Cookery Course 2018 @chalmersr - Tumblr Blog

View from one of the Ballymaloe Cookery School kitchens

Back Home

After a tumultuous welcome home from the dogs, and the joy of seeing my husband, friends, family and our lovely home, it has started to sink in that my time at the Ballymaloe Cookery School is over. A blazing hot day in Johannesburg, followed by a glorious thunderstorm with hail and pouring rain cements the fact that I am home.

For the first few days, I awoke a little disorientated and slightly panicked that I was late for the morning’s cooking. But a week later, I have started to look back at Ballymaloe with some objectivity. And what an experience it was.

During the course, I started making a list of some of my key learnings, several of which you will find in Rory O’Connell’s wonderful book “Master It, How to Cook Today”, which I chose as my parting gift from Ballymaloe. I ran out of steam towards the end, but thought it might be useful to collate my Top Five lessons:

1. Only use quality ingredients – fresh and preferably organic. It may cost a bit more, but if you can afford it, quality makes all the difference;

2. Seasonality is key – identify ingredients that grow naturally in your area during the seasons, and then find recipes that make use of those ingredients rather than buying strawberries, for example, in winter in South Africa. They’ll be imported and expensive. Grow as much of your own veggies, herbs and fruit as you can and get to know your local butcher and health store owner;

3. If you are going to cook more than one dish – or even if it’s a slightly complicated dish – do an order of work before you start. Read your recipes and organise your work so that it’s efficient;

4. Invest in a few pieces of great kitchen equipment that may cost a bit more, but will last a lifetime. The top 5 for me are a food mixer (Kenwood or KitchenAid); food processor (Magimix etc); mouli legume for making sauces, mashed potato and so on; electric thermometer and a mandolin (with a guard to protect your fingers);

5. Freezing food is a great way of preserving it, but it won’t improve products, so only freeze food that is in perfect condition, freeze it in small quantities and always defrost it properly (preferably overnight in the fridge)

If you have children, or know people who are going to Ballymaloe, here are a few pointers for future students:

· File every day. You will receive hundreds and hundreds of recipes, and if you do not start filing from the start, it will become impossible. And while Ballymaloe gives you a filing guide, file in a way that makes sense to you so you’ll be able to find recipes in a year’s time. There is a check on your filing system at the end of the course, but it’s pretty cursory;

· Take advantage of all the optional things you can do – from baking sourdough bread to fermenting food to milking cows to gardening and much more. You’ll regret it if you don’t;

· The teachers at Ballymaloe are all completely wonderful – they have a huge amount of experience and knowledge and they are patient and caring. Ask lots of questions and listen to what they have to say;

· Try to get some exercise every day – I managed to walk almost every day until it got really dark for the last couple of weeks, but I found it so important in helping to work out the kinks from cooking all morning and sitting all afternoon and to just keep your head together;

· Have fun and relax – the 12 week course is seriously intensive. You will be exhausted a lot of the time but it is also a lot of fun so take time to go to the pub with friends, go to the beach or to the nearest town of Midleton, whatever suits you.

And finally, a word on the exams at the end of the course. I rather fruitlessly searched other blogs for some guidance on the final exams, as quite a lot of emphasis is placed on them by the school. It seems that they make small changes each year, but in short the exams are pretty hectic and you will be tested on almost every part of your learning during the 12 week course. The most important is HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points), with lots of questions on this system, but also on food costing, menu planning, freezing, allergens, preserving, jam making and much more.

You will need to know your spices, beans, herbs (and recipes) as well salad leaves and be able to identify fish and meat. The questions are either multiple choice; true or false or one line responses. There will be quite good guidance from the School towards the end of the course on what you need to know. But take notes throughout and read through everything on the list they give you before the exams.

And so, what next for me? The course has been invaluable in terms of helping me to understand what I do and don’t want to do regarding our little restaurant in the Western Cape. I know I don’t want to cook in the kitchen – it’s back-breaking stuff that’s really suited mostly to the young – and I know I don’t know enough about managing a restaurant to do it by myself, so will need a lot of support with systems, ordering and much more.

