Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

Day one starts with a communal breakfast. Actually, for me, it starts early as I’m still on French time so wake up around 5:15 and there’s no way I can get back to sleep with the noisy dawn chorus! The breakfast spread is magnificent, though, even if partake of very little—freshly harvested radishes and local cheese and charcuterie. In the dining room Darina Allen highlights the locality and freshness of the ingredients, a line that continues in an introduction to the farm and the school in the demonstration room and then on our tour of the gardens and farm.

I guess she’s preaching to the converted—a point she acknowledges herself in saying we presumably signed up to a course at Ballymaloe in full knowledge of the general ethos. But you certainly see it in action with the composting, wildflower meadows, shelters for wild bees, …

The farm has brand new one acre (2.5ha) glasshouse which replaced the previous ’60s vintage glasshouse at the end of last year. Not surprisingly, there’s a vast range of produce growing in neat rows. Much (all?) is grown from seed and we see the dedicated sprouting room later. We also add to the produce in the greenhouse, each planting a 5-week old corn plant that should produce a nice corn cob for us to eat before we leave.

The tour of the farm finishes with a visit to the fermentation lab and the bread baking HQ. We have the opportunity for extra curricular sessions in these (as well as in the milking parlour and dairy). But these, of course, extend the day—baking sessions start at 6:30, fermentation ones at 7. I need to think carefully here: I’m certainly going to sign up for the fermentation sessions but however tempting the bread and pastry making is, I need to think about whether I’m likely to put in practice anything I learn once I return to the real world.

After lunch (perhaps a little later than scheduled… there’s lots to see and much fascinating background and incidental information that Darina et al are keen go communicate) it’s time for our first demonstration session. With nearly 70 of us the chairs are tightly packed but visibility is good and Rory O’Connell gets a lot of information across as he prepares various dishes for us—soda bread, carrot & cumin soup, roast rhubarb, rice pudding, oatcakes and mushrooms à la crème. We get to taste all of these at the end of the session. In fact, tasting is practically compulsory so I do taste the rice pudding, not that it changes my opinion!

We finish around 17:30 and I worry somewhat I’ve been lulled into a false sense of security: I’m sure the information density will increase in the coming days and weeks and we have another introductory session tomorrow morning, including details on the record keeping and filing expected of us, before we start our cooking proper. I’m not sure yet I have a good idea of how much work we need to fit into a day before we start adding option activities let alone any extra-curricular ones—such as the cabin sauna on the nearby Ardnahinch Beach…

I walk to the beach in the evening—a ~6km round trip—but the sea is fairly high up so I don’t explore further.

More interesting is the foraging on the way back. I learnt during the afternoon demo session that there are two sorts of wild garlic. As well as the flat leaved, shade loving allium ursinum (ail d’ours in French…), there’s also a triangular leaved, sun loving allium triquetrum which is growing in abundance along the side of the road. I pick some intending to have it sautéed on toast for supper.

There’s enough to share with my fellow housemates but I’m not convinced it’s the best use. As J. comments, it’s a shame we have no parmesan as otherwise we could have made pesto with it. And, indeed, I see that wild garlic pesto is one of the recipes to be demonstrated tomorrow afternoon. Whatever, a foraged meal putting to use knowledge I’ve learned today. Let’s hope the remaining 83 days end so well…