For Christmas I was given a day at Cook School by Martin Wishart. I didn’t know anything about Martin Wishart, so I looked him up. Turns out he’s a Michelin-starred chef specialising in French cuisine; he has one restaurant in Leith, another at Loch Lomond, and a cookery school down the road from my work. I assume he’s quite a serious chap, because his website has lots of grainy black and white photographs of him doing serious food-related things. The class I was on was taught by two of his henchmen rather than the man himself, and I must say I was happy about this; I am not a serious chef, and my Michelin star has obviously been lost in the post.

Anyway, at 9.15 on Tuesday morning I found myself down at the cook school with a bunch of other initiates, drinking coffee and wondering exactly what was in store for us.

I’ll cut to the chase.

Langoustines.

Langoustines were what was in store for us.

Sure, there was a load of other stuff like gnocchi, tiramisu, mascarpone mousse, sautéed endive and the like, and some of it was pretty challenging to put together, but none of these things required quite the same commitment as our crustacean friends.

At the very start of the class, Ryan, one of the tutors, brought a polystyrene crate out of the walk-in fridge and plonked it on the worktop in front of us all. He popped open the top and plucked out a langoustine, a six-inch long mini lobster/giant prawn with two long, slender claws and a multitude of gently squirming legs. Holding it by the torso, he gestured as he talked, explaining (to our universal horror) how we were to prepare them, and then directed us back to our stations.

I turned round to put on my apron, and when I turned back I was confronted with three live langoustines, coiling and uncoiling fitfully on the chopping board. I sighed and picked one up by the thorax. Its black, beady eyes swivelled around and its legs pedalled the air. I took hold of the tail with my other hand as Ryan had done – Pinchy was cold but very much alive, and I could feel his clawed legs working away inside my fist.

I took a firmer grip around the tail with my left hand and the torso with my right. Pinchy’s tail curled round against my fingers.

Then, as demonstrated a few minutes previously, I twisted him firmly in half to the sound of splintering chitin and tearing flesh. I fairly dropped the newly bisected crustacean onto the chopping board. The tail curled up instantly, while the feelers, claws and legs on Pinchy’s business end continued to twitch away, innards exposed where the tail had been attached just moments ago. “That’s just reflexes,” Ryan said mildly as he passed.

“Fucking hell,” I confided to the woman at the station across from mine. “That was fucking mental.”

“I know!” she agreed, then squealed as her own langoustine writhed out of her grip and dropped to the floor. “Shit.”

Okay. Deep breath. Next bit.

I picked up Pinchy’s dismembered tail, only for it close around my fingers. Sharp points at the bottom of each segment of the shell poked into my fingers. (The woman across from me later showed off her blue catering sticking plaster, covering the cuts which her own notionally dead prey had inflicted, post-mortem.)

“Ah, fuck. Fuckity fuck,” I moaned as I pried the tail straight. I spread out the five flukes, grabbed the middle one, broke it free and pulled it out along with the intestine, a translucent three-inch tube dangling from the tail fin. I dumped the guts into the bin, dropped Pinchy: part II onto the chopping board and breathed out. It hadn’t been in the same league as, say, slaughtering a fatted calf you’ve raised from birth in front of the kids (who incidentally, named her Daisy within minutes of meeting her and have since bonded with her in a touching display of affection) and then having to explain to them the nature of life, death and where baby calves come from, but it certainly focused the mind on what has to be done in order to get something even as insignificant as a single langoustine onto the plate.

We cooked the tails, cracked open the shells, chopped up the meat and wrapped it in hand-made pasta to make ravioli. They were delicious.