A quick trip over to the left.

These last couple of days I've been over on the West Coast of Scotland. Having the Great Aunty living there helps a treat as it seems hipsters from every corner of the globe are buying up tiny crofters houses, which means, there's no accommodation to be had and the pubs are all full. With the hipsters though comes new imports such as olive oil. It's hard to remember that they only had a road put in in the 70s.

Friends of ours have a prawn business over there and each visit we are gifted several kilos of prawns. For those in Ireland they would be Dublin Bay Prawns. For those in Scotland they are obviously Scottish Prawns and everywhere else in the world I'm sorry, but you'll have to chose which you want to call them. Having prepared, cooked and eaten these yummy, sometimes arm length prawns at Ballymaloe Cookery School I was quickly put to work and set to cooking. Throw in some homemade mayonnaise, using the olive oil that's now being imported, supper was delicious with a view that people would pay thousands for. Oh right, they do.

We had beautiful sunny weather most of the time and for anyone who's been to Scotland, 5 days in a row of sun is quite exceptional. Lapping it up, we went on walk after walk with the puppy. Snow peeked mountains looming over us as, we slowly and heavy breathed our way further up and up until the view got the better of us and we stopped to admire. This moment, here. Is what has made me understand why my Great Aunt moved up here in the 60's. No roads, no running water or electricity is pretty hard core. But when it's sunny and you can see for miles and mountains I can understand.

It's been a spectacular couple of days with my Maman. Hanging out, no TV, no internet just the heather on the mountains, highland cows, lambs, deer and good conversation. I've loved it.


Ballymaloe Cookery School Mayonnaise:

3 egg yolks
¼ tsp mustard
2 tbsps vinegar
8floz of oil (they do 6 of non flavoured veg oil and 2 of olive oil)

Whisk together the egg yolks, mustard and vinegar. Then very slowly but steadily drizzle in the oil, whisking all the time. Add more vinegar or mustard at the end if needs be.

Penultimate Week

Last week was our penultimate week at Ballymaloe Cookery School. Nobody can believe it, we've started thinking about our futures (even more seriously), I've started applying for jobs (yeah, crazy!) and I've also started revising. Can't quite believe it.

Sunday was a special family dinner with the girls. Lots of chat about our final menu, what we've learnt and where we are going.

On Wednesday we were lucky enough to have a guided tour around Ballymaloe House and speak to the legend that is Myrtle Allen. Lucky us! We saw some fantastic stuff, the wine cellar with Colm, the Grainstore which is an event space and also these bad boys below!

These are two of my friends here at Ballymaloe Cookery School. I love this image!

Wednesday we also had sushi class and was lucky enough to try this fellow. The Oyster Plant which actually tastes like oysters!

And this beautiful plant is the Wasabi plant.

The atmosphere has changed too, everyone is a little more serious, practise for our practical exam is being sneaked around our daily menus and the are some heart to hearts going on.

It seems every time we have Rachel Allen for demo there is some wonderful animal she has to hold up! This time it was the stunning Thornback Ray.

We finished Fridays demo with an iced lolly. YUM!

Filleting a fish

I figured that although it's great you hearing about all the fun things we get to cook it might be a great idea to let you in on some of the basic techniques we get taught.

Filleting a fish is one of those things. Let's face it, it's easier for your fish monger to do but you should really know how.
On the 15th Feb we have a 'half term exam' here at Ballymaloe Cookery School and filleting a fish, amongst other things, could be one of our tests.

So, this is Fred the fish, he is a Sea Bass, so known by the silver shiny body and the 'look' of a fast fish. He will be ever so kind as to help me show you how to fillet. Please say 'Thank you Fred'.

I had to gut Fred myself but you can ask the lovely fishmonger to do that for you as well as de-scaling. If you didn't get that done have a look on the belly. Near to the tail there should be a fin and a small 'toilet' hole. Insert your knife in this hole and slice upwards towards the head. 

Once this has been done, there is the pleasant task of taking all the guts etc out. Moving quickly on...

Next, take the knife at a diagonal and cut from beneath the gill area up to the spine. Cut all the way until you meet the back bone.

Repeat on the other side and then break the head away from the body. 

The gills should come away with the head so that's all the stuff you can't eat out the way. If you want to use the head for stock, you will need to remove them as they will make the stock bitter.

Ok, so next step is slicing as close to the back bone as possible starting with the 'head' end and down to the tail. It doesn't have to be a big cut, just to open the flesh.

