Finding Nemo

I kicked off with the lemon meringue tart this morning - the fish hadn't yet arrived and I wanted to get the pastry behind me anyway but I've good news, I heard the magic three words from my teacher this morning for the first time ever.........................."good pastry Debra". Aren't you impressed, third time lucky but it really was good - not too dry, not soggy, rolled out like a dream, rolled it up on the rolling pin and flung it expertly across the flan ring like Nigella, even made some little ones for miniature lemon meringue tartlets and petit four out of the extra pastry - felt so good, had it all done in about 20 minutes flat (excluding all the time it has to sit in the fridge and "rest", lazy stuff pastry) - made the lemon curd without making lemon-flavoured scrambled eggs which a few of the others managed to produce and then turned out some not-too-shabby meringue and piped it (piping sucks by the way, messy business cleaning the bag out and all that) into a lattice-work across the top of the tart - bit old-fashioned but it was a good reason to practice piping and it came out just beautifully - in the excitement I forgot to take a picture, I really should have because it was just fab, had a proud little moment before it got cut up - full marks for it. YAY.

By then, the fish had arrived and I was stuck with filleting a fairly sizeable cod and a little mackerel - I started with the cod thinking that because it was so much bigger, it would take longer - not so, in the world of fish, big = easy and small = shoot me now.

So with Mr. Cod, I cut around his "neck" and then twisted his head off, bit manky and then had to dig out his gills (note for future reference, they're quite sharp) before the head went into the stock pot - had to ID and pick out a few more little body parts and then it was on to the main business and it really wasn't too bad - the bones are quite big and you can see them pretty easily so negotiated my way around all of those. Admittedly the fillet didn't look too smooth by the time I'd finished with it, only fit really for a fish pie or smothered in batter, it wasn't really pretty enough for pan frying but still, at least it was no longer attached to the fish, bone-free and skinless.

Shane and his cod

As for Mr. Mackerel, he drove me mad - I thought I had got the fillet off quite well but when I felt along it, as we'd been shown to do to look for bones it was like feeling a bloody pin cushion, bones everywhere and my word they wanted to stay there - I'd have given up my winter coat for a pair of tweezers, my hands were all slimy and trying to pull out those little suckers took ages. Thankfully I'm not a big mackerel fan (it's just a bit too fishy) because I'll not be serving those again any time soon - I'm sticking to nice, big grown-up fish from now on and flat fish, we're doing them next week and apparently they're so much easier than round fish - roll on sole and plaice and all their friends.

My veg turned out all right - I made a tomato dish and another one with cucumber and fennel - I did feel sorry for the girls who'd planned a big Friday night out, one of the veg on the roster was beetroot so they'd have ended up going out with neon pink fingers and eau d'Nemo, probably not the look of choice - I imagine the local boys (who must so look forward to every fresh intake of students) likely kept their distance a little last night although a few pints and a Jager bomb or three might have done the trick.

We had a fantastic afternoon demo with Rory and learnt lots of fab dishes which we've to recreate as best as possible on Monday - roast leg of lamb, traditional Irish salad with cream dressing, mint sauce, gravy, glazed carrots, braised turnips with marjoram, roast potatoes, haricot beans with rosemary and tomato, berry salad with mint and mangoes, bananas and passion fruit in lime syrup. I'd not had much lunch, all the fishy business of the morning had put me off a bit and so I was thrilled to bits that there'd be so much to taste at the end of demo - roast lamb with gravy, mint sauce and crispy pots, not too shabby for Deb.

Rory began by showing us how to cut up a side of lamb into the various bits - he safely assumed that we all at least knew which end used to "baaa" and which end didn't and so he moved on to showing us how to cut a shoulder, loin, fillet, leg, etc. We've only to learn how to do the rack and ribs and chops and all that later, it was just large-ish body parts to start with which was enough in any event. The leg then got covered in rosemary and garlic and popped into the oven - the room smelt gorgeous the whole afternoon and it was drizzling outside and dark and generally mis so the kitchen was the perfect place to be.

We moved onto the veg after that, glazed carrots and braised turnips, they're trying to teach us how to best maximise the use of vegetables that are actually in season firstly because it's the right thing to do in terms of supporting local farmers and secondly because it's so much more cost-efffective, for example turnip for 20 people would cost about €5 whereas asparagus which is not in season right now would cost €40 for the same number of people and even at that price would probably arrive in your kitchen somewhat sorry for itself, stringy and dishevelled after travelling halfway around the world. You can't believe how big this turnip was though, forget feeding 20, it could have doubled as a weapon, seriously.

Turnip bomb..............

The carrots were a bit of a laugh - for the recipe, you've to cook them in very little water with a bit of butter and sugar so that the water basically evaporates and you're left with shiny, happy glazed carrots. That at least is the idea but like Rory said, it's sadly quite likely that at least one of us will manage to weld our carrots to the bottom of the pan come Monday, in fact he reckoned that between the carrots and the turnips which also have to be cooked in very little water, there was a chance a select few might graduate from their welding apprencticeship and get their stripes all in one day. We wanted to take a bet but he politely declined - apparently a couple of years ago he did take a bet on this very issue and unfortunately for him it turned out to be the only carrot-welding free year in the history of the school and he had to part with a case of wine the following day. I think it's a fab idea, nothing like a bit of liquid motivation to get you watching your carrots like a hawk.

We ended with the fruit salads, too good for words, and then the traditional Irish salad that included hard boiled eggs and whilst Rory was busy with those, a conversation about how long a soft boiled egg needs came up - most people were muttering about 3 or 4 minutes but Rory told us very clearly that you want to give them 6 minutes on the dot, in boiling salted water. Everyone argued that it would be too long and so the challenge was on but he's dead right - when the timer rang for 6 minutes, it was the perfect egg, firm white part and runny yolk and none of that nasty wobbly stuff that slips around the plate if you've undercooked them, granted the eggs here are BIG eggs but still, I'm going to give it a bash tomorrow morning, boiled egg with toast soldiers, perfect, I'll let you know how the 6 minute thing turns out.