Greeting to you all from a rainy Bilbao!
I'm nearing the end of my time here in Bilbao, and with only a week or so to go before I make my fabulous return to Finland, I'm very happy, but also sad to leave what has been a truly memorable and educational experience.
As I told you before, I started the fish station, and as I am truly awful at actually updating my blog (mikä on myös opinnäyetyöni, ihan vaan tiedoksi), I've also finished there. I'm now back at the cold kitchen which means gross foie gras, lots of baking and spending dire hours splitting peas (I'll tell you about that later).
The fish station was such fun and a great experience. I got to make Salsa Vizcaina, a traditional basque sauce made with onions and dried red peppers, fried and celaned plenty of different fishes, cleaned out mounds of chirlas (clams) and shrimps, made pig's trotters for lunch once as well. There was that moment at lunch when I just looked down at my plate and there in the middle of it was a pig's trotter covered in tomato sauce, and i just thought: "Ok then." I also made pil-pil, another traditional basque sauce, made using cod infused oil and fish stock to make a thich green sauce. It tastes good, but it's literally just oil. Oil. The one thing I won't miss in the cooking when I get back home.
Durign my stint at Andra Mari and in order to graduate I needed to do a skills assesment demonstration and as part of it I made the folks at work korvapuusti a Finnish baked good, something akin to a Chelsea bun. They were a hit, I tell you. In fact so much so that they made me make some more of them the following week with new fillings. I made a batch with strawberry (not so good in my opinion) and a chocolate batch (omg that was full on). Now they have the reciper and talked about making mini ones to be served as petit fours. *u*
Ah, now to pea splitting business. One of the dishes we now have at Andra Mari is broad beans and peas with a chunk of jamon and it's juices. As the quality must be high, we of course use fresh beans and peas. Now this is where this all gets dire. First, you must shell HUGE amounts of peas and broadbeans. This is then followed by a quick stint in bloiling water after which the truly torturous part begins: splitting the little bastards. And you're basically dealing with roughly 3kg's of broad beans and 3kg's of peas and you can only split one at a time. Take the bean/pea, pop the case and out should spring two little half. Oh my god it is the most boring thing in the entire world and I don't even want to think how many hours I have spent doing it, with my back killing me from standing in one place and my hand wrikinling to prunes. Oh, and apparently broad beans emit some sort of slime when cooked and then split. That's particularily enjoyable.
Tomorrow is my last Saturday at Andra Mari, and then it's just 4 days of working next week and then I get to go home! And then I graduate! Two years of working reasonably hard will all come to an end when I get handed my certificate and I will officially be a restaurant cook. Yay me! Also I get to see some extremely fabulous people again!
FOLKS REMEMBER TO WATCH EUROVISION TOMORROW NIGHT ALRIGHT BEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR
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