Enjoying the View

I love Monday's. I was back in Kitchen 3 my favorite of all four locations. Its so calm in there and there is an incredible view which is enjoyable when you are kneading dough. 

Meringue Log

This morning I was feeling ambitions and decided to make a granary loaf and a meringue log on top of my scheduled recipes. The granary loaf turned out really great. It took a long time to prove because the flour was so much heavier but I've learned the longer it proves the lighter the loaf becomes. My hours of waiting paid off around 4pm this afternoon when I was finally able to eat it. 

The meringue log was a different story.

 I needed to work on my meringue technique so I volunteered to make this log. Basically you whip egg whites with sugar until the meringue becomes quite stiff. I struggled with this concept and after being sent back to the mixer numerous times I finally came away with stiff meringue. I laid it onto a small rectangle dish lined with tinfoil and oil and baked it for 15 minutes. I allowed it to cool while I whipped the cream... another technique i'm yet to master. I seem to always over whip the cream which probably explains why I was so nervous whipping the meringue. I was just stating to make butter from the cream when I realized I over whipped it ...again!  After the meringue cooled I spread on some (rescued) cream and covered it in fresh strawberries. It was all perfect until it was time to roll it. I ended up rolling it way to tight all the filling oozed out. It was a disaster! I unrolled it redid it and in the end if you didn't see the whole process you'd have though I was a genius! :) 

Seafood Platter

Besides those two things I cooked and served a plate of seaweed, clams, muscles, periwinkles and oysters. After nearly loosing a limb opening the oyster I tossed everything else in a frying pan and watched them pop open. The seaweed was  thrown into boiling water and turned a beautiful green color. My plate looked great and I tried my best getting everything down. I may live by the sea but I don't like eating from it. 

Finally I made a parsnip cake. Grated parsnip and apple with maple syrup, pecans, sugar, flour etc etc. It was moist and delicious. I love baking and decorating cakes. 

Lecture today included pasta making. I remember doing a course at home where we made pasta, i'm going to take a crack at it again tomorrow. Gillian tossed it in a pan with butter, chopped herbs and a little of the pasta water... simple and delicious! Darina made a peasant's soups, poached Monk fish, French fries (believe it or not!) and deep fried cabbage (delicious) We had a couple guest speakers who demonstrated how to make olive and ciabatta bread along with a 'how to make prosciutto' It was great. 

Parsnip and Apple Cake

Tonight my house mate nick treated me to a lovely salad (and yes I identified all the salad leaves) and now i'm going to file and get ready for tomorrow's cooking! Tomorrow we find out our exam scores... I may share about them tomorrow .. :)

A quick shout out to a fellow Ballymaloe blogger... Bill. He featured me on his blog and I was so excited. He was my cooking partner a couple weeks ago and was fabulous. His blog is absolutely fantastic... a must read. You can follow him on http://www.billsballymaloeblog.blogspot.com/

Until tomorrow... happy cooking!