My career on a knife-edge: From graphic designer to trainee chef

On Sunday morning I picked up some wood pigeon, wild mushrooms, beef fillet and free-range chicken at the Slow Food Festival's market on London's South Bank, but unlike most of the other shoppers who went home to create a seasonal, slow Sunday lunch, I went on to prepare them in a live cookery demonstration at the festival, in front of crowds of budding gourmets.

If you'd told me I'd have been doing this five months ago, I'd never have believed you. Until then, I was working in a well-paid job on a daily newspaper as an arts editor. But after 12 years, something was missing: I'd fallen out of love with the work, and the industry, but the money and friends I'd made kept me there. More to the point, I didn't really know what else I wanted to do.

So I thought about what I loved doing: cooking – for friends, family and for myself. I enjoy growing food, preparing and eating food, thinking about the seasons and creating recipes. I love going to delis and food shopping, marvelling at the displays of unusual ingredients and colourful combinations. Food is a visual, tactile and sensory experience to be savoured and enjoyed – it brings people together, gets them talking and celebrating, whether it's a humble bowl of pasta, or a simple salad as crisp as spring.

Around this time last year, after a short break to Ireland where I spent a day at the famous Ballymaloe cookery school, I decided that I wanted to make food my career. But I was tied into an exorbitant mortgage and, at 31, I was 15 years older than your average trainee chef – I couldn't see a way in.

Before Christmas, I fired off several emails to different chefs and restaurants asking for advice about what to do next. In late January, just as I was giving up hope of hearing from anyone, I got a phone call on my birthday from the executive head chef of the ethical eating and training restaurant Acorn House, Arthur Potts-Dawson. He asked me to go in for a chat the following day.

When we met he told me all about his restaurant, its environmental beliefs, sustainable ingredients, the emphasis on seasonality and slow food, kitchen gardening and composting – and the training scheme. I had heard about the trainee course but at 31, I thought I was beyond the age of being a trainee (at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen trainees have to be under 24). "Absolutely not," said Arthur, "we're looking for people who are passionate and come to us wanting to learn whatever their age, rather than plucking people off the street, like other restaurants. People like you."

He talked me out of going to college explaining that if you wanted to learn, the best, and quickest, way to do so is to work in a kitchen. He stressed that the trainees would work at their own pace shadowing chefs and that the kitchen didn't have the shouting and pressure trainees experience in other restaurants. It sounded perfect.

I'd gone for a coffee expecting to get some advice and at best maybe two weeks' work experience. An hour later, I left with the offer of a job, subject to an audition day. I was stunned, elated and in shock. While the offer was incredibly tempting I hadn't expected to have to take such a massive pay cut at this stage – I'd planned to save over the next year while doing a part-time course. I phoned my wife, still dazed. "You have to take it," she urged. "We'll worry about the money later."

My trial day was friendly and went smoothly. I peeled and chopped celeriac, I chopped some onions and I helped to make ice cream. The atmosphere was quite chatty and friendly. At Acorn House it's not unheard of that the chefs will sing on the pass, not likely in a Michelin-starred restaurant. It's just much more laid back.

I'll never forget phoning my mum at the end of the day. "Did you have a good day at work?" she asked. I was trembling with emotion when I explained that I hadn't been to the office that day. "Actually, I've been working in a restaurant today," I told her. "I've got a new job training to be a chef."

"There you go, chef," said Arthur, throwing me my chef's whites on my first morning in May. I'd arrived terribly early, after a sleepless night, wracked with trepidation, nerves and excitement, and ended up walking around the block for about half-an-hour before going in.

The day whirled by in a blur. There were no breaks, no time to stop, to phone friends, have a coffee or send a few emails – life in the restaurant business is fast, frenetic and relentless. I settled in to a day of chopping and preparing veg, making cakes and generally feeling a bit useless. Compared to the rest of the team I was bumbling, slow and shy. At the lunchtime service the chefs operated with such grace and intuition it was like watching a ballet – everyone has to work in harmony around each other with precision timing. But I felt stupid having to ask questions all the time, and clumsy in my technique, or lack of it. In the afternoon, I ran into Arthur just after I'd cut myself chopping celeriac and had the telltale blue plaster to show for it. I was so embarrassed, at home I hardly ever cut myself so it was really unfortunate that I did on my first day. Working at speed, and in control, takes time to learn. I didn't eat anything that day until I got home, nor the next or the next after that (in all I've lost around a stone in the last five months).

By the end of my first week, I couldn't help thinking I'd made the biggest mistake of my life. Like the couple that move to France after enjoying holidays in the Dordogne, I quickly discovered that cooking in a professional kitchen bears little resemblance to spending your Saturday afternoons working through a Gordon Ramsay recipe while sipping red wine and listening to the football on 5 Live. I had blisters on my arms, burns all over my hands and even on my body (don't ask) and calluses on my fingers and palms so that it hurt to chop onions or beetroot.

