Skating On Thin Ice

So with one exam down, it was back to normal and with so few days left – don’t talk about it – all I wanted to do was be in the kitchen but with all of yesterday’s excitement and OK, yes, a bit of panic as well, I’d forgotten what awaited us this morning and WOW, let me tell you there’s nothing like a skate, first thing in the morning, to curb your enthusiasm.

They’re seriously the most slippery little buggers and I know this is a bit gross, especially when we’ll be eating them for lunch but every skate in the kitchen needed to take an antihistamine or six, no matter how long you dangle them under the tap (holding them with a tea towel since between the spikes on the tail and the aforementioned “snot” issue, they’re not easy to keep a grip on), they just don’t get non-slippery, rinse rinse rinse, test for gluey bits, rinse some more, test, rinse, test, rinse – they’re moonlighting for Bostik for sure!

I mean this in the nicest way but thankfully my partner was stuck with the task of actually filleting the little soul – I was having a bit of a battle with his face, one minute you just hate him because he refuses to be clean but then you turn him over by mistake and there’s this sad little face staring up at you – there were few scruples left in the kitchen by this time though and most people were happily impaling their skates with the largest, sharpest knife they could find, revenge is indeed sweet.

Before getting on with another round of white soda bread, I soaked my hands in vinegar for a few minutes to try and cut through the glue – it really is that bad, I’ll freely admit to a fondness for exaggeration at times but in this case I’m so not, it’s like having built in velcro on your hands, everything you touch simply sticks to them. Straight onto the soda bread then which came out pretty well, nice colour, not too heavy, only distantly related to a rock, all in all not too bad.

Straight onto my salad for the day and whilst Emily might have been stuck (literally) with the skate, I’d landed warm lamb kidney salad with oyster mushrooms and pink peppercorns, urgh! Crunchy salad leaves, yum; oyster mushrooms, yum; tangy peppery dressing, yum; organs at breakfast time, not so yum. Fiddled around with them for quite some time, getting rid of membrane, gritty bits, the odd ventricle whose function I’d rather not consider too closely, not my best thing to be honest. They’ve to be cooked off at the last minute, along with the mushrooms so I just got everything ready and then moved onto something much more up my alley – homemade raspberry chocolate truffles!

Aren’t they sweet, bit mucky rolling them all up but I’d choose chocolate-covered mits today over any of the other options – the only slight downside was the raspberries, they were glorious but huge, a choccie truffle should be a ‘bite size’ affair and I suppose mine could have met that requirement as long as Mick Jagger and Angelina Jolie were my only guests – I tried to eat one in one go and ended up doing a damn fine impersonation of a chipmunk, pretty!

Made another batch of puff pastry during the course of the morning, the only positive about the arctic weather conditions at the moment is the fact that making pastry is a breeze – the butter couldn’t melt if it wanted to, in fact I’m almost certain it hardens up even more when you take it out the fridge and pop it onto your work station, bliss. Rumour has it we’ll be using it tomorrow, more recipes involving puff pastry, YAY YAY YAY.

Last item on my list for the morning was buerre blanc sauce, one of the genuine classics and a feature on my Technique List that I hadn’t got around to yet – it was to be served with the skate so I started off with the vinegar, shallots, white wine and white pepper, reduced that down to almost nothing, then added a generous spoon of cream and reduced it a bit more and then slowly whisked in all the butter, a few cubes at a time – I hate to even commit the figure to paper but there was a whopping 175g butter and I know what you’re thinking, yuk, who would want to eat a sauce of melted butter but it’s not like that at all, even though it seems as though the vinegar and white wine have done a disappearing act, they’re still lurking in the background and with all the whisking and carrying on, the end result is just truly sublime, the lightest, most subtly flavoured gorgeous sauce you’ve ever eaten and my favourite of the classics so far by a veritable mile - I’d eat it with absolutely anything, it’s magnifique.

Charlie was opposite me in the kitchen and the most delicious wafts of heaven from her apple tart tatin kept finding their way over to me and somewhere to the left, someone was brandishing a blow torch and finishing off their créme brûlée – I decided to go for broke at lunch and ate a few of the oyster mushrooms off my salad (having fished them out and left the kidney bits behind) dipped in buerre blanc, a slice of apple tart tatin and then some créme brûlée so really, all I ate for lunch was cream and butter with the odd flavouring of apple, white wine, vanilla, what have you – divine.

Off to afternoon demo and I honestly felt as though I waddled there rather than walked, my post lunch delivery of guilt had arrived.

Darina kicked off with two different types of spring rolls – the healthier version made with rice paper wrappers and filled with prawns, fresh cucumber, carrot, spring onion and coriander with a Vietnamese dipping sauce and then the ones I know you’d rather eat that were very similar but had arranged a sneaky sidestep into the deep fat fryer, I know I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, why does everything that goes through there taste so bloody brilliant?

Your man and I went to Vietnam earlier this year and really loved it, but the one thing that will stay with me always is the smell of fish sauce which isn’t great to be honest, it’s made from rotting fish after all so I suppose there’s not much hope if that’s your starting point. Anyway no matter where you go in Vietnam you can smell it everywhere, I think it’s part of the Immigration process - they scrutinise your visa, stamp your passport and then arrange for Mr Fish Sauce to be your tour guide for the rest of your stay – the thing is when you put it with something, like a spring roll or these amzing prawn dumplings that we had called White Rose, it’s delish but on it’s own, not so much.

Next on the list was a tambale of smoked salmon, too die for – smoked salmon mulched in the processor with butter, cream, horseradish and a hint of lemon and then popped into a mould lined with slices of smoked salmon, served with a cucumber and fennel salad, heavenly. There were also some little smoked salmon roulades filled with cream cheese and dill, more heaven - smoked salmon is simply too good,  it’s soooooooooo expensive at home and so I’m going to eat myelf silly with it for the next two weeks.

Pork en croute with duxelle stuffing was next so that’ll be me and my puff pastry tomorrow, and all sorts of fab things to go with it – red cabbage, lentils, apple sauce, kale and potato gratin dauphinoise (yup, that’s the potato bake made with layers of thinly sliced potato and lashings of cream). There were also crispy stuffed mushrooms and I’m going to have to make these for your man, they’re so his kind of thing – giant flat brown mushrooms filled with a stuffing made of herbs, butter, cream, mushrooms and bread crumbs, topped with thick cheese sauce, then a layer of buttered crumbs and then a prinkling of parmesan – I know they’re a dead cert for failing your next cholsterol test but still, don’t tell me your mouth isn’t watering right now.

