With my merde en place I stride confidently in the direction of the kitchen. Order of work in hand, knives sharpened, whites clean, apron pressed. First bit of news - I had an 8am duty that I was blissfully unaware of. Luckily some kind soul covered for me, and I will repay the favour by doing her chores later in the day. Merde en place my arse.
I am bullish with my order of work - straight in amongst it. First on the list is cleaning up the chicken livers for my pâté. I get in early and pick nice dark livers that will have more flavour. They’re on the pan in the foaming butter, my thyme and garlic is ready to rock and all is rosy in the garden. You have to be careful not to cook them too slowly, or they basically poach themselves. Too quickly and they crust on the outside. I decant them in the magimix and deglaze the pan with brandy. (The last time I had my hand on a bottle of brandy this early in the morning was after my greatest loss in my previous incarnation as a bookmaker - a couple of times the bottle almost reached my lips but somehow the premonition of a lifetime drinking cheap liquor from brown paper bags held me back). Unfortunately I have allowed the pan to cool as I decant, so it is not hot enough to ignite the brandy, and I lose the opportunity to show off and look like I know what I’m doing. I add the thyme and garlic to the pan and scrape its luscious contents into the mixer. This has to cool before I start adding the copious amounts of butter.
The pâté under control, I begin on my almond tartlets. The mixture is equal quantities of ground almonds, sugar and creamed butter. They go in the oven and come out a lovely golden brown colour. I load up a second tray. They go in the oven and come out a dark brown colour. Fortunately I had been stupid enough to make twice as many as I needed anyway, so passers by eat the burnt ones. I am tempted to put a sign on them saying €1 but there’s enough of that going on as it is.
Meanwhile my pâté has cooled and is ready to be buttered up. I add 10oz of butter to my 8oz of chicken livers. The colour is right but there is a grainy consistency that no amount of whizzing seems to be removing. This means that I probably overcooked them and a crust formed in a couple of places. Naturally I doubt this, but in the absence of any other conceivable explanation I probably have to accept that this might possibly be the case. Eliminate the impossible and what remains, however improbable, must be the truth. The sieve messily comes to my rescue. I pot up some of the pâté and pipe the rest for canapés.
The tartlets are going to be filled with raspberries and coated in a redcurrant glaze. This can wait till later. I now have a bit of spare time so I knock out a couple of loaves of bread. I haven’t actually made traditional soda bread yet, so I make one white and one brown. You can’t fuck around here; the second the alkali of the bread soda mixes with the acid of the sour milk, things start to happen. Making two at the same time means having all the ingredients ready and doing it quickly. This probably helps me - the temptation is to faff around a lot more than you have to, and to the detriment of the bread. They go in the oven, crosses on, and with the traditional slits ‘to let the fairies out’. They come out three quarters of an hour later and they are good. More by luck than judgment maybe, but it appears that I can make bread.
It is getting close to plating up time. I have an opportunity to work on my presentation here. I roll the raspberries around in the glaze and place them on the tartlet bases with a pair of chopsticks I borrow from a fellow student. Then I get my hands on the piping bag again and start working my magic with the cream. I am uncharacteristically ambitious here, and try to create a delicate crown around the top raspberry on each of the three tarts. What I actually succeed in creating is the illusion that an extremely gifted albatross has just deposited three impossibly well-grouped salvos of guano on the plate in front of me. Still, nothing a craftily positioned mint leaf won’t fail to conceal.
I am much happier with my pâtés. I place the canapé size pipes on a small round of cucumber and top with a chervil leaf. I have also knocked up a tomato concasse, with a tiny splash of sherry vinegar and olive oil. I add little groups to each diminutive canapé. If I had hundreds of them to do, it would take me hours, but I have seven, so I make the effort. For the ramekin, I scatter concasse and chervil leaves around the plate with melba toast and make a small pile in the centre. For the first time in my three weeks, I take a photograph of the food I have created. Who says you can’t polish a turd?
After lunch we are treated to a chat from a local gamekeeper. He is exquisitely attired, and I am now considering sewing some leather patches on my elbows and buying a gilet to complement my nascent flat cap collection. He has a range of stuffed, frozen and a few fresh game birds for us to peruse. He demonstrates plucking and singeing techniques, and then spends five minutes with his fist inside a teal explaining how to remove its contents. (If I wish, I can get into school early tomorrow to try my hand at plucking - I’ll have to think about that one). His genuinely interesting and informative presentation builds into a scintillating crescendo with a demonstration of his loyal gun dog retrieving a frozen duck from outside the window. It receives a rapturous ovation.
The rest of the afternoon passes in a whirlwind of sponge cake, roast chicken, parsnip crisps and tomato juice. After demo a few of us squeeze in a bit of ‘exercise’ and get a game of tennis on in the hour and a half we have before the sun sets. I probably burn off the equivalent of a slice of melba toast thinly spread with pâté maison, but it’s a start at least.
Tomorrow isn’t particularly exciting me right now, though I am looking forward to attempting the sponge cake, especially since the demo one turned into a bit of a gun dog’s dinner. No doubt if I do nail it the old €5 a slice sign will be going up. If it does, I’ll try and take a picture first.
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