Monthly Archives: June 2009

A brief thank you

Posted on by
2

I just wanted to say a big thank you to Robert McIntosh from Wine Conversation for mentioning me on Twitter, so thank you! Make sure you visit Wine Conversation and give it a read as well.

My main reason for blogging about Ballymaloe was that I found it very hard to get info online when I was deciding whether to come, so hopefully I’ll be able to help out anyone who’s thinking of going. If you do have any questions just leave me a comment or email me and I’m really happy to help.

Also, I’m planning to carry on the blog after school finishes and start posting recipes and things so stick around and hopefully things will get even more interesting.

Speaking of interesting, I have a whole load of filing to do.

Oh also, I jointed a chicken in 6 minutes today. Result!

Ballymalloe Week 10 – decision time!

Posted on by
5

A chicken

Week 10 has flown by and suddenly I have 2 weeks to go. I am really enjoying it here, but I’m also getting impatient to go home now. It can get a bit boring being somewhere so quiet for 3 months, especially without any transport!

The main focus of this week has been our 3 course menus for our final exam. We have 3 lots of exams in total: a practical exam (the biggest chunk of the marks), a wine exam and a written exam (3 papers). Now that I think about it, there are a lot of 3s! Our wine exam is on Wednesday morning and our written papers are on the Friday of week 12.  Our practical exam is over 3 hours and mine is the Wednesday of week 12, at 9am. I’m absolutely terrified!

Anyway, we had to hand in our final menus and ingredient lists on Friday, so it’s completely set in stone now. Our menus are meant to be balanced, themed (not like a pirate theme or something, just ‘a farewell dinner’ and things like that), seasonal (or using ingredients we have in the glass houses at the moment) and we are also trying to showcase how much we’ve learned. They also have to be Ballymaloe recipes. With that in mind, my menu is……. (drum roll please)………….

Roasted beetroot, Ardsallagh goat’s cheese, rocket and balsamic vinegar

***

Chargrilled chicken paillarde (butterflied chicken breast) with aioli, roasted cherry tomates and couscous with pinenuts

A green salad with Italian salad dressing (lemon juice and olive oil)

***

Mini lemon sponge (told you I’d get it in!), vanilla bean ice cream and fresh raspberry sauce

So there you go. Now all I have to do is practice it, write a time plan and hopefully manage to cook and present it in 3 hours without completely breaking down and having to be carried off to some kind of institution. I chose things I really like to cook which I hope will help, but I’m nervous already so God knows what I’ll be like on the day. Best not to think about that I reckon.

Other than that, this week has been pretty good. I made puff pastry for the first time which worked out really well (I’ve got a load of it in the fridge so I’d better do something with that…), jointed a duck (very similar to a chicken), made a really nice sponge cake and iced it really badly and made a bunch of other things that I can’t bring to mind right now. Next week we get to do steak and lobster (not on the same day, that would be ridiculously decadent), pork loin and pork belly and on Wednesday afternoon our demo is made up of student suggestions. I suggested paella and we’re doing it, so I’m pleased about that.

Reports on the wine exam when it’s over. I’m sure it’ll be fine…

p.s. The picture above is one of the chickens sitting in the chicken food skip, see how many disgusting things you can spot. There is definitely a carcass of some description.

Ballymaloe – Weeks 8 and 9 and a lot of birthdays

Posted on by
Reply

It’s the end of week 9, which means I only have 3 weeks left – only 2 of which involve lectures and cooking as far as I know – eek! I don’t feel very prepared for exams in a couple of weeks.

Week 8 was pretty uneventful, up until Thursday when Dunc and some of my friends came to stay. I spent the entire week being very impatient (not helped by 2 theory days in a row). We had a really good time when they finally got here and it was awesome to see them all (Dunc especially). It was my birthday on the Friday, so I took the afternoon off school and we had a really nice afternoon on the beach.

I got some very nice presents (including a new DS lite from Dunc with Zelda – woop!) and made some very good ice cream, so all in all it was a good day. We went to the pub in the evening and then came to the school for pizza on the Saturday. The rest of the weekend was pretty quiet – it was Helen’s birthday on Sunday so I cooked birthday tea of veggie chilli and mixed berry fool. I completely blagged the quantities for the fool but it turned out pretty well in the end.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t pursuade them all to abandon their jobs and come live here for the next 4 weeks, so they’ve all gone home now. I had a minor sulk about it, but it’s only 3 weeks now until I get back so I’m not too sad.

