Curry Cooking Course

As part of my decision to try and take some opportunities to learn some new skills before I go I went on a Curry Cooking Course at a restaurant in Manchester this weekend. I went with my mate Kirsty who introduced me to the fantastic Mancunian tradition which is Rice and Three. He is a curry monster just like I am.

Ready for the course to start

Upon arriving we were sat down and given some traditional Chai Massala while we waited for the course to start. This was surprisingly lovely and consisted of boiling milk and steeping tea leaves in the milk (normally loose leaf, but they admitted to using tea bags for consistency reasons) and then adding a couple of other ingredients which I am trying to remember as I type this.

Starting the Rogan Josh

They split us into two groups with one learning the two starter dishes and the other going into the kitchen with the head chef to learn the two mains. I was in the group which went into the kitchen first to see how to cook Lamb Rogan Josh, Chicken Jalfrezi and Pilau Rice. We were not actually each going to get a chance to cook at a station and prepare our own meals (probably due to space limitations) rather the head chef was preparing the dishes on one of the big gas hob stations but while allowing us to get involved stirring and mixing and adding the ingredients.

Stirring the Rogan Josh

Both the mains started with a similar base, where a load of vegetable oil was poured into the bottom of the pan and then, when it was really hot, onions and garlic were added and stirred, until browned. What was noticeable, and probably the first thing I learned, was the sheer amount of garlic that was added, and also the high temperature at which the oil was heated; this meant that the garlic disintegrated during the stirring, and the onion browned off really evenly. The smells were incredible.

The chef was cooking his own dishes and there was no measuring device in sight as he just took a spoon of this, and two of that, while building up a flavoursome and colourful sauce. The chef started another big pan with a load of water in it, and added a couple of other spices to the boiling water then put the lamb in it to boil off for 20 minutes or so. He also put a substantial amount of ghee into a pan and heated it up until fully melted, then added a few other ingredients and then poured a load of water in. This was for the rice.

The Chicken Jalfrezi

It probably took an hour but it felt like a couple of minutes and he had pulled the Jalfrezi off the heat and we were getting our first taste. It was amazing! He had added a large amount of rice to the water which was boiling hard, and then reduced the heat under the pan while putting the lid on with weights piled on top.

One other little tip I did spot was when he added the egg white to the Jalfrezi he did not stir at all, allowing the colour of the eggs to distribute itself through the sauce as it wished. This is a small tip but explains the interesting striations I have seen when eating Jalfrezi before.

The Rogan Josh was ready next and I must say it is possibly the nicest curry I have tasted; I am normally a Jalfrezi man but I reckon I may introduce this as a bit of variety next time I am out for a proper Indian meal. So many flavours, so much subtlety, and a flavour which lasted long after the mouthful had been swallowed.

This is the rice

The last thing to be served to us was the rice and this also blew my mind; it was so tasty and so fluffy and delicate. Amazing. I will be buying ghee and using it from now on to make my rice!

So with the mains observed we moved onto the starters and here we were hands on and actually preparing the dishes ourselves. We were to make Chicken Tikas and Lamb Chops which were to be BBQd over coals and flames.

My Chicken Tikas

The main part of this was preparing the marinade and then coating the meat and putting on a metal spike in a kebab style arrangement. It was great fun getting our hands coated in oil and spices and then learning how to best arrange the meat on the spike.

Kirsty very proud of his kebab

Each marinade was very similar involving either a teaspoon or a table spoon of ingredient and with some picked particularly for flavour and some for colour, once again the colours and smells of Indian cooking brought a smile to our faces.

Cooking the starters over flame

Once again we weren't actually involved in cooking the dishes, probably for insurance purposes as the flame grilling station was very hot and probably dangerous for all of us to crowd around trying to turn our own spikes however as they were finished the chef handed them out so we got to eat them fresh and really hot off the cooker. I have rarely tasted chicken as tasty and juicy as those Tikas, and the Lamb was beautiful both juicy and crispy from the flames. Wow.

I got a pot of each main, and a pot with a couple of the starters in, to take home with me and I will be enjoying them today (as you read this) at work.

I am deliberately not revealing the ingredients as if you want to learn what I did, you should go to Zouk in Manchester and get on one of their excellent courses.

Plastering Course Weekend Two

This weekend was the second part of the four day Beginners Plastering Course.

The finish on my first attempt

After having such a great time last weekend and feeling really confident and happy that this was something which I can definitely do I approached this weekend with some trepidation.  Beginners luck could easily explain the results the previous weekend and also the speed and skill required would be increasing as the weekend went on.

If you remember we had skimmed the ceiling and half the big wall, after having spent the first day getting used to the environment and each other and just putting plasterboard onto a framework.

My applied plaster

This weekend our task was to finish the big wall (joining this to the previously skimmed section), skim around the window (including the reveal), fill the hole we cut out for a plug socket, and then on the Sunday do an entire reskim of the whole plastered area: big wall, window wall and ceiling.

But more of that later.

His mrs washed them!

Saturday morning arrived with a groan as the alarm went off at my usual midweek time but the motivation of "doing this for Bulgaria" helped me out of bed, into the kitchen and towards my first brew of the day. When I arrived (with my overalls still dirty) there was much amusement as my mate's wife had got hole of his and he was clean again.

Such is the humour of boys and workmen.

With much less ceremony than last week we were set to to mix up a load of plaster and on with plastering the wall around the window. While this was being mixed we each went round with a scraper and took the blobs and lumps of plaster dripped from the ceiling onto the wall off.

This week we were allowed to use the slightly nicer trowel however, as I stood on my step-up and took my trowel in hand loaded with plaster I suddenly realised that I had forgotten how to hold the thing! It took two or three attempts and then suddenly it all fell back into place and the plaster started going onto the wall nicely again.

First coat, troweled up, flattened

First application, troweling up, second coat the troweling up again and flatten twice; plastering is a skill which depends upon speed of application and then being ready for when the next stages should be started. Just as it goes tacky is when you start troweling up. Flattening is slightly less time-dependent but you do NOT want to try it when the plaster has gone off too far or you will start pulling the plaster rather than smoothing it and then will have a large amount of sanding to do (which kind of defeats the object of plastering).

First around the window

When the window wall was done I went on to plastering the reveal around the window. This was rather a fun challenge as the space was very limited and the plasterboard was actually quite bowed and therefore I had to pack the curve to ensure a flat application. I actually learned a LOT from this very small step in terms of how to build up plaster into a dip and how to press it down with the correct force to ensure it is flat.

The tiling course work and Len removing it

While we were doing the plastering the tutors were going around knocking down the other walls, ripping tiles off, and generally tidying and clearing so the next course would have a space to start learning plastering. It was a sad sight to see such excellent tiling as this come smashing off the walls.

Soaked the join

After lunch we had to plaster the rest of the large wall which included joining to the half we plastered last weekend. The technique here is simple; you must wet the old plaster thoroughly and then smooth the new plaster across onto the wet area really firmly. Once you have a smooth finish you can then scrape the overlapping new plaster off to ensure a smooth join.

The large wall all plastered

The rest of the wall went on nicely and all of our techniques were now starting to come together and the results we were achieving now were making all of us feel a little better. I was still applying my first coat too thinly however my trowel angle for troweling off and flattening was much better.

The end of the day was us attempting to fill in the hole from the plug socket and learning about dot and dab which is a technique for sticking plasterboard to a wall to allow you to then easily plaster over a large area without having to render the wall.

Filling the hole ended up being a real pain - you measure a section of plasterboard slightly narrower, and slightly taller, than the gap and the push a nail through. You then load it up with plasterboard concrete and push it through the hole, while holding onto the nail. You then carefully push the nail through and hopefully the block will not fall out. This didn't quite work the first time but the second I loaded loads of the concrete stuff onto the board and held it for ages and it stayed.

So to home and much sadness watching the All Blacks beat England at rugby. Oh well.

Glue to be put on the old plaster

The next morning was even tougher to drag myself out of bed for... plastering is very physical and I was starting to ache already. Not only that, but Sunday was the day when we were doing a full reskim of the ceiling and every wall - something which had taken all of the previous two days of plastering. The thing with this is plaster goes off very much quicker when it is skimmed over old plaster and so we would have to work much faster and more efficiently than we had all through the previous days of working.

Applying the glue with the roller

The trick to plastering over old plaster is to provide a non-porous surface over the old plaster; we did this with a 3-1 mix of PVA glue and water. This was applied with a roller and then the new plaster went on a bit easier; not that it didn't go off much quicker, but we had time at least to put a load on before troweling up.

First reskim coat

First the roof and by half way through I thought my arm was going to fall off. It was a case of mind over matter and just keep lifting and spreading and trying to get as good coverage as I possibly could while moving fast as it dried so quickly (as we were warned it would). By the time the first load was up I had to go straight to the beginning and trowel it off. This in comparison with about a five minute wait for the plastering onto fresh plasterboard. A minor victory on my second coat as I managed to put too much plaster on the ceiling where I had always til this point been too stingy with my application. This was solved by a heavy handed troweling off and the spare plaster went onto someone else's ceiling who had run out.

Roof and end all done

After the first break we went onto the window wall using the same technique and then after lunch we did the entirety of the large wall which was a REALLY big challenge.

... and the big wall

I ran out of plaster and so had to start troweling off before I had finished the wall, as the applied plaster was going off so quickly. Fortunately Len, our excellent tutor, was hard at work making more mixes so we weren't short of plaster for long.

All in all this course has been excellent - I feel so much more comfortable to pick up a trowel and get involved in helping with the plastering in Bulgaria however I think I'll have to build myself some practice walls in my storage unit and keep my hand in as it is shocking how quickly you forget the techniques and how to hold the trowel etc.

Len the tutor

One other thing to say; I had a really good chat through the course with Len who has renovated a number of houses in france and was very interested in my plans for the school. Fingers crossed we'll stay in touch and he can come out and see what I am doing.

I got SOME on the walls

Cheers Len.

