Flavours Of A Country Kitchen

Photo 1 : The useful ‘caul’ fat of the pig; 2 – My Grand Marnier Soufflé – five seconds before it collapsed; 3 – Duck Legs with roasted onions & rosemary; 4 – Having fun @South African wine dinner, Ballymaloe House; 5 – The Oxtail I cooked; 6 – Triona performing some witchcraft on my ice-cream!; 7 – warm winter salad; 8 – super Vanilla Bean ice-cream with carmellized fruit; 9 – Poached grey sea mullet; 10 & 11 – festive game and pork terrines; 12 – Aine cutting a steak; 13 – Pumpkins; 14 – A well-baked bakewell tart; 15 – a plate of locally smoked fish

I am home alone in my little cottage today, very sick with the flu, nursing a burnt finger and praying that I make a speedy recovery as the days are turning into weeks, and I only have less that 3 weeks left before the end of course. I don’t want to miss a second of it! Two of my housemates visited me at lunchtime, which was very nice as I was starting to feel a little lonely,with only our resident little mouse to keep me company (yes, seriously!) They came bearing the fruits of the morning spent in the kitchen  – delicious beefburgers, homemade sausages and sticky toffee pudding. What a service! I could only manage little nibbles of this feast, which confirms the fact that I am truly sick – oh dear .

Anyway, enough about me…. more about cooking! Since my last post, the pace and complexity of the cooking has stepped up a notch or two, and we have been cooking some super dishes, including some real classics, so important to get those right! To the joy of the many commited carnivores on the course, we had a day dedicated to all things steak – how to cut steaks from a big joint of meat (a lesson given by course butcher), how to prepare them, how to cook them (obviously!) and a small but perfectly suited group of accompaniments. So, I made sirloin with Bearnaise, french fries and french fried onions. Other options were steak au poivre, steak with salsa verde, steak with blue cheese butter, steak with chimchurri…. all the classics were covered. Also, interestingly, and something I have been doing incorrectly for some time now – steak only requires a rub of garlic (not for the garlic taste but to bring out the meat flavour) and some pepper as a ‘marinade’, no oil or salt until ready to cook – rub the eat with a little bit of oil just before putting onto a very very hot grill pan, and salt only as turning the steaks, to avoid any ‘shock’, and hence toughness. Oh and Santie if you are reading, I would like a very heavy grill pan in my stocking please!!

Keeping with the beef theme, we made some fantastic stews, including beef bourgignon, Italian beef stew, steak and kidney pie, and Oxtail stew – I made the latter, I have attatched a photo of the oxtail, which was quite a challenge to prepare and not the most appetising-looking either, I am sure you will agree … A few months ago I would have gone running for cover! While there is not that much meat on it, what is there is really delicious, and this being one of the cheapest cuts of meat, it is certainly worth having a few recipes up the sleeve.

We also learned all about beef suet, which as many of you might know, but I certainly didn’t, is the fat that covers the kidneys, and there is alot of it! This is rendered down to become beef dripping/suet, which in the past has had so many different uses in the kitchen, from adding flavour to meat dishes and pies, making pastry, making Christmas sweet mincemeat, adding a protective seal to insulate all kinds of relishes and jams, and of course for simply cooking in. For our steak and chips day, we cooked the chips in beef dripping, and they were delicious. Given that this is a by-product of all the beef meat we eat, it seems a shame that we don’t use it anymore, though I think I have been converted to its charms!

On the subject of useful animal bits ‘n’ pieces, on Friday we were given a beefburger demonstration, nice and easy for a Friday afternoon! Darina showed us how to use pork caul fat to wrap around beefburgers, sealing them and giving them extra flavour.  I have attached a photo of this caul fat – it looks like a lacey, gossamer sheet and is really quite beautiful! Try to forget that it comes from the outside of  digestive organs of the pig… anyway, again this is very very cheap, a butcher would possibly even give it for free, and has many uses – helping burgers keep their shape, and especially for adding flavour to roast meats, particularly leaner cuts. Go and get some!

