So, in no particular order, here follows my Fantasy Festive Food & Wine Wishlist (as it appeared in IMAGEdaily today, only with links, and some pix in case my words don’t cut it for you):

1.     A very generous voucher for Ireland’s Blue Book, which just celebrated its 40th anniversary with the addition of Thornton’s Restaurant (where the canapé bar is one of Dublin’s most underrated food-fun nights out); the remote Clare Island Lighthouse (a spectacularly located guesthouse overlooking Clew Bay); and Liss Ard Estate in Skibbereen (which has the coolest magical-mystery gardens, complete with an otherworldly Irish Sky Garden where humdrum clouds are elevated to works of art). Now when I say ‘a very generous Blue Book voucher’ I would of course graciously accept any kind of a Blue Book voucher. Especially if it came with the latest glovebox-friendly copy of Georgina Campbell’s Ireland Guide or the McKenna’s Irish Food Guide, so I could be sure to eat well en route too.

Some view, huh? That there’s Clew Bay.

2.     A full set of Riedel’s ‘varietal specific’ wine glasses so that I could have the perfect glass for every wine I drink, whatever the grapes or style. (I attended a Riedel tasting recently and their glasses really do make an incredible difference to different wines.) The only problem is that, with separate glasses for Cabernet or Pinot Noir, Riesling or Chardonnay, and so on, I’d really need a bigger kitchen to keep them all in. And logistically, that would involve moving out of my tiny apartment, which I’m really rather fond of. So to avoid all that hoo-ha, I’d settle for the Syrah set, the most versatile of the lot.

3.  A year’s supply of one of the following:

a)     Pata Negra Iberico ham, to be delivered to my door by a swarthy Spaniard. (Failing that, a voucher for Black Pig in Donnybrook might do it, and I could go collect my own whenever supplies run low, and pick up a bottle of something delicious while I’m at it.)

b)    M&L Szechuan’s chilli-fried green beans. (Or failing that, a new stainless-steel wok from the Asian market, a supply of dried bird’s eye chillies and the recipe for said green beans.)

c)     Green papaya salad, like what used to be on the menu at Diep Le Shaker restaurant and what I could have lived on in northern Thailand. (Or failing that, a mandolin slicer and a voucher for the Asian Market so I could get a fresh supply of unripe papaya, chillies, nam plaa fish sauce and limes to make my own.)

4.     Speaking of mandolins, I’d also love a new Microplane grater, which happens to be the best grater in the world. I left mine at a party (don’t ask) and I really miss it for everything from grating Parmesan to finely grating garlic (beats crushing it by a mile). Okay, if you have to know, it was my own party but in a rented place and we were cooking and I thought I couldn’t cook without my Microplane. That’s how much I love it.

That’s what I mean by Microplane

5.     A case of Highbank Medieval Cider, because I know that it’ll probably be sold out by Christmas if it isn’t already. If you haven’t tried it, look out for it next year: it’s an amazing new honeyed cider that is sweet at first and then dry thanks to the tannic apples. Or failing that a mixed case of Irish craft beers and ciders. (A year’s supply is harder to define, right?)

6.     A wine course. If I hadn’t already done the WSET course run by Cooks Academy (‘Dublin’s School of Food & Wine’) and tutored by the brilliant Liam Campbell, I’d do that all over again. It was such a treat to go in every week, taste different wines and learn about different styles from all over the world. (WSET stands for Wine & Spirits Education Trust, a global professional wine educator, but they offer courses at all levels from introductory to Masters of Wine.) But seeing as how I’ve done the WSET thing, I’d go for a voucher for Ely Wine Bar’s weekly Thursday night wine tastings, which are only €15 a pop and give you a chance to taste some gorgeous wines you mightn’t otherwise try.

7.     A pair of stockings from Avoca (have you seen them? Cute or what!) stuffed full of hot and salted Pulparindo candy bars and fizzy cola bottles and Wham bars. (There’s a reason that tangy green papaya salad is my favourite dish ever.) What are Pulparindo bars? They are the penny sweets of gods, courtesy of some Mexican genius who thought to turn tangy tamarind into a sweet candy, and to flavour it with salt and chilli. Bam!

chilli-hot, salted and tangy tamarind – that’s what I’m talking about, right there

8.     A stainless steel stove-top moka pot for home-brewed coffee, possibly from Coffee Angel on South Anne Street, who seem to sell every kind of coffee accessory you could possibly want, not to mention every kind of coffee. (My current favourite is their Kebel Demersa from Ethiopia which tastes like Turkish delight, in a good way.) Oh and they’re also selling really sweet little stocking filler snowflakes made out of Finnish birch for €6, 100% of which goes to Barnardos. Sweet.

