It's My Party!

and I'll mist if I want to

Welcome to the post-midterm post-fam visit post-birthday slump.

Also welcome to the panic foyer. It’s not quite a room yet, certainly nowhere near a cave. But when we realized we’d just finished our seventh week and there were only *five* to go . . . well, you could almost see the little electric sparks start to pop above people’s heads. And when someone else said that the pop-up was in two weeks and here I’d been thinking of it happening later, like in June or something, and oh hellsbells it is June. Because after the pop-up dinner all attention turns to the FINAL EXAM.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves because this past week was the high point of Lisa Lauterbach month,¹ my actual birthday. I was so so happy to have Izzy and Bill and KT here and missed Petey (although I appreciated his birthday text, sent at precisely midnight his time, as is his wont).² I was serenaded not once, not twice, but thrice - by my housemates, my kitchenmates, and the entire school, saw a beautiful sunrise sky, received a brilliant card from Izzy, took a particularly fine rooster picture, learned how to bone a whole chicken leg in one go, saw all manner of sea creatures go into their big silver pot, finally got to show my fam what the school was all about, was given a gorgeous cake (a raspberry pavlova no less), found a motherlode of treasures at the beach, and had cocktails with Izzy at dinner.

how lucky am I?

And thank YOU all for your kind messages, I loved hearing from you. This *may* have been the best birthday ever. I mean, who could ask for anything more?

Kitchen 1’s Wild Kingdom Friday provided the pivot from celebration mode back to the bubble. This week, I cooked with fellow CDCÁ Keri, a delightfully competent caterer and mother of three from Dublin. We rotated through three excellent instructors: Tiffin, Gary, and Richard. Tiffin always calls you chef when you are cooking - excellent chef, here you go chef, thank you chef. It makes you feel very profesh. Gary is the kindliest soul, tossing a couple of extra chicken legs my way so I could perfect that boning technique and was just barely prevented from getting the kitchen to sing to me AGAIN.³ Richard cannot open his mouth without a joke coming out. While there or may not have been some mist of exhaustion⁴ by Friday lunch, there was also some good craic in this kitchen this week.

Here is what I cooked:

• spinach and pork terrine

• the famous cucumber pickle! We buy gallons of this stuff from the store, and now I have the recipe mwah ha ha.

• crêpes with salted caramel sauce, at which Tiffin took one bite after trying my terrine and muttered fucking hell which meant, I cannot simply cannot eat any more salted caramel sauce today or ever it is that good and also that rich. The trials of being an instructor at Ballymaloe.

• baked off some ciabatta.⁵ At demo on Tuesday Rachel showed us various stages of ciabatta and one of them was the proofed dough almost ready to bake and then she offered it to whomever had a birthday this week which was me. It baked up Rachel-mm-mm-mm delish, but now we have three more loaves of bread in the freezer. Perhaps there is panzanella in our future.

• shaped some butter - Keri had butter duty and Tiffin let us use his grandmother’s butter bats “my most precious possession” to learn how to shape it. We feel suitably honored to have been given this opportunity.

• Thai green curry chicken - delish, actually, but doesn’t go at all with broad bean salad with green tahini sauce

• broad bean salad with green tahini sauce - if this sounds familiar to you it is because it is an Ottolenghi recipe. Also I confused the entire kitchen by continually referring to them as fava beans WHICH THEY ARE.

• steak and kidney pie filling - what a fucking beast this was and I don’t even get assessed on it until Monday because it takes so long. First I had to break down that monster of a suet log and then brown all the veg and the beef and the kidney in what I consider to be a far too small frying pan. Then it went into a casserole with some stock and seasonings and then into the oven forever and next week will get a topping of puff pastry if we can find mine from ten days ago. I’m sure it will be delicious but the whole thing kind of derailed my Friday morning.

• roast hazelnut panna cotta with chocolate caramel sauce - the panna cotta was an absolute revelation and the sauce was delicious but so freaking heavy and rich and really does not belong with that angelic dessert. I fucking hate this sauce, says Richard, it is just too much with this dish, but it isn’t my name over the door so we have it.⁶

• brioche dough from which came a plait⁷ that kind of fell apart and butter-sugar brioche which is as good as it sounds. Since Thursday looked kind of light I decided to make brioche dough, which is a technique for us, and needs to be made a day in advance so I did but then that damn kidney threw my Friday schedule out the window so the brioche got baked off as pretty much of an afterthought before I shoveled in a plate of lettuce at lunch and returned to do weigh-up clean-up duty on a deep fry day and then had to run to demo still in my sweaty food smelly whites hence the mist of exhaustion.

i learned how to make a butter top! half-eaten terrine and crêpes, can anyone read Tiffin's handwriting? the ciabatta dough ready to go and then baked, my underwhelming brioche plait

As for the Wild Kingdom, we saw a variety of species on Friday.

crabs, plaice, a squid that had eaten two fish, the suet behemoth, the reveal, my weird pride in this project

I did take time on Tuesday evening to attend a zoom chat with Deirdre Heekin from Domaine La Garagista in central Vermont. It was a fascinating window into the life and work of a deeply knowledgeable and serious maker of biodynamic wines, ciders and co-ferments, and I was just developing a fantasy of going to work for her when I overheard Colm tell someone that Deirdre is so in demand that people will work for her for free and there is a line out the door to do so.

Still entertaining that fantasy but it is even less likely to advance to reality now. In the meantime try her wines, they are amazing.

The mists of exhaustion were descending again by Friday evening but a well-timed visit to the pub sorted that. FIVE WEEKS LEFT.

Then I have to leave this?

1. It’s not just a day it’s a whole vibe for the month of June or at least Gemini season. My sister-in-law, Lisa DeGreif Lauterbach, is also obvs Lisa Lauterbach and so gets to share in the festivities, as do I in her birth month. If you see her, wish her a happy Lisa Lauterbach month!

2. The gang was all here.

3. Resources are carefully protected so handing out a couple extra very fine legs is indeed a generous gesture.

4. Tears is too dramatic. It was more just feeling-sorry-for-myself-eyes-watering-involuntarily, totally fueled by exhaustion.

5. You may think you know ciabatta but you don’t know this gorgeously light ciabatta. The word means slipper so you are supposed to make them kind of slipper shaped. I mean, if you squint?

6. We’ve heard this toeing-the-company-line comment before. Meanwhile, the male teachers swear like sailors and call us girls. The female teachers call us luv and girls and look aggrieved when something goes completely off the rails. And none of it is at all offensive in fact it is kind of heartwarming.

7. plait = braid. Pronounced plat, like splat, which is a sound my dough makes all too regularly.