It’s okay - I’ve calmed down. A bit. Or maybe I’m just too tired to be angry any more, it’s hard to tell. I was still angry earlier, but resisted the temptation to vent my frustration, took a few deep breaths and started making a ciabatta biga in one of the kitchens instead of having my lunch in the dining room where I may have been tempted to have words with the twat.
I had to take the car in this morning, so was up at 7am after an inadequate weekend’s kip to drop it off and cadge a lift to school. I got in around half 8 to discover I was on stock duty, which starts at 8. I just didn’t know. But then ignorance of the law is no defence, so I will have to make up for it later in some ball breaking way no doubt.
I use my early arrival to flaunt the rules and practice an exam dish - ruby grapefruit and pomegranate sorbet. I use my own ingredients, and my own time, so I can’t see too much wrong with that. It’s a good job I did too, since I have sussed out a few things that will prove handy. Namely, that he sorbetiere I used is shit, and that there is a far superior one elsewhere in the school that I must use in the exam. I also get to check the sweetness of the recipe, and try out the presentation. Some people thought it needed more sugar, but I wasn't one of them.
For the exam we all have to make a bread, to be determined by ballot. This means I need to revisit some of the earlier ones I made just to remind myself, so I knock up a white soda. Except I balls it up totally, having forgotten all the golden rules of soda breads that I learnt about two months ago. Luckily my brilliant teacher, Debbie, puts me straight. They are a complete doddle to make, if you can just remember how.
I don’t really have a great deal else to do today - roast a rack of lamb, make redcurrant sauce and cook some cabbage. I start by prepping the lamb, which I have done a good few times before. In the hotel kitchen they just discard the section you cut from the rib, but today we are cooking them in breadcrumbs as Epigrams, meaning I have to be a bit more gentle and fillet the rib bones individually, which takes longer. The epigrams go in flour, egg and breadcrumbs and onto a tray. One guy can’t remember the order you do this. It’s easy I tell him - flour, egg, crumb, or “FEC” for short.
Ribs ready, epigrams fecced. I cheat on the redcurrant sauce recipe and whack the frozen redcurrants and sugar together in the pan. The frozen ones shed so much water you don’t need to add any. They cook until they burst, when the tartness of the currants and the sweetness of the sugar mingle and form the sauce. I prep the cabbage, and now have some time to kill.
Since I naused up the béarnaise a few weeks back, I want to give it another go. I can put fresh mint through it instead of tarragon to adapt it for the lamb. This time I keep the heat plenty low enough, and the whole thing goes off swimmingly. By the time I finish that, I’m ready to cook my cabbage, and once that’s out of the way the lamb comes out.
The way to test a roasted joint of meat’s readiness is with a skewer. You plunge it into the deepest part of flesh (the animal’s, not your own) and count to five. When you pull it out, you place it on a sensitive piece of skin, like the wrist or the cheek, to assess its heat. Obviously it takes a bit of practice to learn the different temperatures, but you have to start somewhere. I take my skewer out and it is hotter than the sun. I rest the rack for twenty minutes or so before plating up, when I carve a rib and discover that it is indeed well cooked. No one seems to mind though, since we were supposed to be cooking them no less than medium anyway.
With my lamb plated up I turn to the sorbet. It is formed of fairly large ice crystals, thanks to the crappy machine, which gives it an unsatisfactory texture, a bit like a slush puppy that you put in the freezer. I manage to get a few scoops out of it and plate up with grapefruit segments and pomegranate seeds. After tasting I decant it into the decent machine and am amazed when I return twenty minutes later to find a proper sorbet with the texture of ice cream.
I pretty much skip lunch, and head for demo, which today is pasta. It drags on a bit, as it often does on a Monday. There are a few highlights; ravioli with sage butter is very good. The desserts are promising but fail to deliver spectacularly. The panna cotta has the consistency of the strawberry jelly they serve up in Parkhurst. It has had a serious overdose of gelatine and is frankly, dangerous. The tiramisu sucks too. It is too boozy. I am really starting to see the appeal of the alcohol free tiramisu that my friends made a few weeks back. It’s funny because in the Trattoria in Youghal the other week I tried both the tiramisu, which was excellent, and the panna cotta, which was life changingly good. We’re going back this week, and I am asking for the recipe.
As if my day wasn't long enough already, we have an olive oil lecture and tasting. The definition of lecture round here is one person reading out loud a set of notes that everyone already has and embellishing them with a series of lengthy tangential anecdotes and incomprehensible descriptions of ancient olive presses. My penance for missing duty this morning is to clear up after this, so by the time I get home, it is gone 8.30pm. Still, the alternative was to get in at 8am tomorrow and mince beef for everyone’s ragu, so I guess I should be thankful.
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