Difficulties on commenting should be fixed

So I just checked and it turns out that the settings for my blog were set to only allow registered users to comment on my post.  Just changed that so there should be no problems now.  Sorry

Everyday I get a little better

So I am now in week 4 of my internship and I must say that right at week 3 I finally clicked with my job and things have been going amazing for me.  At first it seemed like everything I made turned out wrong; frittatas, cookies, scones, even soups, you name it.  But almost like magic, everything started coming out amazing at the beginning of week 3.  Now, scones are coming out of the oven beautifully golden brown and fluffy.  My brownies are insanely chocolaty and decadently moist.  Two soups (Tomato and Basil & Sweet potatoes with coconut and ginger) were possibly the best soups I have ever made.  I think I have finally gotten the hang of how to make really good brown soda bread after several less the amazing loaves.  While there are many other things coming out nice now, I think the one I am most proud of is a New-York style lemon-blueberry cheesecake.  Not only did I know that it came out perfect, but everyone else who works here thought it was amazing (one girl said it was the best thing ever made at the shop) and it sold out completely in two days.  I am currently working on making a recipe for a Baileys Cheesecake which will be featured in a magazine article about discovering Ireland.

Basically, the first two weeks were me getting the hang of a new kitchen and now I feel as if all the stuff I have learned as a home cook is allowing me to make some pretty great food.  However, I am still playing it pretty safe by cooking things I am familiar with.  My plan as of right now is to continue doing this for at least another week and a half until I reach the half-way point.  Then for the second half I really want to push myself technically and creatively by making things I have never done before.  I still need to make some food items for the lunch menu and I think my first one is going to be a grilled cheese with ham and sun-dried tomato pesto.  While that might seem really basic back home, people here don't eat grilled cheese so I am hoping to introduce them to an American classic with my own twist and using really good Irish cheddar.  I will let you all know what people think.

Coffee lovers both rejoice and despair

So I know that when I left for Ireland I was under the notion that everyone here just drank a lot of tea.  While this is actually true, I was quite surprised to find out that certain kinds of coffee are actually really popular in Ireland.  In general, it appears that espresso drinks are actually really big in Dublin, with people going out for coffee more often than tea.  Coffee drinks generally consist of espresso, macchiato, cappuccino, americano and latte.  Mocha's are usually offered but very few people order them.  Don't expect to find any over the top drinks like you would at say Dutch brothers of Starbucks (white chocolate mocha, pumpkin spice latte).  So I guess if you love coffee shops you should get along splendidly in Ireland.

However, coffee does have a dark-side here.  If you just like a black cup of drip coffee in the morning or during the day you are in the wrong place.  Almost nowhere serves black coffee and people don't make it at home.  Instead they use instant coffee like Americans did a long time ago (some people might have a french press but very few own coffee machines).  The main reason for this is probably because the Irish really do like tea and they can make it easily at home in place of a cup of black coffee.  However, they can't make espresso so they go out to cafes to get their coffee fix in a way similar to how we do.  

This is both bad and good for me.  It is bad because back home I usually just like to get a cup of coffee and add a little sugar and milk to it, so at the beginning this difference in coffee really sucked.  However, now it is amazing because my work makes amazing coffee drinks to help set them apart from other cafes and I basically get free coffee drinks all day long whenever I want them.  I like a cappuccino or macchiato when I am casually working during the day and a shot of espresso really helps during the busy shifts.  So while I might not be getting paid, the job definitely has its perks. 

So the first thing I miss from home is.... beer!? Really?

While although the Irish are both loved and notorious for being big drinkers of beer (especially Guinness), that doesn't mean they have a very extensive selection.  After going to multiple pubs in the suburbs and a few in the city, I think I can make a pretty accurate statement when I say that pubs in Ireland really only have a limited selection of beer on draft.  The standards are Guinness (of course), Smithwicks, Bulmers, Carlsberg, Heineken/Becks and weirdly enough Budweiser.  In fact, a lot of places also carry Miller and Coors as well.  You might get a few others here and there but for the most part those are your options at the pub.  Bottled beer is available to (and for some reason is quite popular at pubs too, even when you can get the same beer on tap.  And some people drink their beer with ice in the glass, which is blasphemy to me) but you pay more for less.  This is really difficult for me to handle, being from the land of micro-brew beervana, where if you can think it, you can brew it.  Guinness is good and all, but I find myself really thirsting for an IPA or even an ale to break up the monotony of the stouts and lagers.  Side note: Heineken on tap actually tastes pretty good here, unlike the skunky taste it has in bottle back home.  I will have to try it from the tap back in the States.  German beers in the stores are the closest thing to micro-brews, but they just aren't the same.  I would like to get into cider, but after a while even the dry ones get too sweet.

Luckily, there is an oasis for a beer lover like myself and its called The Porterhouse. It is located in the heart of Dublin and they have about 10 home-brewed beers that they serve everyday, a lot of which even use cascade hops.  They don't even serve Guinness at their two pubs because they claim its no longer an Irish beer (it is internationally owned now).  I only wish it were closer and/or their bottled beers didn't cost so much.

Rush Shifts: It kinda a love/hate relationship

Let me first of all say that I after this entry I promise to make my entires shortes

So while my first two days of work where very laid back and casual in pace, Friday and Sunday both had very definitive rush shifts.  Friday gets very busy during lunch because Friday just in America is the beginning of the weekend and people like to go out and get lunch to "celebrate".  As the tickets began to come in much faster, I quickly began to feel overwhelmed.  I was basically put in charge of making the sandwiches (which are by far the  biggest attraction for lunch).  While although it might not seem like that difficult of a thing when there are not many orders, it quickly becomes more complicated once multiple orders come in with several items on each ticket.  At first I made a lot of mistakes and it was fairly frustrating because they all came one right after the other.  However, you learn quickly from your mistakes and after about an hour I got into the groove of the rush and things went smoother (but not perfect).  The two most popular sandwiches are by far the roasted chicken with basil mayo and a classic BLT.  The bacon that we use though is very different, almost more like a small piece of pork crossed with bacon and you don't cook it crispy unless asked for (and even then it is never really crispy).  I personally don't think I could ever get used to it knowing American style bacon.  There is also a lentil, roasted veg and goat cheese salad that is quite popular and quite delicious.

Sunday was absolutely crazy.  Not only are Sundays normally the busiest day but it was also Mother's Day in Ireland.  (Side note... it was really cute to see dozens of young men caring around flowers Saturday night before going home).  I tried to mentally prepare myself for the rush, which helped a little bit but it was still really hard.  Brunch was the main feature of the day and menu items include a full irish breakfast (sausage, bacon, scrambled eggs, black and white pudding, creamy mushrooms, roasted tomatoes and toast), eggy bread (basically french toast without any milk, vanilla or cinnamon in the batter) with sauted bananas and honey, a brunch salad (spring greens with black pudding, bacon, cherry tomatoes and balsamic dressing), scrambled eggs with soda bread and some sandwiches that are available during the week.  I basically had to learn how to do everything again and like before made lots of mistakes with the orders and it seemed like the orders would never stop coming.  At one point I just wished that no one else would come in.  But like before, I eventually got the hang of things and Fabi and I cranked out the last orders of the rush just around 3:30 pm.  I didn't get to eat lunch until 4:00 pm (I started my shift at 9:30 am).  One of the best experiences today happened when quite a few people at first ordered poached eggs even though they weren't an option on the menu.  Fabi didn't really know how to make them, but i had been working on preparing eggs in different ways before I left the states, including poached eggs.  Because of this I was able to step up and really help out in a way like never before and felt quite proud of myself.  

After the rush ended, all of us in the back relaxed a lot and joked about how mad everything just was.  Sitting down to eat my sandwich never felt so good.  I would say that today's shift was pretty much a love/hate kinda thing.  At first I felt embarrassed and stupid because I was making so many mistakes that I felt as if I had never even cooked before.  But by the end, I felt much more like a well oilded machine that quickly knew how to react when an order came in.  I am actually really looking forward to my next Sunday shift now that I know how things work and really want to knock it out of the park.  I still have a lot to learn and I can still get MUCH better, but after today I feel confident in my abilities to improve everyday and help make Urbun an even better restaurant than it already is.

First days of work.