9.     A voucher for Inis Meain Restaurant & Suites so I could go back and recreate one of the best short breaks I’ve ever had. And maybe I could go towards the end of their season and they’d let me stay on and write that novel I always thought I’d get around to. It’d be the perfect stop for it, and the food is pretty darn spot on too. (I could do island lobster and fresh spuds on a daily basis. No problem!)

The Inis Meain Breakfast Box, delivered to your door early morning to be eaten whenever. That’s my kind of breakfast.

10.    An essential cookbook. Maybe Darina Allen’s 30 Years of Ballymaloe, which just won Best Irish Cookbook at the Bord Gais Energy Book of the Year awards. Or From Lynda’s Table by Lynda Booth of Dublin Cookery School, where I did the life-affirming one-month cookery course a few years back. Or Ross Lewis’s startling Chapter One: An Irish Food Story. Or whatever cookbook looked fun and interesting and solidly written. I wouldn’t mind which one.

Whichever.

I’m really very easy to please.

Honest.

The Chapter One cookbook, a soulful thing with very beautiful photography by Barry McCall

I was getting hungrier and more despondant by the minute. But then whaddayaknow, the phone rang, the order was taken, and by the next ad break a car was outside my place and a cheery Italian waitress stepping out of the passenger seat with my dinner in a box. And omigod was it worth holding out for. Chewy thin base smeared with sweet tomato goodness, topped with artichokes, olives, mushrooms, slivers of roast ham and a still-soft fried egg on top. A splash of olive oil I had fortuitously dropped some chopped chilli into, and I was made up. (Other contenders had featured the likes of spicy pancetta with spinach, olives and ricotta; or Italian sausage with mushrooms and oregano. Next time.)

Not long before, at the Irish Food Writers’ Guild belated Christmas party in Chapter One, the talk of the table for no short stint of time was the new pizzeria on North Strand. Don Mimi’s will be familiar to many Dublin Southsiders who may have enjoyed its previous incarnations in Dun Laoghaire and Deansgrange. Now it’s the lucky turn of Northsiders to enjoy the kind of pizza base that commands prime time foodie conversation in one of the country’s finest fine dining restaurants.

If you’re not lucky enough to have a Don Mimi or Caffe di Napoli within delivery distance, you have a couple of choices. One is to stock up on some excellent bases from the brilliant Artisan Pizza Company. I usually pick these up at the Dublin Food Co-op where Luca and Aisling from La Bella Pizella also transform them into several tasty vegetarian creations at The Co-op Cafe, such as the Timi with roast red peppers, artichoke and capers. These handy bases can be a great back-up for party fodder; just line up the topping choices and you can allocate various guests to take shifts at the oven. Think of it like a weather-friendly barbecue alternative.

Of course the other option is to make the bases yourself. This is easier than you might think, as most of the time spent doing it is spent waiting for the dough to do its own solo work. See my previous posting for a little pizza inspiration from Day Eighteen at Dublin Cookery School  (incidentally, they’ve a Breads & Pizza class coming up on which they’re offering two places for the price of one – and which I’d heartily recommend).

But perversely, for such a crowd-pleaser of a foodstuff, pizza can be surprisingly divisive. I once suggested bringing some of those brilliant pizza bases to my sister’s place for an easy supper. It turns out that cooking pizza at home for a family of six is something of a logistical nightmare, everyone having very different ideas on what constitutes the perfect topping combination. And life is complicated enough without instigating pizza wars willy nilly.

No, it seems that there really is a time for take-away pizzas. Thank god for that eh? And thank god for the good take-away pizzas out there, working hard to keep our lives Domino’s vacant and Four Star free.

The people were a dream too: the camaraderie of the other 16 students, each from a very different background and level of experience to the next. And the staff were a proper dream team to deal with, from the unflappable behind-the-scenes admin of Sally to the ever-cheerful cleaning staff to the daily kitchen staff (Gerry, Ann Marie and Lia) who measured ingredients with such precision and doled out support and third / fourth / fifth-time explanations with such endless patience. That’s before you get to the shooting stars of the show: the chefs who travelled across cities – even seas! – or abandoned new-born babes to share their considerable expertise (not to mention entertaining stories) in one-day visits.

And then the true headline acts: John Wyer, more familiar with Michelin-starred kitchens than cutting-edge cookery school demo kitchens (though you wouldn’t have known it, so natural a teacher was he) and the prima donna of Dublin Cookery School, the woman whose dream this in fact began as, and continues to be – the inimitable, unstoppable, uncompromising, never-resting, infectiously passionate Lynda Booth. Her dream began with placing a reclining mirror above her home kitchen counter and inviting paying guests to watch her cook up a storm (sometimes with the help of a then-very-young Neven Maguire who used to close his Blacklion restaurant kitchen on a Friday night to come cook in Lynda’s gaff for said paying audience).

