We had a few lectures today, all sorts of subjects ranging from menu planning to how to get a job after Ballymaloe to making your own flavoured vinegars and oils, and the highlight for me, a spice lecture given by a previous student who nows runs a hugely successful spice company called Green Saffron (who are supplying some of the UK and Ireland's best known speciality stores and celebrity chefs).
Anyway Green Saffron aim to get spices straight from farms in India to the customer in less than 20 weeks, and sometimes much quicker, depending on the spice and how much time it needs to dry and mature and all that jazz - in comparison to most of the spices in your local supermarket that have been lounging around for 2 to 3 years, that ain't shabby. And it's all very well to chat but the test is in the taste (or in this case, the smell) and it was so true, when these little bowls when around your life really was spiced up, Posh would have been proud. They were so pretty too, some of the blends include fine dried rose petals which I've learnt are a very traditional ingredient in lots of Indian and Middle Eastern cooking and they just look gorgeous, forget cooking with the stuff, I just wanted enough to fill a giant glass bowl in my house, heaven in a bowl, like an updated version of that fairly dire pot pourri we all used to give our grannies for Christmas a hundred years ago and better yet, you can eat this!
Of course if you really want to get our attention on a wet, cold Winter afternoon, don't bugger about passing around bowls to sniff at, give us something to eat and Arun did, the most wicked gingerbread I've ever tasted, made with their super fresh ground ginger and all spice and with a base of chunks of crystallised ginger and then lots of squishy, yummy gingerbread - fighter jets doing a fly by right outside the window couldn't have woken us up more, he's promised to email through the recipe to the school for all of us and we're on tenterhooks, it was that good! No time for a pic I'm afraid, it would have to be a MRI scan it went down far too quickly..................
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