Full On

Ballymaloe Week 4

I'm terrible at keeping track of time. Sometimes, this is a good thing, Turns out the Ballymaloe House 5k is February 7th, so I have an extra week of training. Running has always been a personal escape for me, something that I can do on my own time just to be alone and clear my head. I've never liked organized races, and I don't like bringing competition into my r&r. What I'm getting at, really, is that my training regime has been pretty half-assed. Speed work has proven hard for me; I'd much rather add a mile than shave a minute, but come next Sunday I know I'll be happy to have run.

I met with Darina after school one day this week. She encourages students to set up meetings with her to discuss life after Ballymaloe, and is happy to provide ideas and contacts, having impressive amounts of both. I'm still a little uncomfortable trying to plan out what I'll do next; I'd rather focus on the course than let it all fly by while I stress about what I'll be doing six months from now. There's a definite balance, though, since eventually I'll have to do something. 

If the course were to end today, first I'd be pretty bummed, but then I'd probably go home and make bread. Darina understandably knows a whole lot more about Ireland and the UK, but she's suggested reaching out to Chad Robertson of Tartine bakery in San Fransisco, who has apparently visited Ballymaloe himself. Tartine is kind of a special place to me, even though I've never been. My home sourdoughs are all made using the Tartine method, and it's given me results that make me genuinely happy. I still have no idea what's to come, but at least I know there's something out there that I really enjoy doing, and that's a start.

In the kitchens, this has been my favorite week, if for very selfish reasons. I'm in a new kitchen this week, my favorite so far. I've moved on from the 6 person demo kitchen into the 20 person kitchen 3. There's a lot more energy and a lot more happening in the mornings in Three than there is in Demo, but it's not quite as frantic as the kitchens were the first two weeks here. Maybe it's because all of us students are becoming a little more comfortable and a little more confident, but I've really enjoyed myself the past few days. It also helps that my partner for the week, Melanie, was out on Thursday and Friday. As nice as it is having a bigger group of cooks around you in the morning, it's just as nice having a full station, and all the space and equipment that comes with it, all to yourself.

Every night after demo, you and your partner get assigned your menu for the next morning's cooking from a list of the demo'd dishes. This is usually something like a starter, main, vegetable side, dessert, and something extra (either another side, starter, dessert, or a bread). You and your partner split this work up between yourselves, and end up making two or three dishes in the morning. No partner meant I had free reign over what I wanted to cook from the menu assigned to my section. In a combination of hubris and naivete, I chose to do everything. And make bread each morning. I'm glad I took on the work I did as I've learned a lot in a few short days, but unsurprisingly, I haven't done anything brilliant. I managed to plate up on time at noon on Thursday, but I started the morning early at 7:30. Friday I was plating at around 12:30 and didn't get out of the kitchen until past 1:00, after an 8:00 AM start. While I was happy with the quantity of work I got done, quality eludes me. There are little details in all my plates that continue to make me want to do better; bread that's slightly under proved, soups that have veg not finely enough diced, caramelized onions not quite taken dark enough. Doing everything isn't an excuse for doing everything poorly, and I need to dial in my focus in the weeks to come and get my details sorted out. This is what I came here to do, and I'm still excited to get into the kitchen day after day.

Menu rundown:

• Parsnip and Fennel Soup
• Sticky Toffee Pudding, Toffee Sauce
• Mushroom A La Creme
• Herb Frittata
• Marzipan Baked Apples
• French Omelettes
• French Peasant Soup
• Roast Stuffed Chicken
• Turnips with Caramelized Onion
• Roast Potatoes
• Sponge Cake with Kumquat Compote
• Laksa
• Chilaquiles
• Coffee Cake
• White Yeast Bread

Every day.

Baby's first 5 plait.

Thursday.

Friday - cake day!

All's well outside the kitchens. Our cheese has had it's week of daily turnings, now it just needs to be turned once or twice a week to help it keep its shape. I turned it this morning and it looks moldy in the best possible way.

Green mold is good mold.

Sourdough this weekend is an oat porridge loaf I've been working on for quite a while. It's a hard dough to work with, but the final texture and flavor is great. This is probably my best version of the loaf yet, my starter continues to impress with its liveliness.

These Things I Do

Ballymaloe Week 3

I have a new tradition. For the past two years, a few weeks after traveling to a new country I get a stomach flu and feel miserable for days. Some traditions are better off broken; sadly, this one still stands. Needless to say, this has not been my favorite week in the kitchen, but the show must go on.