I will be taking a much needed break to decide on our next steps, and just how engaged we wish to be in feeding people great food for a living. There is no doubt that Ballymaloe was one of the best experiences I have ever had, and I am so grateful to Darina, Rory, Rachel, the wonderful teachers and the amazing staff at the school. I will really miss all the wonderful students and the friends I made at Ballymaloe.

Thanks all and Cheers!

#ballymaloecookeryschool

Sushi, Vietnamese Spring Rolls and Chinese Spring Rolls

#ballymaloecookeryschool

Lobster and Tarte Tartin

#ballymaloecookeryschool

Sushi and Spring Rolls

In the midst of all the angst and studying for the exams, we were taught the fine art of making sushi. I know there are many people who do not like the thought of eating raw fish, but there are lots of different forms of sushi, and it is so incredibly good for you!

It’s not easy if it’s really well made, but that’s because sushi is a true art form. Our teacher, Shermin Mustafa, worked in a restaurant in Australia where the wife of the owner was Japanese and made a sushi dish every day, which is where she first became interested in it. Thereafter, Shermin worked in a Japanese sushi restaurant and says she was not allowed to touch the sushi for ages – she chopped onions for three months and watched the Sushi Masters (or Itamea) at work. It takes at least eight years of complete dedication, devotion and mastery to become a Sushi Master and no-one is allowed to work with sushi in a proper sushi restaurant without such training. Shermin said when a true master made Nigiri sushi, all the strands of rice faced in the same direction – a skill undertaken with a particular movement of the hands!

Sushi is great fun if you are not too bothered about it being perfect. You can get a perfectly decent looking plate of sushi with a bamboo-rolling mat and a bit of practice. The nori seaweed that is part of many sushi rolls is apparently incredibly hard to make – teachers at the Ballymaloe Cookery School have been trying for some time without success. This despite the fact that there is loads of edible seaweed washing up on the shores of the sea around Ballymaloe, so that’s frustrating for the team. And you know the bits of pinkish pickled ginger you get with your sushi in restaurants? Well, it’s dyed. Of course, it makes perfect sense when you think about it for even a second – root ginger is not pink! This had never occurred to me (although perhaps that’s just me being somewhat oblivious at times). But you can get it that way by just adding a bit of beetroot juice - try to avoid the artificial colouring that goes into many commercial pickled gingers.

My next favourite thing to make in the past week were the Vietnamese Spring Rolls, followed by the Chinese Spring Rolls. The Vietnamese ones are uncooked and are generally vegetarian (although sometimes with a little pink prawn included), wrapped in rice paper, which is soaked briefly in hot water to soften it. Be warned, the rice paper is really sticky and can be difficult to roll, so have a bowl of cold water next to you to moisten your fingers and help the process along. With a bit of dipping sauce, it’s utterly delicious and another really healthy snack. The Chinese spring rolls are a little less healthy, being as they are deep fried, but are crispy and have great flavour.

And then there was the lobster. Oh dear. When we had the demonstration on making lobster dishes, the creatures had already been cooked and we were assured that the RSPCA had approved the cooking method. In short, you put them in a pot of cold salted water and turn the heat to low. They die at about 44°C and start to change colour to a deep red. If you cook live lobster, you need to be really careful when handling them as they have very strong claws and can give you a nasty pinch (deservedly, no doubt). There are lots of different ways of cooking and serving them, including with pasta or in a fresh brioche roll – I find lobster pretty rich in the first place, and cooking them with cream certainly adds to that, but a little is very tasty.

I was most trepidatious when arriving in the kitchen the next morning as we had been assured there would be live lobster to be cooked. As it turned out, the lobster were hiding (clever things) so we did not have to cook them, and substituted the lobster for scallops. I much prefer scallops to lobster – they are so delicious and should be cooked first on a very hot non-stick pan with no oil or butter to brown them, and then can be finished off in the sauce. Delicious!

