Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

As I expected, there wasn’t much to do early this morning: many of the ingredients I’d need (bacon, avocados) weren’t available early on and those that were (flour, sultanas, …) were for the spotted dog soda bread that I wasn’t sure I could make. But I did collect a load of eggs and ready the rhubarb and ginger jam for cooking having rustled up some ginger and a muslin square. Fortunately for me, I managed to catch Julia before the assembly and get her approval for the spotted dog—she agreed there should be time given my other tasks. But during the assembly we had half an hour knocked off: Rory et al wanted us to have more of a Brunch than a Lunch, so starting to eat at 12, not 1pm. We would, though, be getting Bucks Fizz given its Brunch status!

I quickly started the mise-en-place for the spotted dog (and turned on the oven; it doesn’t take long to mix). This didn’t take long either but I soon hit a snag. All of the soda bread recipes say to add most of the liquid to the dry ingredients and add the rest only if needed. I, of course, added all the buttermilk. The dough would just not shape without needing loads of flour being worked in—and you are not supposed to work soda bread much or it ends up too dense. I guess I’m not going to forget the “add most of the liquid” instructions in a hurry! Fortunately, although the dough looked a little flat during the early minutes in the oven it ended up OK in the end.

While it was baking I made my jam (cooling the test sample on a plate in the fridge this time, not like with my raspberry jam a couple of weeks back). No picture of this, but Julia was happy with the result and I have a jar for J. to sample. I also hard boiled 6 eggs for the avocado toast and made hollandaise. This meant I had three pans on small hob so used a small one for the hollandaise. (Others were making this over a bain marie but Chef Fabrice of Gastronomicom would not be happy if I took that route.) Unlike our Gastronomicom hollandaise, though, we didn’t make a reduction, just cooked the egg yolks with some water before adding the butter. Rory did admit yesterday it wasn’t traditional hollandaise but said it was fine for the purpose. Julia was rather concerned about the size of my pan but did admit I hadn’t much option when I showed her the space on the hob. And the hollandaise turned out OK (probably the part of my later presentation she enjoyed the most…)

She certainly wasn’t happy with my initial Avocado on Toast presentation. The recipe included hard boiled eggs and I placed these between two pieces of toast with Avocado on. And scattered sumac tastefully over the eggs and plate as well as over the avocado. Julia allowed that it looked good like that but Rory had put his eggs on the avocado and so we were expected to do the same—even if it did, as I pointed out, make it a little harder to eat. There were times at Gastronomicom, though, when we had to reproduce Chef Fabrice’s plate. (And as Darina apparently said in a talk on getting a job in the industry that I didn’t attend, “learn how the chef wants things done and do them that way unless your opinion is asked.”)

Having been hassled on the eggs, I forgot to add any greenery to my Eggs Benedict. But, as mentioned, the hollandaise was good and my egg perfectly poached (I’d poached four, put them in cold water to keep and then chosen the best one to present…)

On the subject of perfect egg cooking, Ballymaloe agree with me rather than J.: yolks should be runny. A few people were frying eggs and had to try again using the Ballymaloe technique rather than cooking them the way they had been used to. So it wasn’t just me not toeing the line!

After the presentation there followed some of the Demo Kitchen confusion. For these things where we have to make individual servings rather than take a portion from, say, a stew or a cake, we need to cook the food for the common lunch after we’ve shown our working to the teacher. To speed things up to get the demo kitchen cleaned up early, bacon was being cooked and bread toasted for all of us so I had no toast on which to put the rest of my avocado—my bread had been taken away. Whilst my hollandaise was put in with the rest for the lunch service, my avocados weren’t put on the toast that was being made elsewhere. So when I came back from feeding scraps to the hens I was asked why I hadn’t plated up my avocados! I pointed out it wasn’t exactly my fault that I didn’t have any toast for that but sometimes in the demo kitchen the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing. (Actually, the same was true of me poaching all my eggs and keeping them in the cold water. We’d been told to do this at the end of assembly but that had been forgotten…)

Let’s hope it’s a little easier on Thursday when I’m down to make Irish Stew and buttered cabbage. I’ve not prepared my order of work yet but there’ll clearly be a big gap between prepping the stew and putting it in the oven and cooking the cabbage just before the presentation. Is it worth me adding something to fill the gap or is that just not worth my while in this kitchen?

As we had lunch early brunch, the afternoon demo started early and so finished early. Which was good as we got some more information on our test at the end of next week. I’ve mentioned that there are some 30 techniques we are supposed to know (including my making shortcrust and lining a flan ring nemesis); two are compulsory (chopping & sweating an onion and making a paper piping bag—Gastronomicom’s cornet) and two chosen at random.

We also, though, have to identify ten herbs and ten salad leaves. Although I can identify all 10 herbs, six of the ten salad leaves (Green Mizuna, Oakleaf, Pak Choi, Red Mizuna, Red Mustard, Rocket, Salad Burnet, Sorrel, Tat Soi and Watercress) were unknowns. Today, though, samples of all were put out for us to examine—using as many senses as we liked. I’ve worked out a decision tree but I’m still not really sure of the difference between Pak Choi and Tat Soi. Pak Choi seems a little lighter and the leaves seem to bend “forward” rather than “back” but are either a characteristic feature? And to my taste they are both very similar…

And, even if I can happily identify the ten herbs (Basil, Bay, Chives, Coriander, Curly Parsley, Fennel, Mint, Rosemary, Sage and Thyme), we have to name two Ballymaloe recipes that use each herb. So I’ve scanned our recipes and created a list I now have to memorise.

Another reason I could do so much homework this evening is the weather! The sky is pretty clear now but there was rain in the air for most of the day. Luckily for me, it was heaviest when I needed to be inside. Remembering my task of feeding scraps to the hens, I came back to collect my waterproof jacket this morning but it wasn’t needed. There’s a 70-80% chance of the rain for the next three days—perhaps only for a couple of mm or so, but I guess it will be permanently damp. People are predicting a heatwave for the weekend though. My excitement dimmed when I learnt that 20°C counts as a heatwave here!