Despite the terrifically stormy weather, we have been getting quite a lot of fish, and so I have added a number of fish recipes to my repitoire. Of particular interest was grey sea mullet, a new fish for me, which we served with delicately-flavoured herd butters; and classic sauces for fish such as beurre blanc and beurre rouge – very impressive and really quite simple to make.

I have tackled some tricky recipes, though the longer I am here the more I realise that nothing is difficult, it is just a matter of common sense, seasoning (correctly and often), and having reasonably good taste buds. I made two souffles (real ones this time!) – an Ardsallagh Goat Cheese and thyme leaf, and a sweet Grand Marnier  – both were super & not at all difficult, which made me wonder what all the fuss is about! I also made ravioli stuffed butternut squash, it takes quite a bit of work but is not difficult at all, though a pasta rolling machine is essential. I am looking forward to experimenting with fillings for stuffed pasta when I get home.

Other favourites over the past two weeks were duck confit with puy lentils, some fantastic warm winter salads, the smoothest, finest ice-cream in the world, and BREAD of course …. I was especially happy with my ciabatta and ‘milk dough loaf’. Making my vanilla bean ice-cream last week, my teacher decided it would be fun to add some dry ice to the mixture, a la Heston I guess… The creamy custard mixture froze instantly as soon as the dry ice was poured into it, though with big lumps of ice so cold it made my tongue tingle ferociously… don’t try that at home is my advice!

We also had our second lecture by Blathnaid Bergin, on the ‘Business of Food’ – it was great to be reminded that it is possible to make money with food! People will always need to eat, after all….

An ex-Ballymaloe student, Tiffany Goodall, gave us a brief talk last Friday – she has written two very successful cookbooks, cleverly tapping into a niche in the market, students and newly graduated people. She deserves her success as she is a brilliant cook and a very nice person… aaah!

Outside of the school, there has been lots going on to keep us amused. The Grainstore at Ballymaloe House hosts some really interesting events, and I went to see that ol’ crooner Finbar Furey there last Sunday night – he is a fantastic entertainer, had us in stitches laughing one minute and nearly crying with emotion the next. I also visited the Tannery in Dungarven with some of my classmates, we had a fantastically delicious lunch and a tour of their small cookery school & garden – we were so impressed with the place – the atmosphere, the design, the food, the ethos – I LOVE the Tannery! Will be planning a trip back with friends/family soon I hope….next time to stay the night. We enjoyed a ‘wine’ evening hosted by a South African winemaker in Ballymaloe House last week, he was very generous with his wine and his stories and it was a terrific evening – so good to see our classmates out of chefs’ whites! And this weekend, some of our classmates held Thanksgiving dinner in their cottage, all in aid of charity – a super effort, making delicious food for about 30 people – not bad after 10 weeks @ Ballymaloe And mulled wine was served in jam jars – so much better than plastic cups for a party, I will certainly be stealing that tip!

This blog is now proudly listed on the irish food bloggers website -

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… so if you enjoy my ramblings, check out some other great food-related blogs there, there are so many.

Thanks so much for reading, hope you enjoyed…

Fiona XXX

Photos : 1 – some friendly neighbours; 2 – the Bluegrass musicians from USA; 3 &4 vegetarian curries from Thailand & India respectively; 5 – delicious chickpea tapa; 6 – Egg & Chips tapa; 7-10 – more proper tapas!; 11 – the magestic Pata Negra joint; 12 – spot the sea urchin!; 13 – Carrigeen Moss/seaweed in dry form; 14 – pretty parsnip cake decorated with almonds and crystallized flowers; 15 – shellfish platter with seaweed; 16 – sea urchins on a plate; 17 – Dingle pie; 18 – Fattoush (delish middle eastern salad); 19 – Fougasse (traditional Provencal breads with tapenade); 20 – Souffles of the lemon & chocolate variety; 21 – Thai green curry with aromatic basmati; 22 – buttered zucchini (courgettes! though doesn’t zucchini sound so much more glamorous..) with pine nuts and sultanas; 23 – my new best friends, asleep.

