The Missing Gin

Team, it has been several weeks since my last blog post and I know what so many of you are thinking- “where the hell is the conclusion of the Ballymablog?!” And what a great question that is. In my time since being home I have scored two part time jobs that are taking up a lot of my mental bandwidth. Therefore this project has fallen to the wayside. I am however determined to finish what I have started. The final posts are written, I just need to polish them off. And also this is a free newsletter that I get no payment from so you will get these when you get them and be appreciative, damnit. But as always- thanks for sticking around. Much love, MK. Now onto the blog!

Saturday

The pop-up night has arrived! We served five courses, with a different group of students responsible for each course. Guests were welcomed with canapes and bubbly in the main entrance of the school. Then we escorted our 70 guests into the dining room where we offered them small starter dishes and a side salad. Meat eaters got mussels with kale, leeks and an apple cider broth. Vegetarians got a scotch egg* with a kimchi drizzle. After that, meat eaters got a ham hock pie with black pudding and kale puree while veggies got a main course of squash gnocchi with a miso onion broth and crispy sage. Dessert was a raspberry kombucha sorbet with meringue and crème anglaise^ and finally petit fours of small chocolates and cakes. Since both the starter and the main course have animal protein in them the vegetarian team was responsible for creating dishes two dishes for the 12 vegetarians that were dining with us. The plating for the starter was a little tricky as we were trying to defy gravity (see photo below). As meticulous and stressful as that round of plating was, we crushed it. Next up we had the main course. Everything that could go wrong kind of did. Our plates weren’t warm. The sauce was looser than we anticipated. The number of plates we needed kept changing. And your sweet Matt got a little mean. But fret not, we got it all done. Our diners were happy and people told me that I wasn’t mean, just passionate. I was assisting the head chef of the vegetarian team so I wanted our food to reflect well of him. When the pressure of time and many hands/voices scrambling around our food was added to the equation, I got frustrated and chose some words and actions that weren’t polite. It was a side of myself I hadn’t seen before but I wasn’t mad at it. I was given a task to execute and if you stood in my way? Be damned. So to those I barked at, I am sorry- but don’t let it happen again (kidding… sort of). After service and a long night of clean up, we trotted on down to the pub to blow off some steam and celebrate Alice’s birthday. I got a headache from all the stress of the evening, so I laid off the sauce. After the pub, we relocated to a cottage where an all-out rager erupted. It was exceptional people watching. Alice falsely accused our friend Emma of stealing her bottle of gin which the real housewives fanatic in me loved, but the friend who had to make sure Alice didn’t do anything she regretted in the morning had to put a stop to. After we scoured the broken glass covered floors for our shoes, I lured my friends back to our cottage with the promise of chips/crisps and water.

Sunday

Despite everyone's wretched hangovers, I convinced a few brave friends to join me at the Ballymaloe Craft Fair that was happening at the Ballymaloe House, the main hotel and restaurant. We all hopped in the cab and listened to Mick, the cab driver, tell us all about how his wife used to work at the house before starting her own bed and breakfast. I could listen to Mick tell me stories about his life all day long. He has such a lovely Irish cadence to his voice and is truly a gifted storyteller.

The Ballymaloe craft fair is an annual ordeal where people commute in from all across Ireland to sell their products, buy new things, eat good food, and be merry. The setup is similar to a flea market, with lots of booths offering their homemade whatchamacallits. We shopped, we strolled, and I had a big bowl of soup. A lovely cap on a busy weekend.

Monday

I made pasta again today. Don’t panic, I had a lovely time. I enjoyed having a pasta rolling machine all to myself as only a handful of others were also making pasta that day. This week my instructor is Laura, a recent grad of Ballymaloe herself. 

Last Friday, we learned about our final exam, which will consist of a three course meal we need to make in 3 hours. We decide what to cook and must finalize our menus by Thursday of this week. While I was rolling out my pasta for today’s sage butter ravioli, I picked Laura’s brain for any menu selection advice. Officially, teachers cannot tell us “do this” or  “don’t do that” but can offer us things to think about. She told me that it’s a forgiving test, and not to lose sleep over it. She also said, “you’ll never be in a situation where you have to make a three course meal by yourself in 3 hours. So be kind to yourself.” And as a radical act of self-kindness, I had a heaping portion of my sage butter ravioli for lunch that day.