And finally, there was the practical cooking exam. I decided to do an “international” menu if you will, and made pea and coriander soup to start – my absolute favourite soup - then a traditional Irish stew with lamb chops and potatoes, and finally a Tiramisu. They are all dishes that I have enjoyed cooking and I was happy with the outcome – at least there were no disasters! We were also required to cook a bread, which is decided by lots. The bread I drew was a yeast focaccia – not at all easy from a technique point of view and it takes quite a long time, but it’s my favourite bread and I loved making it.

In terms of the exam, all of the dishes must be served up at the same time for three teachers who taste and mark them. My tasters were Rory O’Connell, Rachel Allen and JR who is the pastry chef at Ballymaloe House. We will only know the results in a few months’ time, but Rachel very sweetly said that my dishes looked good.

So the practical cooking exam is done and dusted, and today I am studying for the written exam. There are three papers that are written over the full day tomorrow, ranging from food costing and menu planning, to identifying spices, fish, meat, herbs (and giving recipes for all of them) to cooking terms, jam making and so much more. I read a blog by a previous student who was a lawyer and had done the bar exam in the US – she reckoned that the Ballymaloe Cookery School written exam was harder! Ah well, nothing to be done but your best, so hopefully I’ll scrape through.

I will write a final blog next week when I am back home in South Africa to reflect on some of my learnings and our way forward but I do know that this has been an experience of a lifetime and I would not have missed it for the world!

My Top 5 Recipes of the week:

1. Sushi

2. Vietnamese Spring Rolls

3. Chinese Spring Rolls

4. Lobster with cream and fresh herbs

5. Tarte tartin

Cheers all, until next time!

#ballymaloecookeryschool #rspca

Beef Consomme and Creme Brulee

Lovely buttery, crisp croissants; Rack of Lamb

Croissants, Consommé and Olive Oil

Ever since I saw the movie “It’s Complicated”, where the character played by Meryl Streep, a successful bakery owner, makes chocolate croissants for her potential boyfriend I have yearned to make them. I always thought they must be terribly complicated, but she made them so effortlessly, rolling up little triangles of pastry, curving them around and then baking them. And let’s face it, who doesn’t love a warm, freshly baked croissant.

Luckily enough croissants were on the list of recipes we made this week at the Ballymaloe Cookery School! J Darina Allen says the first recipe she tried came from Julia Child’s book Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and the croissant recipe covered 10 pages! She persevered (as is her wont) and came up with a less complicated recipe, although I must warn you that they are made over two days, so this is not a quick exercise.

You start with a flour, milk, sugar, yeast and water dough, which is mixed, kneaded and then left to rest for a few hours, after which butter is added to the dough. It’s then all about creating layers by folding, rolling and resting the dough several times, after which it should be left in the fridge overnight. The croissants should be rolled and shaped the next day and then baked after proving.

It is not particularly complicated to make croissants, but it does take time (as does all pastry), and the result is fabulous – buttery, crisp and utterly delicious. You can make Pain au Chocolate from the same dough, just shaping it in a different way. Having never thought I would make a croissant in my life, it really did feel like something of an achievement to produce one that was not only edible but actually tasted pretty good.

Once the euphoria of the croissant making had subsided, it was time to make beef consommé. Many in the cooking world speak of beef consommé with great reverence in hushed tones, which I never understood as I thought it to be little more than glorified beef stock. But on my first attempt, it was clear that there is some real technique involved in ensuring that the consommé is crystal clear and sparkling. It all comes down to the egg whites that are a clarifying agent for the soup by helping to lift all the veggies to the top and create a sort of mesh on the top – what they call a “clarifying raft”, if you want to be fancy pants. You have to stir it consistently in the beginning and then not at all for ages. It is seriously delicious and is incredibly nutritious as you are getting all the goodness from the stock as well as the veggies and meat. While it is not my favourite thing in the world to make, I am pleased that I managed to do it relatively well.

