October 2009 Archives

Coffee and cake - kaffee und kuchen - can you think of a better thing to warm you up on a bracingly cold Berlin afternoon? Over the course of ten days in Germany there were a lot of stops with Little Missy for a variety of sweet treats - and a lot of walking to compensate! Herself, myself and the Husband were staying at an apartment in the Friedrichshain district so, with the Husband gone from early to late on his course, LM and I set off to explore the city together. Mornings she slept then, as soon as she cocked an eye, she was scooped up, wrapped warmly, landed in the pushchair and we took off.

It took me a little while to figure out how to manage the u-bahn with LM so I discovered that walking from the apartment to Alexanderplatz took just over half-an-hour along the historic Karl Marx Allee. Half way there, Café Sybille was always a welcome stop for refreshments plus a side helping of history from its mini-museum on the building of Stalinallee, the Communist-centric former name of Karl Marx Allee. If we got as far as Alexanderplatz before LM needed a stop, the food department on the ground floor in Galeria Kaufhof was another good spot after I figured out how to work their system. Basically, grab a seat in the back corner and find a place to park the pushchair, figure out what you want to eat from the menus on the tables and order from the surrounding counters. For a sugar hit, their cake counter, piled high with lots of delightful sweet things (a tart of caramelised nuts on a biscuity base was a favourite) is particularly good.

Managing a pushchair plus a Little Missy around any city on your own is not the easiest and I did end up walking past plenty of places that looked great but weren't so easily accessible. That said, once I found the u-bahn stations with lifts (all clean and most of which worked), the city was much easy to travel around - praise be for barrier-free travel - so we roamed around the Tiergarten (tip: if you have a baby with you, you get to skip the two-hour queue for getting to the top of the Reichstag building), spent mornings in the Spandauer Vorstadt (grab some bircher muesli at Milchhall Berlin or Blintschiki in Gorki Park) and, in the last few days, discovered the delights of our Friedrichshain district (eating pizza from a woodfired oven at Pizza da Dante, taking away some beautifully decorated treats from Cupcake Berlin or visiting my local 50s milkshake bar at Milkabilly).

As Little Missy goes to sleep these days between 7pm and 8pm (if we're lucky!) there wasn't much chance for evening adventures but, when the Sister came over for a few nights, herself and myself did get a night off to head for dinner with The Shy Chef. But that's a whole other story...

The packing is finally done - it's not easy heading away for ten days with a small baby! - Berlin, here we come (again).

I might have missed Donal Skehan in last year's Eurosong Finals but I have been following and enjoying his food blog for the last couple of years. Skehan, who juggles his music career (he's a member of pop group Industry) with food writing, has just produced his first cookbook, Good Mood Food. With a few basic rules - eat a variety of colourful fresh foods and drink plenty of water - this is good, solid, sensible eating presented in a bright, accessible format.

Healthy food doesn't have to be tasteless or boring is the stand out message as Skehan produces a series of simple, quick dishes ranging from breakfasts (Nutty Breakfast Bars, Oat Pancakes), to lunches (Sesame Pasta Salad, Tahini Noodle Toss), dinners (Mojito Chicken, Sweet Potato and Parsnip Mash) and even some sweet treats (Baked Pears with Spiced Honey). If you're feeling under the weather, Skehan points out that food is the best way of fighting back with a selection of cleansing and healing juices, teas (I particularly liked the Orange, Mint and Lemon Balm Tea) and soups.

All tousled hair and cheeky grin, Skehan's youth and pop connections should appeal to a younger audience than most cookbooks reach. A perfect gift for the student in your life.

Must try: Swedish Cinnamon Buns, Real Baked Beans with Ciabatta, Oven Roasted Sausage and Sweet Potato

Good Mood Food by Donal Skehan is published by Mercier Press.

Despite the fact that we only have two hens now, we still end up with a lot of eggs and I'm always looking for something new to do with them. I love making egg-based quiches or tarts but, with Little Missy on hand, recipes that involve a number of steps - making pastry, prebaking it, making filling, baking end result - often fall by the wayside. That's why I'm in love with this crustless quiche recipe.

