Cooking up a storm

We changed cooking partners this week.I am partnered with Rocky from London England. Rocky is going into 4th year university. In the mornings we are assigned 4 recipes between and we both do 2 and help each other keep things clean. Yesterday I cooked Macaroni and cheese which requires one to make a Bechamel sauce, a sauce of butter and flour and a mornay sauce which is a sauce of butter, flour and cheese. Both basic and fundamental sauces in cooking. I also cooked another soda bread which one makes from flour, milk, salt and baking soda. A very simple bread. We all eat a very large lunch of the food we cooked in the morning. In the afternoon we have demonstrations on 10 various meals of which each team will make 4 of the next day. The demonstrations are a little on the long side and because they are after a large lunch, I have found myself nodding off at times.

I have been getting up a little early every morning to help out in the bread shed. The work mainly involves weighing sour dough bread batter and shaping it for baking which is a technique that I wasn't able to master on my own. Timothy Allen who owns Ballymaloe also hangs out in the bread shed with 3 of the bakers Jane. Daniel and Micheal. Three of the other students Renner and Raleigh from Park City Utah and Lizzie from London England are also regulars in the bread shed so I have got to know them a little better.

It has been warm and sunny in southern Ireland so after classes a lot of students have been swimming at the nearby beach. While the heatwave in the rest of Europe is pushing temperatures into the mid 30s, Ballymaloe is only hitting highs of 23 so although hot for Ireland, it isn't too warm.

We have some additional tasks to do here. Monday I got to feed food scraps to the chickens. They feed the food scraps to the chickens and then compost it with the chicken manure. Who doesn't like chickens.Read more