Waves

Seems that sometimes things come in waves -- some of my own doing and some that are just the way things go.  After weeks of staying around the school, I broke out last weekend for the wine course at Ballymaloe House (see the previous blog).  I followed that with a wine-reception dinner at Ballymaloe House this past Thursday and a nice trip Saturday to the beautiful harbor towns of Kinsale and Contakilty.  The weather recently seems to have been in waves of days of rain; but now we're on a short streak, which hopefully becomes a long streak, of sunny but colder days.  My highs and lows seem to come in waves as well, but lately there are many more of the former.

There weren't too many waves at the beach today (Sunday) -- the tide was out.  That's the Ballycotton Lighthouse on the left and the village of Ballycotton on the right.  The beach is a 15-minute walk from the cottage.  If we get more days like this one, beach walking will become a regular habit.

My partner this week was Heather.  She's the youngest at 17 and I'm the oldest in this 12-week session.  She cooks faster than I do (it's more than just youth) and, with the workload we had, thank goodness.  Monday I made a red pepper chutney.  Chutneys aren't very popular in the states, but I have to admit that they are growing on me.  I did a simple caramelized apple tart and a fennel and red onion salad.  The tart was good, but frankly not as good as one that I had done over Christmas from a cookbook by the Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten.  Fennel is a root vegetable that I had never seen before (the feather leaves are a herb)  The salad was very good, but maybe too oniony.  I haven't seen sweet or Vidalia onions over here yet.  Tuesday I started a flaky pastry that I didn't use this week but will probably use this coming Monday (it takes days to make and not worth it from what I've seen).  I also made polenta with cheese and Italian beef stew.  The polenta was no problem and the stew turned out fine, but every student I talk to is tired of stews and stew-like dishes (Dingle pie, Kerry pie, etc.).  Please, give me something light, like chicken!

Thursday I had an easy day, so I made a granary loaf (heavy bread that uses stone-ground granary flour), then some homemade custard, and spring rolls -- you know, the things you get at Chinese restaurants that are wrapped in a springy rice paper (and they're light!)  Well, seems I finally found something to excell on.  The spring rolls were not only tasty, but my artistic side came out in their presentation.  I got I few oohs and aahs from my fellow students.  Thursday's wine dinner was followed by waves of being tired and unmotivated on Friday, and it showed in my cooking.  No disasters, but I barely finished a simple Moraccan spiced lentil soup and goujons of sole with aioli (a spiced up mayonnaise).  The soup was all done but a little too thin, so I left it simmering to reduce some.  While working on something else, I reached over and turned off the burner.  About 15 minutes later I noticed it was still simmering -- I'd turned off the wrong burner! Guess what was the only criticism from  Debbie, my instructor, on the soup?  Of course, it was too thick!  (They usually do get the critiques about right.)  The sole involved filleting a couple whole sole, which are flat fish and quite easy and kind of fun to fillet.  Never even started a lemon souffle that I was scheduled to make, but Debbie didn't seemed to mind.  Thank goodness the weekend came when it did; I felt exhausted during Friday afternoon's demo.

The wine reception on Thursday night was for the European rep for Penfolds wines.  They are a very big and highly regarded wine producer in Australia and the selections we had in our tasting class Thursday afternoon and at the dinner Thursday night were very good.  Almost 20 students from the cookery school attended the dinner and, like many of them, I thought the food was just O.K., while the wines were really good.  We had a total of 7 different wines with the dinner, including Penfolds' top wine, Grange, which sells in Ireland for about 300 Euro (~ $400) a bottle.  No one I talked to thought it was their favorite wine of the evening, but it was so much fun trying something that gets rave reviews from the wine critics.

Bryony (on the right), Louise and I drove to Clontakilty and Kinsale.  Actually, Bryony did the driving, so Louise and I relaxed.  Clontakilty was O.K., but not worth a return visit.  We had a nice lunch in an old, well maintained, and well run pub -- great pub atmoshpere.  Kinsale was really delightful -- beautiful harbor, quaint little shops and cafes, picturesque hillside setting to the east, etc.  I have a reservation for the Chart House B&B for Charlene and me when she is over here (belated anniversary celebration), so I visited it.  It's a Georgian structure with period furnishings, and I think that Charlene will love it.  After walking around Kinsale and looking at the menus for the restaurants (what do you expect, we're cooking students), we drove back towards Shanagarry and had dinner at a Pub owned by and named after Pat Shortt (an Irish comedian and actor).  The person who runs the kitchen is a former Ballymaloe student who had previously come to the school and talked with us.  Although his #2 was doing the cooking, he was there and spent a good 20 minutes talking with us about, among other things, his experience at the school.  He described the final exam process, about which we have heard almost nothing from Darina, Rory, or the others.   In fact, the lack of discussion about expectations is quite surprising.  Seems that they want complete flexibility to decide what is needed for a certificate and their version of "honors."  None of this will make any real difference in my life back in NM, but that ego thing keeps getting popping up.

I took this picture at the beach and then asked the people about their dog, which is a 5-month Golden Retriever.  They stopped and spent several minutes talking with me -- so nice and friendly!  You just got to love these Irish!