busy busy busy

Since Saturday I have a friend from Switzerland staying with me. She is mighty impressed by the intensenty and pace of the course. She came to Ballymaloe for lunch today and stayed on for the demo-lesson. I made a starter "Avocado with Crab Mayonnaise and Spicy Tomatoes". We had to cook the crabs yesterday and extract the nice white and brown meet today.

Avocado Crabmayonnaise and Spicy Tomatoes

3 more technics were ticked of on my tecnic sheet: making mayonnaise, preparing a crab and carving  poultry. I know now how to divide a roast chicken into 6 fair portions, every diner will get a nice piece of brown and white meat and not more then one piece with a bone.
For dessert I baked little sponges, filled them with cream and raspberrie jam. I had no time to take a picture, part of the cakes didn't even make it to the sideboard, on the way to the dinning room teachers and employees grabed one! they were delicious and looked very pretty.
I also made a red currrant sauce to serve with roast chicken. I was very happy not having to cook the bread sauce. Not my piece of cake at all!
Yesterday and today I was on duty, we all have duties to do, cleaning, feeding the hens, emptying the bins, vacuumcleaning, serving starters, main course and serving after demo lesson, washing dishes etc etc. Some of the duties are pretty unpopolar, especially the ones you have to stay on after lessons on a sunny day. We are blessed with great weather at the moment, the sun shines all day and I enjoy every free minute in the school garden.
Tomorrow night we are having a litte gathering, a few students organised a little wine tasting. It will take place in the kitchen of Shanagarry house and of course we take it very serious! Readers don't laugh we will write notes about producer, grapes etc. After all we like to pass the wine exam with good marks.

Kitchen

Yesterday we were instructed how to identify guinea fowl and how to pluck and prepare them for cooking. Nothing for sensitives souls. I truly hope  the pheasant in "my garden" will survive the hunting season.

That's it for today. Good bye for now!