Day 75: Ciablatta

Two days left in the kitchen, and you gotta make them count. Or do you? Today I am lined up to make coffee ice cream and roulades of smoked salmon. That’s it. Whisk some eggs, make a syrup. Whisk them up together, fold in whipped cream and freeze. Slice some salmon. Mix Philadelphia with cream and dill, season, spread on the salmon, roll up and refrigerate. Hardly three hours’ worth there.

What can I add to this miniature roll call of skills to optimise my remaining six hours in the kitchen? Well, there’s ciabatta of course. One last roll of the dice. I have a recipe from Bread Matters that involves a sponge from yesterday and a rye starter, so I water down a little of my sourdough starter to keep the proportions of the original recipe intact. In general, I think the word impossible is often misused. People often employ it to define things that are eminently possible, but simply beyond their own meek powers. I can’t be certain that I am not doing this now, but the dough is impossibly wet. Actually it is more of a puddle than a dough. There is structure there, just. But then there is structure in the guano one has to remove from one’s windscreen after being forced to park under a particularly large tree. In the book he even suggests kneading it like a concertina, not letting it touch the work surface. He has to be taking the piss.

I follow his instructions, and keep the batter like 'dough' under a bowl on my work surface. I have to keep it under a bowl - it is the only way of limiting its slow and steady expansion. Even with the bowl, I keep having to mop up bits of it that have leeched out from under the glass. It is more like a bad science experiment than a bread.

I give it time to develop structure before having a crack at the secondary kneading. This involves getting dough scrapers underneath, stretching one end of it out, away from the surface, then folding it back in on itself. You repeat this for the four points f the compass, helping stretch the gluten and improve structure. Each time you must allow the dough to relax. After a few of these workings, I begin to sense the first tiny shoots of stability in my nascent bread. I keenly latch onto these and attempt to decant onto a baking tray for the final proving. This is a disaster. (Try it yourself - pour a pint of water onto a table, and attempt to put it back in the glass with your bare hands. Use flour if you think this will make it easier). I optimistically cover the pat with a tea towel, in the hope that some form of alchemy way beyond my comprehension might rescue the situation. It doesn’t, and the hens benefit to the tune of some flour, yeast, salt and water that I have kindly amalgamated for them.

If it sounds like all this took a long time - it didn't. I ambled my way through the ice cream and salmon with the unenthused, idle swagger of your average tracksuit clad, hoodie wearing, pre-pubescent Islington chav. Like them, I just couldn't be fucked. I filled my spare, unforgiving minutes with sixty seconds worth of coffee drunk. By lunchtime the caffeine was about the only thing still alive inside me.

Penultimate demo after lunch, and the last one from which we will have to cook. I really, really can’t be arsed by this stage. I have the shittest after demo duty as well; basically washing up all the crap from the afternoon, so I have to be there at the end. This is probably the only thing that prevents me from just driving home and sleeping for the next three days. Also, we are cooking lobster and scallops, two of my favourite things. The demo is better than most of them have been this week, but the standard is still below what we are used to. This is the only week of the course so far where our favourite instructor hasn’t taken a demo. It shows. Without him the course would be pretty lightweight.

The lobster recipes are okay but I’m not sure about the scallops. Poaching them seems criminal. The crime is exacerbated when they are plated up in their shells with mashed potato piped around the edges. I defy you to go anywhere in the world where this kind of presentation is considered normal. And you’re not allowed to use a time machine either. Continuing the seventies theme, when we do fry some in the pan they get drowned in beurre blanc and presented in a cringingly retro yellow puddle.

The good news is that there will be scallops and lobster in the kitchen on Monday. And I am guessing that the Mary Celeste theme will return and there will be no one around to cook them. I certainly hope so - then I can ditch my scheduled lamb tagine (heeeelp meeeee) and sear some scallops in a little olive oil. Just three hours left in the kitchen. It would be a shame to waste them. Maybe I could find a little ciabatta recipe from somewhere to pass the time…