A new Masterclass course and a new instructor!
Lee has a background in certifying apprentice chefs to work in the industry - so is unsurprisingly keen on health and safety. He immediately set to work establishing the class' ground rules:

• NO RUNNING WITH KNIVES!
  Knives to be carried held loosely at the side and pointing downwards at all times.
• NO CATCHING THROWN KNIVES!
  Or dropped ones.

Kitchen rules to live by 😉

He has already dispensed many useful cooking tips during the course of demonstrating tonight's dishes including:

• Stabilize your chopping board by laying a damp cloth or tea towel underneath it.
• To prevent pastry sticking when rolling, flour the surface as lightly as possible so as not to dry the pastry out.
• When using your knife to cut, say a salmon parcel, if you have to press on the knife - it's not sharp enough. It should cut naturally without pressure when sawed back and forth.
• You can make your egg wash with egg yolks, whites or whole eggs mixed into either milk or cream.
  Egg white will make the baked pastry shiny, while the yolk will add a golden colour.
• If it grows above the ground start in hot water, if it grows below then start in cold.

OK, a little explanation for that last one - green vegetables with fragile cell walls are best boiled or steamed as quickly as possible so as to preserve their nutrients and colour.
You should only add them to already boiling water and return them to the boil over a high heat.
It's also good to add a dash of salt to the water which will not only season the vegetables, but serves to raise the boiling point of the water and cook them even quicker.
You want to have a little bite left in cooked fresh green vegetables so avoid over-cooking them.
If you aren't serving them immediately then you should drain and plunge them into iced water to quickly cool them which will preserve their green colour.
When you are finally ready to serve you can either throw them into boiling water again or, as Lee controversially suggests, reheat them in a microwave.

Root vegetables, on the other hand, with their thick starchy cells are best brought to the boil in cold water. This will give the insides time to come up to temperature too, and reduce the risk of over-cooking and disintegrating the surface before the vegetables are cooked all the way through.
As someone's mother has it: If it grows in the hot hot sun, put it in boiling water to cook. If it grows in the cold cold ground put it in cold water to cook.
And who could argue with someone's mother?

On the subject of making cream sauces - in order to whip cream so it holds air you will need it to have 30-35% fat content or higher,
and cream which has less than a 25% fat content will likely split when brought to a boil, especially in the presence of anything acidic.
UK creams have the following fat contents:

• Single: 18%
• Whipping: 36%
• Double: 48%
• Clotted: 55%
• Soured: 18%
• Crème Fraîche: 48%

So choose wisely!

The class was blessed with whole sides of salmon costing around £30 each, to cut down for the croûtes and Lee discussed their quality and demonstrated how to prepare them...
Good fresh salmon will smell of the sea and not urine, its flesh will be quite elastic and (eventually) spring back when pressed in.
It will be a pale orange colour, not the artificially bright colour of preservatives, will not have too much fat marbling, and its scales will be still firmly attached.

For the salmon en croûte you want to remove the skin first which saves the tedious and messy job of de-scaling for which you want a very sharp filleting knife that is longer than the widest part of the fish.
Lay the fish skin-side down.
Starting from the tail end, cut down through the flesh to the skin then orient the knife horizontally.
Now generously salt the tail end of the skin and your fingers which will help prevent them from slipping and grip it firmly. Pulling tightly on the skin with one hand, work the knife along the skin with the other, cutting it free with as little attached flesh as possible.

There will likely be small bones still in the fish, particularly the larger pin bones which run down the middle of the fish from the head to roughly two-thirds of the way to the tail.
Run your hands over the fish to feel for these and pull them out with your fingers or a pair of pliers or tweezers.

Lee showed us an ingenious method of using a potato peeler to get out the larger pin bones:
You will need a traditional, double-gapped, non-swivelling potato peeler. Here's what you do with it — make as if you were going to peel the salmon flesh where the head of a pin bone projects.
Direct the peeler so the pin bone enters the upper slot.
You then roll the peeler so the upper slot moves away from the fish. This should have the effect of the slot edges grabbing the bone. You can also press on the protruding bone with your thumb to make sure it holds.
Now you can pull the peeler away from the fish in the direction the bone is pointing, and it should come out cleanly.