I passed the halfway mark of my time here at Ballymaloe with a trip back to London – a bit of a shock to the system at first, but great to be back in the bright lights of the city again. Now ensconced back in my little cottage for the second half of my stay, the cold dark nights are closing in, evening rambles are now out of the question, but things are heating up in the kitchens…

Well I never thought I would get so stressed about a salad leaf! We had our ‘exam’ last Friday, and you could have cut the tension in the air with a knife. It was hilarious (in retrospect) to witness so many successful, smart people fretting over the names and shapes of what are, essentially, bits of edible foliage. I was happy to see that my power to retain alot of information in a short space of time has not diminished since my college days, and the herb and salad exam went well. The technique exam went fine too – I was asked to extract the meat from a crab (a true test of how much I have evolved), and also to make an omelette, not as easy as you might think! This is supposed to take 30 seconds exactly, I think I did it in about 25 … oops. Anyway, the lesson is that 25 seconds does not an omelette make… but be careful, 35 seconds and its overdone! Hmmmm… I think the ‘cooking is fun’ website title for this course is a little misleading sometimes!

Tuesday’s demonstration began with a live performance by a Bluegrass band from Kentucky, totally random but great fun. They were just passing through, literally, and had to sing for their supper … sorry, couldn’t resist . After such a lively opening, we settled in for recipe demonstrations of a vegetarian global theme. The most amazing Pumpkin Risotto, Thai veggie curry, Autumnal garden salads, white turnip soup, little pots of cucumber deliciousness and gorgeous plum Tuscan tarts. And that was just Tuesday…

Wednesday was devoted to ‘Tapas and Sherry’, a sell-out demonstration for the school every year, we were told. It certainly lived up to expectations, and we enjoyed making and eating the most delicious tapas I have ever tried – far better even than in Seville (in my most humble experience). The most exciting part was the grand carving of the great creature, the Pata Negra, the black pig of Southern Spain. This type of cured ham is very prized – it was delicious, so sweet with none of that ‘pig’ taste so often found in cured hams. Of course, this little piggie had lived a very happy life, munching only acorns in the forest of Andalucia, and was then cured for nearly 36 months. We also cooked with salt cod, which was so delicious and not something I would have chosen to cook previously – it was stuffed into pretty red peppers with herbs. Other little bites of joy were octopus (eek), delicious sort of olives and cheeses all marinated here in olive oil & herbs (a zillion times nicer than shop bought marinated olives and cheese…annoying but true), chickpea stew, chorizo cooked with sherry (delicious – the best chorizo ever, from West Cork! Gubbeen), Albondigas (meat balls, silly!), garlic shrimps, homemade Membrillo or Quince Jelly…. and egg and chips. Yes, seriously, apparently this is a real hit in the best tapas bar in Madrid. I have attached a photo, I’ll let you readers be the judge! This little feast was washed down with some tasters of sherry, lovely cold dry white sherry of the ‘Fino’ style. There is a great history and story behind the making of sherry, and truly for the amount of skill and time that goes into producing it, it is certainly unfairly sidelined. Our technology-embracing sommelier, Colm, showed us a webcam interview he conducted with head honcho at one of the best producers, Lustau, who explained to us whats-what in the world of sherry.

