Right, I've officially lost the use of my right arm - I think it might still be lingering somewhere in Kitchen 1, on strike, hiding behind the door in the hope that it won't have to whisk or roll anything else, ready to start a protest if needs be.......................the only thing it might be up for, just might, is scribbing illegibly across a placard, "Please, No More"!
Back to the kitchen this morning after a day of theory which was fab for the mind and not so good for the bum, both in terms of 8 hours in the not-comfy chairs and the volumes of afternoon tea that I managed to eat, best not give that any more thought actually, I'm blocking it from my mind.
So today I was down to make tortillas, brown bread, sorbet and quesadillas - bread went well, third time I've made that one so it went off without a hitch, then the sorbet which was surprisingly easy, YAY for ice cream machines, all you do is pureé the raspberries, sieve them to get rid of the pips, chuck masses of sugar at the whole thing, pop it into the machine and hey presto, a couple of hours later you've smooth, sublime sorbet. The accompaniments for the tortillas were easy too, just good old guacamole and salsa, no problem and then it was onto the tortillas themselves.
For the record, I'm never making these again, I honestly couldn't tell the difference between the ones you buy at the shop and the ones I made, although I suspect my arms could give you a detailed run down of the whole exercise and exercise it was - basically you make the dough, easy peesy, then you break off tiny portions of it, about an ounce each and then, theoretically only I hasten to add, roll them out to be the size of your saucepan - well that saucepan of mine was on steroids, every time I looked at it, and the looks were increasingly menacing, it had grown bigger!
The thing is, the dough is very elastic and so you roll and roll and roll, and then you've to pick it up and move it around so that it doesn't get stuck to your work surface and at the very moment that you pick it up, it laughs at you in a mocking way, flips you the finger and shrinks back to the size it was before you started - no, OK, that's a bit of an exageration, it's bigger by about a centimetre, so it looks like a golf ball then you roll it into a dinner plate and then it decides it's not that ambitious and would far rather be an espresso saucer - God, I wanted to scream. I had to make 8 of them and it took me an hour, an hour, can you believe it - %&$^$£%!!!
Anyway despite all that I then had about 30 minutes to spare and as much as I wanted to make something nice like cupcakes or scones, we have this Technique List which is beginning to haunt me - it lists 90 things that are considered classic and must-know kitchen techniques, all of which have to be done a minimum of 3 times during the course. Now a lot of them do come up in the course of our normal cooking each day but some don't and one that's been lurking as completely undone on my list is good old mayonnaise - as much as I'd rather have messed about with pretty cupcakes for half an hour they don't count as a technique and so, obviously not having suffered enough with the tortillas, I launched into mayo which requires, I can now tell you, a serious amount of whisking. You see to make mayo, and this is another one wistfully calling my name from the shelf of the supermarket, you've to whisk eggs and oil (a lot of it) together and they don't fancy one another very much and are looking to break up and move out if you so much as glance sideways or let up on the whisking for a second - bionic arm kicked in and it took 16 minutes, not that I was counting. By the way, don't you think it would be fab to be ambidextrous? I gave whisking with my left arm a shot after about 10 minutes when I'd lost all feeling in my right arm but all I managed to do was fling a bit of the mixture around my work station and allow Ms. Egg and Mr. Oil to take a few steps towards the divorce courts so it was back to the right arm to finish it off.
Three big positives - Ms. Egg and Mr. Oil remained happily married, I've made it once so only two more times to go, and you don't want to eat a bowl of mayo which just might have been the case if I'd made cupcakes or scones.
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| Ta da................homemade mayonnaise! |
Afternoon demo was with Darina and we learnt how to make chicken liver pate (half a block of butter for the record), melba toast, fish pie, tomato sauce with chilli and coriander, a few new salads, stuffed peppers, almond tarts with raspberries and white yeast bread, the first one we've learnt that comes with the joys of kneading, rising, more kneading, second rising and just for the hell of it, a bit more kneading.
So I've a date tomorrow with a floured work surface and some quality time with a lump of dough and my old buddy, Mr. Fish who with any luck, I'll be relieving of his bones on the first attempt before drenching him in bechamel sauce and topping him with buttery mashed potatoes, should be fun!
I'm off to drink a large glass of wine now, possibly though a straw what with my arm being on strike and all but before I go I just have to tell you about a new little addition to the Ballymaloe family - 2 little chickens, too cute. I know I've said before that there are a lot of hens here but there are also a few special rare breeds who get to live together, mom and dad, in special little houses. They're actually too sweet, I'll have to try and get one of them to pose for a piccie and post it - their feathers grow right down over their feet, sort of like a non-arctic, farm version of a penguin, I love them - they shuffle around the place looking like an old couple out for a Sunday stroll. Anyway, there are 8 eggs in the incubator at the moment which is in the office, and 2 of them have hatched, one yesterday afternoon - he's the fluffier number and then the very small, soggy looking soul had only popped out half an hour before the papparazzi descended on him - as they say here, what a dote! I love them, the lady who runs the office, Sharon, is going to do her head in soon with all of us popping in throughout the day to check on the little guys.
Welcome to the world little dots
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