Next with the tip of your very sharp knife, slowly in little cuts and using your fingers to gently separate the flesh from the bones. Go slow as the less barbaric you can be will make a difference to how your fillet appears and also how much flesh you actually have.

Next thing, if you want to, is to remove the flesh from the skin. Hold the tail end of the fillet and cut down, not all the way through the skin, and then flatten to push it head wards. Gently rather than pushing with your knife, pull the skin towards you and wiggle your knife. The flesh should come away from the skin quite easily.

And then da-dah! Congrats. You did it.

It was great to see Rory O'Connell filleting several fish for us today and seeing how fast we should be able to do filleting with time.

Cake competitions and foraging.

This week at Ballymaloe Cookery School two hugely significant things happened. First, we had ourselves a cake competition. Ok, so maybe it wasn't that serious and second, we only had the choice of three cakes but still. A little Ballymaloe/Rachel Allen inspiration did not go astray! We had crisp rolled dark chocolate mounds, sparkling iced primroses covering bases, mugs of steaming coffee decorating others etc, etc. (I'm hoping you get the picture)

Wednesday was Rachel Allen's, along with Pam who is definitely a fountain of cake wisdom, turn to show us all how to make/ice/decorate a cake. The choices (not made by us!) where coffee cake, chocolate cake and lemon cake. I got coffee cake. For someone who doesn't drink coffee or has never liked coffee cake this was definitely one to help me not lick the bowl! Obviously not forgetting how unhygienic that would be….

Second myself and Pam, who as Darina Allen says 'once seen never forgotten', had been doing some recipe testing with left over marzipan and sour cherries.  It's a delightful mix of fluffy rich cloud with hint of almond with random red sour cherry bursts topped off with crunchy marzipan. Today was the day I got it right. 1 hour of cooking (and worrying) and 1 plate of pieces sent to the office later I received two fantastic compliments. 1 from Rory Allen (I'm still happy as Larry over this one) and 1 from Darina who then said, 'yes we'll put it in the book as Jette's marzipan and sour cherry bake'. Yep. That'll do me thank you very much.

After our cakelunch but before demo foraging was next on our schedule.  Off we tootled down the country lanes off to Garryvoe Beach with Darina. Perrywinkles, horse winkles, sea spinach, urchins and the list goes on and on of our salty treasures. Not long enough on my opinion as I am utterly into foraging. I've found a new obsession reading any foraging blogs (a fave is this one).

And so now it's Friday night, as a little treat for all of you who read this (thank you by the way) here is the fantastic Marzipan and Sour Cherry Bake. Enjoy this over the weekend.

6oz salted butter
6oz self raising flour
60z caster sugar
3 eggs
roughly 2oz of homemade marzipan (a little kept behind to sprinkle on top)
100g of dry sour cherries.

Mix butter, flour, eggs and sugar in a food processor. Fold in the most of the  marzipan and the cherries. Put in a low tray/tins and sprinkle with remaining marzipan. 180degrees in the oven for about 15 minutes. Nom nom nom.

Lazy day

It's a lazy day. A day to meander and wander, to explore the ever green hills and ivy-supporting trees on the country lanes. Plus, the sun is shinning. They said snow but really, what does the met office know?

We left early and made our way to Ballymaloe House, the place it all started as far as Ballymaloe and the empire it has become is concerned. Where Myrtle Allan chose local ingredients to go on her menus and as some people say is really the founder of the whole Ballymaloe organic/local producer love.

It's as picturesque as you can imagine. A long drive way winding up to the big house. Deep, dark, brown earth tilled, splitting and ready for seed to be sown on each side. The sun shinning and making icicles out of cobwebs.

A walk on the beach follows with an icy salt tang in the air. All that is needed now is food, which is where the English Market comes back into play. The 15 or so cheeses we tried yesterday and whittled down to 3 are now part of mezzo starter plate. Hot smoked chilli salmon from Frank Hedermen, a traditional irish fish smoker, is on the plate too. Oh and those locally marinated greek olives could be thrown in the mix too (if we don't eat them first)

Sounds like a good preparation to me for tomorrow, no?

Knives at the ready!

Row row row your boat...

Having spent the summer on boats, I have now become a little tad obsessed, not in the sense of now my bathroom looks like a lighthouse montage kind of way, just in the majestic beauty of them…

Just for the fun of it

Summer time was full of work, 18hour days to be exact but also lots of fun. One of those aweseomely fun things we did was paddle boarding! Jolly good laugh and exercise! 

Summer time

Summer time is over unfortunately, but what a fantastic summer it was! Superyachting around the Balearic Islands and having well, a whale of a time!