The Art Of Butchery

Pure comedy morning with the multi-talented Phillip - Ballymaloe's in house 4th generation German butcher/cupcake baker/pizza maker! Sausage making is a funny enough process as it is, but being talked through it by someone with a German accent is just inexplicably hilarious. He showed us how to take a little piggy from this..

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to this.....

The pigs are, of course, all residents of Ballymaloe Cookery School Farm who live a happy healthy life until a little trip to Midleton slaughterhouse. Then, to use Darina's word, 'ping', a quick end. Aside from obvious humane reasons its hugely important not to stress the pig in this period otherwise adrenaline pumps through the body making the meat pale, wet and generally of a poor quality. After the short journey from the farm they stay over in a cosy straw filled pen to, in Phillip's words, 'chill out', then are stunned before being killed. Found the demo really interesting, and not that gruesome, but when Phillip started talking about the physical similarities to humans and pigs I began to feel a tiny bit nauseous. Apparently, the only differences are that humans have an appendix and a larger brain, but apart from that we can both eat everything, live anywhere and get sunburned! We also talked alot about curing meat (parma ham, coppa, pancetta etc) which sounds like such a cool thing to do! Salt, the magic curing ingredient, both flavours and draws out the water from the meat thus destroying the microorganisms that need moisture to survive. Then all you need is a cool, dry and fly free environment et voila!

In the afternoon we had a talk by an ex student Arun who now runs a company called Green Saffron, importing 'the finest quality whole spices, superior 'Bespoke' spice blends and highest grade Basmati rice'. Arun talked about the differences between traditional western flavours (sweet, sour, salty, bitter), Indian ones (which also include pungeant and astringeant flavours) and how, with his blends, he is trying to create a 'blend' of cooking so to speak which encorporates both cultural elements. He and his wife run stalls at all the farmer's market and thier spices are just out of this world....you can smell the quality! They just look beautiful too - rose petals in the garam marsala blend!

So the day finished with a curry tasting for us all, but the evening held yet more cookery fun for Rosie and I as we went to assist with the evening demonstration: held in the evenings for local people! Rory was cooking, with Florrie assisting him, and us assisting her....which roughly translates to washing up and chopping! But we were greatly rewarded for our efforts with an almost-midnight feast in the cookery school of moussakas, salads, chard, mackeral pate, breads, popcorn, soup, eclairs and yoghurt ice-cream. Food like that a more than acceptable payment!