Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

… although it didn’t seem like that when I went along to the freezer in Kitchen 3 early this morning only to find that it had been cleaned out and my puff pastry was nowhere to be seen. There wasn’t much I could do about that so I carried on to the Bread Shed to get my starter ready for the first stage of the focaccia to present with the exam meal. It seems James (absent wounded) and Juliet (on holiday) are away until Thursday so I hope there is some sort of order and sense when I need to bake the focaccia!

The stroke of luck came when Liv looked at my order of work and the gap in the middle. She remembered, though, that I’d been interested in the shortbread and pointed out a) it was touted as an accompaniment to ice cream and b) the biscuits could be baked in the same oven as the gratin. Doing these again was a real help—Liv reminded me that for soft doughs like this you mustn’t press too hard when rolling it out, just let the weight of the rolling pin do the work. Then, although baking the biscuits in the same oven was maybe not the best idea (they took way longer than the time given in the recipe), it did mean that I got a much better idea of how to tell when they’re cooked from the colour. As usual at Ballymaloe, there is one precise shade that is correct. A tad lighter or a tad darker is wrong. As our presented offerings will be tasted by three people, I wonder how well they agree on the shade!

For my scheduled offerings, Liv realised that I’d probably cooked gratins before; there wasn’t much to say other than to discuss the portion size—but agreeing that it’s a bit odd to judge the size of a portion of gratin all by itself… I said I’d taken two similarly shaped dishes and decided the smaller one looked too mean.

There was an interesting twist with my ice cream, though. Liv liked the taste and the light texture but wondered if I’d tried to create a ripple effect (you can see specks of dark coffee in the picture below). I had to admit that I’d not followed the recipes well enough: you create an intense coffee flavoured paste with 1 teaspoon of water to 6 teaspoons of instant coffee. As you can imagine, this is pretty stiff so you’re supposed to loosen it with some of the ice cream mix, the step I’d missed out. The Irish Coffee Sauce was pretty good, though.

Overall, a successful last cooking session!

And not much else to report as, after the demo, it was time for revision again. I can say, though, that sage flavoured water kefir is a win and, unlike basil of chilli, not a flavouring Maria had tried before.