Day Four, naturally

I’ve sud­den­ly real­ized: I have not described to you any­thing about Totleigh Bar­ton itself! That must be rec­ti­fied, because the atmos­phere was real­ly inex­tri­ca­ble from the expe­ri­ence. No one can ever tell me that one can learn any­thing any­where: well, maybe so, but one learns bet­ter in beau­ti­ful, his­toric places. That’s just the truth.

Totleigh Bar­ton is, as all the lit­er­a­ture told me solemn­ly, a “pre-Domes­day thatched manor house.” I ingest­ed this infor­ma­tion with­out any real idea what that meant. Thatch, I under­stood, but pre-Domes­day sig­ni­fied noth­ing, igno­rant Amer­i­can that I am. So I’ll tell you: it’s to do with a book, as most good things are, I find. The Domes­day book was com­mis­sioned by William the Con­quer­er in 1086 as the most com­pre­hen­sive land sur­vey in the world. A con­tem­po­rary observ­er of the com­pi­la­tion remarked “there was no sin­gle hide nor a yard of land, nor indeed one ox nor one cow nor one pig which was left out.” Pret­ty impres­sive, that.

But for our pur­pos­es, I have to aver that the house we stayed in, while very very old, is cer­tain­ly not a medieval manor house. The impor­tant thing is that there has been a house, on that spot, since before the Domes­day book was com­piled. Pre­sum­ably who­ev­er lived there in 1086 is includ­ed in the book! I don’t know any more than that. But Totleigh Bar­ton itself must be sev­er­al hun­dred years old. The floors were made of GRAN­ITE. Can you imag­ine? A glass dropped on the kitchen floor sent shat­tered shards into the adja­cent coun­ties, I am quite cer­tain. The ceil­ing beams in the kitchen were so low that I am con­vinced Edward in par­tic­u­lar lost a fair num­ber of IQ points bump­ing relent­less­ly into them, poor man. We were an unusu­al­ly tall bunch of food writ­ers, it would seem, so care was taken.

Can I describe to you the com­plete unsuit­abil­i­ty of the kitchen as a room for prepar­ing food? I have to remem­ber that food writ­ing is but one top­ic cov­ered at Totleigh Bar­ton and pre­sum­ably the rock­et sci­en­tists who fol­lowed or pre­ced­ed us did not care one whit that the only tru­ly prac­ti­cal thing the kitchen was capa­ble of emit­ting was fried mush­rooms. There were two ovens, but only one worked. Well, the oth­er might have worked, but the wail­ing, whin­ing, thump­ing sound the inter­nal fan made caused us to turn it off in heart-thump­ing dis­may. The oven that did work, did so only under duress. Its door tried to remain open at all times, its tem­per­a­ture was quixot­i­cal­ly inde­pen­dent of any mea­sur­ing, order­ing or pre­dict­ing. The stove top was so inef­fi­cient that Tamas­in’s car­rot soup had to be put into three sep­a­rate pots in order to achieve even the most mod­est sim­mer at a time even approach­ing past lunchtime.

And the light­ing? Or lack there­of? My dears, it was like cook­ing in a cave, lit by a sin­gle torch hang­ing by a string in the cen­ter of the enclo­sure. There was one enor­mous dan­gling LAMP that sus­pend­ed itself pugna­cious­ly over the kitchen table (whose evi­dence of absolute­ly no prop­er hygien­ic scrub­bing made me fran­tic all week: I kept promis­ing myself I’d creep down at 2 a.m. some­day and have at it with a bleachy sponge, but alas, it nev­er hap­pened). There was, unac­count­ably, a tru­ly superb chop­ping knife, and my expla­na­tion for that is quite sim­ple: no on in the his­to­ry of Totleigh Bar­ton before us had ever attempt­ed to use it. Enough said.

