Also on the menu - fluffy lemon pudding
(a magical batter that separates during cooking to form not only a spongy lemon
cake but also a thick layer of lemon curd sauce). It was the kind of old-fashioned pudding that could only be serve one way - nanna style. Spoon into bowl, add cream and foliage, voila!
Then (sigh) I made quesadillas.
Quesadillas are the Hispanic equivalent of a toasted cheese sandwich. You
literally throw a tortilla (shop bought) on a pan, load with cheese, bung
another tortilla on top and wait till the cheese melts. There is no trick to
cooking these, unless you consider ‘not burning things’ as a talent. Luckily,
there were many other things on the lunch menu to impress The Editor. (Editor's Note: There were indeed. Particularly the spicy chicken, tandoori chicken legs and cabbage salad. And I don't care how easy they are to make, the quesadillas were dang tasty. And the Plumpcious pudding was, of course, spectacular.)
In the afternoon demonstration we were shown how to
butcher a lamb. Half a headless carcass
was plonked onto the butcher's block – beside it were a saw and a collection of
very sharp knifes. The sight and sound
of the saw grinding through the creature's bones put a chill in the air … but
things were about to get creepier. The
butcher went along identifying various cuts and finally arrived at the
fillet, which he described as a prime piece of meat. A small hand shot up in the back row – a question from a young
softly-spoken girl that nobody was expecting – ‘Do humans have fillets too?’ There
was a stunned silence followed by nervous laughter. It turns out the answer is
yes. So now I am attending a cooking
school with a potential serial killer who has access to her own set of
professional knives and has been taught how to butcher an animal. Gulp.
Once the panic had subsided, we were shown how to cook:
Salad of blue cheese with chargrilled pears and spiced candies nuts, Salad of
roast red and ellow peppers with parmesan and rocket, Tapenade toasts, Brown
soda bread and scones, Lamb roast with rosemary, Mint sauce, Rustic roast
potatoes, Haricot beans with tomato and rosemary, Glazed carrots (to me,
cooking something in butter and sugar makes it a dessert, not a side dish),
Blackcurrant leaf sorbet, Lemon balm sorbet, Ruby grapefruit sorbet, Strawberry sorbet, Raspberry sorbet (10
points if you spotted the sorbet theme) and Fresh raspberry popsicles.
This weekend I am catering for 10 crazy people
(including The Editor) who are partaking in the Connemara Adventure Challenge – an insane 31km triathlon which involves running through a bog (Aussie readers - that is not a cute way of describing an emergency dash to the toilet, it’s a field of soft turf), kayaking 2km and cycling 17km. Considering the
amount of eating I have done in the past fortnight I probably should be
competing, but conveniently, I am needed in the kitchen. Besides, stirring a
giant pot of spaghetti sauce is a real workout.
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