#ballymaloe

We went on a school tour last week, all 64 students at the Ballymaloe Cookery School marshalled onto two buses. The general consensus is that the bus I happened to be on had the better of the trips. We visited an award-winning restaurant and cookery school called The Tannery in Dungarvan, ate fresh and tasty oysters straight from the sea at an oyster farm called Hartys and had the best sourdough bread I think I’ve ever eaten at a little bakery called Seagull’s in Tramore.

We started at the Farmers Market in Cork, and en route Darina Allen regaled us with a tale of how she came about starting one of the first such markets in Ireland. It seems that after Ireland joined the European Union in 1973, a range of new regulations were implemented which started to put the squeeze on the smaller farmers who were selling into restaurants and stores. Many of them did not have the necessary infrastructure, equipment or the income to ensure that they could conform with the stricter rules. In addition, many of the big supermarkets had moved to centralised buying, so the local stores they owned could no longer choose who they bought from, further squeezing the local farmers.

Darina was visiting a friend in San Francisco who got her up at the crack of dawn after a long flight as she insisted on taking her to a farmer’s market in the city. She soon forgot about her irritation at being hauled out of bed so early. Seeing the market was a major lightbulb moment, as she could see the potential such markets held in Ireland to help relieve the pressure the local farmers were facing. They could sell their produce directly to consumers at the markets, which meant they got 100% of the retail price (as opposed to about 30% from supermarkets). This would allow them to circumvent the centralised buying problem and generate the income needed to comply with the new EU laws. And consumers would get fresh, healthy produce made from high quality ingredients. The long and short of it is that these markets took off in Ireland, and seem to have saved the skin of many a farmer.

Darina tells an amusing tale of taking a walk on the cliffs of Ballycotton on a sunny Wednesday morning and found the local potato farmer lying contentedly in a field in the sun. She mildly berated him for lying around on a work day, and he shot back with a retort that he made sufficient wages at the Saturday Farmers Market in Cork to pay him for a whole week, and thus was able to lie around on occasion during the week. She was completely delighted!

In Stanford in the Western Cape, where my husband and I will be moving next year, we have a regular Saturday morning market as well as a weekly Wednesday morning and an evening market once a month – all with a wonderful array of locally produced goods for sale. There are many cities, towns and villages across South Africa that have long had excellent farmers markets, which adhere to the core principles of supporting local and small-scale producers; focusing only on high quality food and ingredients; as well as having fresh, often organic, produce. It’s a wonderful system that supports local farmers and is hugely popular with local consumers as well as out-of-towners who may be visiting. And that brings us full circle back to the Slow Food Movement I mentioned last week, of which I am increasingly enamoured.

The food focus at Ballymaloe over the past week has been an eclectic one, with no central theme. It has ranged from how to make the perfect chip (use the right potatoes and cook the chip three times) to a host of breakfast and brunch dishes, not to mention different types of pastry and the inevitable soups, jams and tarts.

Despite having made scrambled eggs almost every weekend of my life for the past few decades, I learnt, of course, that I have been doing it all wrong. The same with poached eggs.  In short, for scrambled eggs you need to start by putting the eggs into a cold saucepan to allow them to scramble gently and slowly, yielding a softer, creamier curd.

Poached eggs, it seems, can pretty much only be done successfully with very fresh eggs. If you find in a restaurant that your poached egg has a lip at the top, it’s because it has been cooked in oiled clingfilm, which is the way many restaurants cook eggs that are older than five days.

Two real highlights of the week were the sweet hot corn bread, and the spiced pan roasted pear cake. The corn bread is sublime – it is really simple to make, is light and airy but substantial and tasty. My sense is that it would do down really well in South Africa, where we could use mealie meal which is a little coarser than corn or maize meal, but would work a treat.

The spiced pan roasted pear cake is just as simple to make – the only tricky part is turning it out from the pan in which it has baked onto a plate. One of my fellow students had a little oopsy and much of the cake went onto the counter, but with steady hands and a dash of confidence, it can be done. I love spiced cake and this is best served warm – it would be wonderful on a cold winter’s evening with a glass of red wine!

