Gareth Mullins

I remember concasting a lot of tomatoes, which means that you have to take the skin off, you take the middle part of the tomato, and you're left with a little cheek, and then you have to square it up and cut them into these perfect squares.

It's quite a French technique, and you don't see it as much anymore, but...

Back when I was training, there was a lot of sauces finished with it.

And I had this French chef to party on the section.

And I was out to do a box of tomatoes.

It took me ages to do it.

And as he was talking to me, he scraped my chopping board worth of mise en place straight into the stock pot because I'd cut them the wrong size.

And I was like, I'd over blanched the tomato a little bit.

And he was looking at me telling me, you've overcooked them, chef, and you've done this wrong and that wrong.

And I remember watching these tomatoes fall off the side.

the chopper board into the stock pot thinking oh my god he's going to ask me to do this again and sure enough he was like into the fridge we go now get another box of tomatoes start again and he showed me how to blanch I was trying to put the whole box in the pot at the same time drop the temperature anyway

But it was a really important lesson that I learned and he was so blasé about putting all this work that I'd done.

But I'm sure if I was on a building site and I'd built a wall, the bricklayer would come along and I hadn't built it quite correctly, he'd knock it down pretty quickly and tell me to rebuild it.

So the important part to learn is work in the best kitchen under the best chef

in the best environment that you can get into.

And then learn everything you can working there.

I think you need to be in a kitchen for, at the start, two years, three years if it's a big enough place.

I mean, if it's a really small place and you've learned all the techniques, it's time to move on.

But do that in partnership with who you're working for.

Telling them,