Six Wines and Stingrays

You guys, I had an incredibly fulfilling weekend. This Saturday I did the thing I was most nervous and excited about- I worked in the Ballymaloe House Kitchen. Ballymaloe House is the very prestigious Irish culinary institution of which, of course, the school is related to. It is a hotel with a world-renowned restaurant focusing on refined organic, local and sustainable food with. As an extracurricular at Ballymaloe (the school), you can work a dinner shift at the Ballymaloe House (the restaurant). On my way to the restaurant today, I felt first-day-of-new-job anxiety, tempered by the comfort of knowing that if they hate me, I never have to come back. Upon arrival around 2:00 pm I was introduced to the head chef, Andy, and the chef I’d primarily be working with, James. They were welcoming but definitely in work mode. James tasked me with peeling ~200 shrimp. He apologized for the shitty task, but it was honestly no sweat. I assumed I’d be doing a little grunt work similar to when I worked that afternoon at the school with Florrie prepping food for the day course (see this post).

Once my endless shrimp decapitating came to a close, I prepped side salads and beef carpaccio* under James’ watchful eye. Finally around 6:30, service got rolling and the kitchen felt a lot more systemized. I did my best to pick up on the communication system and plating rhythm, and timed my questions carefully. I plated a lot of side salads, beef carpaccios, and then leveled up to scooping sorbet which I honestly wasn’t great at- but it was fine, not a lot of people ordered the sorbet.

The busy dinner service ended around 10pm. I was told not to help with cleaning because I wasn’t getting paid. But I was here to do the damn thing so I finally convinced them to let me put leftovers away into containers and label them. The team then sent me off with a plate of food consisting of what we made that evening and a “good job, Matt.” As I was leaving I thanked Andy for the evening. Much to my delight, he told me that I did a great job and he would love to see me come back and work for him any time (!!!). I’m really proud of myself.

I don’t have much else to say that doesn’t feel braggadocious so I’ll leave it at that with one small epilogue. An intoxicated friend of mine and his intoxicated parents were at the restaurant that evening and invited me to join them for an espresso martini, and I’m not in the business of turning down a free espresso martini. What a night!

Sunday

Took another day trip to Cork today to eat food and walk around. We had heard wondrous things about this Japanese street food shop called Miyazaki and the hype was well deserved. We arrived right as it opened which was good because immediately all the seats were filled. I got fried chicken with rice. Sounds simple until you bite into the fried chicken and realize it has a soup dumpling component. Like the fried coating of the chicken was filled with a broth along with the chicken. The rice had an otherworldly aioli mixed in. Aside from our main dishes, we also decided to get two more dishes to share just in case the full meals we had weren’t filling enough. We left feeling uncomfortably full in the best way.

Monday

Today I made potstickers which I was kind of nervous about messing up, but I pulled through. As with baking, making a little appetizer like this one has steps that you have to get just right. You want to make sure the filling is well seasoned but not overpowering. The dough must be thin enough, while also being not too wet nor too dry. Cook the filling, but don’t let the wrapper burn. A lot of moving parts. My teacher this week is a woman who grew up in Russia named Julia. She helped me fold some dumplings since I had quite a number to manage- her dumplings looked suspiciously like Pierogies. Ultimately we hit it outta the park and they were pretty fun to make

Tuesday

Pasta day ruined me. I’m being dramatic but sheesh. I made a dish called Cannelloni which involved a béchamel sauce^ in two different states and perfectly measured pieces of pasta. I was not the only one who struggled today. Sixty students fought over 6 pasta rolling machines. I love being here but something I will include on my course feedback is more pasta machines. Not just for our sake but for the instructors’ sanity as well.

To begin, I made my béchamel sauce and set half aside. Then I combined the rest of my béchamel sauce with uncooked ground pork to make a goop that became the filling in my dish. Once I had my goops and goos set aside, I got moving on the pasta. This process was actually pretty straightforward. Pasta is just flour and egg mixed together until you get the consistency you are going for. Once your dough comes together you want to knead it for around 10 minutes until it is light and springy. Cannelloni usually is a large cylindrical pasta shape- kind of like a large penne. However the technique I was using called for me cutting the pasta into squares, popping in some loose pork béchamel filling, and rolling those squares up to make a tube shape. Once my loose tubes were prepped, I put them into a casserole and topped with regular béchamel. The recipe Julia and I were following seemed to have been written in Shakespearean English as it was nearly impossible to understand. After we sought advice from three other instructors and made sure what we were doing was correct, the Cannelloni went into the oven to bake and came out looking somewhat presentable. Julia gave it a thumbs up and I then promptly closed the book on pasta day.

Wednesday

During week 1, we prepared some homemade wine. First we had to pluck all of the grapes off of the vines, then we had to crush them. No we did not crush the grapes with our feet, we just used our hands. As fun as that still sounds, my hands lost feeling after about 5 minutes as we were outside in the autumnal air and the grapes were quite chilly. But it was all for the love of wine, even if we did have to wait several weeks for it to ferment.

And today, the wait was finally over. The juices had fermented and it was time to try our beautiful homemade wine. The whole class lit up with joy and excitement to taste our craft, and it was so incredibly nasty. Tasted like nail polish remover. Our teacher told us that this may be the outcome as it was still a pretty young ferment, and it was a natural wine. He also described what steps you’d take to make it more drinkable but it was the sixth wine we tasted and I don’t remember much of what he said.

Thursday

Came face to face with another beast of the deep today- a stingray. Last time I saw one of these up close and personal was at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago when I was just a wee lad†. There is a tank there where you can dip your hand in and a stingray will swim up to you and allow you to pet them. And today, a stingray laid dead on my cutting board. What a world. It was much smaller than I expected, which was a relief I suppose. Nevertheless, under the guidance of Julia, I butchered and poached this flappy sea creature and served it with a warm coriander/cilantro butter. Julia said it was perfect. Personally, I was still having a Shedd Aquarium existential crisis which clouded my judgment of the dish. It was probably fine though. I also made a delicious vanilla and date tart which harmed no creatures of the deep.

Friday

On some days I feel like I actually signed up for Ballymaloe butchery school instead of cookery school. Today was one of those days. I was visited again by the notorious monkfish. Just on luck of the draw I feel like I get a lot of recipes that require intense butchery of an animal. I’m not mad about it. In fact it makes me feel very badass that I can do all this stuff correctly. The one downside, it makes me smell like raw fish or meat the rest of the day- yuckaroo! Today I made a poached monkfish with shoestring frites, and pomegranate and tomato drizzle. I had a disagreement with Julia today because I selected a dish for plating that she deemed “too big.” I was going for drama but she wasn’t sold. She went to get a different plate for me to use, however it ended up being the exact same diameter of the plate that I selected originally. I won the battle. But at the end of the day, Julia is the one grading me so I used the plate she selected. She won the war.

This evening was our final prep session for our pop up restaurant we are organizing for tomorrow. Everyone is on edge with anticipation. Will we rise to victory and serve our patrons the meal of a lifetime? Will we crash and burn and stir up embarrassment and peril for the prestigious Ballymaloe Cookery School? Tune in to the next blog to find out. (spoiler alert: we did well). See you next time!