For desserts it was all about ice cream – cappuccino ice cream, chocolate ice cream with a hint of rum and coffee ice cream with an Irish whisky coffee caramel sauce, good good good.

Guess what? Only two sleeps until your man arrives, very excited!

Ho Ho Ho

OMG, wine exam at 08h00 and it was so cold that holding my pen, poised above the paper ready to mark x’s in multiple guess was a challenge! Surprisingly not as bad as I thought it would be, YAY, you could almost hear the sighs of relief around the room - not exactly plain sailing, I was mumbling all my little anagrams under my breath to remember where Pouilly Fumé came from compared to Pouilly Fusé but certainly less terrifying than I imagined. All done in 40 minutes and then I raced home for the world’s largest cup of seriously hot tea to defrost before heading back at 09h30 for Christmas Demo.

The demo kitchen looked ‘grand’ as they’d say here, we’d left the evening before with it looking it’s normal old self and obviously the Christmas fairies passed through sometime before we returned the next morning because it was all dolled up and looking gorgeous – Pam and Flori were sporting Christmas head gear and even Darina had on a pair of snowman earrings. For the cherry on the cake (or the angel on the tree if you want to be seasonal), Pam’s apron featured Rudolph and every time she bumped his nose during the morning, on the corner of the oven or something, Rudolph would sing his song about having a red nose and all, it was certainly festive!

We launched into a whole lot of mincemeat recipes to start with, beginning with homemade mincemeat which I’m afraid to tell you is traditionally made with beef suet – your man won’t be pleased to hear that I don’t think, his daily quota of mince pies come the silly season is impressive but I doubt he knows about the secret ingredient.

The mince pies were utterly sublime though, best pastry I’ve tasted since starting the course, they didn’t just melt in your mouth, they gave your taste buds a full on day at the spa, incredible! We also learnt to make mincemeat shortbread, divine and a mincemeat crumble tart, doubly divine – can’t wait to make all these when I get home.

The Christmas pudding, or Plum Pudding as it’s known here (although there wasn’t a plum in sight) was brilliant too, I’m not a huge fan of Christmas pud to be honest, I normally have a small helping to justify the brandy butter because dishing that up on it’s own is just a step too far in terms of disgustingness, anyway this was different and really good, and even better I learnt a new sauce to go with all these things that might just have to take up residence next to the brandy butter at this year’s family Christmas – it’s known here as Mrs. Hanrahan’s sauce and basically it’s made of butter, cream, sugar and hurricane-style lashings of sherry and port, tells you enough really doesn’t it.

Early on in the morning the turkey (a super size me version of note) and a goose had made a brief appearance before being swiftly whipped into the oven to make sure they were ready for lunch. Darina did the most brilliant thing with the turkey that (I can confirm after my double helping at lunch) worked the bomb - soaked a piece of muslin cloth in melted butter (and I mean soak, if you’re going to do it, do it properly – no sprinkling allowed) and wrapped it all around the turkey, tucked him in for a good kip in the oven and the end result was that he emerged goden brown, crispy and juicy and you know that’s always the down side for me with turkey, that it's about as moist as a mouthful of cotton wool, not so with this little trick, YAY.

All the traditional good side dishes stopped by for the show – roast potatoes (done in duck fat, I’ve no words), glazed carrots, buttered brussel sprouts, very herby stuffing (more butter than bread crumbs I fear), cranberry sauce, bread sauce, apple sauce and litres of gravy. The goose was filled with potato stuffing which was equally yum, new for me but so worth making again.

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a few more of those family favourites – trifle swimming in sherry, a Yule log (basically chocolate roulade filled with rum flavoured cream), Christmas pudding ice cream and ice cream with butterscotch sauce and last but not least, and maybe not appropriate for a 30 degree Seth Efrican Christmas but perfect for the return of the ice age which we’ve got here at the moment, mulled red wine which we had with lunch – staying awake for afternoon demo just got a bit harder!

Lunch was beyond good, so good that I lost the button off my jeans and had to scramble around on the floor subversively looking for it before everyone noticed and had a proper laugh.............so that’s my second Christmas lunch of the year and it’s only December 1^st, things are looking good, my Bellymaloe is certainly looking forward to the rest of the silly season, merry merry Christmas!!

Returned to my seat ( which alarmingly didn’t seem wide enough after lunch) for afternoon demo and the Student Wish List (things that we’d not yet done but which people wanted to see) which was an absolute mish mash of goodies – those wicked little chocolate puds that are molten chocolate in the middle, a French/Spanish country vegetable stew called Gabure Catalana, gnocchi with sage butter, paella with chicken, chorizo, mussels and prawns, good old Scotch eggs which they cooked just spot on, you know where the yolk is still a little bit soft, yum. All sorts of bread and butter puddings, traditional rice pudding which just isn’t a South African thing but one that I’m so taking home, utterly delish, brownies, brown bread ice cream, caramel truffles, banoffi pie, beef Wellington, kedgeree made with salmon and cream (to die for), walnut bread, eggs Benedict, venison stew with chestnuts and made with deer (someone asked which deer Bambi was which made me a bit sad, poor Bambi ending up in the pot), and hot chocolate soufflé. Someone had asked for guidance on how to skin, gut and joint a rabbit and then turn it into stew but thankfully there’d been a “rabbit sourcing problem” and there wasn’t one available for demo, fine by me, I wasn’t so sure about having to cut up Flopsy, Mopsy or Cottontail.....................

I’d put down proper red wine sauce, crème brûleé, tart tatin and the birthday cake that was served at Rory’s party a few weeks ago (which turned out to be hazelnut praline cake made with proper French butter cream) but it turns out that they’re all on the list, some we did yesterday and the praline cake is featuring on Friday apparently and red wine sauce next Tuesday so I’ll be sorted after that, all my wish list numbers ticked off and ready to be recreated at home – after I’ve bought some super glue to restore the button on my jeans or maybe just gone “bigger size” shopping instead, I know, I know, never a good move, I'll do my best to refrain but honestly, losing buttons and virtually cutting yourself in half when you sit down ain't good, there has to be a line somewhere.........

