Be a domestic kitchen God

There's a little framed postcard of a Glen Baxter cartoon that hangs in the Mills scullery, which, for years, has helped excuse me from any creative cooking duties.

It features a drawing of a rather inept-looking man in swimming trunks, flippers and goggles brandishing a wooden spoon like a psychopath with a dagger, about to attack an innocent dish of comestibles on a nearby table. The serendipitously appropriate caption reads: 'Asking Simon to lend a hand in the kitchen was always a big mistake.'

Well, Baxter must be a bit of a psychic because this Simon has always been a complete kitchen klutz and an utter hob yob. My oven-ready pizzas taste like wood-fired pub trays, and I can even make a pig's ear of pork chops. When I throw a dinner party, it inevitably gets thrown back at me.

So, I was packed off to Real Thyme, Olympia, a 'new concept in cookery and entertainment', where I was to learn how to do dinner-party food. Real Thyme, whose student base is 90 per cent men, teaches chaps to cook not just for themselves but for others, and their courses culminate with a dinner party where each student invites a guest to sample their newly honed skills. They offer everything from specialised Thai evenings to classic Brit cuisine. In theory, I would enter as Gazza and exit as Wozza.

I liked Real Thyme's proprietor, Samantha Axtell immediately. She is a good, solid no-nonsense Sloane; an ex-City girl who graduated from both Oxford and Leith's with honours. She has also earned a record-breaking double blue as a cox in the Boat Race - and she wears Doc Martens, so I knew she meant business.

I was to tackle two of the kitchen's Holy Grails: pastry and meringue. This worried me a bit. The last time I made pastry was probably 30 years ago with my mum. I'll spare you the more lurid details, let's just say cross words were exchanged and mess was made. My only attempt at a baked Alaska, meanwhile, ended up in a right old state.

But pastry, I was about to learn, is like plumbing. The fear factor is high, but the practical is anything but scary, once you know why and what you are doing.

2 Sam then taught me how to 'drive' the rolling pin. Start from the middle, one roll forward, one roll back, return to the middle and then rotate the pastry 45 degrees to create a circle.

3 Attaching the pound-coin-thick pelt to my pin, I transferred it to my quiche ring (they give one's tarts nice crispy bottoms - dishes are so last year, darling). Oh, dear. My duff pastry started to look like an industrial accident. Sam helped me stay cool, and soon I had a neat, upturned pastry Frisbee all ready to go.

4 We 'blind baked' the pastry (ie, baked it without the filling). This seemed an appropriate term because all my previous cooking looked as if I had done it blindfold. We used funky ceramic balls to keep the pastry walls from tumbling down.