Like Buttah

            

            Today my “chore” was butter.

            We have chores every day on a rotation. I swear Darina Allen (founder and Grand Matriarch and Entrepreneur extraordinaire), should write a parenting book! We all have rotating tasks that not only get the work done, but teach us in the process the hard behind-the-scenes work of a daily culinary/hospitality operation, and to have ownership and pride in it.

So far some of my most memorable chores have been: salad making where we gather the salad greens at 7:30 am (I spaced that one), taking all kitchen scraps out to the chickens, setting the lunch tables, blitz/cleaning the kitchen after all the damage from four hours of cooking has occurred, dishes after the afternoon tasting, serving lunch  or hosting and being nice to guests, making the daily fresh lemonade, gathering herbs, and today for me was making buttah!

            So, I arrive to find Tim (Mrs. Darina) has brought me about a quart of heavy cream from the morning’s milking of the Jerseys. Now it goes in one of manys (they don’t have KitchenAids.. they have … ) Kenmores (and I don’t think it has anything to do with Sears). Then you basically beat the “H” out of it until it separates into granules. Next you rinse it until the water runs clear and let it drain for the next two hours. Salt is added at the ratio of 2% of the total weight of the butter. However, I wanted to make it a fresh butter (won’t keep) and so I added just a gentle amount of English Sea Salt.  Next you get out the “butter paddles” (boards ridged on one side), and roll balls of butter. So zennnnnn. And very satisfying. I dare say more than a few folks chose my butter balls at lunch!

            Simple… natural … why don’t we do it for ourselves? How many of our children/ grandchildren/ nieces and nephews even know where butter comes from?

            One thing I’m finding, living closer to the food supply, is that smaller amounts of really good stuff satisfies much more completely with less bulk. Are we starving for our sources?... and so instead eat and drink to satisfy an elusive  hunger?

            I look out on the harbor every day … and it is enough. The TV is silent. Our music is the song of the birds and the howl of the coastal storms. It is enough.

            In two weeks I’ll have a comprehensive test on everything I’ve learned (or was supposed to learn so far): techniques in the kitchen, herb and spice identification and uses, and what’s growing on the grounds .. both wild and intended.  I’m feeling good about most cooking techniques (though I’m a little dicey on jointing the chicken and getting the “oyster” in … and fileting a fish -- we’ve learned the round fish.. next is the flat fish). Herbs and spices I know… but seeing all the different lettuces (or “leaves” as they say here), are a bit baffling, and yet foraged greens are slowly making their way into my bones.

            Where do I take this? What do I do with all that I am learning? Can I drink in every moment without getting lost in the details?

            Stay tuned!

Mike O'Shea

                                                          

            His name is Mike, and he owns a pub and B&B on the main street in our little town of Ballycotton.

Brian and I went in for some pub grub tonight, but found out there is only food served Fridays to Sundays. It was just us in the bar, and Mike seemed happy enough to direct us someplace to get food. But we decided to take a load off our four feet and bellied up to the bar.

Mike told us about the beers on draft and let me taste two besides Guinness (and yes Guinness won out). Mike’s wife is the cook on weekends. His three daughters help out. He lent us some books on the area to take home and peruse.

Mike told us the pub culture is changing… thinks it’s probably due to technology. Used to be that the pub was the center of social life. Not so much any more. Three 20-somethings might be sitting up at the bar each with their smart phone making other connections.

It was a really nice pub. And Mike was the kind of guy you probably could talk to about just about anything.  I wonder if three days of food service a week is enough to keep him afloat.

The recession is still affecting people in Ireland. The real estate boom of 2006 crashed, and as in the U.S. of A., many Irish are upside down on their homes by a third or more.

In our class of 60 at Ballymaloe, many of the students are looking to a new career after having been deemed “redundant” in their jobs.  Each day Darina reads advertisements from food establishments seeking “passionate chefs.” And each morning Darina asks in her coach-mother-cleric tone of voice: “.. and how many have found a job?”

Think I’ll ask Darina about Mike.

