Ballymaloe Weekend 7 - 25th/26th February, Food Writing Course

This weekend we had a Saturday course on Food Writing with Hugo Arnold, who has written for the Evening Standard, the FT, Food and Wine Magazine and other publications in Ireland. It was all really interesting and a real insight into how to approach writing recipes and articles. As ever, perseverance and exhaustive research seems to be key. Hugo Arnold told us about his experiences, what in his opinion makes a good food writer, and what doesn’t (or rather who!). We met some people from the outside world who weren’t on the 12 Week Course, and had pizza for lunch.

I also carried on feeding up the sourdough starter. I had fed it with a bit of spelt flour and it went mental, bubbling up and out of the small pudding basin I was using. I fed it up with a big feed of flour and water and put it in a big Pyrex bowl covered with clingfilm. The clingfilm was soon rising above the bowl as it was so active. Going to try and use the starter for the dough tomorrow. The elements seem to have been captured anyway, I am the culinary Prospero!

Ballymaloe Day 35, 24th February - Girl vs Monkfish

 Last day of Week 7 but plenty to be getting on with in the morning. I had to make more pastry for the base of the Apple Pie, this time a sweet shortcrust pastry. Then once rolled and chilled this is combined with the apples, sugar and a lid of flaky pastry before going in the oven. The top was a bit fiddly with the scalloped edges and pastry leaves for decoration. The pie is cooked on a Pyrex plate, which I had never seen before but Pyrex plates are very popular here and used for lots of recipes. The pie took much longer than you’d think to get it all together and in the oven. Next was the cream and red pepper sauce for the monkfish, a bit bland in my opinion but apparently it is very popular on the menu at Ballymaloe House. Although I wasn’t using crab I got the chance to extract the meat from the cooked crustacean so that was another technique practiced and I was happy.

Lastly was preparing and poaching the monkfish. The ugly beast and I were never going to get on but he was easily the slimiest fish we’ve had to deal with. I don’t really mind all the gross stuff we’ve done so far but this was grim. The skin was supposed to be kind of pulled off but it was so slimy it seemed to take me forever getting it off and trimming off all the membraney bits. You only really use the monkfish tail, that’s where the meat is; the other half of him goes in the stock pot. I poached the collops of fish in simmering water and served it with the pepper sauce and chervil. The pie was great, and I made custard flecked with vanilla seeds to go with it. Another carry on, the custard started to split, I had to rescue it with a blender…

Monkfish before...

And after!

My Apple Pie

After all those adventures I was ready for a snooze but the afternoon’s demonstration was good, vegetable curries, risotto and a fabulous chocolate tart. Then in the evening the housemates and I went into Midleton to a shop and restaurant called Farmgate. It’s a nice place with quirky décor and full of ladies who lunch types. As ever, they’re all about seasonal local produce. I had the mussels and the roast chicken which was delicious and full of flavour and a bit of crème brulee. The housemates All the mains came with a generous portion of roast and green veg. It was all tasty but expensive!

Farmgate feast

Ballymaloe Day 34, 23rd February - Apricot Tart and a frisky Crab

In Kitchen 1 today there was a lot on, smoked fish, steak and all the trimmings and the frangipane desserts. I began with the Apricot and Frangipane Tart. Cooking the pastry was a bit tricky but the end result was impressive, much better than the Medjool Date Tart de Terrible from the other week. I served it with the ubiquitous softly whipped cream. I made Flaky Pastry too, layering up the pastry with cubes of butter and rolling, turning and chilling it till you have leaves and leaves of pastry, awesome. I also cooked my sirloin steak medium and made Bearnaise Sauce and two kinds of chips, including the very fine Pommes Allumettes. Not the greatest fan of the deep fat fryer, too scary! But they’re used all the time here so getting used to it. The Bearnaise sauce was delicious! It’s kept warm in a Pyrex jug sat in hot water – a great tip. Can’t complain when lunch is a huge juicy steak with all the trimmings, yum!

In the afternoon we had a visit from Peter Ward of Country Choice delicatessan in Nenagh http://www.countrychoice.ie/index.php He showed us a huge whole wheel of top quality Parmesan and talked a bit about the importance of the quality of ingredients.

 

There was also much excitement as we had fresh live crabs in front of us for the demonstration. They were pretty lively and snapping their claws all over the place! You heat them up in the water slowly and they’re supposed to fall asleep and unconscious before they get cooked. Hmm, felt a bit bad but I like eating crab so what can you do? It was great to see how to prepare the crab and get every scrap of meat out of the body and the claws. Both the white and brown meat went into some tasty spring rolls served with a chilli dipping sauce. Next up was poached Monkfish, that is one ugly fish, that’s for sure. Dessert was Vanilla Ice Cream and Apple or Rhubarb Pie. I am cooking the Monkfish and the Apple Pie using the Flaky Pastry I made earlier in the day.

Crabby

Spring Roll

Monkfish

Apple Pie

Glazed Fruit as Petit Fours

Ballymaloe Day 33, 22nd February - How to price a Lobster Vol-Au-Vent?

Our Theory day for Week 7. Today the Restaurant Advisor Blathnaid Bergin was back for her second day of lectures on food and business. Particularly interesting was how to cost a recipe, down to the last gram of sugar and flour. Even if the ingredients are relatively cheap, once you’ve added on tax and overheads and so on (not to mention profit!) the price you need to charge for a dish creeps up. Then there were also all the systems a good restaurant should have in place which we went through. We also looked again at common mistakes restaurants make and at some other food businesses in Ireland which have done well. With everything that could go wrong it wouldn’t surprise me if some of us were put off starting up after this!

In the evening my housemates and I and some of the other students were invited to Darina’s house for drinks with Rory and some of her family. We had organic Cava and some lobster vol-au-vents. You don’t get them every day!

Took zero pictures today but will be back with some tomorrow!

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!