Too late for the Bees

The other day I wrote a blog where I was deciding which courses I thought I should do before I go over to Bulgaria. Some people have said I am thinking too hard about this process and should just take a step back and wait for things to happen. This may be correct in a few places (for example, I was looking at the price of a second hand mini digger on cars.bg the other day, as I have LOTS of digging needed on my land and having to hire one in every time I need to terrace or whatever seemed a waste. Worrying about this now, however, is premature.) but I have found one situation where I have missed the boat.

I want one of these

I spoke to a lady today about bee keeping courses (thank you Tracey for the contact) and the last course this year is this weekend, with the next ones starting, you guessed it, towards the end of March.

I should have had these thoughts, and booked myself onto a course, about two or three months ago apparently.

A bee

She has kindly said that if I want to go to their hives and observe their winter maintenance (which would definitely be interesting to me) then I can possibly do this. I will not be getting any bee keeping training before I leave however.

I have had a bit more luck with booking a plastering course and I am going to be doing this over two weekends later in the year. One of my work colleagues was interested in doing it also so we are both going to do the course together.

This will be me, oh yes!

Four days of training will not make me an expert by any means, of this I am well aware. What I am hoping for is to have confidence to pick up the tools and give it a go, at first surely helping my workmen while they are there, but hopefully building up to a stage where I am able to give it a go during the summer when I am on my own for the renovation.

I have not yet done any research into the other potential courses and tomorrow I fly to Bulgaria again for the weeks worth of building to make the roof safe, and get water and electric installed. When I get back I will probably look into the pig husbandry courses at least, and get the trailer course booked too.

My updates may become sporadic (especially after the mistakes in auto posting last time) over the next few days but I will try and do a blog a day diary probably in the evenings, rather than the mornings.

Cheers for reading.

Training myself; course thoughts

Part of the the excitement and thrill of this whole adventure is the range of tasks which I am going to take on which I have never tried before. Setting myself challenges like this is something I have done my whole life so far; I am a self taught guitarist and music producer (and have a profitable recording studio to show for this), a self taught software developer (earnings from which funded the studio, and are allowing me to expedite my retirement as described in this blog) and I have started the process of learning about growing things.

Learning is Fun

Being self taught does not mean, however, that you ignore all advice or even that you isolate yourself. It can be very useful indeed to get a helping hand when you are getting started and I would never say that I had no mentors for my music or my software.

A fair number of my regular readers have commented that I should look into some courses before I leave to get this grounding in subjects which I have zero experience in. I thought I would put a brief blog post together summarising these suggestions and my thoughts on this.

One course which I am pretty sure I am going to have to do is the trailer towing course. As I passed my driving test after 1997 I do not have the correct codes on my license to allow me to tow a trailer. Not many people know about this change in the law but it is sadly true. I have found some suppliers local to me who do a weekend of training and then provide the test. It is about £500 with the training course and test cost. I'd rather spend this and get the additional codes than risk losing the trailer on the journey.

The first course which I considered was for plastering; the walls in the school are expansive to say the least; it would be good if, during the non-building seasons (summer and winter), I could get ahead and do plastering of rooms I'm living in. There are courses available in the north west and this one looks like the best. I am very tempted to book onto one over this winter. I think having some confidence with plastering will be one of the most important building skills I can have.

Me learning Brick Laying with Phil

Another course someone suggested to me is Bricklaying. I am not so sure about this as I have some experience with brick laying, having had a friend teach me and my business partner when we first started work on the studio. This was a long time ago and I didn't do that much, but the principals are in my head and I'm sure I will be able to do it at a pinch. I don't think using one of my now becoming limited weekends for a bricklaying course is a good use of time.

Finally, for the construction style courses, it has been suggested I look into a welding course. There is a fair amount of merit for this suggestion as I have not a clue about anything to do with welding however I also am not sure what I would need to know it for over there? My thoughts on this are that if I find I need to know welding I can find a course over in Bulgaria and learn while I am there.

I am quite confident with animals, as my parents will tell you I have always been able to deal with animals, however there are two courses which could be useful.

First of all a bee keeping course is an option. I am really keen on keeping bees, they are amazing creatures, are at risk at the moment from the monumental evil which is Monsanto and other GM companies, and they work really hard for a homesteader by pollinating flowers and helping plants to fruit. If you keep honey bees then you get the added benefit of, well, honey. And what would be nicer than to be able to source your own honey in your back garden. I am exceptionally tempted to try and find a bee keeping course.

Bee keeping - fetching outfits huh

I have also been recommended to look for a Pig Husbandry course. I am feeling quite close to decided that I will be keeping pigs early in my stay and I have been told by people with experience that they are not as simple as some other animals. I think I need to spend some time this upcoming visit exploring the village and seeing if I can talk to any locals who may already keep pigs; if there is some expertise in my village then that would make taking this course less important.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of courses which could prove useful (for example if I wasn't planning on going next March I may well have booked myself onto this: http://www.panyaproject.org/permaculture-in-practice-course-october-20-november-2-2013/) and if you think I have missed something then please comment below.