Vacation Time

It can be quite boring looking at a slew of someone else's vacation pictures, so I'll try to keep this short.  After clearing out of the cottage at Ballymaloe, Charlene and I headed to west Cork.  A few hours later, we were at the town of Skibereen, where we stayed for three nights in a charming 19th-century farm house.  It is still an active dairy farm with about 80 cows.  Skibereen and the surrounding area was hit particularly hard by the potato famine in the mid 1800's and we learned as much as we could take at the Heritage Hall in town.  Sunday we had beautiful weather and we drove over back roads to Bantry.  The scenery along the way was lovely.

We toured Bantry House, which is owned by a descendant of the original Earl of Bantry.  Dressed in a sharp blue blazer, he was manning the reception desk for self-guided tours while keeping an eye on his grandson, who was in a baby carriage in the entryway.  Although the inside was fascinating the outside gardens were just starting to spring out.

And the view from the top of the Hundred Steps was special.

From Bantry, we drove about 20 km to Glengarriff, where we took a ferry to Garnish Island and then strolled the lovely Gardens of Ilnacullin, which is like a national park.

Monday was dreary with rain, but we had a great time in the nearby town of Schull (pronounced and sometimes spelled Skull).  After strolling through the town and driving along the nearby coast, we had a wonderful time visiting with one of the students from the school, Marie, and her husband, Michael, at their lovely holiday home near Schull.  She cooked us a delicious curry dinner from one of the recipes from the school.  I relaxed and drank quite a bit of great wine, so Charlene drove us back to our B&B.  I think she handles this "wrong side" of the road more easily than me.

Our final vacation spot was the harbour town of Cobh, which used to be an important port of call for cruise ships, including the Titanic.

In addition to visiting shops, taking in the Cobh Heritage Center, and playing a little golf, we visited the Fota House and Gardens and the Fota Wildlife Park.  Charlene drags me to zoos, but thus was different.  You feel like you are right in with the animals, which in some cases you are.

Here only a thin electified wire separates Charlene from the big animal.  Nothing separated us from the kangaroos and lots of birds and small animals.

By one of the ponds, a mother duck wandered through our mist with about 15 very little ducklings.  They surrounded a little boy and his mother and the little boy was somewhat frightened and stepped onto the wheel of the carriage that his mother was pushing.  I watched in fear that he would fall and crush some of the ducklings, but thankfully not.

Before the flight home, Charlene did her miracle work and managed to pack everything into our suitcases; and we had no overweight charges.  I managed to strain my knee at Cork Airport when I realized I had forgotten my passport in the safe in our room at the airport hotel and chased after the shuttle bus  It didn't prevent me from doing miles of walking in Chicago O'Hare, where cancelled flight and an unplanned overnight delayed our arrival back in Albuquerque.  Both Charlene and I have colds and I'm waking up for the day at 2 a.m., but all this will pass eventually.

I should probably end the blog here, but I plan to update my evaluation of the school and living in Ireland.  I know that some of you will want to know  how I did on my final and, although I don't expect the news to be good, I'll pass it on when I get it.  In the meantime, I'll keep smiling with my memories

Last of a Great Culinary Experience

Sorry it has taken me so long to complete the story of my Irish culinary experience.  After the final exam and a farewell dinner, we were rushed the next day to get out of our cottages.  From then until our return home late Saturday, I've had limited internet access.  Enough of apologies, let me get on with it.

My cooking/practical final, was the last time slot (done by random drawing), which was Thursday noon.  In another random drawing, I drew one of the easiest breads (or so I thought), a brown soda bread.  My order of work was similar to what I put in a previous blog, with the bread inserted and a few other changes.  Of course there were hiccups along the way, several of which occurred with the bread.  As I was adding the baking soda to the dry ingredients, I had the required sieve close by but started to add the soda without using it.  I caught myself, but not before some of the un-sieved soda fell in the mix.  I put the spoon down back in the jar of soda; so now I didn't know how much more I needed to add.  I guesstimated and sieved in the remainder.  I had earlier looked for a baking pan that would fit in the slots in the oven I had been given, but I left it in the now preheated oven.  I took it out, but it was too hot to put away, so I put it on my counter space, got another baking sheet, put it next to the hot one, and proceeded to finish mixing and shaping the dough.  I put it onto the baking sheet, but in my haste, it was the hot one.  I could have started over, but I put the bread into the oven and hoped for the best.  When I took it out of the oven later, it hadn't risen as much as I thought it should have, it stuck to the pan (not normal), and a piece broke off, as I used a spatula and lots of muscle to free it from the baking sheet.

