Day 28: The Spotted Dog...

There I was sitting in the kitchen Sunday evening looking at my order of work for Monday, which was looking to be a pretty good morning, nothing too difficult. The plan was banana bread, Kerry pie, seafood starter, homemade lemonade and soak some fruit for Tuesday's lunch all to be done well before lunch.

 
It was going smoothly until 10:30, then it went all so horribly wrong. The banana bread came out perfect, as did everything else but the pastry for my Kerry Pie just did not cool in time, no matter what I did. It's been such a learning curve this morning, it was a bad idea to work on the filling of the pie before even having the pastry done. What was I thinking?

 
I tried everything to try and have it cooled by lunch; placing it by an open window, placing pods in it for it to cool but it just wasn't happening. However, on the plus side, I do like making this pastry over the pastry we were making for the goat's cheese tart.


I guess it's just Monday blues and I'm going to keep calm and carry on. This afternoon we focused on breakfasts and of course the key ingredient to a good Irish breakfast is the right pork. This linked in nicely with a chat from the local producer of the week Noreen & Martin Conroy who are suppliers of free range bacon and only supply within a range of 15 miles of their farm. They do not intensively produce their pigs and do not feed their pigs copper and produce 90% pork meat produce.

Following on from their very passionate chat about their produce, the afternoon demo was focused completely on the perfect breakfast with a retro grapefruit cocktail:

A funky beetroot smoothie:

Some brilliant blueberry muffins:

Spotted dog:

Not forgetting some baked eggs:

Then this evening, I read through Denis Cotter's For The Love of Food, it's well worth a read it's brilliant.

As well as lots more besides, tomorrow I've to be up at ridiculous o' clock to make vegetable stock before hitting the kitchen for a busy mornings work.

Tip of the day: When making banana bread or any other breads with raisins or sultanas in the mixture, ensure not to have raisins on the top because they will bake quicker and will burn (see above banana bread as an example).

Thanks for stopping by,

D x