99 YEARS OLD AND STILL CONCOCTING CLASSY COD...

HAVING recently perfected my home-made biscuits, thanks to a piece of chocolatey advice from the marvellous multi-Michelin starred Clare Smyth, I was beginning to feel that the rest of my culinary repertoire could do with a bit of an upgrade, so I was delighted to be invited to drop in at Le Cordon Bleu cookery school in London to learn how to confit a cod.

“Confit a cod?” I asked in surprise, needing to check that my hearing was not at fault. “I have confited duck legs and chicken wings but would never dream of confiting a cod. It’s simply something a gentleman would not do.”

“Michelin star chef Pascal Aussignac does it,” my Cordon Bleu caller said, “and I am sure he would be delighted to show you how.”

And that was how I found myself, on Monday evening, among a group of budding chefs, cooking a dish called Confit Norwegian cod, butternut squash, black garlic, verjus and juniper under the joyous guidance of Pascal Aussignac.

Founder of Michelin-star Club Gascon and a few other restaurants, Pascal has a delightfully flavoursome French accent, a gloriously un-French sense of humour and a delightful way of combining ingredients in remarkable ways and deconstructing quite advanced cooking techniques in a way that makes them accessible to ordinary mortals.

I should, right at the start, point out that quite apart from never having confited a cod, I have never heard of black garlic or verjus, I have never used the blowtorch, which is in a drawer somewhere in the kitchens at Beachcomber Towers, nor have I felt the need to use my Heston Blumenthal cooking thermometer.

And, I must add, I have never much liked butternut squash, yet the way these ingredients and techniques, along with black treacle, lemon, sugar, fresh rosemary and some egg yolks all combined to form a truly delicious dish, was truly gastro-magical.

The cod was rubbed with juniper salt (that’s salt with dried and ground juniper berries), then left for half an hour before being rinsed and left to cook gently in oil at 52 degrees (that’s where the thermometer comes in).

After 20 minutes, it’s taken out of the oil, smoked for a minute over more juniper berries, then finished off with a blowtorch.

And for plating up, we decorated a plate in Miró style with splurges of a purée of black garlic and treacle and another purée made from roast butternut squash, added a few blobs of sabayon, made from the egg yolks, verjus (that’s a sour juice made from unripe grapes or something similar) and butter, put the cod artistically on top and ate it with a plastic teaspoon because we couldn’t find a fork.

It looked and tasted brilliant. I asked Pascal how he had come up with the deliciously effective idea of blending black, fermented garlic with treacle and serving it with fish and he said, with a huge grin, that he didn’t know.

But I’m very glad the Cordon Bleu folk let him share the idea. All I have to do now is find the blowtorch.