29 June 2012

"Um, that is not a saucepan".

No, it was a sieve, and I was attempting to melt butter in it over a gentle heat. Whoopsies. Thankfully, my ever-helpful kitchen partner was more alert than me this morning and disaster was averted. This week has felt like a month. So many recipies! So much concentrating! So few gin and tonics. Yet despite my butter-filled brain, a dessert that should come with a fire-extinguisher and a crustacean that was designed by the devil, I actually had a rather successful day in the kitchen ...

First, I finished off my brioche by shaping them into what look like little doughy snowmen, then baking them for 25 minutes until shiny and golden. For breakfast I like to eat the buttery brioche with raspberry jam so I sneakily put a dollop of jam into a few of the buns and voila! ... breakfast on the go! (I know, it's genius).

Brioche for the working woman

Next up - Gateau Pithiviers. A French cake made traditionally on 6 January to celebrate the Feast of Kings (also known in our house as the day the Christmas decorations come down). It is made by sandwiching two rounds of puff pastry together with an almond and butter filling, painting the top carefully with egg wash, and then scoring a million little lines onto the top to make a petal pattern. Once the gateau is baked you drench it with icing sugar, put it under the grill and watch it like a hawk - previous gateaus have been known to spontaneously combust at this stage and while a flaming dessert can be a real party piece, that was not the desired effect here. My gateau was puffed to perfection (4 inches high!!) and tasted sublime. Lets not think of the amount of butter I have consumed today.

Moving on. The next recipe was meant to be mackerel with Bretonne sauce, but there was no mackerel today so we got Dublin bay prawns. In Australia, prawns have a relatively soft shell and peel easily. In Ireland, I discovered today, prawns do not want to be eaten and hide themselves in razor sharp, rock hard pink fortresses, daring you to peel them with their beady little eyes. Try to peel them like an Aussie prawn and you will need medical attention. Such brutality! Eventually, with a little assistance from my teacher, I peeled a dozen of the little terrors, arranged them on a slice of sourdough and smothered them with Bretonne sauce - a type of hollandaise with fresh herbs. By this stage I had nibbled on so many brioche that I couldn't bear to eat anything else, but I am told they were yummy.

Today we were taught how to cook: Fish mousse with shrimp butter sauce, Beurre blanc sauce, Moules Provençal, Guard of Honour (a fancy name for 2 racks of lamb leaning against each other for support), Roast rack of spring lamb with three sauces, Roast rack of spring lamb with cucumber Neapolitana (more cooked cucumbers ... when will this stop?!), Gratin of potato mushroom and thyme leaves, Aubergines with various toppings, Pommes Dauphine, Onion sauce (Sauce soubise), Tzatziki*, Classic creme brulee, Poached apricots with sweet geranium leaves, Walnut cake with American frosting, Mendiants, Rye and caraway seed bread. 

* I nearly needed to be restrained when the teacher demonstrated this recipe ... one of the ingredients was cream! Cream! And it gets worse ... the recipe suggested you can also add pinch of sugar! What?! Please do not try this at home. 

The Editor and I are off to the greyhound races ('the dogs') for the evening. I am hoping we back a winner so that I can buy more butter and make more brioche. Chomp.

P.S. This evening I will be baking a second batch of sourdough. I have not forgotten to add the salt this time so stay tuned for the results!

28 June 2012

This morning I got in early so that I could make a start on some brioche, which is a two-day process. Today's stage involved making a dough and slowly beating a large quantity of butter into it, piece by piece, until I was left with a luscious yellow dough. This process took over 20 minutes in an electric mixer... can you imagine making such a thing by hand?!. Tomorrow I will shape and bake the dough and then find a quiet corner somewhere where I can sit and quietly munch through the entire tray*.

* Just kidding... I never do anything quietly.  