And that dream of Lynda’s lives on three or four times a year, when the 3,000 square foot converted warehouse in which Dublin Cookery School is housed opens its doors to up to 24 students. Yes, there are lots of other courses and classes throughout the year to choose from at the school (over 60 of them) but the one-month is Lynda’s baby, her dream come true.

And for one month, it was mine too.

And what did I take from it? Well, apart from all that has been logged in the 20 postings of this blog, each dedicated to just one aspect of each precious day, I learnt so so much more. To fill in any gaps for those who have been following, here’s a list of some of those things:

How to cut up a bird, be it a quail, poussin, chicken or duck.

How to fillet various types of fish, not to mention skin them.

How to make several styles of meringue.

How to make old-style sauces such as bechamel, what to do with them in a modern kitchen, and what lighter alternatives contemporary cooks like to use.

Several methods for chopping an onion, speedily and safely.

How to make a soup in seconds or mix bread in minutes, what to marinade for hours and when to start a bread overnight.

How to roll pasta, pizza and sweet and short pastries.

How many pints of soup, cups of rice, loaves of bread, handfuls of leaves, slices of tomatoes, fillets of fish, legs of lamb or haunches of venison to allow per head when calculating catering quantities.

How to tell a chiffonade from a concasse, a reduction from a roux.

How to blanche, braise and baste, to carmelise, clarify and confit, to macerate and marinate, to poach and to pass, to scald and to skim.

Why to refresh, when to relax and just what to render.

We made chickpea cassoulets and shellfish casseroles, crepes and croquettes; we baked naan breads, grated fresh coconut, shredded green papaya and

We stir-fried cumin-scented beef, baked mozzerella-stuffed peppers and steamed cous cous to soak up tagine juices.

We tasted cheeses and fine wines, and took a virtual tour of the soleros of Jerez, the home of sherry in Southern Spain.

We learnt to cook with all our senses.

To listen to the sounds of the sizzling pots and pans telling you when they’re too hot or too cool.

To smell when one spice has released its aromas but another is still locked inside.

To recognise temperature by touch, distinguishing medium from rare.

To look at the edges of a fillet of fish browning in a pan, and watch the opaque colouring of its flesh creep towards cooked.

And to taste, taste, and taste again.

To trust our senses, and challenge our palates.

And to remember that there are very few rules which cannot be broken, and very few mistakes which cannot be rescued, and very little which cannot be learnt by trial and error.

To cook, and to keep on Cooking for Life.

Then there are those days filled with extraordinary moments to be treasured: the view at the ridge of a clamboured mountain, the slip of a ring on a finger perhaps, or the warmth and weight of a child when first held in your arms. January 2011 was a month of such moments, when you tap yourself on the shoulder to say, sorry to interrupt the fun but don’t forget to remember all this, cos this is some good shit happening here right now. And who knows when life will get this good again.

Others days are pregnant with an accumulation of all of the above: the thrill of that build-up and the high-definition perception of those willfully remembered moments, shot through with nostalgia for what is quickly becoming what was. You know the feeling: it’s the last day of a holiday, the day after the wedding, the last day of school or of college – or of a one-month cookery course which you wish could have been a two or a three or a four month cookery course.

Although in truth, a month has a perfect arc to it. You know in a month that every day is precious. It’s enough time to get to know each of the very motley crew of students, but not enough time for cliques to form. We had come a long way from the first morning when we sat silently reading our first day’s recipes – but familiarity had not been around long enough to be tinged with contempt or any of its insidious ilk. Our stamina had been tested but our energy levels had not yet been spent. Our expectations had been met, our skills honed, our enthusiasm captured and exploited and transformed into a lifelong passion.

All of this was in the air as we sat down to our last meal together as the class of Dublin Cookery School’s Cooking for Life course January 2011.

And what better to eat on the day after the night before than that most casually indulgent meal of them all – brunch – cooked together as one last communal activity.

We grated potatoes and fried them off in little rosti pans, regulating the heat to get the perfect colour, as had now become second nature. We whisked yolks with water over a bain marie, drizzled in melted butter and seasoned our now-Hollandaise sauce with lemon and cayenne pepper. We rinsed spinach and tossed the leaves into hot pans, covered to wilt and buttered to season. We discussed the various egg-poaching techniques presented to us over the course, brought our acidulated water to a gentle rolling simmer, whipped up a whirlpool into which the eggs were broken one by one and cooked till the white set before being plunged into cold water to stop the yolk following suit. We juiced oranges, percolated coffee, baked scones and opened jars of our favourite jam. We made our choices between smoked salmon and cured ham – a tough call – and then when ready to eat, we plunged our perfectly poached eggs back into the now boiling water just to heat them through. And then we took ourselves and our Hollandaise-crowned towers of glory into the adjoining dining room to savour our final feast.

