We were in our new kitchens for the week today! I have really come to like the method of work that we do in the morning. It may be stressful, dodging people right and left to get to the sink, the oven, or the ingredients station, but I love how invigorating it is!! It's a fairly risk-free environment, and even though poor cooking/time management is discouraged, the teachers are forgiving of mistakes (at least at this point! Maybe not in the coming weeks!). It doesn't feel as solitary anymore either because now that the students have gotten to know each other more, we're able to interact rather than just be silent for 3 hours. I got to make...
Alright, now picture time! :D I didn't make the strawberries with basil in them, but I just thought they looked really pretty so I wanted to include that! Also, I somehow forgot to get a picture of my ice cream :\.
- Tomato soup: made from the tomato purée I cooked on Friday, with sweated onions and coconut milk in it. Strangely, it tasted a lot like macadamia nuts to me for some reason! It was nice to be able to do a dairy-free dish for once - it seems like almost everything we make here involves cream! I also made
- Brown soda bread: this was the first time I made it! The instructor liked it! Yay! If you have all of the ingredients mis-en-place (or however you spell that), it only takes a minute to mix the dough with your hand then pop it in the oven for an hour. How simple!
- STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM!!! Yum!!! By the end of today's cooking, I was completely sweeted-out from the tasting I was doing throughout the process. Strawberries can pack a whole lot of sweetness, wow. I made a strawberry purée, added a sugar syrup with orange and lemon juice, and then finally folded whipped cream. Yum! I still preferred the raspberry ice cream that some other students made though! :P.
- Lemonade! I was on lemonade duty today, so I squeezed oranges, limes, and lemons and added the juice to a ginger and rosemary sugar syrup and water. Yum! I love how much Ballymaloe incorporates herbs into their cooking! It's wonderful!
Alright, now picture time! :D I didn't make the strawberries with basil in them, but I just thought they looked really pretty so I wanted to include that! Also, I somehow forgot to get a picture of my ice cream :\.
After the afternoon cooking demo, I learned how to make aged cheese from Tim Allen, Darina's husband! Mine will hopefully be ready by the time I have to leave Ireland, because apparently US customs won't let me bring cheese to the states :(. The process started out like this, with a culture added to a vat of the day's milk that had been warmed.
The four other students and I then got to stick our hands in the lovely vat of milk curd (it looked and felt a lot like tofu!) and whey (the yellowy liquid) and break it all up. Funny enough, Ballymaloe doesn't have a recipe that they use for cheese (which they don't sell actually, it's all used at the school). Rather, Tim just knows when the next step is supposed to happen! Here's what it looked like at the end, when we put it into these containers that let the whey drip from the curd. Eventually it'll become completely compressed and turn into cheese! Yum!
So that was pretty much the extent of my day! I did another workout with Nan and Stan - Leg Day! Ouch! Hanging out with students after was great! Everyone is so interesting! I hope jointing a chicken for the first time tomorrow will go okay! I'll be butchering a chicken to make a spiced chicken breast dish, then I also get to make candied citrus peel and a plum tart! Yum! :D I hope all is well with you, dear reader :).
Love,
Livvy
Love,
Livvy