Day 18: Blessed Are The Cheesemakers...

So here we are, all six of us sitting around the table chatting and sipping wine after a great meal. Today was a brilliant day. I did an amazing Yeast Bread which tasted fantastic- secret to good Yeast bread, slightly less yeast!

Then I made a very nice Ottolenghi's Roast Chicken with Saffron, Hazelnuts and Honey:

with a yummy Cinnamon Meringue with Plums and Cream for pudding, wow look at the texture:

Then lunch with a fabulous table setting:

Then the brilliant Rachel did a demo in the afternoon where she showed us how to make Ballycotton Shrimps with Homemade Mayonnaise where Rachel threw some live Shrimps into the pot! These's poor fellas:

Followed by some amazing glazed loin:

Not to mention Cullohill Apple Pie:

After demo, I went making cheese with Timmy, Darinas' husband and I'm now spending next number of evenings turning my cheese.

It started off with Timmy with 60 litres of of milk where he added in rennet and live cultures. Then we had to place our hands into the cheese vat and crumble the texture into a scramble egg style texture, before we drained the whey protein off leaving us with this:

Then we took the 'scrambled egg' texture and placed it into little containers with weights on top to mould the cheese together. So, all the hard work comes down to this:

And there's my cheese- now for the next number of mornings and evenings I've to turn my cheese. I'll have to do this for a month, then turn it again a few times a week for three months after. I'm looking forward to my summer block of cheese :)

Here's a few pics of local cheeses from the school:

Gubbeen Cheese from West Cork

Ardsallagh Goat's Cheese

Wicklow Blue Cheese

Dermie's Tip of The Day: Fruit or Veggies that were frozen in season will always be tastier than fresh veggies out of season. Fact.


Same time tomorrow folks x