There was more to the day: certificates handed out, and some fun prizes too (bottles of aged sherry vinegar for winning teams of our final surprise ‘it’s-not-a-competition’ challenge – upon which details I am sworn to secrecy) and exchanges of contact details by all. There was more food cooked, and eaten, and then it was time to say the first of our goodbyes as the group whittled down to those who were taking the long farewell to the local pub. Or pubs, as it transpired.

We must have looked like an unlikely bunch on our Blackrock pub crawl. A crane driver with a dream of volunteering to cook in a SVP kitchen. A gap year student with a penchant for sharpening knives and eating jellyfish and foraging for wild mushrooms. A health and safety graduate looking to shake up her second-generation family restaurant. A restaurant critic and food writer, an Australian ex-pat interior designer mother of two, and a B&B owner from one of Ireland’s most beautiful and remote peninsulas. All coming from very different places, all leaving Blackrock at the end of one unforgettable month sharing the same treasured memories.

Who knows when life will get this good again. And what a privilege to have experienced it ever getting that good. January will never be the same.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to suggest that nerves weren’t running high all day in anticipation of the big grande finale Restaurant Night towards which we had been building for the last four weeks of this extraordinary course.

It’s just that what Lynda, John and the rest of the team on Dublin Cookery School’s Cooking for Life course had promised us was that we would get a taster of how a professional kitchen works for a professional service. And it turns out that if a professional kitchen is being truly professional about their service, and have prepared their mise en place, and stepped up to their own exacting standards, and anticipated everything that needs thinking about – as well as taken a well-needed break before regrouping for kick-off – then the service itself can be a bit of a breeze.

It mightn’t make for great telly, but it certainly made for a great night. And I think our guests might have enjoyed it too – running, as it did, as follows:

1. Smoked mackerel and diced beetroot with horseradish cream.
2. Celeriac velouté with mushroom duxelle and truffled hazelnuts.
3. Pan-fried seabream and crispy squid with red and yellow pepper escabeche, tapenade and aoili.
4. Open lasagne of smoked haddock velouté with leeks and spinach.
5. Roasted poussin, confit legs, Bourguignon sauce and olive oil pomme purée.
6. Hot lemon soufflé with whipped cream.
7. Petit Four of chocolate silk cake with salted caramel ice-cream.

What do you reckon, does that read like a good night?

Actually, I can tell you from experience how good it all tasted because the night was meticulously choreographed to ensure that we got to cook and serve our tasting menu, and eat it too. Hours had been spent picking over the computations and permutations of not only who should prep what dish and with which cooking partner, but also which teams should leave their seats at our own dining table to cook off and plate up which course, and even which teams should serve it up. Each pair had their own element of the meal to be particularly proud of (I couldn’t resist pushing for people to try my fougasse bread, a twist on Rossa‘s rustic white recipe, moistened with olive oil and infused with herbes de Provence) and each team had their rhythm during the night, their time to bask in the heat of the kitchen, and their time to kick back, have a glass of fine wine and enjoy the fruits of the month’s labour.

The day had had its own rhythm too. Gathering bright-eyed in the morning, we were informed of what section each of us were on, and with whom. Then it was down to work. Breads were mixed and proved, pasta rolled and blanched, mirepoix sweated and veloutés simmered. Lemon curds were coaxed into being, and then rejected and started from scratch when decreed less than perfect. Salted caramel ice-cream was made, and tweaked, and retweaked again until we hit on just the right salt-sugar palate play. Mayonnaise was emulsified, seabream filleted, squid gutted and sliced. Wines were chilled, menus printed, flowers bought and given a long drink.

For several hours the kitchen was in full focus, each pair of cooks an individual cog spinning on their own axis to drive the machine forward, with John and Lynda leading the way and Gerry and Annmarie ensuring no-one was falling behind.

So organised was the whole affair that we had time for a sit-down lunch of gourmet open cheese toasties with a salad of avocado, pinenuts, cherry tomatoes and Parmesan croutons. (This was the one digression from the reality of a professional kitchen – everyone knows that chefs don’t eat properly, and certainly not sitting down, with their colleagues, chatting and laughing and savouring the meal.)

Late afternoon gave us an hour’s break from the building: some to get air, some to get pretty, some to hightail it to the wonderful 64 Wines in Glasthule where we knew staff would steer us well on choosing some special wines for each of the members of staff who had made the month so great.

