Day 39: Fool's gold

They must be going easy on us this week because of the exam. My dishes today were crab pâté with cucumber and dill salad and raspberry fool with shortbread biscuits. Piece of piss.

The fresh crabs have either wised up or packed off for the winter, so I have to use stuff from the guys at Ballycotton instead. It is beautiful, though all white meat from the claws. Without the pungent brown meat, the balance of flavours in the pâté will be affected. The recipe stipulates a mixture of the two meats, softened butter, garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper, parsley and a tomato relish. Ballymaloe Tomato Relish in fact, a rather fine condiment from these parts and enjoyed all over Ireland.

The tasting and seasoning is an interesting process, since I do it with my teacher, a lovely lady with the most impressive hairdo in the whole of County Cork. First of all, the recipe states the relish is optional and I question if we need it. We do. First taste - I think the relish has overpowered the crab. Also the parsley is very strong. I wonder if it might need more garlic. She says it needs more salt and lemon juice. It is really interesting to see how the lemon juice pulls out the flavour of the crab and combats the tomato. The parsley’s fresh crisp taste is subdued by the extra acidity, and as the other flavours develop it softens. She continues to tinker, but ultimately we end up adding more crab; the absence of the strong brown meat completely threw all the proportions of the recipe. It was a great lesson in balancing flavours and seasoning, and watching and understanding how she went about it. In the same situation, I would have done it completely differently. I’d never have been so bold with the lemon juice but it worked so well. The seasoning and balancing of flavours is crucial, and no two people will ever do it the same.

The raspberry fool is uneventful. Raspberries macerated in sugar, pureed, strained and folded with softly whipped cream. The shortbread biscuits are dead simple. Flour, butter and sugar in 3:2:1 proportions, brought together in the magimix, rolled to 5mm thick and baked at 180ºC for ten minutes. When you think they’re not done because they still feel soft, they’re done. Get them off the tray immediately. They’re good. I take my time today and in some of the gaps we go over a few of the techniques that could come up on the exam tomorrow. Like segmenting citrus fruit, making paper piping bags, slicing, dicing, chopping and crushing.

The extra time, together with the fact that my dishes are all cold, gives me a chance to make an effort on my presentation. The pâté looks nice with just a little heap of the cucumber on the plate, but then I realise I need melba toast too and the harmony is clumsily interrupted. The fool is a fool is a fool.

Afternoon demo is a struggle. The least effective combination of demonstrator and sous chef means a number of things don’t quite go to plan. I am very glad when it is all over. To combat the lethargy in the evening I do something I haven’t done since I arrived here six weeks ago - I go to the gym. It’s not quite the Virgin Active in Islington, though it does have the usual quota of unfeasibly large, grunting Eastern Europeans. I struggle through like a hundred pound weakling, reward myself with a solitary pint and gracefully hit the hay.