Stylishly Sated: Ballymaloe Week Three Highlights

Monday 14^th May – Sunday 20^th May

Tackling seafood in kitchen 1!

1. Monday we died and went to seafood heaven with the most amazing Dublin Bay prawns.

2. On Tuesday I made the simple sounding, tedious to make, and utterly delicious Chard and Gruyere Gratin. Note to self: 1kg of freshly picked chard leaves take far more than the ten minutes I allotted myself to wash and drain them!

3. Shepherd’s pie made with minced, left-over lamb can be beautiful when you get busy with a piping bag (pictured is one of Rory’s demo pies)

4. On Wednesday I roasted my first ever guinea fowl complete with onion stuffing and parsnips and game chips. The secret is to cook it draped with a piece of butter-soaked muslin which keeps it moist while still allowing the skin to turn a golden brown. The taste is like a slightly gamier chicken and the meat is only brown –I loved this little bird.

5. Warm salad of Gubbeen Bacon with Poached Egg, Caesar Dressing and Parmesan. In our headmistress’ words, this classic and delicious salad is only as good as its ingredients i.e. fresh free-range eggs, thick bacon lardons and a homemade dressing.

6. ‘Cooking for Pleasure and Profit’, an all-day lecture held on Thursday and led by Darina’s sister, Blathnaid Bergin, who is a restaurant advisor: An amazingly interesting and interactive day which covered everything from minimising food waste (she had some incredible true-life stories of chefs who would throw away 50% of their food orders) to the nitty-gritty of starting up a business and catering tips.

7. On Friday we were all cooking with the left-over chicken meat from roasting on Wednesday. Cue a fabulous lunch buffet of Vietnamese chicken salad, curried chicken with mango (my favourite), filo chicken pies and a mexican dish called chilaquiles verdes o rojos.

8. That same morning we had a cake baking competition (see pic of my kitchen’s efforts – with mine bottom left). I was down for the legendary ‘Aunt Florence’s Orange Cake’ but I mistakenly managed to produce a bastardised version by covering it entirely in butter-cream instead of the assigned glacé icing – quelle horreur! No amount of covering it in toasted almonds and rose petals seemed to appease the judges either!

9. Liberty Grill Café, 32 Washington St, Cork. On Saturday, some friends and I visited this little slice of America which serves the often-elusive all day brunch. Small but buzzy, it serves just what I wanted on a gloomy Irish afternoon - a stack of pancakes with bacon and maple syrup. We also had a delicious mushroom soup and my American roomie munched through her burger in silent patriotic-bliss!