The stuffed chicken went in the oven as planned, I prepared and poached the pears.  While I was heating the cream to infuse it with the sweet geranium leaves, I was distracted by being unable to find something and the cream boiled.  I dumped it our and repeated the infusion with fresh cream without boiling.  I prepared my vegetables:  carrots, potatoes, and kale (replacement for Brussels sprouts, which I had been told weren't in season).  While the carrots were glazing (cooked in a sugared water until the water evaporates) and the potatoes were in the oven roasting in duck fat (after having been first brought to boil in water), I cooked the kale in boiling water and started to drain it in an empty sink.  Well, the lid of the pot slid off and the kale followed the lid into the sink.  Fortunately, no instructors were around and I scooped the kale back in the pot, cleaned off some sink debris, and proceeded to puree the kale. 

By now, the chicken was out of the oven and covered and setting, while I made the gravy.  I started whipping the cream to go with the poached pears, but it wouldn't fluff.  In desperation, I got more fresh cream, beat it to firm peaks and added half of the infused cream that wouldn't whip -- wallah, soft whipped cream.  It wasn't until I was preparing my presentation that I realized that the now very crisp potatoes were still roasting.  Despite all the little blips, the final presentation actually looked pretty good.  Left to right:  leak and potato soup with nicely browned croutons; chicken leg and breast on stuffing with bright orange glazed potatoes on one side, bright green kale on the other and crisp roasted potatoes on a separate plate (I'd picked the least browned ones); and fanned poached pears, with soft whipped cream in a tiny pitcher and a sweet geranium leaf for garnish.  Even the bread didn't look too bad on a bread board nearby.  One of the tasters talked to me afterwards (not usually the case) and seemed surprised that I was deflated by my performance.  I was allowed to take a large part of what I had cooked back to the cottage and, except for the potatoes, I couldn't taste any of my errors.  However, when I had been offered the bread, I refused -- didn't want to be reminded of the comedy of errors.  My total time was 3 hours and 45 minutes -- 30 minutes of penalties.  Sounds bad, but I think this was the shortest of anyone in my cottage.  Several people took 5 hours.

After the stress of the cooking final, I tried to study more for the written final.  I'd been through all of the material I could find, but reading is different than memorizing.  In many cases, I thought "they couldn't possibly expect us to remember all the 10 steps" of this or that.  The 5 hours of written exams in three session were on Friday, April 1st, and the joke was on us.  Many of the questions did indeed ask for 10 of this, 6 of that, 20 of something else.  Some I actually knew, a few could be reasoned, but many were just impossible.  I felt devastated when done.  I felt better when, at the farewell dinner, I responded to Stephen's question about the final:  "a lot of dumb questions about s__t that I don't give a damn about," and everyone around shouted their concurrence. 

The farewell dinner was prepared under Rory O'Connell's leadership and it was outstanding.  I imbibed lots of the wine with new-found knowledge from our many tastings but longstanding drinking ability.  Despite the severity of the day's testing, a very good time was had by all.  We joined many who walked to the local pub for Guinness after the dinner.  Yes, the Irish really do know how to celebrate.  Charlene and I were surprisingly steady as we walked back to the cottage.  Next morning I was up before most and Louise, Bryony, and I did the lion's share of cleaning the cottage.  Packing after 3 months was a strange experience.  Goodbyes were short or missed as most of us rushed to get out by the 11 a.m. "deadline."  I was more anxious to get on with our vacation, the details of which with a few pictures will go in the next blog.