we're halfway through week four, one-third of the way through this twelve week course.
wowza!!
i'm pretty sure i need one full day to properly post about the past few days, so i'm going to do my best to share the highlights from friday through today.
friday
friday was my last day in kitchen three. we were using the rest of the chicken from thursday's roasts, so there were chicken salads galore. i made the vietnamese chicken salad with prawn crackers which required me to spend an hour and 15 minutes shredding my two chicken breasts into matchstick-sized pieces. a form of meditation for sure!
lunch was a rush because (for some reason i can't pinpoint) everyone took forever to finish up in the kitchen and then i was responsible for cleaning the weigh up area with florrie. at quarter past 1, we were told we were having a group photo at 1.30pm, so there was a flurry of activity as everyone with a duty did their best to be done by then.
the group photo was a bit hilarious as not everyone was there and it was a bit chilly outside. tim patiently waited with the camera poised as darina shouted out orders. 'emily! emily! remove your hat, we can't see you!' and 'who's that in the back there? no, not you. to your right. yes, YOU! come down here to the front so we can see you properly.' lots of groaning and whispering until tim shouted, 'ready?' and snapped away.
we were herded back inside to the demo room for our afternoon lecture. darina covered cooking and extracting meat from prawns and shrimps, making homemade mayonnaise, prawn bisque, ballymaloe brown yeast bread, ballymaloe sour dough bread, ballymaloe bacon chop, plantain chips, piperonata, roast parsnip, apple and hazelnut salad, cullohill apple pie and mereworth biscuits. after a sample of everything and a meeting with my new partner to discuss monday's cooking, i was ready to enjoy some down time! since i was attending a gluten-free cooking course on saturday, i stayed at ballymaloe for the weekend.
week three favorites: the curried chicken salad with mango and roast cashew nuts, enjoying my first guinness at ballymaloe with new friends, a successful roast of lamb with garlic and rosemary, toby's greek moussaka and visiting with darina's aunt florence.
i built a fire in the our fireplace shortly after dropping my apron and knives on my bed and changing into sweatpants. our cottage was very cold and even though i was curled up in a ball on the couch with slippers and two rugs on top of me, i couldn't get warm. charlotte brought her computer over and she sat on the floor in front of me and we watched the end of 'gone with the wind'.
friday was also graham's birthday, so his cottagemates had organized a bbq in the common area between all the cottages. charlotte and rose made brownies for graham and then our cottage wandered over to join in the celebration. it got pretty rowdy as many of the students were celebrating the end of a long week in addition to graham's birthday. after eating a burger with some delicious farmhouse cheese and visiting with a few students, i made my way back to the pink cottage and went to bed.
saturday
hazel and i started our day off with a run. we both enjoyed a bit of a lie in (as they call it) and then ran the loop at 10.30am. we completely enjoyed the scenery and commented about all the little things we weren't able to enjoy during our night runs. the sheep were out in the pasture enjoying the sun. when we got to the garyvoe hotel, we opted to run along the ocean instead of continuing on down the road. the view was unbelievable! the tide was out pretty far, so we had a nice, hard running surface. we found the path back up to the road easily and returned to school in under an hour. great run and great conversation!
i had thought about going to lunch with a few students at the ballymaloe house cafe, but my conscious got the best of me and i changed into my wellies, grabbed charlotte's camera and made my way down to the greenhouses so i could photograph the leafs and herbs we had to learn. i spent a good 45 minutes taking pics (which i'll post shortly) and walking around the grounds.
the gluten-free cooking course started at 2pm, so when i got back from the greenhouses, i made myself a late breakfast and enjoyed a cup of coffee before heading over to the school. there was a good turnout for the course: about half paying customers and half students. rosemary kearney, our instructror, had attended ballymaloe and as a coelic herself, has published several gluten-free cookbooks. unfortunately, talking in front of a group isn't one of her strengths and she was coming down with a sore throat, so it was a struggle for her to talk. a handful of students left during the break because they were not impressed, but i stayed 1) out of respect for poor rosemary and 2) i was eager to taste the numerous dishes she had prepared.
a few of the students who attended were heading into midleton for pizza after the course and they invited me to come along, so when rosemary wrapped up, i was off to my cottage to shower and change.
the evening was quite fun. the group of students who went for pizza was one that i hadn't gotten to spend much time with as individuals, so i was looking forward to getting to know them. i sat next to tom, the american from new mexico, stacia, from the netherlands, and across from bryony, from sweden. the conversation revolved around family and i got to learn loads about tom, stacia and bryony and their spouses and children. lots of laughter, good pizza and great wine.
