so that I could earn enough money to buy a drum kit. When I was fourteen, I had finally saved up enough to buy one. I was on fire I joined a band and we even got on TV! The only problem was that in Dublin at that time everyone was in a band.

So while it was a great time for music, the opportunities were slim. I grew my hair because I thought if you were in a band it was a pretty cool thing to do. Around the same time, I saw a documentary about chef Marco Pierre White. Long-haired, cigarette in one hand, knife in the other, he was losing it at the chefs in his kitchen and I thought, Cookings cool. Marco Pierre White was the first rock star chef. Nobody was doing anything like him.

I finished school and started at catering college the next year. I got to cook, and at that time the government gave you a grant if you were at catering college. Cook and get paid? Yes! I figured that if I was doing something where I woke up every morning still keen, then it was the right thing for me. THE DISCIPLINE OF BECOMING A CHEF When I was at catering college, I met Kevin Thornton, who was one of my lecturers and pretty out there. Kevin was leaving teaching to open a small restaurant called Thorntons and asked me to be a part of it. I said yes without even thinking and thats when my life went from pretty cushy to getting my arse kicked.

There were four chefs, including Kevin, and within six months of opening Thorntons, Kevin received a Michelin star. I was below the pot wash in the scheme of things, so I got worked over from morning to night by the whole brigade. I had to make staff dinner every day, and this was the first place I learnt about discipline. In Ireland, wed shoot our own deer. As a result, we had a lot of venison left over and wed have it for staff meals. Venison is very lean, and therefore easy to overcook.

Id always overcook it and Id always get caned for it. Kevin promised me that if I stayed two years at Thorntons hed get me a job in England. He knew I wanted to go there more than anything it was my Emerald City. As a chef, it was where the gods of cooking worked: Marco Pierre White, Pierre Koffmann, Raymond Blanc. I stuck to my word and he stuck to his. He got me a job with Raymond Blanc and I flew over to Oxford.

I started the same day as nine other apprentices. After a month, I was the only one left. I worked in a kitchen where nobody spoke to you for three months there was no point getting to know you unless they knew you were good enough to be allowed to stay. I worked, slept for a handful of hours each night, and went back to work. I didnt take meal breaks or eat very much. I used to eat the chicken wings out of the stockpot like an animal.

We didnt have time to do anything other than cook the pressure was incredible. I worked like that for two years: sixteen-hour days, ten days on, one day off. Those days werent really about cooking, though. They were about following a routine and trying to stay out of trouble. I think what happens to a lot of people who want to become chefs is that they fall in love with the idea of creativity and using great produce, but then they get into a restaurant and realise that what they need to fall in love with is routine. You follow it and, though slow, the learning comes.

After three months with Raymond Blanc, I was accepted into the brigade, as Id managed to outlast all the other junior chefs. Then it became like a band of brothers there are guys from those days who I still keep in touch with. Theyre spread all over the world and many of them are incredibly successful. Justin North and I started together in the veg section and he is the reason I came to Sydney. He was a much better cook than me, too. (These days Id like to think I give him a run for his money!) Raymond Blanc was a self-taught chef who never went to college and ran a brigade of forty chefs.