How Do You Swear In Italian?

Mmmmmmmmm, as predicted, Tuesday was a bit of a nightmare - between the blasted lasagne, another meringue dish, a date tart and the cursed marmalade, it was manic and on top of everything, just utterly utterly freezing, just before 11h00 it was still -3 degrees, just not on! I was layered up so heavily I looked like the Michelin man and trying to knead my pasta was a bit of a laugh, what with me hardly being able to move my arms and everything.

I started promptly at 8 but everything just took forever - my marmalade recipe told me it had to boil for 8 to 10 minutes before it would be set and could be bottled, well mine was having a laugh and had absolutely no intention of setting, I was dashing back and forth to the fridge every 10 minutes or so to spoon a bit onto a cold plate, leave it for a short time, dash back again and see whether it had set and invariably it hadn't - took over an hour, I was ready to chuck spoonfuls of gelatine at it by then but it finally did it's thing and turned into grown up, proper marmalade, YAY!

The lasagne was equally traumatic - it was lasagne verde so green pasta made with fresh spinach which is a mission to handle because it's quite damp whereas pasta should normally be really dry so I spent a quality half hour at the pasta machine, armed with a large bowl of flour and semolina to keep throwing at it to stop it getting too soggy, rolled it all out really thinly, and then cooked it for a minute or two in batches in boiling salted water, then blanched it in cold water and dried it out on kitchen towel, needed a lie down after all that but it still had to be layered up with the ultra-slow cooking ragu meat sauce and the bechamel sauce, bit of parmesan sprinkled along the way and over the top and ta da, finally lasagne, took the whole morning!

Somewhere along the line I managed to make and roll pastry, slice dates to put into it (Medjool dates, they're just the business), fill it up with custard and shove it in the oven and even better, set the timer so I didn't forget about it completely, and then track down some strawberries, slice them, whip cream and put together the meringue thingy too - there was no time for piccies I'm afraid, as it was it was one of my special "finish after 1pm" days and I was utterly wrecked.

Staggered in for a bit of lunch - felt I had to at least try the damn lasagne after it had taken so long and it was fab, I have to say that as much as I adore homemade pasta I'm not sure it extends to lasagne, for everything else - the ravioli, cannelloni, what have you, I'd absolutely make it but I did have a bit of a yearning for good old lasagne sheets that just come out the box.................

Best part of the morning, a flurry of snow mid-morning and everyone raced out to do a bit of a jig in the white stuff, so fab!

Afternoon demo was with Rachel which was lovely, we've not seen her for ages and we had a great afternoon - she whizzed through everything knowing we had our wine exam the next morning at 8 and that some serious cramming was needed by most parties.

We did a few warm salads, one with beef fillet which I loved and a couple more with lambs kidneys which weren't my cup of tea, I'm not a big organ-eater to be honest, and then it was onto the main character of the day, skate or ray - the closest I've got to one of these before has been the aquarium and now the little soul was about to end up on my plate, topped with hollandaise or beurre blanc or something equally yummy and let me tell you, they're not easy to prepare, slippery little buggers and I know this sounds manky, but just so slimy, you wash them and wash them and wash them and even then they're still all goopy and gluey, somehow once they've been poached they're actually quite yum but it takes a while to get there for sure.

For pud, there were a few of my favourite things that I've been waiting to learn for weeks, so glad they appeared on the list at last - tarte tatin and classic crème brûlée, YAY, both just incredible, there was a bit of a tiff with caremelising the crème brûlée because the blow torch was out of gas but Rachel managed in the end, about 3 blow torches later! With our puff pastry which is still making an appearance most days we also did a feuilliteé with berries which is basically layers of puff pastry filled with cream and berries, yum, and then to finish off a couple of handmade truffle choccies, not too shabby for Deb and we managed to get through all that by 5, just in time to race back home and hit the books in a big way.

Darina had arranged for the fires to be lit in all our cottages late afternoon which was just so lovely so when we got home, instead of doing an impersonation of the walk in cold room our little cottage was all warm and toasty - we battled along until just before midnight, trying to sort out all the blasted different regions of France, with a few Italian estates chucked in for fun, we swung down south very briefly for a look at Chile and Australia, back up north for a very brief squizz at Germany and everything in between - bottom line, I'd far rather just drink the stuff!!

Wine exam at 08h00 tomorrow morning, 100 questions multiple choice (or multiple guess, depends which way you look at it), wish us luck...................!

Mama Mia

I can't believe it's our last proper week in the kitchens - we cook next Monday but only for one day and then Tuesday through Friday are over to exams, yuk. So for the last full week we're back in the first kitchen we started in which for me was Kitchen 1. More importantly though was the temperature this morning, we could see our breath in the kitchen until about 09h30, it was ridiculous - leggings under my chef trousers, two pairs of socks and two long sleeve tops under my chef jacket and I still couldn't feel a thing - forget your chef hat, you needed a beanie if you wanted to hang onto your ears, it was utterly, utterly bitter!

I had quite an easy morning to be honest, roast artichoke salad with hazelnut oil and berries, almond meringue with strawberries and cream and Moules Provencale, those steamed mussels topped with a veritable mountain of garlic butter and breadcrumbs and popped under the grill for a short stint, delish - all went pretty well and for once I wasn't the last person out the kitchen, OK only second last but still, made for a pleasant change............

I started making marmalade too which is a two day affair and one of the last few things on the Technique List that I've never done so step one today was to juice the oranges and lemons and scrape out everything from inside and then leave them to soak overnight - tomorrow it'll be onto boiling them and chucking a massive amount of sugar at the whole thing and with any luck it'll actually set and turn into marmalade, I live in hope.