Whenever I am at a restaurant, my two favourite things to order for dessert are either ice-cream with hot chocolate sauce (the real stuff) or crème brulee. This is another dish that has always seemed somewhat daunting to make, but is actually incredibly simple. It is also made over two days – you make the custard on the first day and let it rest overnight in the fridge and then make the caramel for the topping or put sugar on the top and blowtorch it until it becomes hard. The caramel will last much longer as the blowtorched sugar will start to soften after a while. The only tip in making the custard is to be really careful once you have poured it into a serving ramekin not to break the skin on the custard. It needs to remain intact if it is to hold. Divine!

Every week, we have a lecture or two on a different issue, and this week it was on olive oil. Many people are aware how good it is for us, being a mono-unsaturated fatty acid and high in Omega 9, but I had always thought it was not great for frying or sautéing at high temperatures as it degrades. Not so, it seems – olive oil has the highest cooking temperature of any oil, although it’s better to deep fry, for example, with ordinary olive oil rather than virgin or extra virgin.

It’s important to buy from reputable producers as there are a lot of fraudulent olive oils out there – in fact, Darina pronounced that there was more money made from selling fraudulent olive oil than from cocaine trafficking. Who knew? And there are a number of guidelines about how to best store it, but the bottom line is that it should be stored in a dark cupboard or if this is not possible, then in a dark bottle. Those little bottles of olive oil in clear bottles on tables at restaurants (often outside in the sun) are a big no-no – they will not last nearly as long if kept that way.

Just as with wine, there are many different types of olive oil and many countries produce excellent oils, including Italy, France, Spain, Greece and many others. The only producer in South Africa mentioned by Ballymaloe Cookery School is Morgenster, where owner Giulio Bertrand took plants from Italy and grew them under the advice of some of Italy’s foremost experts on olive growing. Darina reckons this is arguably the best New World olive oil with a sweet and buttery flavour and a hint of avocado and pepper. We tasted about 15 of the best olive oils the school recommends and perhaps no surprise, but it was my favourite!

My Top 5 Recipes of the week:

1. Beef consommé

2. Rack of lamb

3. Rustic potatoes with rosemary

4. Croissants

5. Crème brulee

Cheers all, until next time!

#ballymaloecookeryschool #morgenster_sa

Bakewell Tart

Tortilla de Patatas

Tapas

I first encountered really good tapas about six years ago when we went to Spain on holiday. In Barcelona, just opposite the hotel we were staying in, was a lovely little tapas bar where you could choose from a variety of delicious dishes displayed behind a glass counter. They were freshly made and immediately replaced as each one ran out, which they frequently did.

The queue was around the corner some nights, and we were happy to wait our turn as the food was so fabulous. I remember succulent prawns with dill mayonnaise; thinly sliced jamon and manchego cheese; ripe diced tomatoes in olive oil with basil and so much more – often on freshly baked crusty bread. It was so delicious and we were best pleased that our hotel was just across the square so we could stagger home and lie down to recover after each of our many visits to the restaurant.

Yesterday’s demonstration at the Ballymaloe Cookery School was on tapas, given by Rachel Allen. She made a staggering number of dishes, ranging from the traditional tortilla de patatas to albondigas which are crispy meat balls to garbanzada, which is a chickpea stew. A highlight was the Jamon Iberica de Bellota, bought out on a metal stand. This is the finest of the jamon - a leg of cured ham from black Iberian pigs who roam and feed on acorns, herbs and roots so that the flavour of the meat is nutty and earthy. A lot of technique goes into carving the jamon – it needs to be very thinly sliced into short strips, and is a very delicious just on its own but equally so on crusty bread with manchego.

While on the subject of tapas, we went for a wonderful trip this weekend into County Kerry, spending a few nights in Killarney and on to Dingle, a harbour town which is quaint and pretty. Apparently, during the summer months there can be up to 15 000 tourists a day visiting the town, so there are loads of little restaurants, coffee shops, pubs, clothes and tourist-type shops.

