Weekend embraced. On Friday night we ate at Ballymaloe House (my first meal in the restaurant despite the fact that I live here.) Dinner consists of five courses - a buffet of hors d’oeuvres, a soup course, main course, cheese course and dessert trolley. By the time I am pouring Pedro Jimenez sherry over my coffee ice cream and sipping on my Uroulat dessert wine that the sommelier, Colm, has kindly donated to the cause, I am reminded of a passage from Goldfinger. Bond and Du Pont have shared a meal of stone crabs washed down with tankards of pink champagne:
With a slight belch, Mr. Du Pont for the last time wiped butter off his chin with his silken bib and sat back. His face was flushed. He looked proudly at Bond. He said reverently, "Mr. Bond, I doubt if anywhere in the world a man has eaten as good a dinner as that tonight."
Bond is disgusted - a glutton. I don’t feel quite so guilty but the sense of having gorged oneself is the same. Three of us seek refuge in the Blackbird, whilst the other heads to Cork for a night shift working in a bakery. Dedication.
It was gloriously sunny when we left Ballycotton on Saturday morning, but horribly Irish by the time we got to Middleton farmers’ market. I wanted to cook for six of us, and was scouting around for options. Frank Hederman, the genial fish smoker, suggested Haddock. I took his advice. He offered some more: “Just don’t fucking overcook it.” I took that too.
How pleasant it has been to have friends to visit - sharing the things that I have been enjoying so much: the people, the food and the place. We managed to squeeze in a quick drink in the Blackbird tonight before I drove them to the airport. Some of the locals were having a singalong, as they do every Sunday. During the odd melancholic number, I often find myself drifting; a little lost in thought perhaps. Looking at the pictures on the walls and the people lining the bar, listening to the lyrics, and reflecting.
This life, the one I am living right now - it’s a bubble. But what a bubble it is. What a thing to be shielded from all the bullshit for a little longer. The stress and the pressure, they come from doing something I love. And they are so tempered by my surroundings - by the peace and tranquillity one only really finds in the countryside, and by sharing it with people bonded by a common passion.
We are seven weeks in. There are five to go. Two weeks ago I wrote this:
I made a discreet resolution to be clear and committed to my cooking over the next couple of weeks and let the future reveal itself to me, rather than scratching around in the hope of disturbing it wherever it is choosing to hide.
The future has not stirred in the slightest, and I sense that I am getting to grips with the kitchen. Spurred on by my friend’s all-night bread baking effort, I am heading back into the kitchen at Ballymaloe this week. It might not leave me a lot of spare time, but in seven weeks, I’ll have plenty of that. Somewhere between then and now, one of my clumsy footsteps might inadvertently cause a ripple strong enough to wobble the future and, who knows, it might just wobble me back.
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