Another uneasy night in bed, I woke up barely before demo and hopped over to the cookery school as quickly as I could. On the menu for lunch today was venison, oysters and quail, and it was great to have a final lecture with Rory. (A very small quail!) Rolling out meat for our beef…
Author: Úna-Minh
Ballymaloe Day 78: “That absolute slap-across-the-face flavour”
The alarm went off at 7.30am, but I didn’t haul myself out of bed until 8am… After a turbulent night’s sleep, I eventually managed to drag myself out into humanity with my chef whites on and knife bag under my arm. Though shattered, it was actually a lovely morning in the kitchen, with an air…
Ballymaloe Day 77: Just one day left in the kitchen…
With only five hours sleep last night, I woke up with a cranky feeling. Wandering around at 8am to unlock our bedroom door I woozily staggered back to bed for an extra hour. Thankfully today was all about Mammy Kavanagh’s visit and with an hour of study under my belt, I was glad to get…
Ballymaloe Day 76: Cough and splutter
Carrageen moss as a drink would definitely not be one of my beverages of choice. Unable to sleep until 3am and then rising at 8am, my body was floating in a wave of drained energy and exhaustion. Forcing myself up, the house was quiet and I patiently waited for the kettle to boil and give…
Ballymaloe Day 75: A day in the leaba
The last thing you want to happen in cookery school is to be sick on one of the final cooking days… Over the past few days I’ve felt another wave of sickness hitting me. I don’t know whether it’s something I ate, the cold weather or just a thing that’s going around but anyway, to…
Ballymaloe Day 74: At the quack of dawn
Last night I managed to smash a pavlova on the floor, slip on a carpet and skid across the dining room and a dog grabbed one of my bread rolls and ran away (thankfully this was all in my dreams). My dreams seem to be getting stranger and stranger and with the end in sight,…
Ballymaloe Day 73: Úna dreams of sushi
I yawned so hard this morning that I thought my head would fall off. Last night in a bid to get all of the last minute wine revision into our system, Sophie, Martha and I blitzed through our notes. Up at the crack of dawn, we pulled on our chef whites, for formality, and heading…
Ballymaloe Day 72: Death by meringue part two…
Meringue is definitely not my friend. It’s an evil force that’s determined to drive me off course – maybe, perhaps, probably not. With just two things on my to-do list today, I thought that I’d be ok in terms of time, but like most days I was like a tortoise on a highway. Getting to…
Ballymaloe Day 71: Dropping like flies
If there were awards for snail-speed enthusiasts, I’d be getting a gold medal. My day was a mixture of being slow and steady and ultimately it wasn’t a good one. Getting up this morning, like most Mondays, was a bit of an effort and heading back into the kitchen with impending exams and more study…
Ballymaloe Day 70: The best bottle on the table is always the empty one
It was a rough start to a Sunday morning. Waking up late to the sound of tweeting birds, I knew that there was only one thing I’d be studying all day: wine. For those who don’t know, we have a flock of white pigeons that live above our Coach House that like to come down…