The inad­e­quate flat sur­faces that we were meant to cook on were tak­en up almost entire­ly by teaket­tles as far as I could see. The British! Hon­est­ly, it’s the largest group of the crea­tures I’ve ever been exposed to in cap­tiv­i­ty, and the num­bers of cups of tea that they require to func­tion is stag­ger­ing. How do Amer­i­cans man­age to get through a pro­duc­tive day with­out begin­ning to talk about a cup of tea at 11, fran­ti­cal­ly long­ing for it by noon? And again at 4, or 5? They would all all troop relent­less­ly into the kitchen and crowd around those *&^% ket­tles, mak­ing up odd pro­nounce­ments about which sorts of tea could receive milk and which for whom the addi­tion of a dairy prod­uct is tan­ta­mount to treason.

And every day a new cake mys­te­ri­ous­ly arrived into the kitchen, to be fall­en on by these dear peo­ple as if on a moose car­cass by starv­ing hunters. It was fas­ci­nat­ing! Every time I think that some lit­tle fact about life in Britain is exag­ger­at­ed (the rain, the bad food, the obses­sion with minor celebri­ties, the devo­tion to one’s foot­ball club, their TEA), I’m faced with the unde­ni­able real­i­ty: a whole lot of them with their lit­tle mugs, every sin­gle day and you realise it’s all true. And, I might add, they will have their tea no mat­ter WHAT ELSE is meant to be hap­pen­ing in the over­crowd­ed kitchen to begin with! There I was, wash­ing inter­minable pots at the tiny sink (I DID scrub that one), and one of my fel­low writ­ers would hang dis­con­so­late­ly over my shoul­der, ask­ing plain­tive­ly, “Could I get just a lit­tle cold water, Kris­ten? Thanks SO much.” Sigh.

But I am dis­tract­ing myself.

Day Four.

One of the wicked things about being with a lot of oth­er sto­ry­tellers, yarn­spin­ners, is that a fair amount of embell­ish­ment, drama­ti­sa­tion, not to say out­right inven­tion goes on. Which is what hap­pened with… Day Four. For some rea­son, in the kitchen at break­fast (read, cup of gin­ger tea for me just to fit in, while every­one else was doing mas­sive fryups and Tamasin and I were hard at work on a stock), I said, “You know, it’s Day Four.” “Yes, what dif­fer­ence does that make?” some inno­cent per­son asked, but Tamasin jumped right on it. “I’ve been on Day Fours on pho­to­shoots that you would NOT BELIEVE.” “Exact­ly,” I said. “Day Four.”

By that after­noon, every­one was ask­ing every­one else how “Day Four” was going: was it liv­ing up to expec­ta­tions, had any “Day Four” things hap­pened, etc. Sheer sug­ges­tive non­sense, but good fun. Edward and I walked into Sheep­dip, I mean Sheep­curd or Sheep­wash or what­ev­er the near­by vil­lage was called, just to clear our heads. We ducked into the pub and were greet­ed with, “I’m just clos­ing up now, mind,” where­upon Edward ordered a pint and I ordered… a pint of cold water WITH ICE. “I nev­er saw any­thing like that bar­man’s face. Ice *&^% water? After he stayed open for us…” We sat out in the sun and dis­cussed life, feel­ing we’d escaped school for a bit. Mas­sive­ly long walk back, some­how so much longer than the walk there, and UP and DOWN. Both of us felt it in our calf mus­cles the next day! But glo­ri­ous weath­er, in a place where the say­ing is, “Wel­come to sun­ny Devon, where it rains six days from sev­en.” Not for us, not for the food writ­ers of Totleigh Bar­ton. We were blessed.