Little creatures came to visit on Friday, when we were given a presentation by one of the only sea urchin farmers in Ireland. What an interesting species they are too. Another highly prized food, though more so in Japan than here (I can’t think why that is! Well…check out the photos). They are absolutely fascinating, not least because they contain both the male and the female in one urchin, if that makes sense?! I’m still scratching my head about that too…. Anyway, it is a very tricky business getting them to breed, so its amazing that he has 100,000 at any one time in his ‘farm’. When they are young, he keeps them in huge temperature controlled tanks, before setting them out into rock pools in the sea, hoping that passers-by don’t tamper with them too much. They are ready to eat about three or four years later, by whoever feels inclined to put a sea hedgehog into their mouths! Rory showed us how to prepare them by simply opening the tops, thereby killing them, and eating them like a boiled egg, with a little spoon, and preferably a dollop of nice mayonnaise. I wish I was grown up enough to try. They formed a very dramatic centrepiece for a platter of shellfish, containing oysters, clams, sea urchins (my old friends!), mussels – all really beautifully presented on a seaweed bed in a wicker basket. To continue the theme, we made a Carrigeen seaweed pudding, which is a type of floating island delicately flavoured with the seaweed, renowned for its health giving properties – that’s what I call a guilt free pudding. Served with decadent irish coffee sauce or poached quince. This traditional meal was made whole with a ‘Dingle Pie’, something I had never heard of before, sort of like a stew covered in pastry, apparently brought to Kerry by tin miners from Cornwall. Very tasty indeed, though a bit of a faff to make!

Friday was Pizza day, and we learned how to make pizza dough properly, playing around with a huge variety of delicious toppings. Like most things in cooking, its so important to get the ingredients right. Among others, we made – beautifully perfect Margherita, carmelized onions with gorgonzola, hot chilli pizza, mushroom & marjoram. Annoyingly, the best results for pizza are definitely to be achieved by using a wood burning oven, but a regular oven can give very good results too -set at the very highest temperature possible, and put the pizza directly onto a preheated (very hot) baking sheet, or even better, onto a  slab of stone, which you can lay at the bottom of your oven. For pizza devotees only that one I think!

This afternoon, we were shown all sort of delights, some with an Asian feel, such as Thai beef and pumpkin curry, chicken and coconut laska with rice noodles (delicious) – it was great to learn more about the various ingredients that form the basis of asian cooking, a subject so vast and sometimes intimidating that one ends up reaching for the nearest branded options. Ingredients such as galangal… hello? Anyway, it turns out that this can be happily substituted for ginger, with maybe a drop if lemon juice too; and that palm sugar, so prevalent in asian cuisine, is actually not very environmentally friendly (aswell as being difficult to find in most supermarkets), so soft brown sugar does nicely as a replacement. Phew for that!  All dishes were great, and can’t wait to cook them on Thursday. We also learned all about Brioche, the  richest and most delicious of sweet breads, which is quite difficult to pull off, but once you do the results are so worth it (like all things in life?!), and a very laborious and time consuming lemon souffle, which I also have to make for lunch on Thursday, oh dear!

Today we also had the pleasure of witnessing the pickling of an Ox tongue… on my, it was the ugliest thing I have seen since the monkfish. I have a particular aversion to animal tongues, can’t think why! Anyway, we pickled it, or at least started to pickle it, the whole process takes a few days. There is talk of this meat making a ‘comeback’, and it certainly is traditional, so possibly I will try it out once it is ready, maybe..

Today also we heard from an inspirational man who has started a cookie business, again from West Cork. I think there is something in the air or water down there! Anyway, he was very interesting, having starting making cookies as a sideline, his business has grown quite rapidly and he now supplies many shops and some of the best hotels and kitchens in the country – he uses all local and where possible also organic ingredients, and though of course there is a premium price to pay, he has built a happy niche for himself.

In terms of actually My Cooking …. this week I have had an absent cooking partner, and while I hope she gets better very soon, I have enjoyed the luxury of having twice the space and utensils every morning. Oh dear, what has become of my life, I am getting excited about extra bowls and counter space?? Anyway, I have been cooking like crazy, and have made …. Winter vegetable and haricot bean soup (sounds so boring I know but was actually tasty, though the peeling and chopping wore me out a little!), pan grilled red mullet with pepper cream sauce (divine), carmelized apple tarlets, lamb pies, green vegetables of various types, pasta (from scratch…yes! ), parsnip cake, sea food platters, the aforementioned pumpkin risotto, white soda bread (so annoyingly difficult to get right!) and Indian partha bread, which is a very cool bread in that it is cooked on a pan and so quick and easy.