i sat up and visited with elisa, emily and charlotte when i got home and we talked until sometime after midnight before all toddling off to bed.
sunday
i greeted sunday with cheesy enthusiasm. a few students were heading into cork to spend the day and i went along so i could meet up with my parents. i met them just inside the entrance of tesco and we did a quick grocery shop before heading into the city centre. we tried to eat at a burger place off merchant's quay, but it wasn't open on sundays, so we walked over to oliver plunkett street and ate the market lane cafe next to milano. it was fabulous! dad and i had the sweet potato starter which was AMAZING!! it was plated beautifully: the mashed sweet potato formed the base and was topped with crozier bleu cheese and spinach. three of my favorite ingredients, as dad pointed out. :) mom had the ravioli for her meal, dad had the ox cheek stew and i had the soy and ginger chicken salad. i filled them in on the week at ballymaloe and they gave me details of their week and talked about how much finnbarre had grown since i last saw him.
we shopped a bit after eating, heading into TKMaxx to look for jumpers and other warm clothes. mom found this and had to buy it for me:
what a find, right?! :)
mom and dad had to return their rental car around 4pm, so they dropped me off on patrick street so i could meet back up with the friends i had come into the city with. we all regrouped in the cafe in brown thomas and i had a coffee while the other three girls ate a late lunch. we stopped in the makeup section downstairs before heading back to the car so elisa could look for some hand lotion. funnily enough, the saleswoman we chatted with had attended ballymaloe a few years ago. small world!!
we were back at ballymaloe by 6.30pm and as we unpacked our groceries, several students came over to invite us to youghal for bowling and laser tag. i declined as i really don't enjoy either activity and i was looking forward to making this:
aside from the fact that we didn't have a blender to puree the soup, it turned out good to quite good. after a second helping, i wandered off to bed.
monday
new week, new partner, new kitchen.
i allowed myself plenty of extra time monday morning so i could get in the kitchen and get acclimated to the newness of kitchen 1. a few of my fellow students from kitchen 3 were also in my kitchen this week, so we leaned on each other when we could find something.
i made the brown yeast bread, the piperonata and couhill apple pie. the bread took ages for the yeast to rise before i could put it in the oven, but the end product was delicious. i wanted to add some chili flakes to my piperonata to give it a bit of a kick, but my instructor explained that we'd be making spicier piperonata dishes over the next few weeks. the apple pie looked beautiful (and i'll have a picture of that later as well) going in and coming out of the oven, but i was a bit rushed in plating it up and was more of a pile of apples, cinnamon and sugar and crust than a slice of pie.
the dining room used by kitchens 1 and 2 is quite different from the dining room for kitchen 3, so i watched a few of the other students and took cues from them as to where i sat and how i went about getting salad, a starter and the main dishes. i sat at a table with two young girls from dublin who are at the school all week on a work experience program. they were very cute and wanted to know all about where in the states i was from, how i was enjoying ballymaloe and how we made the dishes we were eating for lunch.
darina is in india for two weeks, so rory is running the show. he breezed through the demo and we were out at half four. he covered mushroom soup, tomato salad, provencal terrine with tomato sauce, frittata with oven roasted tomatoes, goat's cheese and chorizo, how to make marzipan, marzipan stuffed apples, marzipan stuffed dates, caramelized walnuts and then he showed us how to make an omelet in 51 seconds. that was probably the highlight of the demo for me because i have never been able to make a successful omelet in all my 30 years. i kid you not. rory made it seem like a piece of cake and demonstrated it over and over, making about 6 omelets in the process. lucky for us, we got to eat all of them!
after sampling all of rory's creations, i was back at the cottage and convincing elisa and emily to help me take out the recyclables and trash. one of the guys from the barn stopped in and announced a game of ultimate frisbee would be starting shortly and i agreed to join them after we dumped our bins and i changed clothes.
we played four on four until it was too dark to see the frisbee. the team i was on got annihilated by the other team but we still had fun. after the game i was still on an adrenaline high so i decided to go for a run. i just ran over to the cul de sac and did some sprints. i was stretching out in the grass and during a downward dog pose, my feet slipped back and i landed flat on my face. hilarious! i was disappointed there wasn't anyone around to laugh with me. :) i got up and ran back to the cottage.
elisa, charlotte and minnie were watching 'beauty and the beast'. i ate a bowl of soup and then went to my room to write out my order of work and do some recipe filing. i think it was around 9.30pm when i fell asleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment