Monday, January 21, 2008
Bangor
There’s nothing like an entire day of concentrating in the kitchen to clear one’s mind – I arrived home Saturday night after my day in the Belle Isle Cookery School kitchen tired and content. Liz Moore is a wonderful cooking teacher, clear and direct, with just enough detail to ease your way but not so much that you’re overwhelmed. We made several delicious things including cabbage leaves stuffed with lamb, seed bread, lemon posset, and frangipane tartlets, assisted by the kitchen help who whisked away our dirty dishes and brought out the ingredients for whatever we were cooking already measured – it was heaven. We ate the meal we had cooked – although Liz had made the side dishes herself – at around 3 pm.
It’s always a little nerve wracking in the beginning – there you are with 10 perfect strangers, knowing you’re going to spend the day with them. But things quickly eased as we got busy. There were two married couples, Iseult and Paddy, and Brenda and Alan – Paddy didn’t know until he arrived what he was going to be doing for the day – a couple of sisters, Juliet and Karen, with their mother Barbara, another mother and daughter, Patricia and Una, another woman on her own, Hilary, and myself, the only foreigner. Hilary and I teamed up and did quite well I think – plus she was fast and very tidy which I really appreciated. I wish I could go once a week to all the classes they offer – I have a lot of theoretical food knowledge but practical experience with a real chef is so fun. I even learned how to sharpen a knife properly for the first time in my life.
