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,