Then it was back to the school to put the final touches to its transformation into a top-class restaurant. In the dining room, we set two long tables for seventeen (one for us, one for our guests), lined up cutlery and glasses, arranged tulips, placed menus, dimmed lights and lit candles. In the kitchen, some set up the sections for each dish, gathering the containers of chopped veg and herbs and any other mise en place we needed; others prepped the poussin which had finally arrived, or whipped the cream, or piled the bread on boards ready to be blasted in the oven before serving. And finally up front, we popped corks, put wine on ice and lined up polished glasses to transform the kitchen shop into our wine reception area.

By the time the guests were walking through what was now the service kitchen to the dining room, we had donned clean aprons, wiped down stations and put our mise en place in place. While Lynda clocked off kitchen duty to join the other guests, John was in high-beam head chef mode, overseeing each team as they brought the big day’s work to its final delicious end. Fish was flaked and veloutés frothed. Pans smoked and potato purées got well oiled. Egg whites were whisked and soufflés soared.

Our guests cooed on cue, and even we – grown accustomed to dining on the finest of food thanks to a month of daily three-course meals – were suitably impressed with our seven-course feast.

I’ve worked in many restaurants in my life, almost always front of house. When a service is going well there’s nothing like the buzz of it for me, and even in my job as a restaurant critic, I often long to be back on the floor. On our Dublin Cookery School Restaurant Night, as I served up yet another dish of exquisite looking food, and cleared off yet another empty plate, I was reminded of what a satisfaction it can be to facilitate such shared pleasure. But when you know how much work has gone into producing something on the plate – and you know it because you yourself put the work in – it makes those words sound so much the sweeter:

“Compliments to the chef.”

I was reminded of this special holiday on the third last day of our four-week course in Dublin Cookery School.

There was an air of spring about it, wafting in the open back door and mingling with the easy banter rippling through the group. The next day was the big one, when we would cook a seven-course tasting menu for ourselves and 18 invited guests at our big Restaurant Night bash. But today wasn’t about impressing guests. Today instead was about savouring some of the final hours of what had been a truly extraordinary experience for myself and the 16 other students on the course. Thursday’s feast would be a showcase of our skills. Today was about party food amongst friends.

For such a famously fast food, making your own pizza is something that has to be approached at a leisurely pace – to begin with at least. It only takes a few minutes to knead the 00 flour, yeast, salt, sugar, olive oil and warm water into a soft dough, but the real magic happens when you leave the dough alone for the next hour or two to do its own thing. (Find somewhere cosy for it to hang out: a warming oven, or hot press even.)

We used that time to knock together some delicious canapés which had been demonstrated the day before (and had been served up to us at intervals during our whistlestop wine tasting with sommelier Martina Delaney).

The trick to party food – with which you are aiming to please palates rather than feed hunger – is to cook the kinds of things you love to eat at any time of day, and to serve up in steady streams of bite-sized deliciousness. Each mouthful could be something as exotic as Atul Kochar’s recipe for okra bhaji with a honey yoghurt spice dip, or duck spring rolls with Neven Maguire’s chilli jam (both demoed by Lynda Booth) or as homely as scrambled eggs on toast transformed into celebratory fare with a slick of truffle oil (as demoed by John Wyer).

As our dough gently swelled and doubled in size in the proving ovens, we rolled cigars of black pudding; panéed balls of Parmesan-rich bechamel sauce for golden croquettes; grated fresh horseradish into creme fraiche with which to dress some smoked mackerel; and transformed slices of bread into squares of Croque Monsieur, of blue cheese crostini, of red onion and goat’s cheese bruschetta.

And then we cranked the ovens up as high as they could go, lined up our mise en place for our individual pizza creations, floured our countertops and got ready to roll.

Once your pizza dough is ready to rock, the fun can begin. Divide the dough into as many individual balls as you plan to make into individual pizzas (reckoning on 450g of flour for two to three 10″ pizzas, depending how thin you can get it). Keeping the reserved dough covered until use, flatten out each ball with a rolling pin, stretching with your fingers as you go and aiming for as thin as possible.

There’s a reason pizzerias take such pride in their pizza ovens: temperatures of over 500ºC. You’ll be hard-pressed to reach such heady heights in your home oven but it helps significantly if you invest in a pizza stone (which you should always preheat simultaneously with the oven itself to avoid cracking) onto which you can flick your masterpiece.

You can use a heavily floured breadboard as a pizza paddle, though it’s much more fun to get to play with the real deal and they’re cheap enough to pick up. Once your pizza is rolled and stretched to a suitably skinny state, rest it on the floured paddle, top with your favourite flavours and place it with a deft flick of the wrist directly onto the hot stone for about four or five minutes, keeping a close eye on it as you do.

