Ballymaloe Day 44, March 9th - Goaty and Fish and Chips

In the kitchen today I began stage 1 of making Brioche, like many things here it is a two day affair. You have to hover over the food mixer adding one cube of butter at a time for half an hour till it is all incorporated into the dough. While the mixer was on I also made some cheese biscuits. I was cooking dessert today, a delicious cardamom yoghurt cream served with a pomegranate and rosewater. Again using gelatine, it hadn’t quite set in a couple of hours, so I will turn out the rest tomorrow. I was also looking after the cheese board, setting out the goat’s cheeses on parchment paper on a board and making the little signs for them. I also added a small posy of herbs and flowers; if I could have got my hands on a toy plastic goat or two that would that would have been perfect! I got a few compliments on it too, sadly I have only one not so great picture of it:

My Goat's Cheese board

 More importantly the cheese and the biscuits were delicious!

My Cardamom & Pomegranate Cream

In the afternoon's demonstration Rachel made fish and chips and some orange and white chocolate mousses. She also made some chocolate cups and decorations from melted chocolate. Then in the evening we had a wine revision lecture, wrote loads of notes but also had a great English sparking rose wine, it was very quaffable. There is really no let up here, and good though it is to be immersed in all these things it's also very tiring. Literally the best bit of the day is when I collapse into my cosy bed at night!

Rachel's White Chocolate Mousse

and Tangerine Mousse

Fish and Chips

Fish Canapes

Ballymaloe Weekend 2 - 21/22 January

No alarm clock needed this morning, thank god, I went for a walk into the village of Shanagarry and tracked down a 2012 diary at the Design Centre/Gallery here. I then had to go and turn the cheese for everyone in the dairy before we salt it tonight.

Also at Ballymaloe today was Mickael Viljanen the Finnish head chef at Gregan's Castle Hotel. He is sort of the Heston Blumenthal of Ireland and has been winning awards as Ireland's top chef. Today he was here to do a demonstration of some of his molecular gastronomy including his famous beetroot meringues and an amazing roast chicken which had been poached first then fried to give it some colour. All the food was spectacular to look at and eat and as students we got to sit in for free!

Also got some great pictures of the surrounding countryside Saturday morning:

After the demonstration we went to salt our cheese ready to go into the fridge to mature. We're making a semi-hard gouda-type cheese. Should be ready in 3-4 months!

Mine is the cheese at the back on the left!

Then on Sunday the housemates and I had dinner together, Darina's Aunt Florence joined us! We also have a new housemate Sarah, who is interning here after being a pastry chef at the world famous Chez Panisse in California, very cool. Our housemate Dermot made chocolate and chilli mousse, it was yum. He has a blog over at http://gasmark7.blogspot.com/ so head over for a read!

Ballymaloe Day 8, 18th January - Cheese & Winefest

The second theory day for us here at Ballymaloe, today was a great combination of cheese making and general dairy goings-on and wine, wine, wine. But first a bit of actual cooking, Darina made the biscuit of the week, Lemon Drizzle Squares which were dead easy, just put everything in a food processor and then rolled the mixture into a swiss roll tin. After baking you can top them with lemon icing or other variations such as coffee and pecans, chocolate, candied peel etc etc.

The main focus of the morning though was how to make Homemade Butter, Yoghurt and Cheeses, presented by Eddie O'Neill a Dairy Artisan Food Specialist from Teagasc's (can't pronounce that yet) Moorepark Research Centre. He knows all about making dairy products and has helped many artisan producers over the years. Here at the school we have fresh unpasteurised milk from the cows (Jersey and Fresian) and they separate the milk and cream every morning after milking. We were shown how to make butter from the cream (as I did yesterday), and then on to the other dairy products, yoghurt, soft yoghurt cheese (labneh, great with middle eastern dishes), buttermilk, cottage cheese and a simple semi-hard gouda type cheese.

 Separating the milk into cream (lighter) and milk (heavier - I think)

Above: cutting the curds and whey

There is plenty of science involved which I couldn't begin to get into right now but it's fascinating to see the alchemy that turns one liquid into so many different things. Through heating to a certain temperature for a certain time and adding pectin the curds and whey begin to separate and then you can make cheese. We are making some cheese with Tim on Friday so more on that then!

A lot of the cheeses need to be drained through muslin as part of the process, including Coeur a la Creme. The homemade cottage cheese is sweetened and drained overnight in heart shaped moulds and served with berries and coulis. It would be perfect for a summer wedding:

Then, after lunch, it was time for the first of the wine lectures from Colm McCan, the award-winning Sommelier at Ballymaloe House and today Peter Corr of Febvre Wine Merchants who also did the 12 week course a few years ago. Wednesday afternoon and instead of being in the office I was standing outside with a view of the sea practicing spitting out wine, good times! We practiced with water first, then moved onto the hard stuff, or so I thought... Our first wine was an alcohol-free one, made from Muscat grapes. Then we tried a Chablis, a Chardonnay, (the same grape as Chablis is made Chardonnay grapes!). Next was two Sauvignon Blancs, and then the reds, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. All were a mixture of 'old' and 'new' world wines so we could compare the two. It was all a new experience for me as I know very little about wine despite a good few years of drinking it! Lastly was a dessert wine they serve at The Fat Duck Clos Uroulat Jurancon 2010, it was delicious, sweet but not too sweet, some scidity, minerally but rounded it was ace! I could have had several more glasses! No surprise here but I didn't use the spittoon!

Tomorrow more milkmaid exploits as I am at dawn to milk the cows!

Ballymaloe Day 5, 13th January - Wine, Theory, Bacteria!

So, Friday the 13th, end of Week 1 which has raced by and a weird title for this post!
Our first theory day and it was good to have a break from the kitchen after three days in a row. Luckily one of our first tastes of theory was regarding wine!

We watched a brief introduction to wine video by Hugh Johnson, a wine maestro apparently although I didn't know who he was! It was a hilarious 80s-style video where this Hugh explains storing and serving wine and serving it in a restaurant etc. Next week we'll begin the wine lectures with the sommelier from Ballymaloe House, very exciting! Darina also introduced us to some of the artisan farmhouse cheeses which Ireland has become famous for including Gubbeen, Mileens and Cashel Blue. We were also taught how to handle, store and serve the cheeses; no lopping the nose off a cheese!

We also had lectures on fire prevention and food safety, including preventing food poisioning and information on various types and bacteria! Was actually way more interesting than it sounds, I was quite into it.

Lastly today we also met some of the local food producers who Darina likes to introduce us to so we can learn more about how all this lovely food is produced. Today we met Jane Murphy from Ardsallagh Goat's Cheese whose cheese we will be using in the salads on Monday. She has built the business up from one goat to supplying supermarkets and winning awards: http://www.ardsallaghgoats.ie/

We also met Mark Kingston of the Golden Bean Roastery who roasts coffee in the grounds of Ballymaloe House. He sources his coffee from a single estate and treats it as a fresh product getting it to the customer within three weeks. I'm hoping to sample his coffee at Ballymaloe House soon, but not this weekend as I have a full day tomorrow helping out at the Farmer's Market in Midelton, 6.30 am start!