Afternoon demo was with Darina and was an absolute highlight for me - pasta, pasta, pasta, absolutely incredible. I know I said this a few weeks ago the very first time I made pasta but it truly is a complete revelation, all I wanted to do was eat and never mind the actual carbs, the sauces alone were enough to leave you reeling from a cardiac arrest, lashings of butter and cream and parmesan and all things nice. We learnt to make tortellini, ravioli, capelletti, lasagne, cannelloni, pappardelle (thick noodles, like tagliatelle but much wider), it was all just fantastic and I'm so buying myself a pasta machine as soon as I get home, "To Deb, From Deb", the only problem of course is the end result.......................it seems my Bellymaloe may follow me to Seth Efrica, at least your man and my dad will be pleased, they adore pasta.

It must be said that making your own lasagne according to strict Italian principles is a bit of a faff and that's putting it nicely - as one of the students remarked, it'd be quicker to catch a Ryan Air flight to Tuscany and order a bowl of it there. Between making the actual sheets and the ragu which is the traditional meat sauce which takes about 2 hours longer to make than my standard version at home (although granted, it is nicer, almost wish it hadn't been), and then the Bechamel to go in between the layers and over the whole thing, well you need a morning off work. I'm down to make this tomorrow so we'll see, I've a sneaky suspicion that it'll be another of my manic mornings with me straggling out of the place well after lunch time, I can hardly wait.

Lots of Italian desserts to go with the whole thing if the pasta hadn't already sent you over the edge in terms of your daily calorie intake - lemon tart, a date tart which was fab, panna cotta and tiramisu, laced with booze, just how it should be.

There was an olive oil and balsamic vinegar tasting after demo, was fascinating, can't believe how different oils from different places tasted - we tried Italian, Spanish, Greek, Australian and one from good old Morgenster at home in Cape Town, YAY! And then a man named Fabio spoke to us, he's from Modena and his family have been making traditional balsamic vinegar for the past 3 generations, since the 1930s - how's this for a cash flow challenge, if you take 100 kgs of grapes today and make them into balsamic vinegar strictly according to the age-old traditions of Modena, it'll take you 25 years and you'll only have 2 litres of it at the end! It's sold for about €80 per 100 ml bottle which actually makes sense once you've heard the history - it is without doubt one of the best things I've tasted and you'd obviously keep it for use in salads and so on, this is not what you make onion marmalade with that's for sure, and it's so concentrated and precious that they even use one of those dropper things (like for ear drops) to add literally just a few drops to a salad, incredible!

Weekend Winter Wonderland

Look, it's been snowing!!! There was a tiny bit yesterday but this morning we woke up to almost proper snow - we aren't exactly snowed in but still, for a Seth Efrican it's beyond exciting - on the down side, it's so cold I had to wear three pairs of socks, tights under my jeans, three tops, a jacket, gloves and a scarf just to go for a walk around the farm but for snow, it's OK by me.

I did see the piggies this morning, mom was snuffling around, she must have had a seriously chilly nose and the little guys were having a ball playing together, too cute.

Don't Cry For Me Argentina

Kicked off this morning by slicing 3 pounds of onions, nothing like a good cry on Friday morning to get your weekend off to a good start, the tears were pouring down my cheeks, what I would have done for a pair of swimming goggles right then!

Put them into the pot to start the whole caramelise business and it took until 11h00, can you believe it, I was tempted to whip the heat up and speed things along but I’m so glad I resisted the temptation – one of the others tried the shortcut route and sadly there was soon a smell of burning and no amount of descriptive menu writing was going to get that across as well caramelised, they were just burnt and so he had to chop another 3 pounds of onions, that put the brakes on any hopes I had of getting them to go faster. They were delish in the end, all sweet and yummy and I was eventually able to throw the stock on them just after 11, add a mound of salt and pepper and the obligatory cheesy crouton bits and ta da, French onion soup just in time for lunch at 12, the perfect thing to defrost with.

Made the tomato, chilli and avocado salsa wearing gloves, no way was I going anywhere near those fire crackers with bare hands, far too risky – so bloody hard to chop with gloves on but I was going for a fairly mild salsa that I could actually eat so only put half a chilli in anyway which didn’t take much effort – made some buttered leeks too, normally a bit of a boring vegetable but nothing a few ounces of butter can’t sort out you know.

I’d checked my Technique List the night before, not long till we’ve to hand them in and so I’m frantically trying to get everything done and one of the outstanding items was to make and ice a cake – quite how I’ve managed not to do that yet considering the onslaught of cake recipes in my file I don’t know, I’ve made lots of others but mostly pan roasted cakes and the like which don’t need icing so I launched into an orange cake, two layers which are then split and filled with orange butter cream icing, I know, doesn’t it sound amazing, four layers in the end, butter all over the show, that’s what I call a cake – brilliant timing too for the weekend so it came home with me and yesterday afternoon we held a mini summit and decided to cover it up (or what’s left of it at any rate) with the salad bowl and a tea towel hoping that “out of sight, out of mind” would work – FYI it doesn’t, I can hear the butter cream icing calling me from here....................

Afternoon demo was with Darina and there were lots of good things on the list - mussel soup, yum I adore mussels, and even better Moules Procvencale which are steamed mussels on the half shell liberally coated with garlic butter, topped with breadcrumbs and popped under the grill for a fe wminutes, deadly! And then more lamb, we learnt how to prepare a rack of lamb and if you really want to get funky, how to take 2 and make a guard of honour or 3 to make a crown roast, all done with lashings of garlic and rosemary, wicked.

Lots of sauces to go with them, onion sauce which I know sounds boring but so isn’t and if you want to sound fancy you can call it by its French name, Sauce Soubise, sounds even better. To go with it we did a potato and mushroom gratin, spiced aubergines and cucumber neapolitana, I just can’t get my head around this whole cooked cucumber business, all a bit too European for me I think but the sauce was divine so I’ve to plans to make it at home with zucchini or patty pans, much more up my alley.

The Jerusalem artichokes were back on the menu, roasted and then popped into a salad and dressed with hazelnut oil, toasted hazelnuts and myrtle berries, just too good – I’’m in love with Jerusalem artichokes, honestly they’re the best thing, especially roasted, I’ve plans to find those at home or if all else fails, to try and grow them – with any luck, I’ll track them down at Woollies or Everfresh otherwise there’s a remarkably good chance your man will never get to taste them unless his hardening skills turn out to be slightly less dire than mine.

