Mid Term

Ballymaloe Weeks 5-6

I was supposed to run a race last weekend. Instead I decided to be sick and sleep for about 16 hours that Sunday. I think the recent traveling and even more unpredictable than the Pacific Northwest Irish winter caught up with me a bit. Week five wasn't may favorite week, considering. I  don't remember much of what was made that week to be honest, we do so much that things get lost pretty quickly. No standout recipes from the week, but I did make bread every day, as is my wont. We had chicken liver pate on one of the menus, but I think mine is better (shout out to the Boat Street Cafe for their recipe). We made a full Irish breakfast one day, too. First time I've had black pudding - it's not bad, but it wouldn't be my choice for breakfast every day. White pudding was surprisingly delicious though, I'm going to have to experiment with oatmeal in my sausage forcemeat when I get home.

Week six in the kitchens was a lot more fun. My teacher that week used to run a bakery, so we talked about bread a lot as I was making it every morning. Made focaccia on Monday and Tuesday and will probably make it again later this week, it's quickly becoming one of my favorites. My favorite recipe from last week, though, reads as the most unexciting - tomato soup. This seems particularly surprising considering it's the middle of February and we're far from anything resembling fresh tomatoes. What we do have, and I now think is brilliant, is freezers full of tomatoes from last summer, when they were fresh off the vines right outside our kitchens. I didn't realize how well (and how easily) tomatoes freeze. No need to skin or deseed or prep them in any way - just throw a bunch of tomatoes at peek ripeness into your freezer. They're actually much easier to peel from frozen anyway (as long as you don't mind cold hands), just dunk in cold water and the skins will flake right off. This is a handy trick I'm definitely taking home with me - when it's high tomato season in the Seattle farmers markets, my freezer is going to get stocked. Last week's soup impressed upon me something I seem to rediscover every few months: some (most?) times the best things aren't the fanciest. Great ingredients need little embellishment, they just need to taste of themselves.

Week six was a short one in the kitchen, but a landmark one in the course. We're half way through the course already, and Friday last was a reminder that this is a cooking school. Midterm exams, both theory and practical, were held in the afternoon. Theory entailed table setting, wine pouring, and herb and lettuce recognition. Each student was presented ten lettuce leaves that we had to name, and ten herbs that we had to name as well as list recipes they would be used in. I'm sure I misnamed one or two of the lettuces, and I set the table with an erroneous fork (the starter for my theoretical menu was soup, but I laid a fork for both a starter and a main - the horror!), but as tests go this wasn't exactly the hardest.

For the practical exam, each student had to make a piping bag out of parchment paper, chop and sweat an onion, and do two random techniques from things we've done over the past 6 weeks. I was the very last student to go for my techniques, and probably had the easiest time because of it. I was supposed to make shortcrust pastry and line a tart tine, and chop a cucumber. Since it was the end of the day and we were running understandably behind schedule, my instructor said to skip making pastry and instead had me make an omelette. When it was all said and done, I was out of the kitchen in probably 15 minutes, most of which was spent cleaning up my section from the students who were there before me, and making sure my onions weren't burning. Not my hardest day in the kitchen by any stretch.

Crumb Shot

The weekend's sourdough is, I think, particularly interesting this time. When I first started making bread at home it all seemed like black magic, and I had a really hard time matching my technique to my results. Bread debugging is something I wish more people would talk about - working, proofing, shaping and baking are all variables in bread making, but since none can be done in isolation with any sort of tangible results, it's hard to know why your bread is the way it is. This loaf is, I think, a good case study on how something easily overlooked can really impact your end result. You might notice the the crumb on this loaf is very uneven - the top right of the loaf is much closer textured and denser, while the left side is much more open with much bigger air pockets. Notice, too, that on the top right of the loaf there's an indentation - this is the mark from where I scored the loaf before baking. At home I do my scoring with a razor blade - something nice and sharp that I can make quick, neat incisions with. When I put this loaf in the oven, I wasn't thinking at all about the score before hand. Instead, I grabbed the nearest knife, a particularly dull one at that, and instead of a precise, clean cut, ended up having to saw a dull knife blade through the dough pretty ham-fistedly. At the time I knew it wasn't optimal, but didn't thing much of it. Upon inspection, though, you can see the direct results of a sloppy score. All the gas around the ear was knocked out of the dough when the cut was made, and instead of getting a nice spring with big, even air cavities, the de-gassed section of the loaf is closed and dense, almost collapsed (but still tasty!).