As chance would have it, we went for a late lunch at the Solas Tapas and Wine Bar on the high street, and had a really stunning meal ranging from croquettes to crispy squid. One thing that stood out was a simple tomato dish, which had amazingly complex flavours. We had a long chat with the owner and head chef after the meal, who gave me a rough recipe for the tomatoes. The trick is to marinate the tomatoes overnight in a sherry vinegar sauce, and then slow cook them. I will be hoarding this recipe and definitely giving it a go when I get back home.

We are now into the tail end of the course, with just two weeks before the term-end exams, so a lot of focus will be going into studying for these. They involve a practical exam where you cook a bread and a three course meal, as well as three written exams. Quite an ordeal for someone who has not studied in decades, but hopefully manageable!

So in the past week, the two big areas of focus for me have been on cooking a steak really well, and getting to understand the different cuts of meat, as well as cooking the simplest – but not the easiest – of dishes, fish and chips! I have mentioned before that the parts of the animal that work the hardest – the legs, shoulders, rump and so on – are tougher but have more flavour. So fillet steak, for example, is the most tender of the steaks but has the least flavour, sirloin is fairly tender and has good flavour while rump has loads of flavour but is not very tender. I’m sure we all know how to cook a steak, but it’s worth outlining the method used at the school – if frying, have a very hot grill pan, sear the steak well on all sides, cook for the amount of time to get it done to your preference (rare, medium rare etc) and then make sure that it rests properly - for at least 10 minutes. It goes beautifully with a freshly made béarnaise sauce – not the easiest thing in the world to make as it has a habit of splitting on one, but made with care and close attention, it not only works beautifully but tastes fabulous!

We also cooked halibut fish steaks, sliced right through the cartilage. The fish should be washed and dried thoroughly, then dipped into some seasoned flour. The frying pan should be very hot, pop a bit of butter and olive oil into the pan and then sear the fish on all sides. Cook in the pan for a few minutes and if the fish steak is very thick, it can be finished off in a hot oven at about 200 degrees celcius for about 6 minutes. You will know when the fish is ready as it will not have any spring when prodded with a finger.

By far the easiest way to cook chips is in a deep fryer – I will never get back those hours spent fiddling around with chips in loads of oil in a pot. The chips we made this week were twice cooked. So you cut the potatoes into a medium sized chip, effectively “blanch” it in hot oil of about 160 degrees celcius for about 60 to 90 seconds and then set aside. You can leave these chips for a few hours if necessary, and then go back to them, turn up the heat to 180 degrees celcius and fry them off. They are crisp, perfectly cooked and delicious.

And finally, soup. My favourite soup by far that I’ve made since I’ve been at the school is the pea and coriander soup. It has a touch of chili in it, which gives it a tiny bit of heat but does not detract from the incredibly fresh flavour of this soup – it’s a lovely fresh green colour and tastes like summer. It’s simple and can be made at the last minute before serving – definitely worth a try.

My Top 5 Recipes of the week:

1. Tortilla de Patatas

2. Pea and coriander soup

3. Steak with béarnaise sauce

4. Fish and chips

5. Bakewell tart

Cheers all, until next time!

#ballymaloecookeryschool

Ballymaloe Apple Tart, with two types of pastry!

Poached salmon with hollandaise sauce and peas; parmesan and gruyere souffle;

Salmon and Other Fish

Whole wild salmon is a rarity in my world. Of course, we get Norwegian and Scottish salmon in many supermarkets across South Africa, some of it wild, but more often it tends to be farmed and it’s almost always in fillets. It’s also incredibly expensive, although there are significant health benefits to eating really good salmon, which are rich in Omega 3 fatty acids and a great source of protein and many vitamins and minerals.