The butter theme continued as I moved on to make puff pastry. The dough starts life innocently enough - flour, water and a pinch of salt. But then things go a bit bonkers - the dough is rolled out into a large rectangle whereupon an ENTIRE block of butter (that is nearly half a kilogram, people!) is placed in the centre and wrapped up like a present. A cardiac cadeau. I am not showing you a photo because it will ruin your enjoyment of vol-au-vents forever. 

In the next recipe I traded butter for my other dear friend, sugar. An almond meringue with strawberries and vanilla cream, to be precise. The meringue was crisp with a slight marshmallowy centre, the toasted almonds provided a crunchy surprise, the strawberries were juicy and the cream was, well, creamy. It wasn't a pavlova (clearly the greatest meringue dessert ever created), but it was special. And it tasted as good as it looked. 

You could go into a trance staring at a dessert like this ... 

In today's demonstration we learned to cook: Warm poached mackerel with Bretonne sauce, Soused mackerel with tomatoes and dill mayonnaise, Beef with red wine sauce (Delicious!!), Gratin of potatoes and gruyere, Bocca di Lupo's shaved radish salad, Gateau pithiviers**, Palmiers, Cheese straws, Croissants (I have now almost reached 90% butter content - if you push my skin it leaves an indent). 

** Oui, this is an intricate, delicate French tart made with puff pastry and filled with almond paste. It took our outrageously talented teacher quite some time to make, so I am slightly nervous about making it tomorrow ... perhaps I shall make a 'rustic' version ...

27 June 2012

Wednesday is theory day, and it always begins with an introduction to local and European cheeses. The cheese du jour was blue - Gorgonzola, Roquefort, Crozier ... which reminds me, Chester is turning into a mould monster. He is pictured below (back right) with the other cheeses that were made on the same day and he is by far the funkiest of the bunch. Hopefully this means he will also be the tastiest.

The morning demonstration was all about canapes and finger food: Marinated feta sundried tomato and olive skewers, Anchovy and sesame seed straws, Tiny smoked salmon sandwiches, Smoked salmon spirals, Thai curry bites, Tiny shepherd's pie, Teeny Yorkshire puds with rare roast beef and horseradish sauce (has anyone else noticed that this is all just normal food with the word 'tiny' added to it?), Cottage pie with garlic butter, Spicy Indian meatballs with pomegranate and coriander raita, Sweet pea guacamole with warm tortillas, Lamb on rosemary skewers, Lamb/pork/chicken satay, Spicy peanut satay sauce, Quail eggs with cumin and salt, Quail eggs with shrimps and mayonnaise, Quail eggs with smoked salmon, Scrambled eggs with smoked salmon melba toast and chives, Tiny fish kebabs*, Cheat's tarts with various fillings, Ragged filo tarts, Fish and chip canape, Grilled sourdough bread (yes, this is actually just bread, grilled and smothered in olive oil... apparently a revelation to some people but Greek children start eating bread and olive oil moments after exiting the womb).

* These are seriously tiny kebabs - they are actually threaded onto toothpicks instead of skewers. Delicious, but frankly who can be bothered?

Quail eggstravaganza

This afternoon we had a guest speaker - a local gamekeeper and his obedient black labrador, Benny. We walked back into the demonstration room after lunch to find it full of taxidermy game animals - duck, grouse, pheasant, woodcock, widgeon (I thought the game keeper had a speech impediment and was trying to say pigeon, but no, a widgeon is actually a bird). Normally on Wednesday afternoons we have a wine lecture, and frankly after seeing a room of stuffed dead birds, I could have used a drink. And then things got even more interesting - the gamekeeper showed us how to pluck and gut a pheasant AND remove the meat from a snipe by cracking off the wings and pushing your thumb into its breast ... seriously. How I wished there was gin in my water bottle ...

Benny the hunting dog.