I have tried (by popular demand!) to add more photos, though please understand that my photography equipment & skill are both sadly limited… Still I hope you get a taste and flavour of what this week held for us.

So, I can truly say that I am thoroughly settled in now, and that time is flying by at an alarming rate. So much information is thrown at us every second of every day, my brain doesn’t know what has hit it, though I am hoping that it is absorbing all this valuable know-how, even if sometimes it all feels a little overwhelming! Darina has told us not to worry, and that everything will ‘slot’ into place around week 11 – I am looking forward to that epiphany very much! Its all good though, and already when I look back at what I have experienced, achieved and cooked in the past three and a half weeks, I have to pinch myself.

The cooking mornings have certainly stepped up a notch, and sometimes it really feels like you are working in a restaurant kitchen – working to a deadline, having to be super-organised before and during the cooking, sharpening your knives every day before commencing (something I am a little lax about, ashamed to say!), tasting EVERYTHING for seasoning at every step of the recipe, fretting over presentation of a dish… all the dishes must, no exceptions, be cooked the Ballymaloe way, which is an exercise in self control for many of us! But it really means you learn so much from applying techniques and practises to each dish, and there is no such thing as a short cut or easy way. Lets just say, I am learning a hell of a lot, which after all is what I am here to do, even if the ego has taken the odd knocking! Some days the angels smile down on my plates, on others I feel like running out and never stepping foot in a kitchen again – but that’s quite ‘normal’, apparently. One great thing – I am a dab hand at the ol’ recycling/hen bucket situation now – one of the only things they don’t like, funnily enough, is chicken.

So… on the cooking, one of the highlights, conveniently enough for this blog’s purposes, was this morning – I actually (successfully) made a white yeast bread with my own two hands. Now this might not seem like an extraordinary achievement in itself, indeed I myself would have sniggered at this ‘triumph’ a mere 4 weeks ago. However, then I did not know a) that I don’t naturally have the ‘baker’s’ touch, a skill few are blessed with; b) making white yeast bread involved alot of ‘kneading’, an action which before today put the fear of God in me, and, I am imagining, many other amateur cooks; c) sometimes no matter how meticulous you are with the recipe, things just simply don’t work out (refer to point a!). So, think how happy I was when a golden, crusty-on-the-outside, fluffy white on the inside, plait (yes, like a hair plait – not sure how the guys on the course fared with this one!) of yeast bread emerged from the oven at approx 12.25pm today. It was like giving birth to a baby, and indeed I had nurtured her all morning with strokes and massage, making sure she did not get too cold or too hot, and that she was nicely fed and watered. It almost felt wrong to eat her/it. Though I’m glad I did, it was delicious, and earned me nearly top marks.

