Interestingly, when you add the comma, the translation changes to buail leat, a chailín! I can’t pronounce either of these and I’m pretty sure you can’t either, Andy Reinhardt. But I love the idea and maybe this morning I will ask Grace from Dublin and Naesa from Mayo who I think are speaking Irish to each other in my kitchen how to say this.1
Anyway in this fifth week I felt like I might just be finding my groove. Is this because I’m getting some exercise occasionally? Fam are coming to visit in a week? The weather has been nice and this place becomes more impossibly beautiful every day? I saw a cow shit all over Billy the dairy man one morning? Who knows, but I think I’m starting to figure things out.
How is this happening? By asking the questions. Getting the help, not assuming, not being afraid, not deferring, and byndeciding that I really don’t care about the numbers. Also trying to not get stuck down Negativity Alley when everyone is lamenting the lack of exciting new techniques, crappy burners, the ingredients carousel, etc.2
Also, two great teachers this week have had a big impact. I’m back in Kitchen Two, with the fearsome (not really, heart o’ gold, but exacting) Instructor Debbie and equally magnificent Instructor Florrie of Chocolate Toffee Squares fame.3 Debbie has long long braids and wears a kerchief over her head. She is also a certified naturopath and gave a great lecture on gluten-free and celiac cooking,4 which followed the general philosophy of making things delicious: if you can’t make it delicious, don’t serve it.
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Debbie is delighted my first morning in the kitchen with her when I confess that I do not remember how to make a cartouche. She thanks me - twice - for asking the question, shows me, and dawn breaks over Mizzen Head here about the asking questions business. Florrie circles around and around her stations, checking in regularly and saying good gerrrl whenever you do pretty much anything. But it is validating, you know? I go in the wrong direction a couple of times, and when I ask about it, the teachers help me fix it, and then Florrie says “but you LEARNED! You learned how to do it next time, and that is the point!” THIS IS TEACHING, PEOPLE!
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My partner this week is the mysterious Zaer. He is Italian-Afghani, but has a bit of a British accent, and speaks in a very low, slow voice which is hard to hear over the kitchen cacophony. Rumor has it that he also has an actual cheffing job at The Glass Curtain in Cork, a very fine restaurant where regular readers may recall I had the greatest Old Fashioned of my life (and an excellent meal after that) the night before I came here. This would explain his frequent absences, hours spent working in the kitchen up at the House, and fascinating knife kit which includes a small cleaver that he uses to chop things. Does it explain his otherworldliness, which brings him late to the kitchen, without a hat/recipes/knives,5 taking an hour to get the ingredients for his stew, making an ungodly mess that spreads onto the stations around him, and then somehow beautifully plating said stew but so late that he vanishes into the ether for afternoon demo? I don’t know, he’s an enigma. Possibly also stoned. But as nice and polite as can be and as amazed by seabeet as I am.
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This week I cooked:
seabeet soup which is a delicious plant that just grows wild around here, and makes the greenest soup6
a Cullohill rhubarb tart which kicked ass except I don’t think you should say that about Rory O’Connell’s mother’s pastry so let’s just say it was delicious and get ready because there will be so many more of them, filled with all the fruit I’m looking at you gooseberries
rhubarb-ginger jam that was way overcooked “But you LEARNED, you learned, and now you know about the hobs and the cooking time and how to watch it, good gerrrrl.” It is also still eminently edible and will go in my yogurt this morning.
Florrie’s Toffee Chocolate Squares which are such a favorite that when the staff see them in the kitchen they start circling and discreetly pulling them off the platters before service. You may know them as Millionaire’s Bars, I just know them as an absolute treat.
No-Knead White Yeast Bread, Ballymaloe White Yeast Bread (which does require a good 10 minute knead), Spotted Dog,7 Fougasse, Sunflower Bread, Brown Soda Bread in a Tin, Mummy’s Sweet Scones, so much bread all the bread sweet mother of jesus there is a lot of bread.
tapenade, by hand because the hardest part is pitting the olives8
black currant fool, I just want to bathe in that
Jane’s Biscuits which sound a bit stodgy but are in fact the lightest and crispest shortbread cookies imaginable
Hisip cabbage, yes cooking cabbage is a technique here because you know what? Cabbage is DELICIOUS if you cook it correctly so just stop all you Irish-cabbage-haters and try it cooked correctly and see if you don’t agree with me.
Deh-Ta Hsiung’s Pot Stickers
pan-grilled John Dory with Nasturtium Butter
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Here are some other things I did this week:
Started a sourdough starter. Her name is Rose. Kadence from Louisiana named hers Gardenia. So far, she is still alive and doing her thing in the Bread Shed. Stay tuned for more tales of Rose.
Stock Duty which is basically doing whatever is needed to make the enormous vats of stock that they go through here: chicken, beef, fish, lamb, goose, turkey, and so on. This week it was cutting up a giant pile of onions and carrots. Once the stocks are cooked, they are frozen in gallon milk jugs (reduce, reuse, recycle!), and then defrosted by running the jugs through the dishwasher a couple of times!
Dairy Duty which it turns out is just watching Billy the Dairy Man milk the cows and listening to him tell you how the milk is made and drinking some cow-fresh milk which tastes like something you’d pay a lot of money for in a coffee shop, oh and scrambling out of the way as Billy gets shat upon by a grumpy cow. Glad I wore my wellies! But the cows really are the most lovely creatures. They are Jerseys which make less milk (although up to 20 l/day when they are calving!) but the highest quality with the most cream. Which is used to make the butter and you all know how I feel about that. Also, the milk process is fantastic - it is just mechanical, pump, into a vat, through a hose, into another vat, then the cream is separate by centrifugal force. So simple and the result is absolutely magnificent milk, cream, buttermilk, butter, yogurt, cheese . . .