There are just two steps: make the filling and bake the end result, both things that I can do while LM is napping, and it's as good cold or at room temperature as it is hot. Depending on what I have a glut of, I vary the vegetable and cheese content: we've had broccoli and cheddar, spinach and feta, courgette and Gruyere, even leek and smoked mackerel, using crème fraîche instead of cheese. Just lightly cook your vegetables - steaming or sautéing are both good - mix them with everything else and land into the oven. Even if you don't have your own hens, this is a cheap and simple recipe to get the most out of the vegetables on hand.

A perfectly seared scallop and a mouthful of Asian 'slaw, some crispy chilli squid on a sesame fried ricecake, a cone of battered smoked haddock with chunky chips and homemade tartare sauce, barbequed prawns, a pile of pickled seaweed alongside tuna carpaccio and fish pâté: it was a full-on seafood feast at the weekend's Dingle Peninsula Food and Wine Festival.

While our personal food trail seemed to lead us unerringly to the fish-orientated stops along the way, there was also some time to enjoy a glass of Bubble Brothers' sparkling Veuve du Vernay and the Husband got to sample some of Beoir Chorca Dhuibhne's cask conditioned ale.

We finished off the eating (at that stage) with a couple of scoops at Murphy's Ice Cream: the Brown Bread Ice Cream with Caramelised Orange Marmalade is definitely worth returning for and I loved the Dark Chocolate Ice Cream topped with a dollop of Irish Whiskey Cream. Given that we had Little Missy in tow this year, there was no trip to Out of the Blue but, after a day spent eating, we couldn't really have justified another meal.

We didn't feel too hard done by as we were staying at the comfortable Heaton's Guesthouse which offers - just in case you might get the feeling that we weren't getting enough seafood - fish for breakfast. Choose from the fish of the day (my haddock was spanking fresh and impeccably cooked), undyed meaty Dingle Kippers (one mouthful was enough to make me rethink my life-long hatred of kippers) or Ted Browne's smoked salmon in any number of ways. And that's after a first class selecton of fresh fruit salads, stewed fruits, yoghurts, juices, at least three different homemade breads (not counting two different kinds of scones) and a cinnamony bread pudding.

All that, and a farmers' market around town too but I was terribly restrained, just a bag of Paddy's O'Granola, a jar of Magpie Cottage Goat's Cheese and some Green Apron Cracked Pepper Mustard, plus a bottle of cider from David Llewellyn and, the pièce de résistance, a punnet of his sweet, musky Irish-grown grapes. Who would have thought that you could grow decent grapes in Ireland, especially in North Dublin?

All the weekend's fishy offerings got gobbled up so fast that there was no time for photos, hence this picture of the Irish grapes, grabbed right before we devoured these too. Sometimes the more good food you eat, the more you want to have. Dingle is good like that.

The An invitation to participate again in the judging of the Blas na hÉireann National Irish Food Awards in Dingle on Friday gave me the opportunity to discover a range of new products - as well as stick around for the rest of the weekend's Dingle Food Festival festivities! This year's judging was quick and efficient as the initial judging at UCC had slimmed almost 800 entries down to three in each category; all we had to do, in a series of blind tastings, was choose the gold, silver and bronze winners.

I was fortunate enough to have to taste Minihan's rich Chocolate & Hazelnut Torte (gold winner in the Functional & Health Foods category), one of only two dishes that my fellow judges and I were interested in having more of. The other was the well-spiced Chicken Korma from Bombay Pantry (gold winner in Ready Meals), which served as an early lunch.

Friday evening's award ceremony turned up lots of favourites amongst the award winners, including Nibbles Food Emporium's Pear and Almond Tart, Glenilen Farm's handmade butter, Mella's Chocolate Fudge, Benoit Lorge's nougats, McCarthy's black pudding and Blazing Salads breads. Irish sourced products from SuperValu, Superquinn and Aldi made a strong showing and Country Choice's Peter Ward, the evening's MC, made a heartfelt plea to the big supermarket buyers, many of whom were in the room, to treat artisan producers well.

This year's Blas na hÉireann Supreme Champion was a product from Fermoy, Silverpail's SuperValu Supreme Truffle Fudge Ice Cream, and you can see all the winners in each category here.