Money for Jam

YAY, I made jam for the first time ever and it was actually dead easy, can't believe how much sugar goes into jam but by God, it's good – that’s probably why to be honest!

Actually had a really productive day and made - brace yourself - brown bread, scones, jam, Greek salad and penne pasta with mushrooms, marjoram and at least one cow's worth of cream so of course it was sublime. Even if I say so myself it was all pretty good and my confidence has crept up perhaps one point after the pastry debacle of Wednesday...................don't talk about it.

Still can't believe I made my own jam, with loganberries which I've never seen before but they look and taste just like raspberries and looked completely spiffy inside a jar with my name on it, so cool.

The bread was wicked too, it was a soda bread so none of those things that normally give me palpitations when I think of bread - yeast and kneading and proving (is that how you spell it?) and all that jazz, of course I know it's coming but I'm choosing to happily exist in my little bubble of non-yeast self denial for now, it's nice here. I topped my loaf of bread with sunflower and poppy seeds, looked so pretty and it helps to make a pattern on your bread so that you can ID it in the oven in between all the other loaves - you've to hope then that yours doesn't flop utterly and end up looking like Russian flat bread in between all the other happily risen, bread-like looking loaves - thankfully my loaf was most obliging, did exactly what it was supposed to do and made me smile in a big way! I forgot to take a picture but definitely will next time I'm rostered to make bread (or at least a piccie of someone else's if mine comes out looking like it was trampled by an elephant................).

Friday afternoon demo was taken by Darina and these were for dishes that we would be making on Monday – mucho concentration required since most of us had big plans to drink fairly significant quantities of wine over the course of the weekend, well earned I’d say after our first week. So for Monday morning, we’ll be making tomato and basil soup (which we had on our very first day, so good, take the idea of standard boring old tomato soup and chuck it out the window, add a whole lot of things like basil and salt pepper and sugar and chicken stock and béchamel sauce and suddenly you’ve got tomato soup for the First Team), white soda bread, more tarts (not thinking  about it), two different salads with these fab little radishes, strawberry ice cream (beyond words, made of strawberries, sugar and cream, no need for further comment), raspberry popsicles (ditto the ice cream) and on the not-so-good side, crab – now I’ve nothing against crabs (loved chasing them on the beach when I was little, we used to try and make them race against each other with admittedly limited success) and don’t get me wrong, I’ll eat them any day of the week but when they arrive alive and you’ve to put them in a pot and make them not alive anymore, well I had a bit of a lumpy-throat, not good when you’re trying to become a chef – Darina told us that the best way to approach the whole scenario (especially if you’re the crab) is to put them into cold water and slowly heat the water up and somewhere along the line (I like to think it would be equivalent to sun bathing on a warm day with a cocktail to hand) they just slip away – I’m sticking with that image, made me feel much better. The other thing to look out for are their sneaky front claws, pre the pot, with which they can apparently break your finger if they manage to get hold of you – of course if that happened you’d probably have far fewer qualms about chucking them into a pot of steaming hot water....................anyway, bless them, they went into the pot waving goodbye and came out a bit later sans the wave but tasted really fab when Darina put them into a tart with a bit of coriander, ginger, a touch of chilli and the obligatory cream – I've chosen to simply block out the part where you've to pound them with a weight or a hammer to get the meat out and I’m afraid my guilty complex just crept quietly away and hid behind my taste buds and stayed there for the rest of the afternoon............

And that was it – our first week was over, the bottle of red was bellowing my name, I didn’t have to worry about tarts or crabs till Monday and best of all, I had a weekend ahead of me – for those of you that have worked in the bush, you’ll know that most lodges and game reserves work on straight work cycles of at least 6 weeks and up to 3 months long – for the past 5 years, I’ve worked 3 month work cycles with a month off after that which is wonderful but the idea of Saturday and Sunday off, with a bit of a lie in, was dead appealing – will let you know what it’s like!

Crab tart; yellow tomato, cucumber & radish salad; old-fashioned hot dressed crab;
Greek salad; tomato & basil soup with soda bread scones; cucumber, radish, feta & Nigella seed salad