A Dawn Chorus walk to hear the birds. You really should do this in a woodland, says Dennis, but Darina wants it on the farm so here we are.9 Dennis is twitcher, which is what they call a birder in these parts, apparently a renowned expert on warblers. We are too large a group to hear many birds but you can read more about this event, as well as the other birds I’ve seen here, in The Dawn Chorus.
Went to a demo (ok it was required) by Giuliano Hazan, son of the iconic Marcella, known just as She in our house.10 I have a vague recollection that my mother didn’t think much of Giuliano years ago and let’s just say that he didn’t exactly slay here at Ballymaloe. But I told him that my mother had studied with his mother, who had inspired her to become a cooking teacher, and when he heard her name he claimed quite genuinely to remember her. So, I’ll give him that. And when he asked for volunteers to stir his had-so-much-potential-but-didn’t-deliver-because-he-didn’t-salt-it zucchini and shrimp risotto, I raised my hand because I knew my mother would have shoved me out from behind the piano if she had been there.11 When I told Bill he said, I think your mother did shove you up there. 🥹
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Things I learned this week:
how to make a cartouche and a paper piping bag although I am still working on that one because of my stupid thumbs
that overcooked jam is lost money “that’s two jars of jam at 3 quid each just evaporated! Caramelized! Gone!”
why my short doughs tend to crack when rolling - I don’t work them enough
but also don’t squeeze your soda doughs
all about beef butchery and how to fillet a flat fish
That I’ve met Marcella Hazan, and Giuliano, you’re no Marcella.
And probably a million other things.
But oh hey, the pop-up was announced! This happens during every 12-week course, it is a one-night restaurant entirely run by the students. You can work in the kitchen or front of house (FOH) and we all know immediately who wants to be captain of each domain (a absolute POT of tea in that topic). Fortunately, we hear that Pam will be running the show, assisted in the kitchen by Nick and FOH by Laura. They will offer suggestions and guide decisions and generally keep things on track. At the first meeting, Pam says she’s never seen such a large group of students interested in the pop-up, but Leo tells us later that week that people will drop out along the way because it happens in the tenth week which is pretty close to finals and talk about your pressure cooker that is when the chickens will come to roost.12 Anyway, I’ve put my name in for FOH because most of the Alphas and AFS are in the kitchen group and who needs THAT. The theme, proposed by Trent from Australia, is some kind of Celtic interpretation of the summer solstice which is appropriate for the date and can basically be interpreted however you want. Stay tuned for more details on that
The CDCÂ are in a bit of a twitter because next week is MIDTERMS! Or, as they call it here: the Herbs and Technique Exam. And it’s been a long time since some of us have taken an exam.
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But this cailín is just going to roc ar and roll into it and then it will be halfway through this adventure and the bank holiday weekend and fam arrive and I absolutely cannot wait to see them.
It could also be Elvish, for all I know. Naesa is pronounced NASA by the way and Grace is a vegetarian so let’s just say she passed on the butchery elective. Updating to note that Naesa says that this basically means there is a rock on a girl except she doesn’t really know what roc means. Also cailín is pronounced colleen.
The kitchens are not new. I like the fact that we’re not given super fancy restaurant equipment but instead have standard kitchen gear to work with, because that’s what I’ve got at home. That said, the hobs can be wonky, ovens may run hot or cool, and the herbs may be late or the eggs small or the flat fish didn’t come in that day, and so on. The control-freak in me does not like this but you have to learn how to play it as it lays so I’m trying to roll with it.
The recipe is literally Florrie’s Chocolate Toffee Squares and when I ask if she is the Florrie she says delightedly that she is! When she was a young girl, her neighbor would make them, and if you stirred the toffee - which takes for-fucking ever - you got a square. You have to put in the work, is the point! Anyway, this neighbor inspired Florrie to go into cooking, and here she is today.
They are not the same! Gluten intolerance comes at different levels, but can generally at least tolerate gluten in the atmosphere. But if you are really celiac, you don’t want your treats made on the same counter where something with wheat has just been made. Debbie is the former, so she can taste what we make, but deeply knowledgeable on the latter. Ireland has the highest number of celiacs in the world! Or as they spell it, coeliac.
To be faaaaaiiiir, that was Monday, after the Festival. Rumor has it that Zaer clocked endless hours working at the House on various fancy dinners and basically got no sleep. After Debbie sent him back for his hat, then his knives and recipes, she asked me “Em, did you and Zaer communicate about today’s cooking?” She wasn’t sure he was coming back at all but he did of course, hat on, doing his thing.
To preserve the vibrancy, don’t cook greens with the cover on and reheat very gently.
Not to be confused with Spotted Dick, which Jack Aubrey likes and is a sponge (suet) pudding with raisins, not a bread.
No more pre-pitted olives (excess processing). Unless maybe they are the delicious green ones stuffed with almonds or pickled garlic or anchovy that are sold at the Midleton Farmer’s Market and that Jen and I buy by the bagful every week.
You hear this a lot from staff. Because when Darina says it, it is so. You do not contradict Darina.
Unless it is a non-Italian recipe being discussed, in which case She is Julia and I know you all know which one I’m talking about.
At my first Nutcracker audition all those years ago my mother told me to stand in front of the piano, not behind it with her. I got the role of the cartwheeling Tiny Mouse, and the rest is history.
Or be roasted, as the case may be. I crack myself up.
I love this blog!!!