Blessed are the Cheesemakers!

Say cheese!

           No, I have not been whisked away to an Irish medieval priory .. nor have I succumbed completely (only mostly) to the pure, unadulterated fat found most delightfully in Ballymaloe chicken liver pate and hand-made butter!

            I have, however, been up to my eyeballs in class, family from California, and the first annual Food and Literary Fest here. But life (as I know it), is now on an even keel (though I have been getting to school at 7:30 am and getting home between 7 and 8 pm, followed by a couple of hours of class prep for the next day). Nevertheless, I will try to catch you all up in the next few days. Since it is 12:45 am … here is a snippet of my last two days discovering the wonders of making my own cheese!

Tim cuts the coagulated milk which is really now the curds and whey!

Every day the 5-6 Jersey cows are milked here (I’ve yet to get a turn). About every three days, there is enough milk to call 8 students into the dairy to try their hand at making cheese. Tim Allen (Mr. Darina), is in charge of this operation.

By the time we had arrived on Tuesday evening, he had already added the culture and rennet to the two vats of milk. We “cut” the whatever-it’s-called-at-this-stage and it becomes the curds and whey.

Really fun, and impossible to photograph, is getting our hands in up to our elbows and moving around the curds and continuing to break them up. The mixture is very warm and unctuous (love that word). Besides whey is really good for your skin… so it’s kind of like a milk bath! Then 1/3 of the whey is released (it really tastes good and is full of protein), and 1/3 warm water is added. This washes it. Then we release all the whey except a thin covering over the curds… at which point we begin scooping the curds into our own cheese molds (think PVC pipe with pin holes). We weight it, turn it out and reverse it’s direction in the mold a couple of times, figure out our cheese’s position on the grid of our 8 cheeses, and make plans to turn it in 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour and 1 hour more. Then we will turn it again in the morning, and “salt” it the next day.

Filling our cheese molds with the curds.

Weighting down the curds in the molds.

Salting is merely rubbing “dairy salt” (a percentage of the total weight) into this gouda-style cheese. Then we will turn the cheese every day for the next week, and a couple times a week for as long as we are here. We can take it with us when we leave. Ideally it would be ready in 4-5 months. Since customs is not going to let it come with me, I guess Brian and I will have a cheese fest somewhere in Scotland or England before we come home!

cheeses waiting to be salted.

My cheese in particular... I think it needs a name!

Tonight I made crackers (called “cheese biscuits” here… which we  mistakenly thought were like the Red Lobster invention), getting in practice for devouring my own cheese!

The intricate and highly skilled task of salting my cheese!

Cheese takes a lot of milk and patience and skill. I have yet to meet a cheese I don’t like!

Blessed are the Cheesemakers!

Stalking the Wild Everything

 Saturday,  April 28, 2013

            There are two types of walkers… those who powerwalk, burn calories, extend their muscles and their stamina. The other group of us likes to linger, see the sights, notice the little things. We are born foragers. While the first group sees with the destination in sight, WE see (and enjoy) the little things around us:  the trees IN the forest and maybe even name them! My father and sisters are power walkers. I am like my mother… I like the scenery along the way. I linger longer, and press my nose against the Ponderosa Pine bark that smells like vanilla. I do NOT return from a walk all sweaty.

            So back to foraging.  That was the purpose, theme, and anticipation of today’s class-in-motion with Darina Allen. You see while I LONG to forage, I don’t know that much about it. Oh, I know a blackberry when I see it, and grew up picking sour grass from the side of the road, occasionally sucking the nectar out of those purple flowers from the low growing foliage, and I took a Field Biology in College where I ate sea urchin gonads. But I really don’t know anything about foraging … and I have always wanted to!

Fab Wellies, Darina!

