Quiche Lorraine

After fish we moved on to chicken and poularde pochée sauce suprême (poached chicken with sauce suprême) last week, and in our practical we had to truss a chicken after we'd burned off all the tiny feathers with a chef's torch - which was quite scary. We've all been taught how to correctly pass a knife to someone (yes?), but few in our class had logically transposed that rule to the blow torch, so when I turned round to accept it from a Chinese girl with singed eyebrows, the blue flame licked all the hairs off my arm.

As I looked down the marble-topped work station at the poulardes flambées (the chickens on fire), the smell of burning hair in my nostrils, I realised just how dangerous a place a kitchen full of 14 wannabe chefs can be.

This week it's pastry and some of you will know that I'm a wee bit scared of pastry - but not as scared as I am of getting third degree burns from holding a hot tray of Quiches Lorraines whilst waiting for someone to shimmy past me as if they were moving from their office chair to the coffee machine.

The cooking's the easy part - so far.