For pud we made about a million versions of meringue – there’s always a huge bowlful of egg whites lying around, way too many yolks going into pastry and all sorts of other things like potatoes and sauces to “enrich them”, when a cow’s worth of butter and cream hasn’t quite done the trick, so to use them all up the answer is meringues. There was an Irish coffee meringue with whisky-laced caramel sauce, almond meringue with strawberries and cream, chocolate meringue with chocolate and rum cream (can just imagine how well that would go down with my dad, chocolate and rum on one plate, what more could you ask for) and a meringue roulade with pomegranate seeds and rose water – yum, utterly high on sugar but other than that, yum.

A Breath Of Fresh Air

So it was “breath of wind” day and I made my little vol au vents using Tuesday's puff pastry – small, medium and large and the filling to go with them, that incredible apple compote and Calvados pastry cream filling and then had to issue myself with a restraining order to stay away from it. The little pastry guys came out really well, I thought I’d overcooked them but in the end they were just perfect, so crispy and light, dead pleased. Lunch was a shocker, willpower of note required to last the hour without eating my annual allowance of pastry in one sitting, everyone’s “food babies” (the size of your tummy and how many months along you seem to be have become a frequent subject of discussion) had a field day, not good.

I made the smoked chicken salad too, not much to it to be honest since the funky bit of actually smoking the chicken had already been done but still, made for a delish lunch along with the tuna, I wasn’t down to make that but thankfully my partner was so managed a plate of that too, better than scoffing pastry at any rate.

Practiced brandy snaps as well since I’ve put them on my final exam menu without actually having made them before but they came out a treat although my timing estimate for them is slightly off – I’ve a sinking feeling that might be the case all round, definitely going to have to add a shot of speed to everything I do...................

And for my bread hit of the day I made ciabatta and my word it’s good and one of my favourites because the machine has to do all the work – far too wet and sticky a dough to knead by hand so it’s a Kenwood job, my kind of bread. It really is just the business, so pleased with the end result and for once I reckon it came out better than the Woollies version that I normally buy at home – the same cannot be said of the rest of my breads, most of which could sink a battleship but this one was a dream, YAY!

Demo was with Darina and sadly it was mostly deep fry day which so doesn’t bode well for lunch tomorrow – why is it that everything that goes into the deep fryer tastes amazing and yet because you know where it spent the last five minutes, it comes with a massive side helping of guilt??

We did a few types of batter, one with beer and a couple of other slightly lighter ones too and then popped an assortment of fish and seafood into them, quick detour via the deep fat fryer and then onto a plate to make up a classic Italian Fritto Misto de Mare, yum – there was sole, haddock, squid, mussels, monkfish and highlight of the day, scampi, such an 80s throwback but WOW, it’s good, we made it with huge Dublin Bay prawns, they’re not actually from the Bay, I’ve no idea why they’re called that but wearing a thick overcoat of crispy batter they were heaven on a plate. It is winter after all so even prawns need a bit of extra cover you see.

Classic tartare sauce followed, about a hundred times better than the manky stuff you normally get at fish restaurants, a tomato, chilli and avocado salsa that almost set my mouth on fire, OMG the chillies are hot at the moment, volcanically, scud missile hot and then all the traditional accompaniments – chips of every size and good old mushy peas with mint. We also made some wicked little crab cakes, spiced up with the aforementioned chilli weapons, a touch of coriander and served with homemade sweet chilli sauce, so good.

For starters we did traditional French onion soup which I adore, takes bloody ages to make, it’s those lazy onions and their “we’ll caramelise when we’re good and ready” thing again but topped with a crispy cheesy crouton, it really is just the business.

And for pud it was all types of mousses, tangerine, orange and another chocolate version, the tangerine worked for me in a big way, really good. And more chocolate cups to put them all in to – painting those was going to be a huge drag I thought but I did a few last week when we made the handmade choccies and it’s actually therapeutic in a big way, lovely.

Yo Sushi

My God, it was a busy day - canapés and finger food in the morning, Sushi and a few Turkish dishes in the afternoon, and a fun filled evening of final menu decisions and planning, I'm wrecked just thinking about it all.

We kicked off at 9 with a half hour cheese talk, honestly people need to stop with all the cheese making, I can't keep up - today it was a whole array of goats and ewes milk cheeses from all over the show and then straight onto a truly manic morning demo with Darina and Rory on canapés, the list of goodies was endless, I'd need to apply for more bandwidth I think to write them all down so will just tell you about a few favourites.

Smoked salmon spirals were near the top of the list for me, nothing terribly new or exciting but you just can't beat smoked salmon as far as I'm concerned - paper thin crepés filled with cream cheese, spring onions and lashings of smoked salmon, rolled up and sliced into spirals, heavenly - apparently the general calculation is about 6 canapés per person at a party, well if they were featuring these at a party I went to the food costing would have gone out the window, give me 6 of these just to start with please and then I'll move onto the rest.

Tenny weeny Yorkshire puds filled with rare roast beef and horseradish sauce, amazing, little Shepherds Pies and chicken satay with the most incredible peanut sauce, I'm not always such a fan of peanut sauce, sometimes you feel like you're eating Black Cat straight out the bottle but this was just exceptionally good.

And then I adored the pea guacamole miniature warm tortillas - such a good idea for when you can't get avos, well I mean you can always get them these days but out of season they're either doing a spot on impersonation of a hand grenade or you've to re-mortgage to buy the perfectly ripe ones so peas are such a great alternative and it was really good.

Darina also showed us how to make these brilliant little "cheat's tarts" - normally that really dodgy sliced white bread in the supermarkets doesn't so much as get a look in at Ballymaloe, it's stopped at the door and escorted off the premises but for one day on the course it makes a brief appearance. The thing with this bread is that if you buy the truly rubbish stuff you can slice off the crusts and then roll it out so that it's paper thin, the rubbish-ness means that it doesn't bounce back and you then cut it into rounds with a scone cutter, pop it into a mini muffin tin and into the oven for a short stint and ta da, it looks like you've slaved for ages making eensy little pastry tarts when if fact all you did was stroll down to your nearest supermarket.

There was a heated discussion later in the morning about doilies - some parties in the room were fond of them and others thought their use should be restricted solely to kindling, I know they might be considered a little retro now but still, I'm just not a big fan.

Rory also reminded us to provide little bowls and so on for people to pop their skewers, satay sticks, olive pips and the like into during a canapé party - so often this gets forgotten and people wonder around not knowing what to do with all the paraphenalia and leaving the party with a handbag or pockets bulging, laden down with odds and ends.

Straight after lunch we moved onto sushi, my absolute best thing (I'm going to have to do a count at the end of the course to see just how many times I've said this, me and food are enjoying a far too intimate relationship at the moment)! But you know the really fab thing about the demo was that I've discovered sushi isn't actually hard and believe it or not, pretty cheap to make, you wouldn't think so considering what you pay for it when you're out but honestly it's a seriously good business model. The key thing is to get the rice right and cooking it is a bit like conducting an intense scientific experiment, down to counting minutes and measuring flavourings really carefully but in the end, if you get it right then you're sorted. The whole rolling part is easy too, as long as you're not trying to be a Sushi Master - seriously, the people that train to do this in Japan spend 10 years as an apprentice before eventually qualifying as Sushi Masters and one of the checks on the list is that fact that every grain of rice has TO FACE THE SAME DIRECTION, can you imagine it?? I get myself into a complete tizz just trying to peel a grape and these guys are fiddling about with individual grains of rice, I think life might just be too short for that.

So we learnt to make maki, nigiri, temaki, gunkan and Californian rolls, and a few hot dishes too with seared beef fillet and duck breast - it's only sashimi that has to be entirely raw, the word sushi actually applies only to the rice so as long as you've got that as part of the dish, you've got sushi.



Darina and Shermin fanning the rice to cool it down quickly



Loopy having a go at rolling sushi

The lady that came in to do the sushi demo, Shermin Mustafa Thompson, is half Turkish/half Irish and so she also showed us a few delish Turkish dishes - dolma which I learnt I knew from Greece but the Turkish version is different (and I'm sorry to say, better), it includes minced lamb or beef and they were fab. There were also lamajun which is best described as being sort of like a pizza (although I'm sure the Turks would be horrified to hear it described like that), merjemec choba which is lentil soup and a fab bulghur wheat dish made with tomatoes, yum.

Straight from demo we all raced home to fiddle about with our menus and finally take a decision on what we'd cook for our final practical exam - having learnt my lesson with the pastry debacle on Tuesday and accepted that I really am horribly slow, I've decided on pea and coriander soup, pan grilled John Dory with mashed herb potatoes and leeks and peppers with marjoram, and yoghurt and cardomom cream mouuse with saffron poached pears and brandy snap petit fours. In between all that I'll have the joys of produing some form of bread which hopefully doesn't weigh more than I do (I sadly have a real skill when it comes to making heavy, stodgy bread) - should be fun, I'm down for 09h00 on Wednesday morning, December 8th, going to have to practice frantically until then.......................having finally made a choice, I put down recommended wines (part of the requirement), drew up an order list for all the ingredients and equipment I'll need, started praying for some kind of time warp that will turn 3 hours into 4, had a gigantic glass of wine and went to sleep exhausted, tomorrow's another day!

Squid Pro Quo

Right, I decided to make up for yesterday's lack of productiveness today by making a whole host of things - white and brown soda bread because they may well come up in the bread exam (with any luck, so much easier than yeast bread which I still suck at after all this time), I've not made them since about week 2 so a bit of practice can't be a bad thing - they came out really well but even against my slightly stogdy yeast breads, I have to admit that yeast bread wins hands down, I'm just going to have to get better at them, aarrrgh the thought of all that kneading, yuk! Made a batch of puff pastry after that which we'll be using on Thursday apparently - a pound of flour to a pound of butter, multiple rolling sessions and ta da, puff pastry.

Made my poached pears next, they really are divine and some little mixed spice tuille biscuits to go with them just for fun, and then finally the main event, the eight legged creatures had arrived and it was time to de-head and de-leg my squid and you know what, they're really easy - miles better than their fellow ocean going buddies, fish and crab, the key thing is to separate all the bits without bursting the ink sac because that's not fun, a few of the others had the misfortune of doing so and their breadboards looked like an oil slick, it was BP all over again and to clean it up, well it ain't fun, that ink is the permanent marker of the sea. So I handled my little guy with kid gloves and managed to keep my work station ink-free, YAY! Brushed the bits with a little olive oil and pan grilled them on a super hot pan, squid is another of those fun things where if you don't cook it long enough, well it's just all slimy and nasty but if you go the other way and over cook it, then you may as well just gnaw on your chef shoe for lunch, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. So it was on and off in a matter of minutes and then straight to the plate with a small rocket salad and some chilli and parsley oil, yum.

Before and after................

I also had a go at making small pastry tartlets filled with caramelised onion, roasted red pepper, goats cheese and pesto as a potential exam menu dish and it was fab but wars have been fought and won in less time........................let's put it like this, the squid probably took about 20 minutes tops, the pears and tuiles ditto, both breads another 20 minutes which means that of the 3+ hours I spent in the kitchen this morning, most of my time was spent fannying about making, resting or rolling pastry tartlets, caramelising onions (so slow, why they can't just get on with it and go brown and sweet I don't know), roasting and peeling peppers (always a fiddly business) and making pesto so whilst it may have been good, producing one course out of three probably won't fly and I'm afraid I'm going to have to down grade radically - back to the drawing board tonight for more recipe file trawling and a large pinch of realism in terms of what I can actually manage in 3 hours.................!

Fab, relatively low fat lunch (so unusual it deserves a mention) of squid and poached pears and then straight onto demo with Rory for an action-packed afternoon - we did about half an hour on more puff pastry things, vol au vents which translate literally as a breath of wind so in other words, you better hope your puff pastry does its thing and rises like it's supposed to instead of just sitting stubbornly on the baking sheet like a lump - he filled them with tthe most delish apple compote and Calvados flavoured pastry cream, you can keep the vol au vent, I could have just eaten the bowl of filling straight. He showed us to roll and cut the pastry to make the little cups, as well as all sorts of other shapes - sacristains (little twists covered in chopped almonds and sugar, heavenly), fold over tarts and another square tart with a border for Tarte Francaise which then gets filled with sliced fruit or a savoury option, think creamy mushroom and chicken or soft cheese, tomato and pesto. They all looked beautiful, you could just picture them lined up in the window of some zgoogy (my favourite word but I have no idea how to spell it) Parisienne patisserie on the Champs Elysee - mine of course may be worthy only of a dodgy back street but it's good to have goals.

Keeping with the French theme, it was time for croissants - we learned how to make the dough first and then to cut them so that they hopefully bear some resemblance to the real thing when they're cooked - as Rory said, most croissants that you see these days are "stodgy lardy lumps of mediocrity" and I'm afraid he's right, most of the ones you see or have the misfortune to taste are truly ghastly, no pressure of course...............

Onto warm salads which are just what you need right now - forget everything I've said so far about winter and cold weather, I knew nothing, this week is truly the real McCoy and it's supposed to just get worse and worse over the next few days, Scotland and lots of England and even parts of Ireland due for snow and in the meantime it's just so incredibly cold that trying to get your yeast going in the morning to make bread is a bit of a non starter. You're supposed to sit it somewhere warm (where, where, forget the yeast just take me there instead) in a little lukewarm water so that it can wake up and start working but at the moment it just sits in the bowl and stares at you nonchalantly, "no way am I doing anything until you sort out the damn heating in this place". Whoops, sorry, waffled a bit there - back to the salads, there were a few different varieties, warm smoked chicken with berries and parsnip crisps, chiken livers with ginger, and another chicken liver one with apples and hazelnuts - I'm not a huge fan of chicken livers unless they're blended with a ton of butter or cream and a dash of brandy and sitting on a plate in the form of paté next to a small mountain of melba toast but the smoked chicken one was fantastic. Most of the smoked chicken I've had to date has been a bit dried out and ukky but this was wicked, smoked by Ummera which was one of the places we visited on the school tour which feels about a hundred years ago, still gorgeous and moist and delish.

The final event of the day was tuna and I've been waiting for this for literally ages so I was heartbroken to learn just how incredibly endangered they are - for the record, none of us should be eating tuna, there really are so few left in the oceans and at the rate we're going, they won't last long but unless the demand stops, greed will keep on ensuring people supply it, too sad. I felt bad even trying it after that - Rory explained that they have to show us how to cook it but other than that, it doesn't feature at Ballymaloe at all, that made me feel a bit better. I just wish it wasn't so damn good - we had it three ways, with chermoula which is a brilliant North African spice mixture that was used as a marinade, with salsa verde and with peppers and tapenade, all delish although the chermoula was by far my best, would be fab with chicken or pork I think so will have to try it with those little fellows instead.

In between all that, an award winning Chilean wine maker named Adolfo Hurtela of Cono Sur Wines popped in and brought with him a few bottles of wine for us to taste, the reception was warm and welcoming as you can imagine.......................we tried a Sauvignon Blanc and two Pinot Noirs, all fanastic, the second Pinot was especially good, retails at €45, sadly not featured in the marked down, plonky section of Tescos that I loyally visit each weekend so it was such a treat to taste.

The group of us that had helped out at Rory's birthday party a few weeks ago were so kindly invited to dinner with Darina, Tim (Darina's husband) and Rory and we just had the most lovely evening - Gillian, one of the teachers here who spent years at the River Café in London cooked and so it was a genuine Tuscan feast, a really special evening, I loved every minute.

Lucy, Charlotte and Ems, bubbles in hand!

Sticky Wicket

Bit of a funny Monday, brain was doing a go-slow and I couldn't seem to get going, not good when you're supposed to be producing decent food en masse!

All I managed the whole morning was sticky toffee pudding (good) and some pumpkin ravioli - bit pathetic for 4 hours to be honest and the ravioli was a monster mission, it made the tagliatelle of a few weeks ago seem like a non-starter, you've to roll it so much thinner, you have to be able to read the morning paper through it which means about 25 trips through the pasta roller, it must have been dizzy by the time I'd finished with it. Yummy filling, pumpkin roasted slowly (it didn't have an option since it was in my hands for the morning) with fennel seeds, garlic, a touch of chilli, ricotta and parmesan and then once the ravioli is finished and cooked, a touch of sage butter, not at all bad.

I woke up a little over lunch thank God, nothing like a few seriously strong cups of coffee to get you sorted. Afternoon demo was with Pam and there were some truly delish things on the menu for the day - our first introduction to squid and how to get them from slimy tube thing with many more legs than me to rings you can pan grill in garlic butter. And the fun didn't stop there, it was straight onto lamb and how to butterfly it, or in other words get rid of the whole leg bone, knee bit and all, so that you can either cut it up easily or stuff it and roast it or something. For us, it was about cutting it up and turning it into the most fantastic curry, fair bit of cream I'm afraid and loads of different toasted spices and lime juice and oh my, so good in the end especially with these two brilliant chutneys that follows - fresh apple and mint, amazing, and tamarind and banana, and then to really get the party started a hat trick of Indian breads - your good old favourite, naan, and two others, pooris which are new to me, deep fried and thus I'm sad to say, fantastic, and chapatis which are huge in East Africa and just totally delish.

The Middle Eastern theme continued with pears poached in saffron syrup and cardomom (just loved them, think I might add those to my final practical exam menu, yes I've still made no decisions and we have to submit them in a few days time), a prune dish which wasn't my best to be honest (not a bad thing considering the typical after effects of a prune eating session) and then our first introduction to filo pastry which I'm beyond pleased to tell you we don't actually make, I wouldn't know even vaguely where to start, the sheets are so thin you could use them as printing paper if you didn't have a ream of A4 handy. So it's just about using filo rather than producing it, the relief! We wrapped it around an almond orange mixture, not too shabby and then to complete the picture there were a few lassis to try which are chilled Indian drinks made with yoghurt and all sorts of flavourings and my taste of the day, ginger and lime lemonade or I suppose that should be lime-ade, just incredible and we all need to be drinking masses of anything containing ginger at the moment - everyone is sick and ginger really helps, it's a natural anti-biotic and I'm desperate not to get sick again so it's going to be ginger all the way!