            Darina gathered the 22 of us as a hen gathering her chicks. This was to be a full day class (9am – 5pm). She told about how foraging was a way of life for her as a girl with her family, but didn’t even know the word “forage.” It’s just what they did to procure most of their food: berries, fruit, nuts, herbs, leaves, shellfish, etc. Eating from nature does not only fill one’s stomach, but there is lost lore in how these plants help our bodies: Nettle keeps away “the rheumatics” .. Hawthorne for cardio vascular, feverfew for headaches, comfrey draws out infection, and carrageen (seaweed) that makes metabolism work optimally.

We begin in the garden...

            Then we were all out and about on the grounds of Ballymaloe where she pointed out the countless edible plants! We traipsed over fully half of the hundred acres (well, it seemed like it anyway), a 180 year old garden, seeing the edible gems hidden only from the uneducated eye:  

1. stinging nettle
2. primrose
3. wild garlic
4. lemon balm
5. bitter cress
6. Hawthorne leaves
7. feverfew
8. spruce tips
9. lichen (yup lichen.. who knew?)
10. borage
11. hogweed flowers
12. goosefoot
13. sweet woodruff
14. tansy (I thought those were poisonous)
15. ground elder
16. Bishop weed
17. Beech 
18. wood sorrel
19. salad burnet
20. chamomile
21. sweet cicely
22. Angelica
23. Walnut leaves
24. Cowslip
25. plantain
26. chickweed

Sea Kale grows on the coast, but folks plant it in their yards. When it first comes up,                        you cover it (blanch) so it remains pale. We had it steamed. It is a luscious flavor combination of asparagus and celery.

We tasted, evaluated, wrote down, and snapped pictures.  After some 90 minutes, we piled in four cars and drove the bumpy back roads, turning at random places to arrive at Ballyandreen right on the coast! Alexanders lined the roads.

The bluffs above Ballyandreen

            We had the luck of the Irish having a sunny day. First we climbed the bluff with Darina pointing out wild violets, mallow, wild sorrel, gorse, and wild thyme.  Straight below us were rocks and tide pools. Descending to those tide pools, we saw the stream picked clean of water cress, rock and marsh samphire .

Dorina in her outdoor classroom.

tiny periwinkles

                But the biggest bang for my buck($$$), came in discovering the shellfish that are there for the taking (responsibly of course … like manna in the wilderness). Darina pointed out limpets and periwinkles and muscles (they all looked pretty small to me and I’ll admit I had my doubts that this country Swede could fill up on them). Not at this shore, but nearby would be clams and cockles.  We looked at seaweeds (all types are edible) - laver, dulse, carrageen, sea spinach. Local farmers spread it on their land as a fertilizer. And cooking in seawater is the best medium for all of these – not just because it already has salt, but for all the many minerals and goodness.

My Wellies working well!

the coastal haul...

   

         Then back to the school for a quick lunch and into the classroom to see the alchemy of fire and nature’s bounty:

1. Foragers Soup and Foragers Salad
2. Cooked Alexanders
3. Dandelion Flower Fritters
4. Crystallised Flowers
5. Candied Angelica
6. Nettle Beer
7. Salad of Hot-smoked salmon, beetroot, horseradish cream and watercress
8. Knotweed with melted butter
9. Elderflower Lemonade
10. Wild Garlic Pesto
11. Nettle and Ricotta Pizza
12. Rock Samphire with Melted Butter
13. Gorse Wine
14. Compote of Rhubarb with Sweet cicely
15. Herb Tea Tisanes 

                       How many of these can you identify?

I spy with my little eye this blog's author!

            Darina and her assistant Emer, moved in an almost choreographed dance of teaching, commenting, preparing, and plating all what we had brought back! So, here are the pictures. 

All manner of crystallized edible flowers

Amazing periwinkles! You take the pin to get the meat out and dip in the freshly made mayonnaise.

Believe it or not these are dandelion flowers dipped in batter, fried, and sugared.

Amazing muscles we had just gathered... ethereal! 

fresh hot smoked salmon and foraged greens.

           I can tell you that it was delicious. The periwinkles while microscopically small were amazing, and the muscles intoxicating. There is even an "oyster leaf" that tastes uncannily like an oyster when you bite into it!

            Now… to remember what's what when I see it!