Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

First off, the next step in sourdough making: shape the loaf and leave in a banneton to rest for a day.

This wasn’t actually that complicated and there was a 15 minute rest period between two shapings during which I bottled a batch of kombucha and brewed tea—so after my proto-loaf in its banneton was resting in the fridge I could start off a new kombucha batch. Perhaps fortunately, Maria wasn’t at Fermentation HQ—she has a horror of people coming in with dough all over their hands as it introduces yeasts which compete with her SCOBYs. BUt, of course, I’d made sure my hands were scrupulously clean!

All of this took less time than I’d thought so I was ready and waiting for the garden/farm tour at 7:30. I was the only one, though! Most of the other usual attendees are Bread Shed regulars, though, and they’re making croissants at the moment so they had a good excuse. With one participant, the walk turned into a visit to the dairy to see some Ballymaloe camemberts and a brie being turned over after a night’s draining. Here’s how a batch of camembert looked immediately after the curds were ladled into the moulds back at the end of April:

and here’s how they look after a night’s draining:

Although the garden walk was cancelled, I took a few minutes to visit the greenhouse to see how the sweetcorn we planted was fairing. The mini-field is pretty impressive, with most of the plants well above my height; the plants started off no bigger than the basil plants to the left!

The corn also seems to be maturing with clear tassels visible on the plants; I guess the cobs will soon be visible.

The morning’s demonstration had three components: Cheese, Preserving and Olives, Olive Oil & Vinegars. The cheeses this week were all blue: English, French and Italian. The French cheeses, sadly, didn’t include Bleu de Gex… The preserving session was interesting but I’m afraid I didn’t pay too much attention during the olive & olive oil session; I’ve visited too many olive oil producers to need any more information on how the oil is produced and I’m not likely to be sourcing olive oil from any of the producers that were covered. I did, though, discover an interesting new olive variety—Arbequina, from Catalunya—in those set out to taste. Sadly, though, just as the cheese selection was lacking Bleu de Gex, the olive selection omitted the Nyons Tanche olive…

The afternoon demo was by guest chef JR Lyall, Head of the Pastry Section at Ballymaloe House. This reminded me strongly of Chef Pol at Gastronomicom last year and it was interesting earlier this evening to look back at some of the things I made there. The problem with pastry, though, is still, I think, that basic recipes are for amounts that are just two much for small numbers of people and, in most cases, JR’s pastries should be eaten with at most a few hours of being made. Still, there was an interesting raspberry ice cream. JR also demonstrated the pastry used to create the amazing gooseberry tarts we ate on our visit to Ballymaloe House a couple of weeks back; perhaps these will be on the dessert trolley when J & I dine there next weekend.