Ballymaloe Weeks 7-8
Week 7 was a heavy week. Irish stew, Italian beef stew, steak and oyster pie (worth neither the ingredient costs nor the labor costs - I don't know why this is a thing). The sun has started coming out here in the afternoons and it's much too nice to be eating stews and meat pies all week long.
As the course goes on, I've been struggling with consistency. There are days where an hour in I feel like throwing all my mise into the hen bucket and crawling back into bed, but then there are days where everything just kind of works and I don't ever want to leave the kitchen. Last Friday featured over-cooked and badly prepped monk fish in red pepper vinaigrette, served with under-cooked soggy pommes allumettes (aka french fries), under-baked granary brown bread, burned palmiers, not-worth-the-trouble caramel glazed fruits, and a split and slightly scrambled creme angliase (I actually had a lot of fun on Friday, but every single thing I did was hilariously wrong). Monday was pretty shit too. Bread unevenly plaited, steak under seasoned, bakewell tart pastry too wet, and messy plating of a smoked fish starter (the whole point of which was to be nicely plated).
But then today after plating and tasting, my instructor said to me, "you really like to cook, don't you?" And I really do. The good days reaffirm that there's nothing I'd rather be doing right now, I just need to work on making more of the days good ones. This morning was roast rack of lamb which I had a lot of fun trimming and frenching, red currant sauce, and buttered cabbage. Bread was ciabatta - it's the first time I've made the Ballymaloe ciabatta recipe. Their method is really strange, but the results are tasty enough that I'll definitely play around with the recipe some more. The most fun I had today, though, was making millionaire's shortbread, which was an extra thing I've wanted to make ever since it was demoed to us four or five weeks ago. Millionaire's shortbread are little squares with a shortbread biscuit base topped with a layer of sticky caramel, with melted dark chocolate spread over the top. They're incredibly rich, decedent, and delicious. Since these were just an extra thing that I had the time and inclination to make, I was allowed to do basically whatever I wanted. Since I can't leave well enough alone, I had a little fun and infused the caramel sauce with rosemary and topped the chocolate with flaked sea salt. Then I ate lots and lots of buttery sugary and deliciously herb-y shortbread. My teacher had me save a few squares for Darina & co. to try - I'm curious if they'll be as much of a fan of the rosemary/chocolate combination as I am. All credit for this idea and the rosemary and chocolate pairing really goes to Kim Boyce and her incredible olive oil cake recipe from Good to the Grain. Actually, I think I'll make that cake on Thursday if I can find the recipe online - it's so so good.
The granary bread I mentioned earlier is something I've not heard of before coming here. It uses a local flour blend called Malthouse bread flour - a blend of malted wheat, rye, and barley that has a beautiful malt flavor and blue-grey color of dark rye. I picked up a bag of it over the weekend because I really want to play around with it in my sourdoughs. This loaf is 20% malthouse flour with dried figs mixed in. It's also a good example of an over-proved loaf of bread. After shaping, I kept this loaf in the fridge for about 24 hours, instead of my usual 10-12. Compared to my standard loaf, what I've got here is much denser and heavier, and the shape is much flatter. The bottom crust is also a bit thicker than normal. 24 hours in the fridge really dried out the exposed surface of the loaf and let a skin form that baked up extra thick. You can also see around the score on the top of the loaf that there was little to no oven spring - the score of a well-sprung loaf should peel well away from the rest of the bread as steam escapes in the oven, forming a sharp ear. The taste is nice though, with bites of jammy fig and a sweet, malty finish from the granary flour.
As the course goes on, I've been struggling with consistency. There are days where an hour in I feel like throwing all my mise into the hen bucket and crawling back into bed, but then there are days where everything just kind of works and I don't ever want to leave the kitchen. Last Friday featured over-cooked and badly prepped monk fish in red pepper vinaigrette, served with under-cooked soggy pommes allumettes (aka french fries), under-baked granary brown bread, burned palmiers, not-worth-the-trouble caramel glazed fruits, and a split and slightly scrambled creme angliase (I actually had a lot of fun on Friday, but every single thing I did was hilariously wrong). Monday was pretty shit too. Bread unevenly plaited, steak under seasoned, bakewell tart pastry too wet, and messy plating of a smoked fish starter (the whole point of which was to be nicely plated).
But then today after plating and tasting, my instructor said to me, "you really like to cook, don't you?" And I really do. The good days reaffirm that there's nothing I'd rather be doing right now, I just need to work on making more of the days good ones. This morning was roast rack of lamb which I had a lot of fun trimming and frenching, red currant sauce, and buttered cabbage. Bread was ciabatta - it's the first time I've made the Ballymaloe ciabatta recipe. Their method is really strange, but the results are tasty enough that I'll definitely play around with the recipe some more. The most fun I had today, though, was making millionaire's shortbread, which was an extra thing I've wanted to make ever since it was demoed to us four or five weeks ago. Millionaire's shortbread are little squares with a shortbread biscuit base topped with a layer of sticky caramel, with melted dark chocolate spread over the top. They're incredibly rich, decedent, and delicious. Since these were just an extra thing that I had the time and inclination to make, I was allowed to do basically whatever I wanted. Since I can't leave well enough alone, I had a little fun and infused the caramel sauce with rosemary and topped the chocolate with flaked sea salt. Then I ate lots and lots of buttery sugary and deliciously herb-y shortbread. My teacher had me save a few squares for Darina & co. to try - I'm curious if they'll be as much of a fan of the rosemary/chocolate combination as I am. All credit for this idea and the rosemary and chocolate pairing really goes to Kim Boyce and her incredible olive oil cake recipe from Good to the Grain. Actually, I think I'll make that cake on Thursday if I can find the recipe online - it's so so good.
The granary bread I mentioned earlier is something I've not heard of before coming here. It uses a local flour blend called Malthouse bread flour - a blend of malted wheat, rye, and barley that has a beautiful malt flavor and blue-grey color of dark rye. I picked up a bag of it over the weekend because I really want to play around with it in my sourdoughs. This loaf is 20% malthouse flour with dried figs mixed in. It's also a good example of an over-proved loaf of bread. After shaping, I kept this loaf in the fridge for about 24 hours, instead of my usual 10-12. Compared to my standard loaf, what I've got here is much denser and heavier, and the shape is much flatter. The bottom crust is also a bit thicker than normal. 24 hours in the fridge really dried out the exposed surface of the loaf and let a skin form that baked up extra thick. You can also see around the score on the top of the loaf that there was little to no oven spring - the score of a well-sprung loaf should peel well away from the rest of the bread as steam escapes in the oven, forming a sharp ear. The taste is nice though, with bites of jammy fig and a sweet, malty finish from the granary flour.
Millionaire's shortbread, dark chocolate, caramel, ... aghhhh. Hope you remember that one, and the rest of those cakes... Half way done, wow.
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