26 June 2012

I suppose I should start this entry with a sourdough report. As promised, the moment the kitchen timer went off I tore off a hot corner of bread, slathered it with butter and devoured it. There are no photos of that first slice because there simply wasn't time - I would have had to put down the butter knife to pick up the camera. The crust was satisfyingly crunchy - it made a fantastically loud crack when bitten. The centre was light and airy - the little bubbles were perfect nesting places for blobs of melting butter. The taste ... well, there was no taste. I completely forgot to add salt to the dough and so the bread tasted of absolutely nothing ('supermodel sourdough' - good looking but no substance). On the positive side, that is a mistake I will not make twice.  Stay tuned for the second batch.

Today I made ravioli with sage butter.  It was the first time I had ever made pasta from scratch and I now understand what all the fuss is about. Let me take you on a homemade pasta journey ... the whole event starts with a dough made from flour, eggs, olive oil, salt and water. The dough is kneaded (by hand) for 10-15 minutes, left to rest in the fridge, rolled out on a pasta machine*, cut, filled with ricotta and herbs, folded and sealed - and hey presto, Ravioli! The plump little beauties are then cooked in salted water and tossed in melted butter and sage leaves. This process took three hours, but the final result was definitely worth the effort.  They were beyond delicious. Eating them was as close as I have ever come to a religious experience. Hallelujah!

* I have never been good at subtlety so I am just going to come out and say this ... I want one of these for my next birthday. Thanks Ed.

I also co-cooked zabaglione semi freddo with my kitchen partner. I don't usually share cooking, but this particular recipe requires you to stand over a bowl of egg yolks and whisk continuously for half an hour - not my idea of a good time. The basic mixture is egg yolks, sugar and a rather generous slog of both sherry and rum (not a dessert for a designated driver). There is a magic moment when the rather uninspiring eggy mixture suddenly turns into a pale creamy mousse. The mousse was then frozen and once semi-solid, served with an Italian fruit salad (Ciao!).

In today's demonstration we were shown how to cook: Lebanese cold cucumber soup*, Yoghurt parfait with mint oil and whey, Poached monkfish with red pepper sauce, Monkfish with red pepper vinaigrette, Braised fennel, Meringue roulade with strawberries, Lemon meringue roulade, Eton mess, Almond meringue with strawberries and cream, Coconut kisses, Puff pastry, and Pickled Ox tongue (I am trying to be open-minded, but ... no thanks).

*This is essentially runny tzatziki that you eat with a spoon. Allegedly refreshing. 

25 June 2012

I awoke this morning to a frightful sight in the kitchen ... Stanley had exploded!! It appears he over-ate*, then got a bit carried away and fermented his way right out of his jar, onto the kitchen counter and down the side of the cupboard. Turns out I was meant to transfer him to a bowl last night so that he could have room to rise. Whoopsies. But all was not lost - there was enough of Stanley left to make my sourdough - actually two loaves and they are in the oven as I type. The second I hear the timer go off I will be leaping out of this chair and risking serious burns to cut a thick slice and smother it with butter...

* Ok, I over-fed him ... it runs in my family. 

Stanley gets a turn in an industrial-sized mixing machine - the dough hook was  bigger than my head!

The twins.

I probably should not have opened the oven door to take this photo....

Back to today's recipes - I cooked beef rendang (apparently voted number one in a poll of the '50 most delicious dishes in the world'). It is incredibly delicious, but then again most things are after you add FOUR cans of full-fat coconut milk. I can see why the Indonesians traditionally only cook this dish for special occasions - each serving reduces your life expectancy by 10 days (disclaimer - I have no evidence of this). But it really good - so good in fact that The Editor popped by just to have a bowl. 

Also on my menu today were deep fried courgette flowers (yes, my curiosity with the deep fryer continues). The recipe was for simple battered flowers, which seemed a bit boring - so I stuffed mine with a little goats cheese and basil pesto and served them on a 'bed' (so pretentious) of reduced tomato, chilli and basil sauce. They looked like little money bags and they tasted divine.  I don't think I can fight it any longer ... I have to buy a deep-fryer. 