Since I last wrote, as anticipated, we have had some pretty bloody demonstrations (not of the political kind thankfully!), and with each one my tolerance for all things gorey is building – its amazing what the mind can get used to. First up – how to butcher a lamb and identify all the joints and cuts of meat, compete with a half-carcass demonstration. I always do feel guilty eating this most cute of animals, such a pity it is so delicious! Thankfully no actual butchery was involved, though there is a resident ‘butcher’ working here, and extra tuition can be arranged I believe. Think I’ll pass on that one! We did make many fantastic meaty dishes with the meat, however, and soon the memory of the bloody carcass was overrun by more familiar sights and smells – the most mouth watering  moussaka I have ever tasted, shepherd’s pie (of course, the ultimate one!), slow roast shoulder of lamb, lamb roast with many wonderful herb versions…. the list goes on. The guts and gore continued on Monday with a crash course in Game, a taster before our more intensive lessons further on in the course. I now know how to pluck a pheasant and a duck, each done in a different manner and direction. And how to gut a bird – the demonstration was with a mallard, but I am sure most wild birds have all their bits and pieces in roughly the same place. I am not sure when that will come in handy, but as our dear instructor Darina says ‘ now, when next given a brace of pheasant, you will know what to do’! Hilarious, I don’t think there is much chance of a brace landing on my doorstep in London… Still, useful skills to have (I think?!). There’s a chance to go shooting with Tom the gamekeeper, I will pass but many are very interested to take up the opportunity. Thankfully in this country I don’t think shooting (nor hunting) is too much of an elitist sport, and all sorts of people from the countryside get involved. And finally, the fish course (though by right this should have come first of course!) – well, I had to fillet a round fish, no gutting thank god. It is tricky enough, though with practise I think it should be easy enough. All these things are common sense at the end of the day, and once you get the gist its just a matter of practising! I have also now had more practise on taking every last teeny morsel of meat from a crab. I’m thrilled to have this skill, as its quite inexpensive to buy crabs whole from the boats or even a fishmonger, but as we all know, crab meat is notoriously expensive. If you can get over the shock of picking out the ‘dead man’s fingers’, so-named because they look just so, but are actually the lungs… well, then its really worth it!

Enough gore, onto nice things….!

We have had some really interesting suppliers in to give us lectures and to chat about their businesses – I particularly enjoyed last Wednesday, when Sean Moran, an entrepreneur who started Sip Tea, came in to speak to us about Tea, and about his business. Sip tea helps restaurants compile their tea menus, and also then supplies the tea. Thanks to Sean, many people in this country are waking up to the fact there is more to tea than Lyons or Barry’s, and the tea revolution is growing slowly but steadily – he pointed to the fact that only 15 years ago we hardly knew what a cappuchino was in this part of the world.  And guess what?! Teabags are made from the worst part of the leaf….better use leaves if you want a high class cuppa… I loved his philosophy that tea is truly a democratic drink, and that everyone should be able to enjoy a cup of the finest tea in the world. He de-coded all the strange and exotic teas for us, and introduced one of the most amazing products I have ever seen – a tea flower, which is basically a ball of tea leaves (in this case, jasmine) resembling a large flower bud, which, when immersed in hot water, gradually expands to look like a flower. It was beautiful and almost other-worldly, and I was momentarily inspired to open a tea shop just so I could sell them for the pure drama and frivolity of it! Especially given that the rest of the afternoon was given over to all things wonderful in the world of afternoon teas – cakes, fairy buns, scones, baby meringues, sandwiches – it was impossible not to swept away by the prettiness and sugar-coated fun of it all.

We have also had the pleasure to meet a french lady who makes her living foraging for wild mushrooms in the woods. This (ie autumn) is her boom time, so she was in flying form telling us all about the many varieties – it is a subject so vast that even she needs a pocket book to identify some of her findings. The mushrooms, when cooked well with simply butter and garlic, are exquisite. (London dwellers – Richmond park is great for wild mushrooms!)

Last night, the sommelier Colm organised a viewing  of a movie called ‘Bottleshock’, a hilarious (mostly true) story of the famous Paris wine tasting of 1976, when French wines were entered into a blind taste test with American wines, and the Americans triumphed in both categories (white and red), to the disgust of the French needless to say. Many say that marked the beginning of the Napa Valley wine industry being taken seriously by the rest of the world, and indeed the end of the reign of French wines as the undisputed best in the world. Happily, we were given our own blind taste test at the same time, and got to try the now-famous Chateau Montelena from Napa (the wine at the centre of the plot) and a similar style from Burgandy, and were asked to guess which was which – I got it right, so those wine lectures are paying off already…

This afternoon we had our first demonstration with Rachel Allen, and there was a hum of excitement when we all realised we would finally meet the famous ‘celebrity chef’! She is absoloutely lovely, just like she is on TV, and very down-to-earth. She made the tastiest ‘traditional’ Irish dish I have ever tasted – loin of bacon with colcannon and whisky sauce. Seriously good, I shall be looking for guinea pigs (ha!) to try this one out as soon as I home…..

Tomorrow we have a tour, where we will visit a local cheesemaker, a famous fish smoker, the food market in Cork, an artisan bakery (maybe he will want to recruit me after today’s success?!), and a local pizzeria famed for its delicious authentic Italian pizzas, and funnily enough an ex-student of this great school! Really looking forward to getting out and seeing where some if the beautiful food we have been eating is conjured up and made.

And in-between all the learning and cooking and chopping and baking….. windswept walks on the beach, serene strolls down country lanes in the winter sunshine, trips to the farmers market, Fota House, the Jameson Midelton distillery, the local pub, dinner at Ballymaloe House, cosy nights by the fire with my house mates – its not a hard life at all.

I think that’s all for now, folks! I hope you get an idea of the breath and depth of the content of the course, I have truly just touched the tip of the iceberg on this blog. It is proving to be the most exhilarating, inspiring, informative, life-changing & exhausting experiences of my life…. and I am loving every minute of it!

Miss you all very much.

It is nearly the end of my first week here at Ballymaloe. On Monday, Darina said that by Thursday we would feel like we had been here forever… well, that is a bit is a stretch, but I know what she meant! I am feeling very at home, and can’t believe I have only been here 4 days, I already feel very immersed in the place. Autumn is a beautiful time of the year to be in the countryside, & we have been blessed with bright sunshine during the day, with a delicious hint of Autumn in the air.

So, I think yesterday was the highlight so far. We spent the morning in the kitchens, and what a chaotic scene it was! I would like to say ‘organised chaos’ but I would be fibbing….   Everyone is given a ‘station’, to share with one partner, I was lucky to be the prettiest kitchen (a true country kitchen, my title is proving most appropriate!), with a fantastic partner, who, thankfully, knows how to peel an onion and work an oven (not a given, I assure you). I made, from scratch, a Quiche Lorraine, brown bread, and ‘fork’ biscuits. Disaster struck early, when my teacher (a seriously talented lady who spent 4 years working in the famous River Cafe in London) pointed out that my pastry mix was looking more ‘crumble’ than shortcrust…. oops, that would be the double helping of butter I put in there by accident. So, I had to start again, trying to keep my cool, as my ‘order of work’ (a detailed list of the order in which you intend to complete each task – much harder to do than it sounds!) flew out the window. From then on, I felt like I was transported to an episode of Masterchef – chopping and dicing, mixing and frying, all against the clock, before having to ‘present’ my dishes to my teacher at noon for tasting and grading. Phew, it was very tough, there were cut hands (ok, so not actually mine, but its only a matter of time I fear!), burnt onions, forgotten ingredients, spilt flour (have you ever tried to clean flour from the floor?!), the whole lot….. and I thought I was a good cook! I felt my self confidence evaporating – its one thing throwing some tasty ingredients together in a pan and hoping for the best (my kind of cooking), yet quite another following a recipe to the very last letter and method. No room for rebellion or improvisation here! These things will get much easier of course, but it was a real shock to the system to take in so many new techniques and best practises all at once. And I have not even mentioned the rubbish situation yet – no more throwing it all in the bin and forgetting about it – now, getting rid of a handful of unwanted bits and pieces in the kitchen involved a detailed brain scan of all the options – composting, hen bucket, stock pot, recycling. Its tough, I tell you, though most worthy I know!

Anyway, all ended very well, and my dishes scored very respectable marks (a lady never tells her scores….), though to be honest I think the teachers were going easy on us on our first cooking day. We then savoured the fruits of our labour for lunch.

In the afternoon we watched a demo with Rory O’Connell – so, everything I had read, and everyone I spoke to about the course, waxed lyrical about his talent for both cooking and teaching, and they were right, he is a great inspiration and a pleasure to watch. Looking forward to the next demo already.

