IT seems like the ultimate busman's holiday, but all the chefs I know spend valuable time on their days off well ... cooking. On that lazy Sunday, or that Monday evening, when these busy, hard working people at last have some time to relax, given half a chance they end up back in the kitchen behind their own hot stoves.
"It is an obsession," says Helen Mullane of Allo's Bar and Bistro in Listowel, Co Kerry. "It's a chance to relax," says Margaret Duffy of Dublin's 101 Talbot. "I cook a lot at home," says Robbie Millar of Bangor's Shanks, but even he admits, "some of the other chefs in Shanks think I'm crazy."
Crazy or not, when the chefs slip out of their toques into civvies, they bring home with them the secret weapons of the professional kitchen: good big ovens, and the ability to generate lots of heat.
"The oven is the most important thing," says Helen Mullane, "and I would always recommend a large oven".
"I have a Gaggeneau 90 cm oven, which is actually wider than any of the ovens I have at Shanks," says Robbie Millar. "This will actually fit three turkeys." Margaret Duffy has remained faithful to "an old electric cooker that we inherited with the house 10 years ago, and though we have spent the last 10 years talking about demolishing the kitchen, it's still here. But the oven also has a great grill."
Robbie Millar is adamant on one of the points which separates the efforts of domestic cooks from professional cooks: intense heat.
"The most important thing to have is enough heat," he says. "I would find it very hard to cook on a standard domestic oven, because it is simply not hot enough."
While white heat can appear to be one of the bravado elements of the professional kitchen, Mr Millar sees its use as essential to modern cooking: "If you talk about things like extracting the natural sweetness of food, then that is down to using the maximum temperature - we are talking about getting your pans white hot in order to seal and sear food. Having a very powerful gas ring is one thing I would be adamant about."
Chefs all agree on this fact, and the other tools they regard as essential for their own kitchens tend to be rather simple.
"The essential implement, I find, is the wok," says Margaret Duffy. "We do a lot of stir fries at home, also we do a lot of pastas, and steaks, and during the summer we keep the barbecue going all the time. The only other thing I couldn't live without is my espresso machine."
Helen Mullane demands no more than a sharp knife. "After the oven, all you need is a knife, and it's amazing how many kitchens you go into and there isn't a good knife! After that, it's only the ingredients: I mean with a few eggs, some herbs, some flour, you can make a good meal,".
For Robbie Millar, the domestic kitchen should also be ergonomically efficient. "When you are organising a kitchen, the thing to think about is what is known as the triangle - preparation area, waste disposal, and heat top, and I think it is very important. We were lucky because when we bought the house, it had no kitchen, so we were able to start from scratch all it had was a 19th century tumble dryer and a cold cupboard. We bought a Boffi Island, which is really a piece of furniture but, like any Italian piece of design, they make it look stylish. And with this island I have the cooker the work surface, and the waste chute so everything is very compact."
"Even if you really only have it set up in a simple way, it must be comfortable to cook in, so that you enjoy doing the cooking," echoes Helen Mullane - it's a requirement the designers of many domestic kitchens tend to overlook, so the amateur cook spends too much time criss crossing the floor unnecessarily.
But does their style of cooking change when they shed their whites?
Robbie Millar reckons that "If I cook for friends, it is very much the way I would cook in the restaurant. If I have some duck breasts, some polenta, some wild mushrooms, I will tend to do them in much the same way I would cook in Shanks. If I am just making a snack, however, then I would make something really simple. Sometimes, you just go into Holywood and John Hoey has some great mizuna and you get some cheeses from Panini, and it's not like cooking at all, you're just assembling delicious ingredients."
Helen Mullane finds that "everything depends on who you are cooking for. If it's friends, then you cook totally different food than you would cook in the restaurant - I think it's a release valve which you keep for yourself, it's a little selfish, perhaps, but you have to have it, that difference."
But Helen Mullane's point about the kitchen needing to be comfortable "so you enjoy the cooking," brings us to the other main difference between the professional and the amateur. For many of us, the kitchen is a stressful place, full of barely understood challenges and rampant with difficulties. For the professionals, with their working cares switched off for a while, the domestic kitchen is a place to unwind and to enjoy cooking for friends.
"At home the cook becomes a slob, and someone who takes life as easily as possible," says Margaret Duffy. "I do cook more seriously each weekend, if we have friends around, for that is how we meet people, going to each others' houses. But aside from that, when you do make more of an effort and you do try to do something special, for me, being at home cooking is a chance to relax."
"We have this glass area at the end which is very bright, and it's just a joy to be in it," says Robbie Millar. "The great thing about the island is that you can cook and talk: we can have some friends in and they have a glass of bubbly and so do I, so that is important: if they were all having crack in another room and I was on my own in the kitchen, then I wouldn't enjoy it, it wouldn't be fun. This way it is fun."
"The secret of a domestic kitchen is the secret of all kitchens," says Helen Mullane. "If I am in a bad humour and I cook bread, then I make bad bread. You have to be happy when you are cooking."