So I am lucky in comparison to many other interns in that I am easily within walking distance of my work; it only takes about 15 minutes to get there.  It is located in Cabinteely Village, a small stretch of shops that is located in a very nice area surrounded by houses.  For my first day, Daniel brought me in at 11:00 am and introduced me to the owners Niamh (pronounced Neev) and Katie.  They are quite young, only in their twenties I think, and before Urbun they owned a small baking company for a few years selling baked goods at local markets, so the café is a big upgrade.  I didn’t really know what my first day of work was going to be like but I thought it would be short and would consist of me observing how things operate.  It kind of started out like this with me introducing myself to all the other staff and watching things for a little bit, but then Niamh started asking me to do things, very simple to begin with.  For instance, the first thing I did in the restaurant was slice a lemon into wedges.  Things quickly escalated though and after about 30 minutes I was making sandwiches for the lunch rush, which luckily on Monday is very calm.  While although some menu items are always available, it changes every day and isn’t finalized until around 11:00 am that day when Katie prints off the new menu (this happens every day).  After the lunch rush died down around 2:30 pm I took a lunch break and you will all be glad to hear that I get free lunch.  I can make myself basically anything to eat using whatever is available at the time (which is a lot).  After lunch, I start working on making food for the next day.  This includes making soup, traditional Irish soda bread, the dry mix for scones, at least one frittata and a few other things that change from day to day.  I ended work on both days around 7:00 pm.

I must say that I am really enjoying the people I work with.  The entire restaurant is quite the melting pot too.  The dish washer Rafael (Rafi for short) is from Brazil and is still learning English so there is a minor language barrier.  One of the other cooks is Fabrizio (fabi for short) and he was born in Italy but grew up in Australia so he has an Australian/Irish accent.  One of the hostesses (her name escapes me right now) is Canadian and is married to a true Irishman; she is working on getting dual citizenship.  Niamh works primarily in the back while Katie handles the front more, but both of them work together throughout the day.  I spend a lot of the day talking with everyone about differences in food culture and how things are either different or the same in the states.  It is incredibly interesting and I plan on making little posts about the things I learn after work every day.  For instance, wheat bread is generally called “brown bread” at least were I work, to measure out a teaspoon or a tablespoon you use and actual teaspoon (a spoon for tea) or a tablespoon (a larger spoon served on the table). 

Something that I think Niamh and Katie are excited about is having an America who can bake because they want me to help them out with lots of different recipes.  On Tuesday, I made Chocolate chip cookies using the nestle recipe from memory, but you would be surprised how hard it is to find chocolate chips here and the ones I did find were not even nestle.  Katie has been wanting to make more things with peanut butter and is therefore really excited I am here because Americans are much bigger into peanut butter.  If you have any suggestions on what I should teach them how to make please let me know.  I plan on doing snickerdoodles soon because they had never even heard of them.  It seems like they are eager to have me help make new items for the menu and as the internship moves on I will probably get more and more liberty to do so. 

My work schedule is not entirely set so there is still some work that needs to be done on that but I am working this Friday and Sunday.  I will post my next blog entry after Sunday to let you all know how the brunch rush goes, which was apparently crazy last Sunday. 

 

  

First thoughts on Food

After spending all Thursday and Friday exploring Dun Laoghaire, I discovered several things that is different about Ireland than The States (this is how everyone refers to the US).  First daytime cafes are huge here.  They generally open around 8-9 and close between 5-6 pm.  They serve breakfast but they are really popular during lunch and afternoon tea/coffee (3-5).  They generally serve soups, sandwiches/wraps and are fairly inexpensive (5-10 Euros).  Going out to lunch is much more popular in general because it is cheaper and the recent economic collapse is still on everyone’s mind.  Menus are becoming much more exciting in these places with food items that are getting more elevated in culinary standards.  For instance, my sandwich on Saturday was roasted chicken, chorizo, red onion marmalade and goat cheese on a toasted ciabatta roles and was delicious.  I wouldn’t say that it can compete with the cuisines of Italy or France, but it definitely feels familiar with slight differences.

Local butcher/meat markets appear to be everywhere, even in the local shopping centers which are like our malls.  These places take their sausages seriously because people in Ireland take their sausages seriously.  However, grocery stores still have meat sections just like they do in the States.  Meat in general is really important here, even more than in the States I would say.  Something really exciting though is the immense selection of cheeses that even the most basic store has;  it really puts America to shame.  At my B&B I had this organic mature cheddar that was one of the best cheeses I have ever had.  It was so intense and the flavor was unlike any cheddar I have ever tried.   I want to try so many others and am going to probably buy a bunch of cheeses and just make a plate of it one night with my host mom with a nice bottle of wine.

While although I am somewhat reluctant to say this because I hate to confirm stereotypes, potatoes really are a big deal here.  They have varieties that I have never heard of and they tend to find themselves into conversations about food quite a bit.  My host mom made some amazing roasted potatoes that were unlike any roasted potatoes I have ever had, so I will have to ask her how she did it.  Weirdly enough though, I have yet to see hash browns or any hash dish on a menu.  Not quite sure why, but I'll look into it.