Today we had a wine and cheese morning – not the most fortuitous timetable for me, following a ‘bonding’ session last night at the lovely little pub down the road last night! The cheeses were divine, and again Darina’s passion for Irish artisan producers shone through, and her personal stories of their enterprises were entertaining, inspiring and thought provoking. The photo attached is the cheese board, which will greet us every day after lunch, with the cheeses being changed very week, so we will get to taste the best variety of Irish farmhouse cheeses. Oh no…. I hope the pilates dvd I ordered in a fit of guilt arrives soon!

Lunch was really beautiful again, not cooked by our fair hands but by Rory’s and some of the teachers – a sort of River-cafe inspired buffet, accompanied by that most irish of meats, baked ham. Attached also a photo of lunch being served.

This afternoon I learned how to use a fire extinguisher, a handy skill don’t you think?! And we had quite a tedious though necessary lecture on food safety regulations, though to be fair Darina made it very entertaining with many digressions on the scourge of the bureaucrats vs small producers (quote on a previous law that all kitchens needed to use plastic chopping boards ‘mankind has been using wooden boards since the Timber Age FOR GOD’S SAKE!’). I couldn’t have agreed with her more…

There is a great atmosphere among the students, I have gotten rid of any initial shyness and have forced myself to make introductions – its a little like freshers week at college!

Ok, nightie night. A long day of cooking tomorrow, before driving to Dublin and back to the Real World for 2 days – how will I cope?!

At last, the waiting is over, I am finally here at Ballymaloe. It is Sunday night and I have settled into my home for the next 12 weeks, an idyllic stone cottage on the edge of the school grounds (picture above), nestled among woodland and fields, complete with its own adjoining vegetable garden and resident hens, who have already introduced themselves to me! My room is lovely, much nicer than I had hoped for, opening out onto a little garden, and I was delighted to see that the living space is ample, comfortable and stylish in a Laura Ashley country chic kind of a way, exactly what I expected to be honest. In a very good way! In particular the log fire had me gasping in excitement – silly, maybe, but a real working fire is a novelty for a Londoner such as myself. I am already looking forward to cosy Autumn nights in…

Earlier this evening we enjoyed pizzas (seriously good 0nes too, naturally… whoever thought of putting flat leaf parsley on a pizza?) with the rest of the group. There’s 62 of us in total, and initial impressions are that is will be a highly interesting, diverse, jovial and entertaining group of people, and I couldn’t be more relieved! (after all, spending 12 weeks in the middle of nowhere with 62 strangers could be considered a highly risky experiment).

And what a journey over it was…. very long, and potentially mind-numbingly dull except for the company of my gorgeous long-suffering husband, who has now departed back to London on a flight from Cork. He was placated with promises of epicurean paradise on my return… I hope I didn’t over promise! We drove from London to Wales, stayed overnight there, before catching the ferry to Rosslare, and then a 2 hour drive to Youghal, where we spent the night (in a lovely pub/restaurant called Aherne’s). Today I was groggy from all the driving, (nothing to do with the delicious red wine with dinner last night…. oh no!), though that feeling nearly disappeared on arriving at Ballymaloe and checking into the fairytale cottage you see above, and taking a walk around the gardens.  They are probably some of the nicest gardens I have ever been in – surprisingly romantic, though practical of course at the same time, providing the cooking school with an abundance of fresh fruit, veg and herbs – tomorrow we have a proper tour of them, I can’t wait.  I also spotted a lovely tennis court, which should come in handy in the battle against the Ballymaloe Bulge….

I would like to write about all the characters I have already met, but I think that would be ‘un-ethical’ somehow so will leave with the assurance that first impressions are very strong,  the people seem super, and I am going to sleep happy yet giddy at the same time, thinking about all the wonderful days and weeks ahead of me… and thanking whoever it is ‘up there’ that dishes out the good fortune in this life for this unique experience. Will try to write again soon, though looking at the timetable for the week ahead, its going to be busy busy busy!