In today's extra fabulous** demonstration we learned to cooked: Homemade pasta, Pasta verde (pasta coloured with spinach), Pappardelle with chicken liver sauce, Lasagne verde, Tortellini with parsley and ricotta, Ravioli with sage butter, Cappelletti, Cannelloni, Fettuccine all'Alfredo, Vegetarian lasagne,  Ragu, Tomato and cream sauce, Panzanella (Tuscan bread salad), Tira Misu, Zabaglione semi freddo, and Italian fruit salad. 

Cute couple - Tortellini and Cappelletti

**All of the afternoon demonstrations are great (sort of like watching a live taping of a cooking show), but today we got to watch an ex-student (who has four year's experience at the River Cafe in London) hand make the most exquisite pasta shapes as effortlessly as I ate them. It was pure food porn. 

22 June 2012

Bill Clinton is in town. The relevance? Tonight he will be at a dinner where the starter is rumoured to be a plate of Irish shellfish, and I think that is why there was no seafood left for the rest of Ireland to cook. How selfish (or shellfish, even). I walked into the kitchen this morning expecting to find a bowl of 20 lovely pink prawns waiting for me to batter and deep-fry them. Instead I was shocked to come face to face with the ugliest cross-eyed critter to have been plucked out of the sea - the monkfish. Further horror ensued when the teacher casually stated - as he smacked the monster onto my chopping board - 'Watch out for its teeth - they are really sharp'. So, in addition to having fallen out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down this creature can maim you even in death and, as I soon discovered, has TWO layers of slippery skin to remove. Do yourself a favour and buy it already filleted.

The monkfish eventually became goujons, and the goujons eventually made it onto a plate with tartare sauce (mayonnaise with capers, gherkins, chopped hardboiled eggs and lemon juice) and chips.

Monkfish goujons having a meeting

I also made a wild rice salad from a curious recipe - all the measurements were in millilitres. Which is fine for ingredients which happen to be liquid (lemon juice, sesame oil, honey) but it is frankly a tad cuckoo when you're measuring out 500ml of green grapes and 125 mls of chopped basil. My theory is, if you have time to cautiously 'pour' grapes into a pyrex jug, you need to get out more. So I hazarded a guess at two handfuls of grapes and got on with my life. Incidentally, besides looking a bit schizophrenic, the salad tasted delicious.  

In this afternoon's demonstration both The Editor* and I learned to cook: Vietnamese rice paper rolls (shrimp and herbs), Rice paper spring rolls with Thai dipping sauce, Salmon with tomato and ginger in filo, Thai chicken curry, Red Thai chicken curry, Beef rendang, Thai green curry paste, Red curry paste, Thai jasmin rice, Wasinee Arjard (cucumber salad), Radish and broad bean salad, Rustic peach tart with summer berries, Raspberry ice-cream with fresh raspberry sauce, Strawberry ice-cream, Backlava, Moroccan snake (filo pastry filled with almond paste and shaped like a coil - it will not respond when you play a flute) and Almond fingers.

* Yes, he not only came to lunch, but he also stayed for the afternoon cookery demonstration! As such I am now expecting him to impress my family by whipping up a quick baclava when they pop round.

The Editor and I are off to Mayo for the weekend and I am taking my new pet, Stanley. Stanley is a sourdough starter - he is part flour, part water, all fermenting happily in a glass jar.  Why is he coming with us, you ask? I know what you are thinking - Plumpcious has gone completely bonkers ... she  is living in deepest rural Ireland, she already has a cheese named Chester and now she has befriended a glass jar who comes with her on vacations. Well, how cynical of you. The reality is, Stanley needs to be 'fed' every day with more flour and water, hence he must go wherever I go. And hopefully on Monday he will become my first loaf of sourdough bread. Stay tuned.

21 June 2012

Today, we went on a school field trip. Sixty students piled into a giant coach and held on tight as it negotiated the tiny winding "roads" of Cork. I had motion sickness within 30 minutes of leaving the school. Blurgh.