It’s up to you what you put on your pizza. But Lynda was keen to remind us that less is so often more: better to showcase one or two flavours than to have all them scrapping for your attention. And remember that not every pizza asks for a slick of tomato sauce: Lynda made a humdinger that combined candied shallots with mozzerella and goat’s cheese, while John’s moment of glory came in the form of squares of pizza smeared with slow-roasted garlic with thyme and oregano, dressed with roast peppers, Parma ham, rocket leaves and shavings of Parmesan.

Because pizza is best eaten piping hot, and shared amongst friends, you should enjoy each creation as it comes out of the oven before assembling the next one. As befits one of the quintessential Italian ways of eating, it’s as much about the people with whom you’re sharing the food as it is about the food itself. And on Day Eighteen of this amazing month-long culinary odyssey, getting to share pizza with 16 new friends (not to mention the brilliant team of staff who had lead us on our journey of discovery) seemed to me the perfect way to almost end our pilgrimage.

I always had the vague idea that making fish stock was a cinch, but have to admit having never made one, blaming lack of large stock pot / deep-freezer / time / spare fish bones etc. Really, it was more a reluctance to fumble blindly into unknown territory, and the unspoken suspicion that it’d be more trouble than it was worth.

Speaking of worth, there is an initial outlay if you want to start making stocks. A good five litre stock pot might set you back anything from €45 to the guts of €200, depending on where you pick it up, what kind of brand you want to buy into, what kind of use and abuse it is designed to take, and whether you bother with a lid or not. (On the latter, many chefs don’t, preferring to wrap the top of the pot in cling film, allowing you to peer in whilst preventing any moisture escaping. Makes sense in a busy kitchen where there’s more important concerns than keeping track of the right lid for the right pot.)

But when you can pick up a pack of bouillon for a handful of coins at any supermarket, or a pouch of fish stock from the likes of Fallon & Byrne, you might wonder, why bother?

And indeed, some restaurants would agree with you. Most of the specialist companies supplying to restaurant kitchens will happily provide – at the right price – a highly reduced, high quality veal jus which will give a richness and depth to sauces that the home cook recognises as different to anything they can produce. Other establishments will make this jus themselves as a point of pride. Either way, it is precious stuff. Consider the energy – human and otherwise – that goes into the following:

• Roast the bones and drain the fat.
• Simmer with mirepoix (ie veg and herbs), skimming the top, for a good five hours.
• Cool and refrigerate for several hours.
• Skim the fat.
• Reduce down by about 70% for another couple of hours, with or without the addition of a bottle of red or a bottle of port or both.
• Pass through muslin.

Hey presto: your five litres of bone-flavoured water has been transformed into about three cups of intense jus.

Having invested all that energy, you’d want to be sure to use every last drop of that precious liquid. That’s where the deep freezer comes into play. Actually, so concentrated is this kind of jus that (a) you won’t have much left to freeze, and (b) a little will go a long way in terms of flavour, so an ice-cube or two will make its mark on a sauce.

Of course, not all stocks demand quite so much dedication. It’s true that a fish stock is a cinch: just feck whatever skins, bones and trimmings you have (leaving out the guts and head) into cold water with whatever mirepoix you fancy, whack it almost up to the boil, skim the scum and simmer for 20 minutes. It’s important to catch the scum as it rises and not to send it back down into the liquid by abandoning it to a wildly rolling boil, but other than that, easy peasy. And because you’re not reducing this stock significantly, you can freeze a good amount for future use.

Some stocks are the by-product of cooking certain cuts (the cooking broth from ham hocks for example); others can be made from what you might otherwise discard (lobster / prawn shells can be roasted and reduced down with various aromatics); others from what others have discarded (chat to your butcher about beef or lamb bones or chicken carcasses).

Once you get comfortable with the basics of stock-making, your horizons broaden and you can get creative. Small details like whether you sweat your mirepoix or not will  mark out your cooking as your own. You can play around with what aromatics you use: Matthew Albert‘s Thai chicken stock is based on the same process as any white chicken stock (a white stock being un-roasted bones, and a brown being roasted) but with Thai veg and herb trimmings used as the mirepoix.

But more than that: once you have the habit of stocking your freezer with well-made stock, you have the guts of many a fine meal ready to rock. On Day Fourteen of the course, we feasted on the fruits of the sea, buoyed up by a fish stock which had been transformed with roasted langoustine shells. From this came the baritone-deep flavours of a shellfish casserole which we topped with roast hake and black olive toast, but which would have stood alone at any mealtime. We also used that fish stock as the base for a lick-your-bowl lobster and tomato sauce, into which we placed pan-fried halibut garnished with a lobster tortellini, shaved fennel and basil oil. (Again, any of the latter components could have been pared back for a perfectly luxurious meal.)