Alaska is home to the world’s largest wild salmon industry, although Ireland, Scotland, Norway and other such countries have wild salmon. Farmed salmon is a massive growth industry, and there remains some debate about whether wild or farmed salmon is better. Quite frankly, it seems common sense that wild has to be better – it is not subjected to the parasites as well as pesticides and other chemicals that are often fed to farmed salmon, it runs free and thus has more muscle and less fat, more nutrients and goodness.

It’s worth remembering that Atlantic salmon from Norway and Scotland is on the WWF’s SASSI (Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative) orange list which means you should think twice before buying it. Rainbow trout, which I think is equally delicious, is on the green list and definitely a good alternative.

Seeing a really big whole wild salmon during a recent demonstration at Ballymaloe Cookery School was quite something. It had been frozen as there are strict rules about when wild salmon can be fished in Ireland, which is one of the few refuges for wild salmon and sea trout. The bigger wild salmon average about 4kg, but the one being cooked this week in demo was about 6kg which is really large.

There are several ways to cook salmon, including grilling, baking, poaching and smoking. This week, we focused on poaching and smoking salmon and other fish and it’s quite clear that I need to invest in some equipment if I want to do this properly back in SA. For poaching a whole fish, you need a fish kettle which is a long, narrow saucepan with a perforated rack on which the fish rests as it cooks, with handles on each end to lift the whole fish out the water intact. If you don’t have one of these, you can poach the fish in water in a casserole, but I can see the potential for disaster in this.

The secret to poaching a fish is to remember that the less water you use the better as you keep more flavour. And it seems that one should never, ever poach a cutlet or fillet of fish because you lose a whole lot of flavour. I will say that the whole poached salmon we did was incredibly tasty, accompanied by some hollandaise sauce and peas with butter. Divine!

Smoking fish is a real art, although I did it with a fair amount of success. I hot smoked some cod with wood chips – using a stainless steel smoker on top of the hob. It took a total of 9 minutes and emerged from the smoker quite golden from the wood chips, and tasted lovely and smoky. I have not tried cold smoking but have seen it done in the smoking shed at Ballymaloe Cookery School, and tasted the wonderful, wild, organic smoked salmon. I am definitely a convert in terms of wild vs farmed salmon!

And then there was the soufflé. Now, I am a little nervous of soufflés – well, aren’t we all? I’ve tried making them all before – sweet, savoury, twice baked, you name it. Some have been ok, some disasters but none would I call fabulous. This week I made a fabulous soufflé, and it was pretty straightforward. It rose beautifully in the oven rather than looking like a flat scone which has happened before, it tasted great and I made it whilst doing a million other things. So it can be done, with a good recipe and a good teacher. Yay!

The most complex thing I did this week was the Ballymaloe Apple Tart. Complex because it involved two different types of pastry – a shortcrust pastry on the bottom, and a flaky pastry on the top. Flaky pastry takes two days to make so it involves quite a lot of effort and let me tell you, the amount of butter in this pastry is staggering. Anyway, I was rather adventurous and made a plum and apple tart, which seemed to hold its own and work out well. I very much doubt I will make this tart again, but if you have the strength, then go for it. It looks good and tastes great.

What I really enjoyed making, and loved eating even more, was the cinnamon ice-cream, which was a variation of the original vanilla ice-cream. The basis of it is a custard, so you warm and infuse some full-cream milk with vanilla or cinnamon for about 15 minutes and let it cool while beating up egg yolks and sugar so that the mixture is fluffy and firmish - you should be able to make a figure of eight with the batter. Cream is part of this delightful desert, mix it all together and pop it into an ice-cream maker. My word, now that is an excellent ice-cream. Seriously, seriously good, particularly with the warm apple tart.

My Top 5 Recipes of the week:

1. Poached salmon

2. Soufflé

3. Cauliflower steak with ginger

4. Ballymaloe apple tart

5. Cinnamon ice cream

Cheers all, until next time!

#ballymaloecookeryschool #WWFSassi

Gorgeous sunflower bread!