First stop - Mahon Point farmers market. We were each given a food token (yippee!) to redeem at a stall of our choice. I chose wood-fired buffalo mozzarella pizza, which came with an apology due to the fact it was partially "flame-licked". Maybe that's artisan food-speak for "burnt" (see for yourself below). Regardless, it was scrumptious. I bought feta cheese, haloumi, a seeded sourdough and a present for the Editor ... a cake popsicle masquerading as a piglet.

Second stop - Toonsbridge Dairy where we met a friendly herd of buffalo along with the friendly cheesemakers who turn their milk into mozzarella, parmesan, ricotta and even feta. The buffalo are best described as a cross between a cow and a puppy, giant bovines who excitedly approach strangers.

 

 

Third stop - Walton Mills, Macroom. The last remaining stone grinding mill in Ireland, the Walton family have been grinding their oatmeal since the early 1800s (and the packaging has never changed!) We have cooked with it at the school and it is absolutely delicious. I do not know how I am going to smuggle it back into Australia... 

Fourth stop - Deroiste Puddings. Not the chocolate kind - the kind that have fresh pig's blood in them. Mmmm. In all seriousness, black and white pudding is delicious.

Last stop - Urru Artisan Food store and Cafe. One of those shops where a foodie like me could easily spend a week's wages. I settled on a bottle of Bundaberg ginger beer for my queasy stomach, a packet of Italian risoni and some of Frank's garlic sausages which are 98% meat (and 100% munchable with fresh sourdough - Hungry Ed). I managed to resist (just) buying the tiniest, cutest bottle of balsamic vinegar I have ever seen, but I had to take a photo. What is the point of a pocket sized condiment? Is it for all those times you drive by some wild rocket growing by the motorway and you wish you had some balsamic so you could whip up an impromptu salad? Who cares, it's adorable. 

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have two bags of field trip bounty to munch through. Chomp chomp.

20 June 2012

This morning we had a 'Dynamic vegetarian demonstration' which involved: Sesame-ginger marinated tofu, Tofu in a curry coconut sauce, Chickpeas with chilli lime tamarind and coriander, Tabouleh, Red quinoa tabouleh with toasted pine nuts and pomegranates. Moro daal, Sweet potato and rice salad, Quinoa with herbs, Aubergine flan, Zucchini fritti, Deep-fried courgette flowers, Chickpea and red quinoa burgers, Onion bhajis with tomato and chilli sauce, Indian spices vegetable pakoras with mango relish, Irish cheddar cheese croquettes, Samosas, Cheese fondue*.

* If you happen to be a guest at a dinner party featuring cheese fondue, choose your seat wisely - apparently if your bread falls into the fondue you have to kiss the person to your right. Alternatively, you may see this as an opportunity to sit beside someone you fancy and then suddenly forget how to use a fork (Warning: this could backfire as they may be alarmed at your inability to use basic cutlery). 

The afternoon wine demonstration - what can I say. We turn up, we learn about wine, we get tipsy (or in my case, borderline drunk)... It's everything I ever wanted in a learning experience. 

As you all know, on Wednesday afternoons I have pilates class - my attempt at counteracting the fact that I am now 82% butter. Pilates involves a lot of stretching and some rather intense positions, and as such it is recommended that you do not consume food or liquid immediately before a class. Today, I attended the class after consuming lentils, chickpeas, onions, fried vegetables, six types of Irish farmhouse cheese ... AND ... 7 generous samples of wine. Ten minutes in we did a series of exercises on our stomachs whereby I immediately began to hiccup. Fifteen minutes in, the tranquil melody of dolphin calls was rudely punctuated by some rather unladylike grumblings. There is a lesson to be learned here - legumes, booze and group exercise do not mix. 