Menu Madness

Right, I've spent the day filing, going through a mountain of recipes from the last 9 weeks, trying to decide what to cook for my final and in my standard non-decisive style, I simply cannot make up my mind - have now emailed your man, my mom, my sister and my lovely chef friends for help, fingers crossed this esteemed Menu Consultancy Panel can help because I'm deadlocked.

It is freezing cold and my housemate Amelia and I have been in the lounge for most of the day, it's only the two of us here this weekend, we've had the fire going and the door closed to try and keep out the cold - you realise how cosy it is when you venture into the kitchen to make the umpteenth cup of tea and instantly lose all feeling in your feet, the thermometer thingy says it's 3 degrees, lovely and apparently there's a cold front due to hit on Tuesday because of course right now it's warm........................

The start of Week 10 tomorrow, I can't believe how quickly the time is flying by now, only 3 weeks left and your man arrives in the Emerald Isle in 13 sleeps, YAY!

Happy Thanksgiving

So Saturday was Thanksgiving in the States and the girls in the Playroom Cottage hosted a full on Thanksgiving dinner and it was brilliant - it was a charity event actually, we all paid €10 and the girls managed to get almost everything donated by either the school or suppliers and stall holders at the Farmers' Market which was brilliant because most of the money raised then could be kept as a donation to the India Fund, a Mumbai-based charity which the school supports - the school also matched whatever was raised and in the end the total figure was well over €1,000, really good!

There were about 45 of us and dinner was fab, so great to have Christmas dinner in November and know that there's another one still to come - turkey, gammon, roast pots, roast artichokes, parsnip and pumpkin mash, caramelised brussel sprouts, stuffing and gravy, bet you're looking forward to Christmas after reading that!

There was mulled wine on arrival, the perfect thing to defrost with, it was bloody freezing and so of course I needed quite a bit of it........................soaked it up with bruschetta to start, main course as above and then pecan pie and apple tart for pud, what more could you ask for, I love Thanksgiving. And I won a raffle prize, a massage at Ballymaloe House, YAY!

Mastering The Art Of French Cookery

So Friday was officially my French cookery day and I was channeling Julia Child all morning - had one very quick non-French moment where I made an Irish soda bread to start with, ever since we moved onto yeast breads which are so much harder, the comparatively easy soda breads have taken a back seat and I've not made one since Week 3 but they're a possibility on the bread exam and so they're back on the agenda for these last few weeks - am so going to have to make bread every day now until the end, the thought of that particular exam makes me want to run away.

Once that was done and banged in the oven, it was Francaise all the way - I started with the consommé and OMG, it's torturous, every moment of it. You've to start by getting enough meat off a beef shin and making sure that every bit is free of fat, tendon, what have you - I can't begin to tell you how hard that it, as far as I could see the whole damn shin was pretty much made up of tendon, my cow had done far too much exercise that's for sure, bloody laps around the field every day evidently. Those of us on consommé duty kept abandoning our stations to visit each other and find out if everyone else was also losing the will to live - anything for a minute or two away from your shin. Straight from there it was onto the other ingredients, all to be finely diced, and then for a truly fun moment in my day, brunoise garnish - brunoise is French for "chop everything so small you need a microscope to find it again", see what I mean!

Thank God it all came out right in the end, sparklingly clear consommé, if it had done anything else after all that work there's a strong likelihood I'd have resorted to a tantrum of historic proportions.

After that I made a pastry type of thing, classically called a Jalousie although I changed the filling and put a cinnamon, apple and pecan mix into mine - mostly I wanted to see whether my puff pastry had actually worked and it was OK, there's definitely room for improvement which is a good excuse to make it again. I'm afraid to tell you that puff pastry is horribly easy to make which is not good because I adore it and battling the Ballymaloe Bulge is already a full time occupation for most of us, more Bellymaloe than Ballymaloe at this stage of the course to be honest.

And finally for the major test of the day, Soufflé Grand Marnier but you know what, it's really not that hard, I was stressing about it something special but in the end it came out "grand" as they would say here and got perfect marks! This piccie was taken a few minutes after it came out the oven so it had started to sink a bit but still, not too shabby huh, I'd make these again for sure, they're delish.

Afternoon demo was with Darina and for the most part, the focus was on hamburgers and about a million variations of what to do with them - mushroom and goats cheese, caramelised onions and pesto, blue cheese, guacamole and French fried onions, mushroom and bacon, the options are endless. The two American students, Madison and Christina, went up to make a classic American burger - lettuce, sliced tomato, mayo, ketchup, a touch of mustard, caramelised onions and bacon, bit of a super size me moment.

For one day and one day only, Heinz ketchup, squeezy yellow mustard and Hellmans mayo made an appearance at Ballymaloe - quite a moment because normally if we want mustard, mayo or tomato sauce, we've to make it from scratch. It was good to see my old friends especially Mr. Hellmans, life just ain't quite the same without him.

We obviously made the patties from scratch, you have to don't you, the ones you buy at the shop are so solid they could double as a frisbee and whilst we were busy with the mincer we also learnt to make homemade sausages and burger patties from around the world, Middle Eastern lamb burgers and Vietnamese pork and lemongrass patties, yum.

There were a few gorgeous soups too, curried parsnip with parsnip crisps and celeriac with hazelnut, so good - I've never really cooked with celeriac before coming to Ireland and I'm so going to when I get home, have some celeriac seeds which need to be planted, easy peesy to grow too I'm told which helps since my gardening skills remain fairly pathetic.

And of course a day at Bellymaloe wouldn't be complete without a couple of cakes - sticky toffee pud, caramelised banana tart and the clear winner of the day, spiced pan roasted pear cake, deadly!

Bit of a nuclear bomb drop just before we headed off for the weekend - the run down on our final practical exams which are on the 8th and 9th of December, time slots still to be drawn, three hours to cook a three course meal of your choice with the menu and list of required ingredients to be submitted next Thursday, November 25th with no changes permitted after that which is a good thing I suppose since I'll need to practice the damn dishes every day between then and D-Day. Speed is not my strong point, I'm more of a tortoise, always get there in the end but I like the slow lane so I'm going to have to practice a lot if I'm to get everything done within the three hours - I know it sounds like ages but trust me, it's not and the kitchen wall clock seems to be on speed or amphetamines or something..............lots of menu brain storming planned for the weekend, wish me luck!