Blackcurrent Fool

Fermentation

Nutrition should be so simple, but it has become horribly complex and some of the official dietary advice being given is actually detrimental to people’s health. For quite some time now, I’ve been working out what food is not only nutritious, but also what my body likes – is butter good or bad, what about salt, carbohydrates, wheat, coconut oil and so on.

Research is increasingly showing that the low-fat, high carbohydrate approach to maintaining health or losing weight is deeply flawed, and has contributed to obesity on a scale never before seen in human history. As the approach is shifting globally to a more balanced diet, the Ballymaloe Cookery School’s Slow Food philosophy is largely on point – food that is fresh, seasonal and high quality, which is produced locally and organically where possible. They are making a concerted effort to use less salt and refined sugar in their cooking, but it remains a factor in many dishes, simply because salt enhances flavour and sugar is needed in many deserts, jams and so on. Rory O’Connell has a fairly simple maxim – it’s all about the quality, so moderate amounts of most produce that is of a high quality will be good and nutritious for your body.

One of the big focus areas as part of this approach to food at the Ballymaloe Cookery School is fermentation. I went to a lecture on the subject recently, given by Penny Allen (wife of Toby, Darina’s son) and really enjoyed not only the products we made, but the rationale around eating fermented foods.

As part of the lecture, Penny told how she had suffered from a range of ailments, to the point that she went to a doctor and a dietician to try to find out what was wrong. After various tests, the dietician’s advice was that she make only one change to her diet - introduce fermented food every day. She did so, and there were clear results over time – her ailments permanently disappeared.

As part of the lecture, Penny introduced us to a book called Nourishing Traditions, which she said set her on the fermentation path and really changed the way she ate. I did some foraging around Ballymaloe and managed to find a copy of the book. It gives some insights into the benefits of fermented foods, how they build immunity, the impact on your gut and how damaging processed foods and refined sugar can be.

So much of our health is determined by our gut, which is made up of trillions of micro-organisms (called our microbiome) that contribute to about 80% of our immune system. And they love, love, love fermented foods like sauerkraut, homemade kombucha, kimchi, miso and other such fermented foods. They are pretty simple to make, tasty and definitely worth the effort!

On another subject entirely - I made an Irish lamb stew this week, which was simply delicious. I have always loved making curries, stir-fries, stews and other dishes that you can do in one pot as it were, as I find you can really control the flavouring and texture. The trick with the stew is to brown the meat and vegetables really well in rendered lamb fat before putting them into the pot, having good quality lamb stock and only adding the potatoes about half an hour into the cooking time so they don’t disintegrate when cooked. Excellent flavour!

And then there was the risotto. We went through a phase at home of making risotto almost every weekend, mostly from the fabulous River Café cookbook. We had lunch at the River Café in London a few years back, and it was one of the best meals ever – we did not want to leave the restaurant and as I recall, the staff rather politely had to move us along as they needed to prepare for dinner!

The risotto made by the school was a Venetian risotto, which is quite a lot more liquid than the ones I am used to. It is key that you add the stock in stages, ensure the stock is fully absorbed after each ladle is added and it needs to be quite loose when it is served – flowing rather than firm. You can add all sorts of things to risotto – from prawns, clams and wine to peas, broadbeans, pumpkins, cheese and so much more. Serve it immediately because as the recipe says, it does not benefit from hanging around!

And then there was the most glorious sunflower bread – it looks too divine and tastes just as good. It’s basically a white yeast bread recipe, which is quite pliable and can be plaited, made into rolls or even cooked in a bean tin. This one is shaped so that it looks like a sunflower and then baked so that it is golden brown. Straight out of the oven, it is warm and soft and entirely delicious.

My Top 5 Recipes of the week:

1. Sauerkraut

2. Sunflower bread

3. Risotto

4. Irish Stew

5. Blackcurrent Fool (parfait)

Cheers all, until next time!

#ballymaloecookeryschool

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