Tuesday

Okay team, the term is winding down faster than I’d like and I have NOT spent nearly enough time in the bread shed. The bread shed is a freight container on the school’s property that has been retrofitted to be a bread bakery. Students can join in the fun of bread baking every morning starting at 6 am, before morning cooking. I’d been once or twice before but decided this morning I had to wake up and get that bread. I began the six-day process of creating my own sourdough starter today. This is achieved by letting water and flour ferment together over the course of a few days to create a natural rising agent. I now must visit my little starter every morning and feed it more flour and water until it is bubbly and ready to use in a sourdough loaf. Let’s see if I have the strength to persevere.

Wednesday

We had a sushi demonstration today. I was very skeptical of what sushi class on a farm in Ireland would look like, but I was pleasantly surprised. Our lecturer was a woman who had previously taught at the school and got her start working in Japanese restaurants. She stressed that she is not a sushi master in the slightest. Sushi masters can take up to 11 years to perfect their craft. Furthermore she explained that sushi has a rich, time-honored cultural history that she, a white Irish person, would not be able to impart in a three-hour lecture. That level of awareness was very nice to see. I did learn quite a bit though! For example the term sushi just refers to a dish being served with a specific type of vinegared rice. Sushi only became what we know it as today in the 1800s. So essentially, a bowl of sushi rice and any assortment of vegetables and proteins could be considered sushi; it is often eaten as such in many parts of Japan. Neat! There are also very specific ratios of water to vinegar to follow when making sushi rice. It is not just a one to two ratio as it would be for a jasmine rice or something similar. Forgive the very corny sounding observation but food is genuinely a window into history and unfamiliar cultures. Like, I know in my lifetime I will not be a sushi master- I simply don’t have the time to devote 11 years in Japan. However, learning about sushi and its history was incredibly interesting and gave me a new appreciation for the culinary marvel that it is. I did however get to make an amateur roll today- it was fun and delicious.

ThursdayThanksgiving

For my international contingent of fans, Thanksgiving is an American holiday you probably already know everything about because we shove our culture down everyone’s throats. If you seriously have no idea, it is a big eating fest featuring a large roasted turkey. You get together with family and/or friends and celebrate some ethically fraught American history. Something silly and fun we often do at my family dinner table is go around and share what we are thankful for. This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for my boyfriend because he came all the way from America to visit and he arrived today! His name is Beau and he is quite a nice fellow. He arrived on a great day as many of us students got together at the pub to celebrate submitting our final menus for our practical exams. We also had a small “Thanksgiving-ish” dinner of spatchcock chicken†, some roasted veggies, and a nice tomato salad. Beau traveled by planes, trains, and automobiles to arrive at the coast of Ireland which was concluded with a cab ride by our beloved Shanagarry taxi driver, Mick. Since his wife runs a beautiful Bed and Breakfast, I knew Beau had to stay there. Mick very kindly picked Beau up from the train station to bring him to Ballymaloe. He got Mick’s full life story during the 30-minute ride, including this excerpt which makes me giggle every time I think about it. (try your best to read this in an Irish accent) “I remember the first time I had stew.”

Friday

Guests of students have the opportunity to join us for lunch and afternoon demo which is exactly what Beau did today. The bed and breakfast he was staying at was just a short stroll away from the school. While I would love for Beau to stay in my cottage with me- I only have a twin bed and overnight guests are not welcome as a rule. I drew him a humble little treasure map to take the back paths into the school. Thanks to my fantastic map drawing skills and Beau’s gift for expert navigation, he arrived at lunch right on time. I had prepared a freekeh salad and a roast duck, but as Beau doesn’t eat land meat, I had to make sure my guy had some other treats to make up for the lack of duck. I gave him two healthy options- a chocolate soda bread and a caramel ice cream (all of the ingredients were organic so that makes it all healthy). Following lunch and demo, the gang and I piled in the back of Mick’s taxi cab to take us back on over to the craft fair for drinks, food, and festivities with friends. This weekend I get to show Beau around Cork. Stay tuned for that!

BallymaBlog playlist

*A softly boiled egg typically wrapped in sausage meat and breading and deep fried. For this vegetarian context we wrapped it in a potato mixture with veggies
^A sweet custard sauce often the base for many ice creams

†A way to roast chicken by removing the back bone to lay the bird flat on a tray offering a quicker and more even cook of the chicken