As there was no food to photograph this morning, I kindly stumbled out of bed at 5.20am to photograph dawn for you. Enjoy x

19 June 2012

Today, I cooked potato gratin, broad beans and seared chicken with mango salsa and roasted sweet potato wedges. Potato gratin is the 'low-fat' version of potato Dauphinoise. I say 'low fat' because it only has a stick of butter and a handful of grated cheese as opposed to a bucket of cream, or as the French would say 'Une buckette de la creme'*.

*That is not a precise measurement, nor is it French. 

Broad beans really make you work for them. First you need to get them out of their pods and then, apres cooking, you need to pop them out of the kookie pale-green sleeping bags they're in (and hopefully not burn your fingers). I started with my body weight in furry pods and ended up with this mean little bowl.

The chicken breasts came in the form of a whole chicken which I had to joint. No problem. The sweet potatoes needed to be cut into wedges. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. The mango salsa was sent to test me. From the outside the mango felt soft and luscious ... once cut I realised it was not a mango at all, it was a pale orange brick. It took me 10 minutes to cut it into cubes ... I had to sharpen my knife halfway through. Then I had to cut a red onion which was so pungent I had tears running down my cheeks.  So now I looked like a crazy panda (Yes, I wear makeup in the kitchen ... I cook better when I look better).  The onion was followed by a chopped chilli, which I invariably rubbed into my eye. Fabulous. By the time I got to the lime I was terrified at what new torture might befall me. The final result was a simple looking dish, but I felt like a survivor.  

Today in demonstration we were shown how to cook: Thai chicken galangal and coriander soup, Chicken and coconut laksa, Beer batter, Salt and pepper squid, Fish and chips, Scampi or deep-fried prawns, Plaice/Sole a l'Orly, Crispy deep fried mackerel, Goujons of plaice, Sole or monkfish, Fritto misto de mare (deep fried miscellaneous seafood), Crab cakes with coriander, Spicy crab cakes with Thai dipping sauce, Tartare sauce, Namjim, Tomato and avocado salsa, Mushy peas with mint, Wild rice salad, Panna cotta with grappa and raspberries, Panna cotta with green gooseberry and elderflower compote, Yoghurt ice-cream with burnt caramel, Elderflower fritters**.

**Someone has taken my enthusiasm for the deep-fryer to a whole new level - battered deep fried elderflowers. You know you have a problem when you are batch frying plants. 

18 June 2012

Today, I decided to branch out and experiment with a new bread (sorry my beloved butter dough): Brown yeast bread. Unlike other breads which start life as a gorgeous elastic dough, this bread mix looked like something you would muck out of a stable. Sloppy, brown and smelling faintly like molasses ... blurgh. The resulting bread looked pretty, but tasted like it was good for you, so it wasn't for me. 

After the bread I made a Besancon apple tart. You wouldn't want to make this dessert in a hurry - it involves making shortcrust pastry, chilling it, rolling it, lining the tin, resting it, blind-baking it, egg-washing it, blind-baking it again ... and all this before you even get to making the tart! The filling is thin slices of apple arranged painstakingly into a fan shape and then smothered in sieved custard. After baking, the tart was slicked with a seriously thick layer of apricot glaze and then left to rest for a while before being cut. It was delicious, but like a lot of French recipes, time-consuming and temperamental. 

While I was waiting for my tart to cook, I used some leftover pastry to make a miniature gooseberry tart for The Editor. Gooseberries are like rock-hard sour grapes - they are quite delicious but they require an alarming amount of sugar to make them edible. (It was presented to me after dinner with cream and a flower and was delicious enough to soften the inevitable pain of Ireland's latest loss at Euro 2012. Perfect balance between sweet and sour and brought back long-forgotten childhood memories of cheek-suckingly sour gooseberries. Mmm. - Ed).

Finally I made bruschetta with cannellini beans, tomato and basil. It's fancy beans on toast people, I am not going to go into details.

