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.