Yes, you can get away with never fumbling into the territory of stock-making and still turn out many’s the fine dinner. But these are far from uncharted waters: most basic cookbooks will have stock advice to get you started. And it will open up whole new chapters in your own personal cookbook of tried and tested recipes with which to wow your friends and win Come Dine With Me. Think of the glory in that. Priceless.

Here’s the thing folks. If I thought that spending 9–5, Mon–Fri at cookery school and then coming home and blogging about it was all consuming, well that was before I threw a Restaurant Night with the rest of the students featuring a 7-course tasting menu for 35 people, and then went on the almighty razzletazzle with them the following night (an endurance-testing affair which included a stint in a nightclub in Blackrock – who knew?)

Something had to give, and I’m sorry to say it was the punctuality of delivery of my copy. Now normally a journalist just has one editor to send a grovelling apology to. This public grovelling is new to me. All I can say is I look forward to revisiting Dublin Cookery School very soon indeed via my notes from those last few days. I’ll let you know when I’m going there – you’d be welcome to come with me.

(Stop yawning down the back.)

Seriously, safety does matter (as our talk at the end of Week Three from Eileen Morgan of Food Safety Solutions reminded us). And there’s no surer way to remember a few rules of thumb on matters of kitchen safety than to lose a thumb or two. Of course, you might have your own method of jogging the memory. However you get them into your head, the following rules are worth remembering. There’s ten of them, one for every digit – so try holding on to all of them eh?

1. A knife is like a relationship. The best are made to last a lifetime, but the duller you allow it become, the more likely to lead to a nasty slip which may not be fatal but sure won’t be pretty for anyone to witness, never mind experience the fallout from. (See more on Day Seventeen for how best to keep ‘em keen. Knives, that is.)

2. Every chopping board likes a little security. This can be achieved by placing a damp J-cloth under said board, hence discouraging it from trying to slide off in one direction as you slice, dice, chop, crush, mince, cleaver or julienne your way towards some other direction – say, the nearest hospital, thumb in hand.

3. Metal handles that have been in ovens tend to get a little hot. As do those sticking out over naked flames. Sure it sounds obvious, but it’s really easy to forget unless you pay attention to what’s been where. And remember that a damp tea-towel will conduct heat in a way that you wouldn’t expect a dry one to, so pay attention to where that’s been too, and what it’s been up to. Murphy’s Law says that handle won’t begin to show its slow fury until you are halfway from oven to table – which could mean dealing with dinner ruined as well as a nasty burn. Double mare.

4. Never let raw meat get overly friendly with cooked meat. It’s only asking for trouble. Think of it like inviting toast into a freshly made bed, only with more serious consequences. (No matter how careful you are, there’s always a few crumbs/bacteria that escape and contaminate the pristine scene, and they multiply at a ferocious rate – doubling every 20 minutes in the case of bacteria.) Always store uncooked meat in the base of a fridge so it can’t drip onto cooked meat, and always wash hands, boards and knives after handling raw meat.

5. Communication is crucial in a multi-user kitchen. This goes for everything, from colour-coding which boards are for what (red for raw meat, blue for fish, green for veg etc) to shouting the word ‘backs!’* at any given opportunity, but particularly when moving a hot casserole through a crowded kitchen with a damp tea towel. Oh and never run in a kitchen. And never with a knife in hand. And if you do, make sure it’s pointed down at the floor and not towards your co-worker, no matter how much you hate that they won’t stop whistling that song.

*As in, ‘watch your…’

6. Remember that high-risk meats need to be cooked to above 75º to kill all potential bacteria. Poultry who have had their insides pulled outside before being roasted whole can be considered high risk. A hunk of red meat such as beef or lamb which has had all its outer bits seared is low risk. There is some controversy over whether every burger should be served cooked through, but certainly the greater surface area of mince means more opportunity for bacteria to be lurking. If you’re eating it yourself in the full of your health, you may choose to take your chances. If you’re cooking for your pregnant sister, her frail father in law, and all his treasured grandchildren, best not to.

7. Bacteria are most comfortable between 5ºC and 63ºC. If you want to make them feel right at home, that’s the zone. Below 5ºC they get, well, chilled and don’t bother with that reproducing lark. They not mad on over 63ºC either, knowing they’re headed for THE END. If you’re keeping food warm, keep it over 63ºC warm. And if you want to be super safe reheating food, check that the core temperature is 75ºC or over (a meat probe will help in this endeavour).

