A day spent at River Cottage sees Karen Bate struggling to reach culinary perfection

I WAS lucky enough to spend a day on a cookery course taught by head chef Gelf Alderson at River Cottage on Thursday.

I am a cookery fail. My ordeal began first thing in the morning when a well-groomed middle-aged woman asked me if I had watched Masterchef the previous evening. About ten other wannabe-chefs within earshot proceeded to hold forth about the various techniques that were apparently evident in the programme. All I heard was blah, blah, blah...

I hadn't watched it because I was sleeping in a yurt and had spent three hours collecting wood to light the Kelly kettle on a barbecue. I spent the next two hours narrowly missing third degree burns each time I tried to pour water over my tea bag. Even if I hadn't have been glamping in a thicket, I wouldn't have watched it because I never have.

Gelf demonstrated how to cook bread. I was so mesmerised by his sleight of hand that as soon as I ventured back to my work station I had forgotten what I was supposed to do.

I measured my water to 300 fl oz and stirred it into the flour.

I looked at the lake that was in my bowl and realised that within three minutes of being in the kitchen, something had already gone horribly wrong.

I tried to hide the contents of my bowl from Gelf, who was adding yeast to everybody else's perfect dough mixture.

He looked at me squarely in the eye. "I think you need more flour in there, don't you?"

"Yyyeeees," I stammered. I'm pretty sure I noticed him smirk as he glided off to get some.

"I think you put 300 grams in there instead of ounces, didn't you?"

I must have done, so I just lowered my eyes in shame.

As the dough was rising we each filleted fish. I was given a beautiful plump plaice, to be honest, mine was probably the biggest in the group. But after I had whittled it down to the size of a sprat, it was probably the smallest. Gutted.

Again, I tried to hide my efforts from Gelf, he must have seen though, but he said nothing.

We made panacotta, but that disaster didn't reveal itself for several hours. As we ate our lunch in the beautiful grounds of the famous hollow in Devon, I noticed that I was covered in dough. Thick, gloopy bread mixture was in my hair, down my arms and my apron was caked in it. It had even found its way onto my coat and bag, which hadn't even been in the kitchen.

I noticed that everyone else was completely clean. Things sort of went bad to worse.

I burnt my top rump beef casserole, my brandy snaps resembled various musical instruments including an oboe and a guitar - everyone else's were perfectly formed, neat and round creations of course - and then I couldn't get my panacotta out from their tiny tins.

When Gelf approached my oven, I stood in front of it, and in the shape of a star fish, shrieked: "Step away from the oven, do not approach, do not come near."

He laughed and looked at the orchestra that was the brandy snaps. "It's not about the look, it's about the taste," he laughed kindly.

I took that comment back to the yurt with me that night as I chipped a tooth on my loaf of bread. Epic fail.

Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use. The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention. If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here

Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use. The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention. If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here