I Like The World Flat

I got through quite a few recipes this morning, took myself by surprise to be honest and made granola (more on that later), blueberry muffins, grapefruit, orange and mint cocktail (which really just entailed a brief negotiation with the citrus fruit to get them to part with the segments and leave all the white pithy stuff behind), spotted dog (white bread with sultanas) and the world's largest fry up - egg, bacon, sausage, mushroom, tomato and toast, a slimmer's delight!

The granola went really well to start with - had the oven timer set to 3 minute intervals to make sure it didn't burn courtesy of all the butter and honey, it was like an Abba revival in there the way I was dancing between my work station and the oven, got very little done in between the checks, 2 minutes and 50 seconds just doesn't give you much time but at least it didn't burn to a cinder. And then the morning's fatal error occured - having gone through all that, I managed to chop up a mountain of hazelnuts, toss them into the granola, stir it all around (the truly dire part) and then realisation dawned and I remembered that I was supposed to remove the skins of the nuts before a.) chopping them up or b.) mixing them in, not good. Of course the bowl was worth a fortune in ingredients and so chucking it all out and starting again wasn't an option, and I wasn't about to present my brekkie display sans the granola so I had to FISH THEM ALL OUT, de-skin them and put them back in - it may have been a grey, miserable day outside but for a bit of colour in your life, you could have just stood next to me for a few minutes, the hit level of four letter words reached an all time high - 20 minutes later it was finally done and I can tell you one thing - it'll never happen again.

My cholestrol-buster fry up was wicked - I couldn't actually eat it all and stuck to the slightly less frightening things instead but it looked good. Once again I forgot to take pictures - it was all a bit manic and very lastminute.com with getting the egg cooked correctly, in other words that 20 second interval in life between an egg being a wobbly mush of white stuff and hard enough for rugby practice but it really did all look quite fab. I don't know many people that could put away that whole breakfast menu in one sitting, perhaps the Springbok back line...................

So instead of lunch, we finished early and had brunch at 12h00 and then at 13h00 we all headed down to Shanagarry Beach to look for periwinkles which are small sea snails - kitted out in jeans, wellies, scarves and rain jackets because it was bloody freezing. Just last week some of the (obviously mad) students were still swimming in the sea and honestly I've no idea how - just fiddling around in the rock pools for the periwinkles had my fingers numb and a pale shade of navy blue, icy icy icy. Funny story - apparently a few years ago, on this same course, about mid-October, a group of students went down to do exactly what we did today and the beach is obviously fairly quiet at this time of year - probably because it's more of a walk in cold room than a beach. Anyway literally a minute before a deluge of 60 odd students hurtled onto the beach, a local bloke had decided to go for a very quick dip but his timing couldn't have been worse - as the periwinkle search went on (and it lasts about 20 minutes before your fingers literally fall off and take up residence in the rock pools), students were commenting on how barmy the guy must have been for swimming so long. Turned out that, with the beach absolutely deserted, he'd opted for a skinny dip and so could hardly then emerge from the depths in the nick and stroll nonchalantly back to his car..............................I'll say only one thing - "frankfurter vs cocktail sausage" - and leave the rest to your imagination.



In pursuit of periwinkles...............

Straight from there we headed back for afternoon demo, defrost took a while and my toes and I became reacquainted about half an hour later.

One of the first things we learnt today was how to fillet a flat fish and let me tell you, in my tiny bubble of fish filleting I like the world flat, you can keep your round fish any day, the flat guys are so much easier to de-body. Of course it may have been an illusion and perhaps my sole and I will have a stand off on Thursday morning but my hopes are high.

In terms of things fishy, I'm afraid the recently collected periwinkles also met a sticky end and spent a minute or two in the good old pot of boiling water - my worst was when the bowl emerged from the fridge and the little dots were trying to climb up the sides, some of them had got right up to the rim, so near and yet so far...........in the spirit of trying everything, I shut my eyes and just ate one (after the trip into the pot and back out onto a plate) and they just taste of the sea really, not sure I'm destined for a long term career in snail eating but at least I gave them a shot.

Other items on the menu were chilli con carne made with beef steak instead of mince, so much nicer, Provencal bean stew, a few chilli sauces, aioli (garlic mayo), goujons of sole, a few salads and then, shock, horror, another type of pastry but this one isn't too bad - choux pastry and granted it'll be a bastard to beat all the eggs into it but at least it doesn't want to be rolled which works for me and better yet, once you've got the hard part over with you then get to turn it into profiteroles and chocolate éclairs - a bright, shiny, LED light at the end of the tunnel, YAY!



Éclairs - available in chocolate, coffee and caramel, YUM!



Theory day tomorrow so there'll be an early morning trip to the demo room by one of us to bag good chairs - the first of a two day course in restaurant management, food costings, payroll, budgeting, what have you.