There are four kitchens here at Ballymaloe. Every week we change stations, either to a new space in the same kitchen, or as was my case this week, a new kitchen entirely. The first day in a new kitchen always feels hopeless. Everything is in a slightly different place, the burners all work slightly differently, and the weigh up rooms are all just different enough that I can never seem to find anything I need. But soon enough it all becomes comfortable and the familiar routines return.

This week I was in demo kitchen, by far the smallest space. This is where our afternoon demos take place, so it only fits three student pairs (kitchen two, where I was previous, probably had three times as many people in it). Demo is a much less frantic place to be. Calm, quiet, and to me much more efficient than the larger kitchens where someone always seems to be on the verge of some sort of disaster.

Demo. Photo courtesy of Fi Hannah

 That is, it's much more calm and quiet until noon time comes around. Since demo is, well, where afternoon demos happen, we have a pretty hard cutoff after which we have to be cleaned down and out of the room so lecture prep can happen. The first two weeks it wasn't uncommon for me to not sit down in the dining room for lunch until nearly 1:30 in the afternoon. Here, we're out by 12:30 and that's all there is too it. Plating, tasting, and cleaning gets frantic in demo, but then you rush your way out the door, head into the dining room, and see that no one else in the school is near ready for service. It's funny that, given we all make the same menus in each kitchen, we in demo get such a leisurely lunch hour. Goes to show how much more efficient you can be on a calm and relaxed morning when you all manage to stay out of each other's way.

Fi, house mate and demo kitchen partner for week three.

My dishes from the last week (no photo dump this time):

• Roast Shoulder of Lamb with Coriander and Gravy
• Mint Sauce
• Saint-Emilion au Chocolat
• Kale Soup
• Brussels Sprouts with Candied Bacon and Hazelnuts (personal favorite)
• Spicy Apple Chutney
• Brown Soda Bread
• Ballymaloe Brown Yeast Bread
• Cucumber Pickle
• Chicken Paillard with Char Grilled Vegetables
• Prawns on Brown Bread
• Homemade Mayonnaise
• Mendiants
• Rhubarb Tart

Next weekend there's a 5k race being organized at Ballymaloe House. I'm not big on running races, but there's money to be won so I'm going to try to do some proper training this week. I've been running in the mornings since I got here, but I haven't done real speed work ever. Don't think I can get much done in a week's time but it will be a fun distraction.

If there's one thing I miss about home so far, it's bread. I'm not really sure why this is, since I've made bread at least three times this week in the kitchen, but soda breads and quick yeast breads haven't been scratching my baking itch.

I'm going to need a bigger cup.

At the end of week two, I mixed up a new sourdough starter, and, much to my delight, it's been doing great. In fermentation-speak, a sourdough starter can be referred to as a "mother". A mother is really a collection of useful bacteria used to start the fermentation process for bread, vinegar, kombucha, and the like. Being a mother isn't glamorous. You spend most of your time asleep in a refrigerator. Then once a week you get taken out, fed your body weight in sugar, and a few hours later get cut in half and stuck back in the fridge to sleep again. The other half gets mixed into some flour and water, stretched out and folded up on itself, and then stuck into a very hot oven. And that, friends, is how a mother makes bread. It's a wonderful bit of magic, and pulling the lid off a dutch oven and seeing that your loaf has sprung and swelled in size is my favorite part of a Sunday morning.

Oven spring is a beautiful thing,

The Week In Food

Ballymaloe Week 2

The Ballymaloe routine feels very much routine at this point, and it gets pretty exhausting. I've had a hard time of it in the kitchen this week. The menus have gotten busy very quickly and there have been days where I let the stress get to me a bit. Twice this week I've plated up well (30+ minutes) past the 12:00 target time, and I have yet to be really happy with a plate of food I've put up.

I love it here. Really, I think I'd be disappointed if I came all the way here and didn't end up doing anything outside my home kitchen comfort zone. There's so much energy in the kitchen when you're in the thick of it that you have to remind yourself to take some time out and just breathe. You get so lost in the details of your duties that when finally get to sit down to lunch and look at the massive amount of work we all cranked through in the morning, its all pretty remarkable. I'm massively excited to see what we'll all be doing in a months time, let alone three.

Since I've not had time to do much of anything outside the day to day, I thought this week I'd give a look at everything I plated up in the kitchen. We do everything from as close to scratch as possible here. A chicken dish on a plate means a morning breaking down a bird, a fish pie for lunch starts it's day as a whole fish being filleted (which I did a miserable job of - lots of practice needed on this one).

