Sunshine, Rain and Wind

My week has been like the weather, a combination of sunshine, wind and rain.  But even the wind and rain can be enjoyable for short periods. 

Here are the pigs enjoying the light rain…

…and the chickens in their huge enclosed area.  In the distance is the large metal chute into which we dump all the food remains from our cooking.  Boy, do these chickens eat well, and it shows in the eggs we get.

One of my cottage mates complains a lot about the types of foods being demonstrated and cooked by us, but I think that the variety covers most tastes.  Listen to my dishes for the week and see what you think.  On Monday I baked a loaf of brown yeast bread, which is very wet going into the pan and isn’t kneaded; made an apple tart (we’d call it a pie); and made fresh mayonnaise to accompany the local shrimp I boiled.  Before I move on:  the pie was the best I’ve had since my mother stopped baking them several years ago; fresh mayonnaise is nothing like the fluffed jar stuff, which I usually avoid; the shrimp were as fresh as you can get, like in still alive; and brown yeast bread is very heavy, but tasty.  Interesting that there was talk in one of demos about killing lobster “humanely,” but we just dumped the live shrimp into boiling water.  I guess shrimp are too silent when boiled.

Tuesday, I made mushroom soup, a mushroom frittata, and a classic French omelette (this is the spelling used here, which is probably closer to the French).  I spent the better part of an hour chopping the 2 pounds of mushrooms for the soup very, very finely, made the soup O.K., but then served it lukewarm to the instructor, instead of reheating it -- not good.  The frittata was going O.K. until I realized I was looking at the recipe for a plain frittata, not a mushroom frittata.  When I flipped to the right one, I jumped right to the step where the mushrooms are added to the egg mixture – wrong, the mushrooms needed to be cooked separately first.  Another case of compounding one mistake with another – will I ever learn?  After much help on the recovery, I did finish something like a mushroom frittata, but….  Finally, I learned the technique for the omelette, but now I need to practice so I get good at it.

Thursday, I baked a loaf of white yeast bread, which required lots of kneading steps and lots of rising steps.  In between I made a “Mile High” lemon meringue tart/pie.  Since I’ve never been fond of meringue, I didn’t appreciate a big pile of it on my 7-inch tart, especially when the weight of it pushed most of the lemon curd out of the middle of the tart.  To add insult to injury, my instructor told me to bake it in a hot oven for a short time, which doesn’t work with this much meringue.  Another instructor re-baked it longer while I was in demo and gave it to me, along with the bread, to take back to the cottage.  Surprisingly, I’ve eaten most of the tart, but only a little of the meringue, and it was quite tasty.  The bread was really good and has been gobbled up.

When I planned Friday’s cooking, I thought “this should be easy,” and it started that way.  I had “brown bread duty,” so I got the bread in the oven quickly.  I then made a fresh orange jelly with mint.  Jelly in this case is a dessert with fruit in something like Jello, but not the term we use here because we use gelatin and make it from scratch.  Separating the segments of oranges requires a particular technique we must learn, but it was pretty easy.  The dessert went into the fridge and I moved onto a beurre blanc (white butter) sauce to go with scallops.  The steps for the beurre blanc must be followed very closely or it curdles, i.e., separates.  No problem!  I got it done, seasoned it, and kept in warm in a bowl in warm water.  I then learned how to open scallops, which were also still alive.  My instructor gave me some questionable directions and, as I learned later, the advice from several of the instructors was conflicting.  So, I figured most of it out myself from things I’d heard at the demo the day before and got the last ones just right.  While focusing on the scallops and getting my bread out of the oven, I evidently didn’t stir the beurre blanc enough and it curdled!  After playing the victim for a very short time, I got help from my instructor and made a failed attempt to bring it back.  I then concentrated on everything I had heard from her and from the demo person, Rory O’Connell, who made it all look so easy (yea, right!), and slowly brought it back.  I then fried the scallops on a hot non-stick pan (no grease) and presented them with the beurre blanc to my instructor.  Absolutely delicious!  Hooray!  Good way to end the week.

Drove into Cork yesterday (Saturday) and returned my rental car from Europcar/National and rented another from Avis.  Wow, what an improvement!  My new rental is a Ford Fiesta, which is more spacious and appointed more like the cars I’m used to.  The little Kia I had would bob and weave on the bumpy roads.  But you don’t want a large car over here.  The country roads are so narrow that larger cars create a problem when confronting a small car, but two large cars would mean slowing and pulling way over into the brush and hoping your car didn’t get scratched. 

On the way back to Shanagarry, I stopped for a haircut and shopping in Midleton.  It was strange getting a haircut in a foreign country.  The female barber I had was O.K., but I’m learning that not all the Irish are outgoing and talkative.  Stopped at a pub and had a Guinness.  Like the pub in Shanagarry, they served no food, so I watched some of a 6-nation rugby tournament on TV and did some people watching.  One middle-aged man spent his time eyeing everyone who came in.  Didn’t seem to talk to anyone, just look them over.

At mid-week, I went to a local doctor and found out that the virus I’ve been fighting is, as I had started to suspect, actually a sinus infection.  I got a prescription for a week of a strong antibiotics, but so far I haven’t seen any real change.  Earlier this week, my cottage mates convinced me to stop my power walking and “rest up.”  Well, after a week, I feel a little worse, not better, so I’ve decided to go back to the exercise.  I’ve read that the exercise activates your immune system; so, I’m going that route.   However, today when the rain stopped at the cottage, I went to run along the beach and got caught in a windy rainstorm – not the best return to exercise.

I know that this blog is quite long, but quoting Ben Franklin (at least the way I remember the quote), “I would have sent you a shorter letter, but I didn’t have time.”

This image along one of the roads here on the Ballymaloe Farm, reminds me of my present journey – I’m not quite sure where all this is heading, but I’m having a pleasant time.