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.........