Chef stands me in front of a big bowl of fresh, green French beans, haricots verts, a plastic cutting board and a knife.”You can start with these,” he says before moving off to start doing something serious to the lumps of meat that have just arrived.Now, I’m not daft. I’m not stupid. I’ve done French beans before, lots of times in fact. Since I was a kid on my granny’s knee in fact. Ha! You just sort of break off the tops and tails between your thumb and forefinger, trying to pull the string that sometimes peels down the side as you do so. Right?But. But. There was the cutting board and the knife next to the beans, so obviously in proper restaurants one cuts the ends off beans on a cutting board. I mean, the one thing I’d learned since becoming a ‘professional’ chef was that everything I thought I already knew about cooking was wrong. So I set to with the knife and board.At first I cut the beans one at a time but then – having thought about this – I realised that I could be more chef-like and cut several at once. Saving time, doing things quickly and efficiently is the other thing I’d learned since becoming a ‘professional’ chef two days ago.I was just lining up my second lot of half a dozen beans when Chef passed casually behind me. He was very good at wandering by apparently casually, as if on his way somewhere else and not at all checking up on my stupidities.“First,” he says, “we don’t use a knife to top and tail beans here – you do it with your thumb and forefinger, like this.” He demonstrated, showing me the bean top-and-tailing method I’d been taught by my grandmother 40 years ago in between her egg-sucking lessons.“Well yes, obviously,” I blurted. “That’s how I’ve always done them but you gave me the board and the knife so I thought I was supposed to use them instead.”“And secondly,” he continued oblivious to my blurtings, “that is not a cutting board. That is a sheet of frozen puff pastry I’m going to use to make the millefeuilles for dessert with when it’s defrosted.” Ah. Millefeuilles of green beans, anyone? Continue reading →