But worse than that was the physical exhaustion. If you're reading this sitting at your desk, you do not know how lucky you are. After a double shift, having spent 16 hours standing up with barely a break to eat I'd have to run for the last train home to south-east London (once I missed it and spent more than an hour on the night bus). At home, I'd be wired from the adrenalin of working on service that night and unable to sleep until at least 1.30am. Getting out of bed at 6.30am the next morning my feet would ache as soon as they touched the floor, only to spend a rush-hour journey, standing all the way, to get to the restaurant for 8am to start all over again.

I spent an entire week pin-boning mackerel with tweezers; prepped 60 artichokes every day for a month, a fiddly, time-consuming job; and was responsible for putting together all of the salads for the lunchtime menu. As hard as I tried

for the first two weeks it was virtually impossible to get the seven salads ready by the 11am deadline that was required. Every time I came close to getting all of my seemingly endless list of chores done, another one would be added. Just as I'd get into my stride prepping my artichokes, a delivery of veg might arrive that I'd need to bring in and unpack. And on the rare days when I got everything ticked off my list before the end of my shift at 4.30pm, the sous chef would find me more things to do, usually unpleasant things like cleaning out the fridges or washing down the walls.

The first month was relentlessly hard, miserable, and lonely. I questioned my ability and ambition, at times I wished I'd never left my old, comfortable, cushy life behind. At my lowest point, only the humiliation of giving up and the thought of letting down my family and friends who'd supported me so overwhelmingly, dragged me out of bed after each short night.

Eventually, I managed to get my salads ready by 11am, and soon I was quick and skilful enough to manage the starters and desserts section on the busy evening service alone. Initially, I'd just wanted to get through the shift, to reach the end without cocking up, but now I was beginning to experience the buzz of making eight dishes at once, the satisfaction of turning out 75 plates of food, each one as good as the last, the thrill when a customer compliments one of my chocolate cakes or tarte Tatins, and the rush of pride when I take a dish to someone I know who's come in to see me cook and eat my food.

I still make mistakes – burning the pancetta or forgetting to make the dough for the next day's puff pastry – but I'm much more confident and the cuts and burns happen less often. I'm no longer afraid of the dreaded whirr of another order coming through on the ticket machine, or fazed by the thought of having to make a pesto on service or pan-fry six wood pigeon breasts at the same time as char-grilling mackerel and plating up a burrata salad.

Now, new trainees have joined and I can see how I was then, that petrified look in their eyes as they try to fit in with the kitchen's rhythm and keep up slicing onion after onion, or producing five salads, each as god as the last.

I went back to my old job for a day last week – it was like taking a day off. And for all it was easy and well-paid, it was ultimately unrewarding and, compared to the pace of the kitchen, life in the newsroom now seems slow and boring. I still have an enormous amount to learn, from pastry to pasta, but I wouldn't swap back now. I'm living the dream: becoming a chef, eventually moving out of London and opening my own restaurant serving the best organically-grown local ingredients and simple, seasonal food – which is the biggest motivator of all.

Season's eating: What Gavin's cooking

Wood Pigeon and Baked Fig Salad

Serves 4

4 wood pigeon breasts (skin on)
8 figs
honey
4 tablespoons light olive oil
salad leaf (frisée or rocket will do)
sunflower seeds, toasted
good-quality aged balsamic vinegar
extra virgin olive oil

For the salad dressing:

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar (Volpaia is best)
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard, sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

First, make the dressing. Mix the vinegar with the mustard and seasoning to taste in a small bowl. Add the oil and whisk until emulsified. Preheat the oven to 220C/fan 200C/Gas 7.

Cut an X in the top of the figs to about half the way down, push open slightly and arrange cut side up on a baking sheet. Drizzle with the honey and balsamic vinegar and bake for seven minutes until the figs are soft and ever so slightly jammy but still hold their shape. Set to one side .

Season the pigeon breasts well on both sides. Heat a pan with the light olive oil on a high heat until smoking, and carefully place the pigeon breasts, skin side down, in the pan. Cook for three minutes, or until the skin is crisp, turn and cook for a further two minutes. Remove from the pan and leave to rest for three minutes.

Meanwhile, dress the salad and place a small amount in a mound in the centre of each plate. Carefully pull open out the figs and arrange two on top of each other on the salad.

Once rested, cut each pigeon breast in half on the angle and place both pieces on top of the figs. Sprinkle the sunflower seeds around the plate and finish with extra virgin olive oil.