Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

But an evening one this time, so before we get there, here’s the focaccia I started yesterday and baked this morning.

Based on this, I’m reasonably confident I can produce a decent effort for my exam on Wednesday; I just have to hope there is a bit more organisation in the Bread Shed…

After baking the focaccia I headed to the Fermention HQ to collect my latest batch of kombucha. As this takes two weeks to mature I had to pack my scoby away to rest in a little jar. I’ll have to see how it survives the trip home.

A good number of people today were cooking lobster, so here’s a picture of a few delivered to Kitchen 2 this morning.

Lobster dishes weren’t on the grid for my section. We were down to cook a lamb tagine with couscous (me) and scallops with beurre blanc and a tarte tatin (my partner). My partner was away, though, so I volunteered to cook her scallops (to tick off another technique in our little book) forgetting initially that that would mean I’d have to make the beurre blanc accompaniment as well. Even so, there was enough time as the lamb tagine needed 90 minutes in the oven and then nearly half an hour more on the hob for the juices to reduce—a half hour that was rather empty in my original order of work.

So, the scallops were served first

followed, a little incongruously by a lamb tagine with preserved lemons and couscous with apricot and pistachio

Liv was reasonably happy in general but not with the plate I’d chosen for the tagine: it might be a nice plate but it’s actually a serving plate so, as you can see, the arrangement isn’t the best and the tagine portion is a little large. At least for the exam we have standard plates and just have to make sure we don’t choose chipped ones!

Then, after the afternoon demo (pork “wellington”, potted lobster, various ice creams…) it was time to head off to Ballymaloe House for an evening shift in the restaurant there. People’s experience has been mixed—it’s interesting if the restaurant is busy, less so early in the week when there’s not much to do and you tend to be prepping vegetables in the back.

I turned up to find a big group of people in front of the entrance and, after finding the back door into the kitchen, am told this is a wedding party that have taken over the restaurant for the evening. So, the kitchen is busy but rather than having some individual plates to prepare for service, I’m part of a more professional version of the production line we had at the pop up dinner here at the school. The first task is to scatter cheese on a whole load of half-cooked soufflés then, after toasting and crushing some hazelnuts for the vegetarian starter, the production line for the soufflés kicks into action: my role is to lay out the bowls (there’s a sauce under the soufflés) and to make sure the rims are clean as the bowls are pushed across the pass. We manage to serve over a hundred plates in just eight minutes. Then the pass is wiped down and everything repeats for the soup course; seven minutes this time.

Things are a little different for the main course as a different section of the kitchen is responsible for the lamb and fish options and my section is tasked with putting the potato and carrot accompaniments into bowls for service; my role here is to add the garnishes—chopped parsley for the carrots, flavoured butter for the potatoes—and pass the bowls over to the waiters for service.

So, probably not a typical evening in the restaurant, but an interesting experience—and a view of life behind the scenes in a restaurant that I probably wouldn´t be able to get anywhere else.