Sunday Miscellany - The Jane Austen Cookery School of Decadence Debauchery and Hemorrhage ! by Cathal .

It’s been a while since I’ve contributed to RB and it’s now time to get back on to the keyboard saddle after weeks of illness, work, dithering about, entertaining people that I owed dinner too, hospital visits, more bloody illness and yet more dithering and flutin about scratchin my ass and not getting into first gear on anything. My usual start to the new year!

But at the start of each new year one of the things I like to do without fail is to try and kick it off by doing something new, with somebody different. (sounds slightly sexual or swingerish doesn’t it? But don’t be silly, I’d never think like that :)
This time we decided to go and do something relaxing after the weeks of stress we had just had, so a ‘cookery school’ weekend was chosen. But of course due to the fact that the Missus was in charge of this one, it wasn’t the greasy bowl and floured stained groin of a weekend I had imagined, oh no, this turned out to be what I’m now calling the -

The Jane Austen Cookery School of Decadence Debauchery and Hemorrhage!

So where do I begin!
I didn’t know much about this hotel and cookery school other than it was owned and run by a celebrity chef and it was miles away from the kids. Which was good enough for me, so I didn’t even think of asking the price. Until, that is, we drove in the gate. And then by jaysis did I ask how much this was going to cost us! In fact I think I may have screamed the question, not asked.

There was silence in the car of course, other than the crunch of gravel as we drove up the half mile of tree lined and orchard walled driveway and received a wave from a man fixing one of the ornate lights that dripped over the road. Then to make my it worse we turned into a carriage circle of finely chipped stone and cobble, and parked beneath the creeping climbers and sashed windows of a granite Georgian mansion. I was expecting the servants to line themselves up in front of the door and the Irish wolfhound to bound across the grass with a riding boot in it’s mouth and Lady Chatterly’s gardener chasing him! This was straight from a Jane Austen novel, and it was beautiful, and it just made me want to sit on the grass and write and write and to hell with the cost.

Being upgraded to a ‘suite’ free of charge is always going to get a couple horny I think, or maybe that’s just us…either way the sight of this suite of rooms just transported me back in time, (back to the horny comment later) and I felt I was Darcy, (its my imagination, so I can be who I like ok :).
After entering the room a large tiled hall welcomed us, as did a huge porcelain chamber pot beneath an ornate mirror, and my writing mind conjured up too many images and started its unravelling into a debaucherous humour that was too last the entire weekend.
Our own private dining room was adorned with crochet cloths and shined walnut tables. Stacks of old leather bound books stood in piles in the corner and antique chairs with straw and velvet were dotted around into shafts of sunlight.
The bedroom was just as it should be. With a lumpy duck down mattress acting as a throne to the layers of goose feather pillows and heavy embroidered eiderdown. Free stranding oak wardrobes nestled between floor to ceiling curtains of heaviness and silk and eight sash windows that overlooked 300 acres of manicured estate were like doors to the Olde England world we have read so much about.
The Missus lifted open one of the sash windows and leaned out, and I’m sorry ladies but I couldn’t help myself. I pictured her in a maids outfit and that was the end of that, my imagination took hold and I shouldn’t say any more! But it didn’t take long and we weren’t late for dinner :).

So, after a night of Michelin star food, champagne, mint tea from silver pots, bath salts, browsing the books about sailing to Jamaica for spices, the engineering of canals, a guide for Butlers and Below Stairs staff, the smells, the silence, the views, and many other decadent experiences, we snuggled with the duck and the geese and hid the chamber pot out of view, just in case I went on a night time walkabout, known to happen after too much imbibing.

The Cookery School was fantastic, and its difficult to decide on what was best, the people, the food, the teaching or the learning. I think as somebody who likes to write I could probably wax lyrical about the food and the cooking all day, but when I looked at my cookery notes after returning home, I realized that the margins were full of things that the other eight people on the course had said (sprinkled with expletives like ‘Bollox to that’ written beside how to make the best fish stock).
It was just my kind of crowd, eclectic and interesting, ranging from two women who were very very wealthy and asked questions about cooking on their AGA’s (expensive cooking ranges) which they found difficult to use for dinner parties of thirty, to a farmer at the end of the table who told us his grandmother could tell how long bread would take to cook by the direction of the wind.
You see some country folk cook on ranges that burn coal or turf, (not AGA’s though, they’re for Dublin elites :)), and the wind would effect the airflow in the flue and therefore the fire in the oven)
The two wealthy ladies kind of got the hump with that farmer put down but he was oblivious to the fact he’d insulted their AGA skills ! But he told me to freeze soup in milk cartons and to use natural yoghurt and lemon as a substitute for Buttermilk, he was just a mine of information that made me laugh all day (by the way Irish farmers are trying to make Kerrygold butter more white, cos America won’t buy it yellow, just so you know this important piece of news).

There was the young chef who entertained us with her tales of cooking in the remote mines of Australia. The young couple who said nothing for hours and then wouldn’t shut up once they realized we were blaggers too and didn’t do dinner parties for their husbands ‘staff’. Then there was the dapper chap who was dressed to kill from start to finish but was learning to cook and the request of his girlfriend. And finally a local lady who had watched the ‘big house’ for years but had never gone inside. I loved her, she was great.

We cooked all day and laughed at the efforts, forgot each others names and made them up as we went along, shared tips and told stories. And like every group activity I’ve ever been on with new people, we had grown to like those we incorrectly judged at the start, we had realized that we were all equals and were susceptible to smiles, and we knew that such moments were to be savoured and stored away to be remembered.
And as our weekend finished we all looked at our watches and wondered where the time had gone and why fun time that’s shared, seems to speed up the clock.

As we drove home, with a smile on our faces, the moments from our trip to the newly christened – ‘Jane Austen Cookery School of Decadence Debauchery and Haemmorage’, played on our minds.
We wondered why somebody would bother to make their own profiteroles and that regardless of our hardening arteries, it was now time to eat real butter again.
I also knew then what the Missus was going to get for her birthday

But what was the Hemorrhage element I hear you ask? Well lets just say that was the flow of money that came out of the wallet as we paid our Ms Austen for the lovely experience of having a weekend in one of her novels. But I now want to write more than ever.

By the way, anybody know where I can get an genuine maids outfit ? :) It doesn’t matter if its a bit on the small side :)

Have a great weekend folks.