Cole Slaw

Apple Crumble Tart

Brussels Sprouts 

Spiced Chicken With Almonds

Crispy Chicken Skin

Nordic Kale Salad

Brown and White Soda Breads

Black-Eyed Beans With Mushrooms

Creme Caramels with Spun Sugar

Dat Sugar Cage

Seville Orange Marmalade

Melted Leeks

Fish Gratin with Pomme Duchesse

A Day In The Life

Ballymaloe Week 1

It’s hard to believe that 10 days ago I was under water somewhere off the coast of Thailand. Things come pretty fast and furious at Ballymaloe and it doesn’t take long for routine to set in. Even after just a week, life before school is a distant memory.

Our welcome breakfast

Darina in the lecture room.

Touring the grounds.

Tim Allen, talking us through various plating techniques

A typical day at Ballymaloe starts at 8:30 in the morning, weighing up ingredients and picking herbs for your morning recipes. From 9 to noon (or later, we’ve been finishing around 1PM since we’re all still moving a bit slow), we’re in the kitchens working away, trying not to sever or burn our fingers too badly. There are 4 kitchens here for the 64 students. We get split into teams of two, and you stay with your partner for a week at a time. Each partner duo gets assigned a section in one of the kitchens (this week I was grey, kitchen 2, for example), and an instructor will oversee two or three sections each morning.

This is my lettuce.
There are many like it, but this one is mine.

A two-person team will be assigned five or six different recipes (a starter, main, vegetable side, and two desserts for example), and a few days a week you will have to make a bread or some biscuits as well. It’s up to you and your partner to divide up the work between yourselves. Techniques are repeated throughout the week so that you and your partner both get a chance to make pastry, bread, dice veg, and all that good stuff (at the end of the course we have to hand in a checklist of all the techniques learned, to ensure that each student has done everything there is to do). Once we’re done with our work order for the morning, each student plates up a single serving of each of his or her dishes, and presents them to their instructor. Taste, technique, and presentation are scored on a tasting sheet, and assuming nothing goes horribly wrong, we all bring our dishes into the dining rooms to share for lunch.

Sample work order, for a pretty easy morning.

Presumably, this will all be full in a few months time.

Afternoons we all get together in the lecture room for demo, where we are shown how to prepare everything on the menu that we’ll be responsible for the next morning. Demo usually runs for about 4 hours, after which we all do a little tasting of the demo dishes to get an idea of what we’re aiming for in the kitchen.

Wednesdays give us a break from cooking duties. Instead we get lectures on wine, cheese, food safety, and whatever else may be relevant to our interests.

A week's chores.

In addition to cooking, all of us students are giving a rotating chore list. Throughout the week you may find yourself out early in the morning picking salad greens, feeding the hens, polishing cutlery and formally setting the table after lunch, or serving other students after the afternoon demo. There are extracurriculars to volunteer for, too. This week I went out to the dairy one morning to watch them milk the cows and separate their cream, and in a couple weeks I’ll be going to the Ballymaloe House kitchen to experience a commercial operation in full swing. There will be extra butchery, sourdough, organic gardening, and who knows what other classes coming throughout the course.

So that, more or less, is the daily grind as it is here. It’s all still a bit overwhelming but I’m loving it. Sure, sometimes the afternoon demos drag on. It’s dark when we arrive in the morning and darker when we leave at night. But the energy in the kitchen with everyone running around in various states of panic is infectious. There’s so much to learn and do, at such a high standard, that (so far!) I’m excited and a little anxious to hone my knives and get started every morning.

Goats cheese rocket and honey salad, scone with loganberry jam and cream. Plated and ready for tasting.

Some of my first weeks work includes carrot soup, brown soda bread, Gruyere and dill tart, fork biscuits, scones, jam, and three or four different salads.

Outside the kitchens, my housemates and I are getting along well. We are one of the more “adult” houses, I think I may be the youngest of the bunch. That suites me fine, though. We’re a pretty quiet group, usually just come home in the evenings, light a fire in the fireplace in our siting room, and unwind with a cup of tea while we talk about what we all did that morning and file away our recipes. Fortunately, a few people here have their cars with them so we can get back into the real world on the weekends. Midleton is the closest town, and yesterday four of us went there in the morning to check out the local farmer’s market. Ballymaloe runs a stand at the market, and one of the extracurricular jobs you can volunteer for is to help run the stand on Saturday. I’d like to give that a shot in a few weeks once I’m a little more settled in. They sell some of the student’s work at the stand (this week they were selling some of our jam and chocolate hazelnut tarts). Sadly, we don’t get any commission J. After the market, we drove into Cork for lunch and a look around. Today I think we’re all taking some R&R, tonight we’re roasting a chicken from the market and making ourselves a little feast.

So far so good.