Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

My Order of Work was pretty vague this morning. I was down to make quesadillas and to bake drumsticks my partner, RN, had left to marinate overnight. It was also my turn to bake a loaf of bread for lunch. That looked simple enough yesterday morning so I’d agreed with Debbie, the teacher, that I should make a brown yeast bread I hadn’t done before—but she wanted me to go through that with her. In the afternoon demo, though, I learnt that I’d also have to make pico de gallo salsa and guacamole to go with the quesadilla and a banana raita to go with the chicken. Not particularly hard, but I had no idea of the timing for the bread and I was pretty sure none of the ingredients for the tortillas or the various side dishes would be around early in the morning.

And, indeed, they weren’t. So after collecting the ingredients for the bread, mixing yoghurt & cream for the raita and labelling a couple of ovens for the bread and the chicken, I headed back to the cottage for a cup of tea and to book a hotel and a restaurant for a weekend in Kinsale in June. Tea drunk, I headed back to the kitchen where I managed to collect the rest of the ingredients I needed. No picture, but Debbie was pleased with my organisation when she came over to help with the bread. The first stages aren’t that hard: give some fresh yeast a little time to activate in warm water with some treacle and then mix that with the flour. But there’s no kneading and the wholemeal flour needs some time to absorb the water so you need to wait a while before putting the mix in the tin to rise.

That gave me time to prepare the tortilla dough from the masa harina—the same Maseca stuff we use. Everyone else was busy pressing their tortillas and cooking them but me, I was more worried the 70-75g portions given in the recipe were too big. I was told to just go with it so I left the 4 masa balls in a dish with damp paper over them and ignored all the recommendations to get them cooked.

By then the bread dough had rested long enough and Debbie came over to tell me to put it in the tin just as I was toasting almonds (which I’d previously skinned—just put them in boiling water for a minute and the skins come off easily). Of course, they caught but, fortunately, Debbie didn’t see that.

I managed to skin and toast another batch of almonds without burning them whilst I put the marinaded drumsticks in a dish and into the oven. Not a difficult task…

The almonds were for the banana raita—added to the yoghurt, cream and sour cream base along with honey, ground green cardamom seeds and raisins soaked in hot water for 10 minutes. Not a concoction I ever want to taste again!

Time to put the bread in the oven and my vague plan hits another snag. I’m offered extra drumsticks but say I’ve put mine in the oven already because the recipe says they can be served at room temperature (after all, they’re being served with a cold banana raita…). Debbie demurs. She wants a hot drumstick to taste. But not that much of a problem, really, they just have to go back into the oven for a bit before plating.

The 50 minutes or so the bread needs to bake is plenty of time to make the pico de gallo and guacamole. I’m mocked for over-filling a small glass bowl with my guacamole rather than using a nice presentation dish but I insist anyway and put the tightly-cling-filmed-bowl in the fridge.

The bread comes out and is a success!

I still have a good hour and just the tortillas to prepare so Debbie suggests I get ahead with preparation for another go at making shortcrust pastry and lining a tart tin—she is happy that this will fit with my Thursday recipes of plaice goujons and eclairs if I leave the filling stage to Friday.

That done, it’s on to finish and cook the tortillas and make the quesadillas. Sure enough, 50g is a much better dough portion for the tortillas so after finding this out the hard way as I press the first 75g ball everything goes pretty smoothly—I’ve had a good teacher in the past and done this more than a few times at home. Debbie is very happy with the result and I have to say that they look a lot better than those made opposite.

Then I plate and present the (warmed) drumsticks and make and present a quesadilla:

Debbie is pretty pleased with both and comments that the faff of chilling the guacamole was worth it. I don’t really feel I deserve any compliments for the chicken, though, as the real effort was by my partner yesterday in preparing the marinade. My major contribution was the raita—which Debbie thinks is well made but better as something for breakfast with muesli than with this dish!

The afternoon demo adds a few more things to my workload for Thursday—aioli and another tomato salsa to go with the plaice goujons. RN offers to take the aioli but I figure all will be OK even though we have another group session to fillet our fish to slot in to our orders of work.

There’s time for a very windy bike ride after which I try my black-tea-flavoured water kefir. There’s no tea taste at all. It tastes rather of apricot which I guess isn’t a surprise given Maria suggested I keep the one used in the first fermentation to be sure there was enough sweetness for the second. I reckon I’ll try some wild garlic for tomorrow’s batch…