After a relaxing weekend I found myself in
Kitchen 1 on Monday morning. Most of us arrive between 8-8.30am to gather all
our ingredients for the morning’s cooking. There is a room between kitchen 1
and 2 where we get them, it’s a bit hectic sometimes as we queue up
to get our things and use the weighing scales.
We also have to wait for our teachers to
arrive at 9am before we actually start cooking, to avoid unsupervised
catastrophes. There is one teacher for every 6 students and we change teacher
each week, as we change kitchen (although some people sometimes don’t move
kitchen). The teachers are very helpful and make sure we’re doing ok in the kitchen
as well as rating our dishes at the end of each morning. After the teachers
taste our dishes we all place the rest of our food in the dining rooms as part
of a big buffet that we enjoy (if we have a little time and not too many
duties) at lunchtime. Most of the time I try to have a little taste of
everything but then I’m so stuffed for the rest of the day that I barely eat at
home in the evenings. This is also because at the end of our day we taste the
dishes that Rachel, Darina or Rory demonstrate in the afternoons, even if
they’re small portions they’re enough for me not to be hungry until the next
morning.
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| My white soda bread |
I was a bit more comfortable cooking and
didn’t burn or cut any of my fingers this week but I’m not very good at
finishing on time. Every day I feel like
I have lots of time at the start of the morning until I realise it’s 11 am and
have to be finished by 12pm. Then I panic a little and rush towards the end of
the morning and never finish on time. It’s funny and a bit scary to see how
less confident I am in the kitchen here than in my own house but it’s a great
opportunity to learn how to cook under pressure and in a more stressful
environment. That’s said I had a great week overall in the kitchen and got good
grades which I was pleased with.
I was happy to see a bit of ethnic food
included in the demos last week with Rachel demonstrating dishes with Indian
influence on Monday, such as spiced chicken with almonds, raita, poppodums and
basmati rice. We also had Darina show us how to cook some Mexican food on
Tuesday. Darina reckons that Mexican food is the next big thing and that Mexico
will be the next gastronomic hub after the Nordic countries. She was delighted
to mention a very successful past student Thomasina Miers who trained in
Ballymaloe and went on to win the English Masterchef in 2005 and is now the
owner of Wahaca in London, a chain restaurants focusing on Mexican street food.
Our lecture day (Wednesday) was one of the
highlights of the week with a big focus on dairy products, a subject I’m quite
interested in. The first part of the
morning was about tray bakes and we got to see lots of variations (lemon
drizzle squares, spiced orange squares, plum and flaked almonds…) and tasted
them during the coffee break.
The rest of the morning included a visit from
Eddie O’Neill, dairy artisan food specialist at Teagasc who shared his passion
for everything dairy with a particular focus on milk, butter and cheese
making. Darina looked so excited on Wednesday,
she’s the “butter queen of Ireland” after all and you can tell this is one of
her favourite subjects.
She had the idea of including a lesson about butter a
few years ago when she found a student in the kitchen who looked flustered
after over whipping cream. The girl wanted to throw it into the hen’s bucket
and then Darina told her she was actually about to make butter if she kept
whipping so Darina decided to show her. The end result was that all the
students around them in the kitchen were fascinated, hence she decided to
include butter making in the schedule of the course. Darina’s eyes were smiling
as she told us ‘It’s kind of magic turning cream into butter’. She showed us
how to make buttermilk, yoghurts and some simple cheeses like ricotta, cottage
cheese and all sorts of variations.
In our second wine lecture on Wednesday we
got to taste the wine produced next to where I’m from: the delicious Sauvignon
Blanc from Sancerre. I just wished I had a little piece of Selles-sur-Cher goat
cheese (from my region in France) or St Tola ash (to stay local) while tasting
it. Then we had a Riesling from Alsace, a pinot noir from Burgundy, a pinot noir from California and a sweet
Riesling from New Zealand, which I also enjoyed. I was on duty after the class
and had to polish glasses with a few others. It wasn’t the most difficult duty
but it’s still interesting to discover how Ballymaloe is really a gastronomic
bootcamp!
Thursday’s demo with Rory was fascinating.
We learnt how to fillet a round fish, pipe Duchesse potatoes, how to perfectly
poach an egg, make a few salads and variations of bread and butter pudding. I was surprised to learn how easy it is to
smoke fish or meat at home and will certainly try to smoke my own duck when I
get back.
On Friday morning I got up early as I was
on herb and vegetable duty at 7.30 am. A few of us met the school’s gardener
Hollie who has been working here for the past 32 years. Andie from the UK, Ayane
from Japan and yours truly found ourselves pulling leeks from the ground and
trimming them in the dark and freezing cold. You really appreciate eating after
you’ve seen that they don’t just magically appear from a pack. When I ate some
leeks at lunchtime I knew they couldn’t have been fresher. We also got to pick
some thyme before heading to our respective kitchens for the morning’s cooking.
Friday wasn’t my best day, after the
excitement of the first week and a busy second week I felt exhausted by
mid-morning. This was bad timing as we were practising fish filleting and I was
struggling with my cod. The Friday afternoon demo started with Philip Dennhardt
(Darina’s son-in-law) showing us how to butcher lamb cuts for roasting. As
always, Darina was super energetic on Friday afternoon and thankfully I didn’t
fall asleep on my chair while she showed the different variations of roast lamb,
vegetables to accompany it and of course the sauces. I particularly liked the
dessert recipe of chocolate mousse served with almond macaroons (not macarons).
There are teachers in the demo kitchen every afternoon who assist Darina, Rory
and Rachel and they do a fantastic job. They’re like little kitchen fairies,
always ready with ingredients and helping throughout the demos as well as
giving some great advice. I hope one day I’ll be as knowledgeable and
experienced as they are.
Week two went even faster than the first
one and even though it was quite exhausting, I found myself thinking everyday about
how lucky I was to be here and to learn about food every day.
“Our
babies are scattered all over the world”- Darina Allen talking about past
students of Ballymaloe.
“Lard is the hottest new fat” – Darina Allen
“After
you leave here, you can’t cook without Irish butter”- Darina talking to 12
different nationalities of students.
