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.
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