Mid-week madness

It's the middle of week 9 at Ballymaloe . That means that I, we, have 3 more weeks here. Exams are looming. Testers are starting to appear and menus keep changing.

I have about 5 ideas of each course of my final practical that I just cannot decide on. Doesn't really help that we have roughly 30 new recipes a day to add to our repertoire.

But in the meantime we have food, friends and laughter. Mistakes in the kitchen can be just as fun as successes, my best sourdough so far made an appearance (did you see it?!?!) and we met the lovely Madeline from Brown Envelope Seeds who, I might add, is growing 7 different types of Quinoa in West Cork. Now I love quinoa. It's a whole protein not to mention it has 13 amino acids and is considered a super food. So to find someone growing it (successfully) in Ireland is fantastic.

So, here are some Tips of the Week:

1. A mix of cream and egg yolk is called a Liaison. Adding this to sauces will thicken and richen. Never add the Liaison to boiling liquid, always add the boiling liquid to the Liaison.

2. In a burger you generally want 10-15% fat. In Pork this would be the shoulder meat, in Lamb the flank and brisket in Beef.

3. If a recipe calls for fresh yeast but you only have dry. Simply half the amount and go with the dry.

Daylight and lessons learned

A quarter the way through the course. For me this week has really the been the turning point where I am starting to really realise my weaknesses rather than feeling confident 90% of the time. I need to learn to slow down and take stock. To actually go through everything twice before going ahead with recipes. It's been a hard one I can tell you but also enjoyable and rewarding to learn that I will never make these mistakes again!

But, on the other hand, it's been another great week. After it being my turn at cooking family dinner (chilli roasted veggies with bulgar wheat and quinoa tossed in parsley and golden oyster mushrooms), finally we are making our way into the kitchens with daylight! Daylight is such a beautiful thing at 8am after leaving demo the night before in the dark! I made my second sourdough and already it's a 100% better. Still got some way to go to perfection but it's a yummy mistake we are all happy to get wrong. We've had some extra hours wine tasting of Little Beauty Wine... happy days! I made Bean Can Bread, so great and easy and then just some great times in the kitchen.

The Pink Cottage also received a great treat in the post from Raw Nibbles, some Cacao butter. We plan on making chocolate and raw chocolate and I've been using this page as some inspiration…can't wait for those final ingredients to arrive and get making!

And one of the best pieces of news…one of the cows had her calf on Monday evening. Welcome baby Babette heifer to the family.