My Top 5 Recipes of the week:

1.       Wild watercress soup

2.       Sweet hot corn bread

3.       Black eyed bean stew with mushrooms

4.       Spiced pan roasted pear cake

5.       Blackberry, Apple and Rose Geranium Tart

The Slow Food Movement looms large at Ballymaloe Cookery School, in part because Darina Allen is a big supporter of, and participant in, the movement in Ireland and also because it epitomises the approach taken by the school.

For those who may not be in the know, the Slow Food Movement began in Italy in 1989 as the antithesis of fast food. It was an attempt to halt the erosion of local food cultures and traditions and produce food that is accessible, healthy and good for the planet. The movement is not without controversy – well no activist movement is, of course. Critics feel that it is elitist as not everyone can afford to buy organic, locally grown food and that this approach to food will never feed our ever growing population – only industrialised, mass-produced food will do so.

Personally, I love the concept of food that is high quality and healthy, produced in a way that does not harm the environment and that is as local as possible. Any such movement must find a way to encompass food that everyone in a community has the ability to produce and enjoy, both rich and poor. It cannot be elitist if it is to thrive, particularly in South Africa. How we achieve this is a different matter, and one to be debated another time perhaps – check out the link to the local chapter: https://slowfood.co.za/

The slow food philosophy and approach is one that we plan to adopt at our restaurant in Stanford in the Western Cape. We are in the fortunate position of having a large vegetable garden where we can grow foodstuff and produce meals that have fresh, high quality ingredients. We are also surrounded by amazing suppliers – two great cheesemakers, two working harbours in Gansbaai and Hermanus, organic farmers of beef, chicken, dairy, pork and ducks and not forgetting the excellent winemakers on our doorstep. And there are many more suppliers of this ilk close to us.

On that note, the quality of ingredients is emphasised time and time again at Ballymaloe – basically, you can make almost any old thing taste good if you have fresh quality ingredients, be they herbs, vegetables, flour, eggs or butter. And I have to say that the dishes prepared during the demonstrations or for lunch taste fabulous – even though the student cooks may not always be the best (myself included)! It’s all about the freshness and quality of the ingredients that goes into them.

So in recent days, we have been focusing more on meat – jointing and cooking chicken and filleting fish, which is no easy task, I can tell you. I have done it a few times now, and it never seems to get any easier – I always seem to cut off a chunk of edible fish along with the head. This is a complete sin in the eyes of the thrifty teachers no doubt because it is a waste in any situation but particularly if you own a restaurant. Cooking the fish was far easier than filleting it, and I managed to produce a well-cooked and tasty portion of cod with parsley butter.

For anyone who has carved a roast chicken, jointing a raw one is pretty straightforward, although the method used at the school is more complex than I am used to, albeit highly practical. In short, you carve the chicken so that everyone gets a bit of brown and white meat. I have roasted many chickens in my time, but the one I did this week was far better than any before – juicy, moist and tender. It is, or course, simply a matter of following the recipe.

There was the joy of making a white yeast bread, which takes a long time but is incredibly therapeutic given the amount of kneading and tending that is required. We are encouraged to do everything by hand at first, be it creaming butter and sugar, mixing and kneading bread or finely dicing  and slicing the dreaded fennel. The idea is that if you do it by hand, you are unlikely to forget it. Given how sore my arms are today from all the creaming and kneading, I guess they have a point.

I decided to do my bread in a plait, and having not plaited anything for years, I managed to somehow do it underhand rather than overhand. Darina gazed rather curiously at my plait, gave it a prod and declared it to be a bit odd-looking, but gamely said the consistency of my dough was superb. Very sweet, but it’s a recipe I will repeat in the coming weeks until I get the plaiting right …

The big feat this week, however, was baking a chocolate cake. Now, this is something I had done on occasion in the past with varying degrees of success. But the chocolate cake I made this week was a revelation to me, given that I am not much of a baker as previously mentioned. It’s not rocket science, but there is complexity in the different methods and phases deployed – the sponge, butter cream, glace icing and dark and white chocolate wafers, not to mention assembling the thing in the end! Anyway, it all came together quite well and I even managed to deliver a creation that did not look like the dog’s breakfast. Hooray!

My Top 5 recipes of the week:

1.       White yeast bread, plaited

2.       Avocado stack with crab mayonnaise and spicy tomato

3.       Traditional stuffed roast chicken with gravy

4.       Gratin of potatoes and gruyere

5.       Chocolate cake with wafers