I'm Getting Better!

Manic Monday and time to tackle the tart again - different filling but same base which is where all my troubles lie but, and this is so cool, the one I made today was a bit better - granted I'm not about to give Gordon Ramsay a run for his money but there was most definitely a slight improvement.

The first one I made last week was as dry as the Sahara desert which apparently makes for crisper, better pastry but by Heaven, it's a mission to roll it out without a million cracks appearing so I went with a tiny bit more liquid for attempt #2 and it helped - God knows if the actual pastry was any better but at least I didn't feel like I needed to impersonate Mike Tyson's biceps to get it from a ball into a flat piece of something - probably a bit wet in terms of pastry-standards so if I could just find a moderate climate somewhere in between drought-stricken desert and flood-drenched plains I'll be cooking with gas.

I even managed that whole roll it onto the rolling pin thing and unroll it into the flan tin business, bit of a milestone for me, sad I know but I was grinning like a Cheshire cat. Deadly filling - Gruyere cheese, parmesan cheese, eggs, cream, dill and the obligatory mass of seasoning - it was really good.

Also made wicked little lemon squares which were delic, could have eaten the whole tray without difficulty - all in all, a good day and I was soooooooooooo glad when the list of what we each had to make went up that my name was nowhere next to Mr. Crab's and so other people got lumped with that task - it'll come up again at some point but the temporary reprieve was most welcome.

Afternoon demo was with Rory and he showed us how to joint a whole chicken and then turn it into creamy sauce with mushrooms and ginger, make sticky chicken wings and spiced chicken legs, zucchini with marjoram, homemade tomato pasta sauce, good old Irish potatoes, gaspacho with all the trimmings and by far the highlight of the day, apple crumble with (oh no, you guessed it) a sweet pastry base, apples from the garden and the most incredible crumble with almonds and cinnamon - it was pure heaven, going to make that many, many times over I know.

Gaspacho; zucchini carpaccio with parmesan; chicken breasts with mushrooms and ginger; apple crumble tart

The chicken is going to be my job tomorrow morning and honestly, you feel as though you could tackle a knee replacement by the time you're done with it - bit ukky but it's all about the joints, ball-and-socket numbers all over the show and if you're going to call yourself a chef, it's not just a case of blunting the hell out of your knife and grinding your way through them as I've done in the past but actually finding the joints and cleanly slipping your knife between them - easier said than done, they're slippery little buggers and when you're holding a razor-sharp filleting knife in one hand and a free-range, organic chicken the size of humble turkey in the other, well it's not the time to day dream about your weekend plans or who's going to get voted off The Apprentice next week. The other small detail is that good quality organic, free range chickens don't come cheap, about €16.00 each here and I'm sure they're pretty steep at home too so if you've plans to run a successful restaurant or something similar in the future, you've got to make sure that you get everything that you can off the kuku before he heads for the stock pot - we're talking a size 0 supermodel silhouette and that makes it just a bit more interesting - looking forward to the challenge ahead...............

Forgot to tell you, just before Demo started, Darina bought in some special mushrooms to show us that had just been delivered to the school - chanterelles which are so pretty and ceps - the office placed a call to a well known London restaurant to ask them what they're currently paying for ceps and the reply was a staggering £45 per kg - nothing like messing up €16.00 worth of chicken and burning £45.00 of cep mushrooms to brighten up your day!

Once I get through the orthopaedic part of my morning tomorrow, I'm down to make chicken breasts with chanterelle mushroom and tarragon sauce, sticky chicken wings and one of the zucchini dishes, no pressure.

Cep and chanterelle mushrooms

We had a wine talk last evening given by Eric Talavet, Directeur Général of Establissement Thunevin in France, a wine company in Saint-Emillion, Bordeaux, owned by Jean-Luc Thunevin, the first ever producer of "garage wines" - it was actually so interesting although I have to say that French wines confuse the living day lights out of me - instead of just saying what a wine is, like we do at home, you've to identify the type of wine (Merlot, Cab Sauv, etc) by the appellation or area in which it's grown - not speaking French or for that matter, being able to pronounce most of the appellations without sounding like a right hick doesn't help and I can see much studying ahead of me if I'm to pass the wine exam at the end of the course.

We tasted 6 wines - 1 white and 5 reds, all lovely - they had the spitoons all lined up ready for use, I've no idea why, I imagine you could safely lock them up in some dusty, unused corner of the storeroom and throw away the key - spit out good French wine at the end of a long day in the kitchen?? - you'd be mad!