Always learning.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, a few years ago I decided that I was going to stop trying to create Michelin stared dishes in the kitchen at Corner Cottage and find out much more about the basics of food production. This change of heart was caused by both a genuine interest in the basics of food supply and by the fact that I was clearly never cut out to produce food that was that pretty or required that many processes. Since then I have learnt how to make bread, how to make butter, how to make sausages, how to make bacon, how to make beer and, a few weeks ago, how to make cheese.

I attended a course at High Weald Dairy on the edge of Ashdown forest, a very highly rated organic dairy run by real enthusiasts. The quality of the course was fantastic with Mark, Sarah and Chris ensuring we had all the information, assistance and encouragement we needed. I came home with a selection of flavoured cream cheeses for immediate eating and a kilo of hard cheese to mature at home. I also bought one or two of their cheeses too and they really are quite superb. We were talked through a range of their products after an excellent lunch. I can only highly recommend this course. I am now saving up for some more kit to begin making my own!

Along with the cheese I brought home a few litres of the whey left over from our efforts. It is a waste product and is also quite environmentally dangerous if it is not disposed of carefully (by feeding it to pigs, for example) On advice I used this instead of water in my normal white loaf mix and it produced excellent bread. It had a hint of sourness about it without being a sour dough!

Bread made with whey

In other news, as some of you may know I am finally practicing what I have preached for so long. I am now teaching cooking to a large cross section of the young people at thew school where I work. This makes for many interesting moments and juxtapositions of ideas. How many people, in there normal working day, go from explaining the Public sector Borrowing Requirement to trying to convince an 11 yr old that a courgette is not an aubergine!