8. Only reheat or freeze food once. And remember that freezing is strictly defined as below -18ºC. And that it is not a license to forget about said food for years, and nor is the microwave a time travel machine in which you can zap Spring 2008′s frozen lamb shoulder back to the future. Pay attention to the guidelines inside most freezers. And only use your microwave to defrost small items; better done in the fridge.

9. Never stare into a mortar and pestle full of chillies being pounded. The oils contain the heat, and particles can be airborne into those rather sensitive not to mention useful instruments that are your eyes. We had lengthy discussions in class with Matthew Albert from London’s Nahm – who has pounded a few chillies in his time – about the merits of Heston Blumenthal-style goggles, but he prefers to just keep the eye-drops handy.

10. Always use a mandolin with the finger guard on. No, not the lute-like instrument. The mean-machine super-fast slicer. Works wonders on fennel, potatoes, index fingers and the likes. Also, take care when working with caramel which can produce particularly nasty burns. And pay attention when moving bain maries of boiling water in and out of ovens. It’s probably best to fill up once installed. (Okay, that last rule of thumb was three in one, but I had run out of fingers, and toes seemed a stretch too far from thumbs.)

And should you – lord forbid – forget some of these rules of thumbs, I guess just try and remember that some people find scars really attractive. And that thumbs are probably over-rated.

No, he didn’t want to know could I floor a ‘roo from 20 feet with a well-aimed cleaver. Nor could I skin one if he caught it on the hop.

What he wanted to know was: do you know how to treat a knife properly, avoiding any unnecessary blunting of its carefully filed edge? Activities that might cause such premature dulling of blade include (a) scraping matter such as chopped onion off the board with the sharp side rather than back side of said blade; (b) throwing the knives into the wash-up bowl to have a little illicit party together under the suds; likewise in cutlery drawers, particularly within moving 4WD vehicles; and (c) forgetting to sharpen with a steel on a regular basis.

The above list is not exhaustive. There are many ways to abuse a knife. Bad sharpening habits can be as bad as irregular sharpening habits.

And this outback Aussie driver-cum-cook was not the only one to be precious about his knives. Chefs know that the right knife can be for life – if you mean to keep it keen. Some brands, such as Wusthof (favoured at Dublin Cookery School), have a reputation for longevity and ease of sharpening. Others, such as the ceramic knives available for around €40 a pop from IKEA (thanks for the tip Tom!) are super sharp and will never need sharpening – though sadly, ‘never’ can be a short timespan for a knife that shatters if dropped on the floor.

To keep your knives sharp, invest in a steel – a long, rounded metal instrument which you can run either side of the knife blade along several times every time you go to use it. A ‘diamond steel’ is a premium version, its edges reinforced with diamond particles to refine the edge even further.

Sometimes however, through neglect or abuse of one kind or another, your knife may need some extra special attention.

There are people in this world for whom this is a call to heaven – amateur-enthusiast, knife-sharpening anoraks for whom I would highly recommend a hot cup of cocoa and a long read of the following link on eGullet: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/26036-knife-maintenance-and-sharpening. For the rest of us, this lengthy diatribe on all things blade-related is worth a brief browse – particularly the section about 5,000 words (or halfway) in, containing a step-by-step guide to sharpening technique.

(This is preceded by an interesting section on choosing between coarse or polished edges, depending on how you’re planning to use your knife most. It’s certainly worth thinking about having different knives for different jobs. A short sharp utility knife might have a highly polished edge so that it can press through, say, the fibres of an apple peel, pushing them to either side as it goes. A carving knife wants to sever rather than push through the fibres of, say, a hunk of roast meat or a soft, juicy tomato. And a flexible filleting knife is handy for such duties as following the line of a chicken breast against the curve of it ribcage, as we discovered today in class when filleting an 8oz breast to stuff with leek and tarragon and roast until tender. Different jobs, different knives, and different edges.)

If you think life’s too short to read a 10,000 word essay on sharpening your knives, I have two more words for you: sharpening stones. That’s what your knife will need when you’ve really let it go too far for the steel to make an impact. The crude advice is to oil it up, and sharpen up by running the edge of the blade at an angle of about 22º along the stone, applying light pressure as you go.

Of course, there’s far more to it than that, which is why there are professionals for the job. One such fella can be seen cycling around Dublin city, tools in tow, from back door to restaurant back door where he will apply his expert angle to all dulled blades within the building. The problem is, you’re unlikely to come across such a fella in the outback of North Western Australia, which is why my driver-cum-cook of a colleague was so uptight about me treating his knives right.

And quite right he was too. A dull knife needs more pressure to cut whatever it’s cutting, making slippage more likely. And passing flying-doctors are nearly as rare in the outback as cycling knife-sharpeners.