Week 9 went well, although it got very hectic. I’ve developed a bit of an addiction to thai rice noodles in soup after eating them on Monday. Noodle soup is definitely one of the best foods ever. I cooked an incredibly sickly toffee meringue, some granary bread and brown yeast bread, a thai red curry and some laksa. I also made ciabatta. I’ve started my ciabatta tonight by making a biga, which is a bit like a sourdough starter. You mix a tiny bit of yeast, water and flour and then leave it to rise over 12-24 hours. Mine turned out really well, although I should have given it another 5 minutes in the oven. Unfotunately I won’t be able to make it at home; the dough is so sticky that you can only knead it in a mixer (a Kenwood/Kitchen Aid type) and I don’t have the necessary funds to buy one at the moment!

We seem to be getting to all the exciting breads now – we’ve learned brioche, ciabatta and croissants in the past couple of weeks. They all take two days, but it’s definitely worth the effort – they’re so much better than the shop bought ones. We’ve also done some really nice Indian breads. I especially liked poori.

Ciabatta

This weekend has gone by very quickly. Went to the pub on Friday in Ballycotton. They had a DJ in who seemed to be a fan of 90′s pop which was very bizarre. Needless to say I spent most of the time sitting outside because the place was packed with people dancing. VERY strange. On Saturday, 3 of the boys put on a really great meze style barbeque for Glenny’s birthday. We had lamb kebabs, home-made pittas, loads of dips and salads made by various people and of course some lemon and orange fairy cakes made by yours truly. It was a really fun night and the food was amazing – I’m definitely going to miss nights like that when I leave!

Fairy Cakes
Next week looks like it should be interesting – we’re doing rack of lamb, mussels, lots of salads (Ballymaloe House buffet-style) and the sushi demo I came to see last year. I’m looking forward to seeing it again as a student.

3 weeks to go! I’ll try to post more regularly, but I think I’m going to have to start revising at some point soon so might be a bit busy. Apparently my wine exam is in a week and a half – pretty sure I’m going to fail but you never know. Eep!

p.s. Here’s a couple of pics of my house – a bit late but never mind!

Mrs Walsh's 1Mrs Walsh's 2

Ballymaloe Week 7 – a school trip happens

Posted on by
Reply

This past week has been relatively non-eventful. My cooking seems to be coming along well – I made some very nice white yeast bread on Friday and a lovely salad with pears, blue cheese and spiced walnuts.

We seem to be getting more complex dishes now which is great. In our demo on Friday Rachel Allen made some really gorgeous cold souffles (a kind of mousse which is set with gelatine into a souffle shape) and some really nice stews with polenta. I’m making a lime souffle tomorrow which I’m looking forward to.

At the end of the course we have to cook a three course meal for our exam and I have absolutely no clue what I’m going to cook at the moment, apart from I know I’d like to do something involving baking for pudding. I’ve been making some really light little lemon fairy cakes recently so I might try to incorporate those. I also need to work on my presentation before then – it’s still pretty appalling at the moment!

The highlight of the week was our school trip on Thursday. We started off at the Farmer’s Market at Mahon Point which was great. I could have done with an extra hour or two there though – there was some really great produce. It’s a shame the market’s only on a Thursday so I won’t get the chance to go again before the end of the course. The queue at the fish stall was ridiculous and unrelenting which made me very tempted to buy some fish. I’m not sure everyone else on the coach would have thanked me by the end of the day though.

After the market, we went on to visit a smokehouse, a cheesemakers and then the Tannery restaurant and the Cliff House Hotel restaurant in Ardmore. Everyone who spoke to us was really inspiring and interesting. It’s great to see that small artisan food producers are surviving and selling produce despite all the recession stuff that seems to be going on.

Next week we have two theory days, including a full day’s lecture on working in the food industry. We’re also doing some thai food, fish and chips, grilling chicken, making panna cotta and lots of other stuff. It looks like it’s going to be an interesting week, although I think it’s going to go pretty slowly because I’ll be waiting all week for Dunc and the guys to arrive for the weekend and my birthday on Friday. I’m getting so excited now that time seems to be slowing down so God knows what I’ll be like on Thursday.

P.S. I’m posting this on Monday and just found out that I got 92% for my herb and salad leaf mid-term exam (would have been more but I can’t lay a table!) and 100% for my technique exam. Needless to say I’m pretty happy with those!
Still no new pics – I’ll try to get the camera out this weekend to document birthday funtimes!