Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

First things first. Today was my first taste of the yoghurt made with the Ballymaloe raw milk and it was pretty good. Creamy and thick. I didn’t try the Darina “turn it upside down” trick, but perhaps I might try a cautious tilt of the next pot I open.

Then, I had the mise-en-place for my five recipes pretty ready bar that for the tart filling before morning assembly.

We had a different teacher today (Maggie, yesterday it was Florrie) but she was busy elsewhere so I started off making the pastry for the chocolate and hazelnut tart. This was a little confusing for Maggie when she arrived and when I explained I’d added the two recipes she reckoned I’d taken on too much. I managed to convince her I reckoned the work would fit in the time available and that I needed to practice my pastry work. She looked doubtful but let me go ahead, promising to help with the various pastry steps—and she also wanted to check my soda bread making.

And helpful she was with the pastry. With her help I managed to roll it out without cracks and line the tin without damaging anything. The issue again was the blind baking but the timing is for when you’re using ceramic baking beans which transmit heat to the base. We’re using old real beans which don’t so it takes longer—which was probably just as well as I’ll comment later.

Maggie’s watchful eye was also a godsend when I was making the soda bread as I’d picked up baking powder rather than baking soda by mistake. Putting everything together is pretty easy though, even if your hands get very sticky, and my end result was well thought of.

The next task was preparing the filling for the tart filling. Collecting the ingredients was simple enough but I needed to peel hazelnuts. For this you need to bake them for a while then rub the skins off in a tea towel. Easier said than done which is why it was useful the blind baking of the tart case took longer than planned. But the end result was considered pretty good by Maggie and Florrie and Laura were both pleased I’d put in the effort.

This though, is where things stopped going to plan. Even though I’ve made hundreds of omelettes, I wasn’t allowed to make one on my schedule as Maggie needed to watch us all. My partner was also planning to cook her omelette so I thought we had a go but then she was told she needed to make the meringue for her lemon meringue tartlets. Putting the tomato salad together took no time so I was hanging around waiting to be able to demonstrate my omelette or for a grill to be free to make the soufflé one.

I got the green light for the soufflé one but even then the waiting for others was a pain. The omelette was all ready for tasting but Maggie took longer than she thought with another student so my presentation didn’t look so great in the end. But my the actual taste was consider good as was that of my French omelette—and I absolutely nailed the technique. I’m sure J. would have mocked me mercilessly had things been otherwise.

After the afternoon presentations (caesar salad, roast chicken/guinea fowl and accompaniments, victoria sponge, …), I had a brief introduction to cheesemaking. There was a vat with 20l of milk that had been seeded with rennet and various compounds for camembert making. We cut the curds and scooped them out into the moulds. Cheese in 3 weeks! There’s a huge amount of whey as a by product which we were practically begged to take away. We’re learning about butter, yoghurt and cheese making tomorrow, including making ricotta. So I plan on going back to collect some whey for ricotta in the not too distant future.

Lecture day tomorrow so it’s a pub outing for Pennywort again, to Ballycotton this time—a taxi ride away. Three of us have cars but a taxi seems the better way to go. And after some phoning around we find a taxi that is willing to take us there but, more importantly, bring us back. So we head to the Salty Dog which has a great sea view from the restaurant and a pretty good atmosphere. Certainly better than last week’s outing to a beer garden that didn’t merit the name.