Ballymaloe Day 11, 23rd January - Demo Debut

Into Week 3 and this week I was in the Demo Kitchen. This meant there was only six of us and loads of bowls and utensils and serving plates to use. It also meant there was a new kitchen to get used to and I had to ask where everything was all over again. This took up a bit of time, which I should have allowed for in my morning's schedule. It's much easier when you have been in the same kitchen a while (she says, having been here two weeks), as you can save time when you know where the parchment paper or ground almonds are kept. And, int the Demo Kitchen you can pretend to be Rachel presenting to an (empty) room of students... err maybe that's just me.

Anyway, there was no time for that as I had to get on with my sorbet. I juiced loads of oranges and kept the empty halves for making candied peel which we have to do on the course. Then I sieved the seeds from the passion fruits, added the fruit juice to a cooled syrup and put in the sorbetiere. Then my partner and I made the spiced chutney and I began the cabbage soup. The trick with the green soups is keeping the colour in them, but I have to be honest, it was hard to be inspired by cabbage soup even though it tasted good. Out of everything today I was most pleased with the sorbet; after churning in the sorbetiere I put it in the blast freezer which cools anything way faster than a domestic one.

Cabbage Soup - looks less anaemic in real life!

Passion Fruit & Orange Sorbet, Spiced Chutney

In the afternoon's demonstration Rachel showed us how to joint a raw chicken for use in several different dishes. That will be tomorrow's big challenge! She also made some white root vegetable soups, raita and a kale salad. For dessert there were lemon and chocolate sponge puddings - very tasty!

Tomorrow I am cooking a lovely indian dish, spiced chicken breast with almonds, the kale salad and continuing my candied peel. In the evening after turning our cheese a few of us in the house went to see a film 'Our Daily Bread' at the school, it shows a montage of scenes of modern food production with no voiceover. Frightening stuff!

Cock o'the walk

This bad boy keep waking everyone up in the morning! I'll be getting my revenge tomorrow when I'm chopping up his cousin!