Today we learned how to cook: Gratin of goats cheese with ruby beetroot and pine nuts, Salad of smoked mackerel with beetroot watercress and horseradish sauce, Hot-smoked salmon, Salad of hot smoked salmon beetroot horseradish cream and watercress, Seared chicken with mango salsa and roast sweet potato wedges, Grilled chicken with summer marjoram and lemon, How to prepare a chicken paillarde, Chargrilled chicken paillarde with aioli and roast cherry tomatoes, Pollo al Mattone with French beans and roast onions and sage, Parsley and garlic oil, Gratin of potato and spring onion, Gratin Lyonnaise, Roast Duck salad with lentils pomegranate and rocket leaves, Lemon tart with lemon ice cream and candied julienne of lemon peel, Date tart, Brioche.

Chester update - he has gone from being the least mouldy cheese in the fridge to the mouldiest, stinkiest thing I have ever seen!! (Apart from an old piece of toast I once found behind the couch). 

15 June 2012

It all started with a seemingly innocent pie which should have easily been completed within the three hours we have to cook each day. The reality was, the filling of the pie had to be slow cooked for hours and then cooled completely, the pastry topping had to be chilled every time you so much as glanced at it (when you are 90% butter you don't hold up well in a hot kitchen) and my oven was not co-operating. So I never actually got to eat lunch, but I did get to bring it all home for dinner.

The pie which was my undoing was a steak and oyster pie. Apparently this pie originated during a time when oysters were cheap and plentiful and beef was not - the oysters were used to 'fill out' the meat. Considering the tables have turned, I think this pie should now be forcibly retired. For someone who cannot stand oysters, I resented the half hour I spent wrestling them open just so they could ruin a perfectly good steak pie. Humph. It was like making a beautiful chocolate cake, and then spreading it with Marmite instead of icing. On the bright side, I finally got to use the flaky pastry I made on Wednesday which was delicious, although I would probably enjoy it more if I was blissfully unaware of the amount of butter in it (how my pants have not split is a miracle).

Next on the menu was the delightfully named rumbledethumps. I do not know the origins of this dish, but I imagine a disgruntled parent got sick of their child's reluctance to eat cabbage, stirred it into some mashed potato with cream and butter and christened the new dish with a name that any youngster would find amusing (try to say it without smiling, I dare you). My rumbledethumps tasted great, but looked rather like potato soup - I got a little carried away with the cream. Oops. I am not including a photo of this dish because it would be a bad advertisement.

Next was bread made from butter and milk dough - the best bread I have ever made (says the girl who has been baking bread for a mere seven weeks). It is a white yeast bread that has a brioche-like texture which means it's like biting into a delicious cloud. So heavenly! I could not wait to get home to cut a thick pillowy slice and smother it with butter - I am chomping as I type (I am chomping as I watch football and listen to her type - Ed). Please enjoy this possibly excessive photo album of my beloved bread ... I call it 'loaf love'.

Today in demonstration we learned how to cook: Crab and asparagus with Thai mayonnaise on sourdough, Crab toasts with lemon aioli, Ballycotton crab crumble, Bruschetta, bruschetta with parma ham goats cheese and onion jam, Sardine and roasted tomato bruschetta, Canellini bean and tomato bruschetta, Grilled sourdough bread with broad beans and garlic, How to prepare a duck or goose, Roast stuffed duck with Brambly apple sauce, Roast duck with traditional potato stuffing, traditional roast goose, Rhubarb sauce, Zucchini Trifolati (zucchini cooked to within an inch of its existence), Red cabbage, Spiced aubergine sandwich with goat's cheese and rocket leaves, Broadway coleslaw (it has its name in lights), Green salad with verjuice dressing, Besancon apple tart, Caramelized apple tart, Rhubarb and custard tart, French apple tart (apple pastry topped with a beret, riding a bicycle).

Tomorrow The Editor and I are going on a 'tasting trail' of Cork city. I am literally eating my way around the country ...