Day Four. There was a pal­pa­ble sad­ness, at least for me, that I could­n’t pre­tend it was only halfway fin­ished. The fact was, it was the Next To The Last Day. I have writ­ten in my jour­nal from the day, sim­ply, “Fab­u­lous.” And it was: chat­ting about our writ­ing plans, our dreams of what we can accom­plish, run­ning the bril­liant tutors’ ideas past each oth­er for moral sup­port, and as an under­scor­ing of how HARD they are work­ing to give us some­thing… and to great results. At one point Orlan­do, with his seduc­tive com­bi­na­tion of hard crit­i­cism and self-dep­re­cat­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with us, said, “I think it may be pos­si­ble that what some of you have learned this week is that you do NOT want to be food writ­ers…” The only point at which I felt this was dur­ing what I termed “recipe hell.” Have you any idea how bloody spe­cif­ic you have to be in writ­ing a recipe? They set us a fas­ci­nat­ing test: watch them go around the kitchen cre­at­ing some­thing unnamed (nev­er mind that we prac­ti­cal­ly all had to have indi­vid­ual torch­es, the light­ing was so abysmal, and every­one hit heads on the beams, AGAIN), and were allowed to ask about what ingre­di­ents and quan­ti­ties they were using, method and prac­tice, and it turned out to be lit­tle choux pas­tries. Then it was off to the barn to turn our impres­sions into… a REAL recipe. Con­sis­tent with the meth­ods, mea­sur­ing stan­dards, word­ing stan­dards, of what­ev­er pub­li­ca­tion we planned to sub­mit to. My God, it was exhaust­ing. In the way that some­thing can be exhaust­ing that does­n’t involve any phys­i­cal effort whatsoever.

Tbsp, or tbsps if plur­al? Herbs mea­sured before or after chop­ping? Water men­tioned in recipe ingre­di­ents or no? Just the term “sea­son­ing” or salt and pep­per in the list of ingre­di­ents? And how to describe the fin­ished dish? A list of words we are NEV­ER allowed to us: first and fore­most among them “deli­cious.” Just not on, not allowed. As also, “crispy.” “Crisp” should be good enough for any red-blood­ed food writer, it was dic­tat­ed. “Unc­tu­ous” is overused and a prob­lem child. Imme­di­ate­ly none of us could pro­duce any piece of prose that did not involve these words. You try it! Take a word off the table and it’s the only word that will do. AT ALL.

Through it all, all morn­ing long as we per­se­vered and mem­o­rized and took notes and lis­tened intent­ly to all the wis­dom being offered, COWS marched past the low win­dows of the barn and COWS stared in at us. I defy you to sit qui­et­ly and take notes about how to pitch a piece to the Guardian when an enor­mous COW has stopped, looked in the dusty win­dow at you, mooed, and moved on. Sim­ply priceless.

What came out of so much of our instruc­tion was painful­ly sim­ple, and yet sur­pris­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to make hap­pen: BE TRUTH­FUL. Tell the truth. Tell a prop­er sto­ry with ACCU­RA­CY. In a restau­rant review, pick out the ingre­di­ents and dis­cuss them. If you can’t tell, ask a wait­er. Get into the kitchen and see what’s hap­pen­ing. All through this, both Tamasin and Orlan­do talked fast and furi­ous, giv­ing me the def­i­nite sense that we could lis­ten to them all day, every day, almost infi­nite­ly, and there would be still more they could impart. How they accom­plished such a com­plex, var­ied, high-fly­ing set of points for us to digest with­out hav­ing done this before togeth­er, I can­not fath­om. It was light­ning fast, not a wast­ed word, and we sim­ply THOUGHT and worked.

One of my favorite bits: Orlan­do’s Mag­ic Three Qual­i­ties in Writ­ing: and each of us is good at only two, and has to slave at the third.

RESEARCH
WRIT­ING STYLE
STORYTELLING

Go on, think about it. What is Jamie Oliv­er good at? Well, prob­a­bly research and writ­ing style? What is Simon Hop­kin­son good at? Writ­ing style and sto­ry­telling. What is Martha Stew­art good at? Research and sto­ry­telling. But we can’t do all three, nat­u­ral­ly, well. Two come nat­u­ral­ly and third is hard-won by sheer hard work. Fair enough. I know for cer­tain that I can tell a sto­ry and my writ­ing style, if not bril­liant, is MINE. But research? Nev­er stirred a heart­beat. Lovely.

Day Four. Intense.

You know what? The food got bet­ter. Lunch­es were a mys­tery to me, strange con­coc­tions that were bet­ter left to one side for more mun­dane sal­ads. The cook­ing at night got bet­ter as the friend­ships one depend­ed on to pro­duce the food got stronger. Each din­ner prep had its own Zen. I will wait until tomor­row, Day Five, to describe to you the joys of cook­ing with Edward, Char­lie and Roger. Me and the boys. It was a hoot.