Ballymaloe Day 36, 28th February - Back in the Dairy

Week 8 already and I was still in Kitchen 1. My third week here, hopefully the teachers weren’t sick of the sight of me. This week we are only in the kitchen for three days as Thursday is the School Outing! In the morning I was up for half seven to milk the cows again. The mornings are much lighter now, I remember stumbling around in a field full of mud in the dark at the start of the course! The cows were herded in and we got the milk and separated it into milk and cream in the dairy. Here are some pics which I didn’t get before!

Mooo!

Separating the milk and the cream

Then back into Kitchen 3 for the morning’s cooking. I was making a salad with thin slices of pan grilled steak, onion rings and tarragon dressing. I also made a rich chocolate tart with very short pastry which I rolled out between clingfilm and carefully laid into the tin. The tart comes out the oven still liquidy and then the chocolate sets overnight. I also made some extra scones for practice, I put a bit of cinnamon in them and brushed the tops with cinnamon sugar.

Steak Salad

Cinnamon Scones

Chocolate Tart

In the afternoon there was a huge pasta demonstration. One of the teachers here used to work at the River Café in London and she is an expert at making fresh pasta of all shapes and sizes. There were all sorts: lasagne, cannelloni, tortellini, cappeletti, fettucini and so on, plus a real ragu, Tiramasu and loads of rich sauces to go with them. They have these professional sized pasta rollers here, sort of like a giant’s version of the ones you have at home. It all looked a feast and tomorrow I am making the Cannelloni filled with chicken and pork and a rich creamy sauce.

Pasta Fest!

Tiramasu

Ballymaloe Day 32, 21st February - Shrove and Steak

Today I made the Granary Bread,it doesn't require too much work but it does take a time to rise. As ever though with the breads, I forgot to take a picture... It was Shrove Tuesday, so I made Crepes with Orange Butter. The pancakes are made ahead and then reheated in the orange butter and orange juice. A shot of grand Marnier would also be good! The final dish was a a starter of Bitter Endive Salad with Anchovy Dressing and Pan Grattato (fried breadcrumbs with garlic). It was very tasty. I made the anchovy or caesar dressing in the food processor, easy enough but thinning down to the consistency to coat the leaves is hard. As it was, I was serving too many leaves and too much dressing, portion control again! They looked very pretty though with the yellow mustard flowers.

It was a busy afternoon's demonstration, plates of smoked fish from several artisan smokehouses in County Cork. Then some fruit and frangipane tarts, my favourite. Last but not least was an introduction to preparing and cooking steaks and accompaniments. Huge cuts of the farm's own beef were brought in and Rory took off the sirloin and fillet. A great idea to feed lots of people is to leave the sirloin on the bone and cook the whole thing as  a roast instead of a roast rib of beef or something. There was plenty of drama with all the steaks frying on the griddle pans and the smoke and lots of very thin chips and onion rings being deep fried. The beef was delicious!

Smoked fish (all about proportion, apparently)

Pear & Frangipane Tart

Smoked Fish and Steak & Chips

Steak with Wild Garlic

Smoke tuna with mayonnaise

 Also remembered to turn my cheese and feed my sourdough starter. All this food to look after!

Ballymaloe Day 6, 16th January - Pastry Paranoia

In the thick of it now, Week 2 and there is no rest for the wicked here at Ballymaloo. Second week in Kitchen 2, good news for me 'cos I knew where most things were in there which saves a bit of time but I was still struggling with the concept of serving food out on time to a hoard of hungry lunchtime diners. The food we cook for lunch we then serve as a 3 course meal to all of us in the kitchen, plus any guests and people who work at the school. Some people have duties each day such as serving, clearing away and polishing the cutlery.

Anyway, straight into Kitchen 3 and started work on my hazelnut tart. Trying to get ahead I weighed out the ingredients and made my pastry early, before our teachers had arrived. Then I was worried that I shouldn't have gone ahead and made it on my own, probably incorporating all my bad habits I have picked up over the years! No matter, there wasn't time to overthink these matters as the hazelnuts needed toasting and skinning, to do this you roast them for 10 minutes in the oven and then rub the skins off in a tea towel - good times! More good practice lining my tart tin with some actually very good pastry and then baking blind before adding the tasty chocolate, hazelnut and orange filling. We have to grate the orange zest with the fine side of a grater - I am going to try and smuggle in a microplane at this rate, that was a nightmare to do!

The goats cheese salad also had delicious dried figs from Turkey I think. Would be lovely on a cheese board, they come on a string looking all rustic and goat's cheese goes so well with figs. Then there were pomegranates to be seeded, the seeds were a lovely blood red colour and came out easily when I beat the hell out of the poor fruit with my wooden spoon. Dressing was fab too, although I was a bit slow putting it all together (becoming a common theme!)



Pomegranates are so gorgeous, one of my favourites and very appropriate as spring approaches as they feature in the Greek myth of Persephone who was tricked into eating pomegranate seeds by Hades:



So a good morning's work, followed by the afternoon's demonstration. There were lots of pulses, and some tasty mexican dishes which I love to cook and eat - tomorrow I am making the tortillas from scratch. The demonstration also featured Creme Caramel and Seville Orange Marmalade. I am starting this tomorrow!

Had a quiet night in and caught up with a bit of the outside world by watching Emmerdale, as usual it is all going on in the Dales, here is a picture of village bad boy Cain rocking his Two-Face look: