November 2009 Archives

My cookery demonstration career continues this week on Wednesday 2 December in Knockcarron, Co Limerick (map here). Knockcarron/Knocklong ICA have invited me along and I'll be giving a demonstration called Spice Up Your Life in the Community Centre at 8pm. I'll be making my favourite Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Soup, a lovely rich Beef and Prune Tagine, finishing with Banana and Cardamom Cake.

This time round - although it may ruin the evening's suspense! - I'm looking forward to using an oven that works consistently. That, and me not accidentally turning it off half ways through the demo...

This is the second article that I wrote for last Thursday's Irish Times Christmas Gift Supplement. Read the first here.

Delicious goodies are always a joy to receive, especially when you know that they've been made specially for you. With a little ingenuity and time you can put together all manner of homemade gifts with a minimal financial outlay. Here are a selection of tasty titbits that won't take a lot of work and are cheaper - and more satisfying - than just picking up their equivalents in your local supermarket. And remember, presentation is everything. Pick up some cellophane and ribbons and take a look online for professional looking gift tags and packaging that you can download.

Everybody loves miniature treats. Take your favourite Christmas Cake recipe (Darina Allen's Christmas Cake with Toasted Almond Paste is well tried, tested and true) and bake it in mini tins. You can use well-scrubbed baked bean tins - you'll get approximately 12 out of a cake for a 10" square tin - or simply cook it in a normal sized tin, then cut it into small cakes before icing. You can do something similar with plum puddings, using ramekins, or cups, that will withstand steaming. You don't even have to ice these, just wrap in gingham and tie with matching ribbon.

Homemade mincemeat always trumps the bought variety and you can add a new twist to this old favourite by adding some liqueur (try Cointreau or Amaretto) to your favourite recipe or by starting a new tradition with Willie Harcourt-Cooze's Chocolatey Mince Pies.

You could compliment a nicely decorated jar of mincemeat or batch of mince pies by delivering them with a mix for hot chocolate. Take some good quality chocolate buttons, add a few pinches of ground spices - cinnamon is classic but chilli is also fun - print out simple instructions (per person: heat a mug of milk, add 1-2 tablespoons of chocolate, simmer and drink) and package in a nice jar, topped with a layer of marshmallows.

If you have any stashes of homemade jam, marmalade or chutney from seasonal gluts, pretty the jars up with some fabric and ribbon, then finish them off with beautifully designed labels and tags that can be downloaded from Eat Drink Chic.

Spices are just the thing to prevent that post-Christmas slump and brighten up anyone's January cooking. Dukkah, an Egyptian blend of toasted nuts and spices, will give a welcome lift when sprinkled across those virtuous New Year's salads; ras al hanout adds a warming North African flavour to stews and couscous dishes; Indian garam masala is an ever useful ingredient to have on hand; and an American pie spice mix will add extra oomph to the next batch of apple tarts. Recipes are easily found online or check out Ian Hemphill's The Spice and Herb Bible for these recipes and more.

Keeping with the spice theme, take a pepper mill and fill it with a mixture of equal parts black peppercorns, pink peppercorns, allspice berries and coriander seeds. When cooking, use this in place of regular pepper. It is especially good over grilled meats or fish.

Granola is essentially baked muesli but a homemade version of this crisp, textured cereal is always a welcome gift. In a large bowl, combine 300g of rolled oats, 100g flaked almonds, 50g each sunflower, pumpkin and sesame seeds, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon and a pinch of salt. Warm 3 tablespoons of honey and 60ml sunflower oil together, toss with the dry ingredients and bake on a large baking sheet at 150ºC for 35-40 minutes until golden brown. Allow to cool before mixing with 100g dried cranberries and packing into a large Kilner jar. Eat with milk, yoghurt - or directly from the jar.

The article that I wrote for today's Irish Times Gift Christmas Supplement is not online so I thought that I would reproduce the entire piece here - before it was edited for space and clarity - complete with links.

Buying for someone who loves food might seem like the easiest thing in the world but sometimes gourmet foodies can also be the pickiest of recipients. Gift vouchers give them what they love - the opportunity to choose for themselves.

For anyone picky about their daily cuppa, a voucher for Le Palais des Thes will hit the spot nicely. Choose from 280 different types of loose tea and all the paraphernalia needed to make the perfect cup. Classy canisters with tea blends from around the world, muslin tea bags to facilitate the delicate unfurling of whole tea leaves and beautiful Japanese Porcelain teapots: this is tea drinkers heaven.
Le Palais des Thes, 31 Wicklow Street, Dublin 2. Tel: 01 6708752 Email: wicklowstreet@palaisdesthes.ie Web: www.palaisdesthes.ie

Give someone you know who loves French cooking to a voucher for a tailor-made gourmet break at The Wilde Kitchen in Normandy. Relocated Irishwoman Sinéad Allart offers un goût, a taste, of French life at her cookery school in Benoistville, a village just 20 minutes drive from the ferry port of Cherbourg. Spend the morning strolling around the local market with Allart, tasting and choosing foods for that evening's class, then turn up at her kitchen for an evening of cooking and eating. A range of accommodation, cooking class and dining out options are available - contact Allart directly for more details.
The Wilde Kitche, La Blonderie, 50340 Benoistville, France. Tel +33 2 3352 5216 Email: wildekitchen@gmail.com Web: www.wildekitchen.net

Head further afield and treat the one you love to a voucher for La Maison Arabe Cooking School in Morocco. Although the boutique hotel is in the heart of the Marrakech medina, the classes take place in the peaceful surroundings of its country club, complete with potager garden. Sip on mint tea as a traditional Moroccan cook, or Dada, takes small groups through the rudiments of Moroccan cooking. The class starts with an explanation of the history and ingredients of that day's dishes - a Berber tagine or a couscous dish, some Moroccan salads - before beginning to cook under the Dada's eagle eye. Once completed, the participants sit down to enjoy a leisurely private lunch together in the garden where they are served their finished dishes. An insight into another world. 
La Maison Arabe, Marrakech Médina, Maroc Tel : (+212) 5 24 38 70 10 Email:
reservation@lamaisonarabe.com Web: www.lamaisonarabe.com

If you want to buy a gift for a cheese lover, a voucher for Cheese To Your Door might be just the ticket. Set up by Clare cheesemaker Paul Keane whose loyal customers had difficulties in finding his Bluebell Falls goats' cheese, he now stocks a selection of other Irish artisan products. As well as Keane's own goat-sourced wares - the original soft cheese has been joined by honey and pepper varieties and he also makes a semi-hard and some white mould cheeses - he sells many of the classic Irish cows' milk cheeses and plenty of great accompaniments. Take a look around the website and pick up a round of Milleens to enjoy with G's Gourmet Hot Pepper Relish, some Carrigaline Cheese Biscuits and Gubbeen chorizo. Cheese To Your Door offers free delivery throughout Ireland for orders over €45.
Bluebell Falls, Ballynacally, Ennis, Co Clare Tel: 086 8134600 Email:paul@bluebellfalls.ie Web: www.bluebellfalls.ie

Every foodie has their wishlist of cookware and baking equipment and a voucher for The Kitchen Dresser's online shop could make their dreams come true. They might fancy a four-tiered wire cupcake stand and one of those brightly coloured herb choppers. Or a bright red covetable KitchenAid artisan mixer might be right up their street. Either way, the Kitchen Dresser can help with online browsing, vouchers from €10 and free delivery in Ireland for orders over €30.
The Kitchen Dresser, Kea-Lew Business Park, Portlaoise, Co Laois. Tel: 057 86 20933 Email: info@kitchendresser.com Web: www.kitchendresser.net

Cook ahead, shop ahead, think ahead - those are the main points of Carmel Somers' first cookbook. Somers is the chef/owner of the Good Things Café, an acclaimed restaurant and popular cookery school in Durrus, West Cork. Eat Good Things Every Day, however, is not in the least bit cheffy. It is all about simple family dishes, often lifted with an unexpected ingredient: an apple in a cabbage stir fry with pork belly, bananas fried to accompany a Cuban rice dish, raw rhubarb tossed in a salad with cucumber and mint.

Eat Good Things Every Day is a book with a plan for eight weeks' worth of uncomplicated dinner recipes. Each week begins with a shopping list and Somers sets down a few cook ahead recipes (rice, tomato sauce, stocks) that can be made without too much fuss at the weekend. These are the building blocks of the weeks' dinners, getting transformed into Kedgeree or Moroccan Lamb (rice), Moussaka or Fish Stew (tomato sauce) and Topside of Beef or Braised Fennel (stocks). At the end of the book there are also chapters on soups, sweet things and a few extra special recipes that people have requested. Somers' Spinach and Durrus Cheese Pizza from the Good Things Café turns up here, as does her Roasted Turnips with Ginger and a very good all-in-one Chocolate and Banana Cake.

Planning aside, these are just very good recipes, all of which have been tested on her own family of three daughters. Imaginative leftovers form an important part of the book (Coconut Chicken with Spices and Herbs, Noodles with Peanut Dressing and Pork ) and Somers supplies plenty of dishes to use up those odd bits of vegetables that often hang around the fridge. There are lots of great fish dishes, crunchy winter salads and I love the idea of substituting chopped dulse for anchovies with lamb.

This is a cookbook which deserves to become splattered with food from kitchen use.

Must Try: Red Lentils Stewed with Tomatoes and Spices, served with Spinach, Baked Potato and Natural Yoghurt

Eat Good Things Every Day by Carmel Somers is published by Atrium.

Listen to Carmel Somers talk about Spices on Foodtalk with Newstalk from here.

If you grow your own fruit and veg, you can turn your garden gluts into winter treats. Caroline Hennessy has some useful tips and a few straightforward recipes for pickles and chutneys on EveryMonday.ie.

When the weather gets tough, it's time to get baking. Just made Carmel Somers' Banana and Chocolate Cake from her Eat Good Things Every Day cookbook and it's a winner.

With Little Missy loving her banana lunches when we're out and about, the fruit bowl is kept stocked up. Sometimes, I have to admit, overstocked, so it's always good to have a selection of banana cake recipes for using up the strays.

Carmel's recipe, available in Eat Good Things Everyday, makes one x 2lb loaf or you can easily divide it between two 1lb loaf tins - one to eat and one to pass on!

In the last few years, the Cliff House Hotel has really put Ardmore on the map. A small seaside village in Co Waterford, Ardmore was one of those places we visited as children during our summer holidays along the coast in Youghal. We always loved the cliff walk and I remember the old hotel that we used to pass on our way there, remarkable only for the large garden alongside.

Now, in its place, there is a spanking new hotel, far bigger than the original, and making the most of its scenic position on the cliff side. My Twin Cousins and I visited last year - we had a delicious light lunch in the bar - but I have never (yet!) had the opportunity to eat dinner there. After reading chef Martijn Kajuiter's cookbook that may soon be remedied.

Being Dutch, Kajuiter brings a new eye to local ingredients. He takes something simple - and very Irish - such as Potato Soup and transforms it by including apples, eggs and almonds. Spelt Bread is given a Cork slant with the inclusion of Beamish and Ardmore shrimp get turned into Dutch Shrimp Balls. Some of the recipes come from local sources, such as Granny McGrath's Brown Soda Bread, and Kajuiter has his own take on Irish Stew, using meaty lamb shanks. He talks with affection of his local suppliers and producers - gooseberries from Mrs Nugent, sampire and seakale from Liam Kelly, while St Raphael's residential and daycare centre grow salads for the hotel.

All the dishes are beautifully plated but this is not just a coffee table brochure for the hotel: it is a genuinely interesting cookbook with many usable ideas. That's not to say that a restaurant sensibility doesn't creep in sometimes. Kajuiter's solution to the problem of producing a still tender, yet well done steak is to cook it sous vide with a dash of whiskey, a great response to the Irish refusal to eat meat with any hint of blood, but hardly feasible for home cooking! Leaving that aside, there are lots of inventive ideas for the home cook, including things like bread dough wrapped around sausage rolls, Bread and Butter Pudding with Wild Mushrooms, peas cooked with oregano and lemon juice, olive oil used to make Chocolate Mousse. The chapter on jams and preserves is particularly good, with recipes for Pumpkin Chutney, Elderflower Barley Water and a variety of fruit cubes (Strawberry and Black Pepper, Lemon and Mint Fruit Tea).

Plenty to try in your own kitchen - and even more to whet the appetite for a visit to the Cliff House Hotel.

Must Try: Irish Spelt Bread with Beamish, Honey and Thyme

Cliff House Hotel: The Cookbook by Martijn Kajuiter is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Peter Ward established the well-regarded Country Choice café and deli in Nenagh, Co Tipperary in the early 1980s. He talks to Caroline Hennessy for EveryMonday.ie about how he thinks the latest recession will affect Irish artisan food producers. More here.

When I lived in New Zealand, cooking was my way of getting to know the (then Boyfriend, now) Husband's family and friends. Three of his sisters lived nearby in Christchurch and they, together with a boyfriend and various cousins, were regular visitors to our house. When I look back on the recipes that I gathered in those days, they rarely were for dining à deux; instead I cooked roasting tins full of Chicken with Garlic and Lemon, made overflowing pans of Beef and Chorizo Pie and baked large dishes of Chocolate Bread and Butter Pudding.

Of all those recipes, this one for a Moroccan Lamb and Apricot Tagine, is one that I have returned to again and again and it was my first choice of dish to cook for Glenroe Ladies' Group last week. A tagine, is quite simply, a stew by another name, with plenty of warming spices and a sweetness from the apricots. It's one of those cheap and cheerful recipes, easy to make ahead of time - the flavour is, in fact, much improved by making it the day before you intend to eat it - and, as it uses a cheap cut of lamb (€11.50 a kilo from Hanley's butchers in Mitcheltown) , this is a meal that won't break the bank.

This is the soup that I cooked at the Glenroe Ladies' Club demonstration - it is something that I make regularly as it has a great flavour, doesn't take long and is really good for freezing.

The smoked paprika is fabulous with it, giving a real depth to the soup. Perfect for sipping out of a large mug while you warm your hands, especially on a miserable wet day like today.

The suspense was growing. There is an element of hope in cooking an upsidedown cake at the best of time but cooking one for a demonstration in front of 35 members of the Glenroe Ladies' Club was, perhaps, asking for trouble. Throw in anirregularly used gas oven - I live in a world of electricity, rarely cooking on gas - and a demonstrator who, while distracted, managed to turn the oven off instead of up (ahem) and you're adding a whole new layer of problems to the mix!

Normally I cook this cake at 180ºC, or Gas 4, but the oven was barely warmed to half that temperature by the time I was ready to put it in. What to do? Whack the oven up to Gas 8, leave the cake on top and get the nearest ladies to monitor the (hopefully) rising heat. It's always convenient to have mother and a few relatives in the audience in these situations! After I landed the cake into the slightly warmed up oven, a cousin kept an eye on the timing and I crossed my fingers.

When it was cooked, taking about 50 minutes instead of the usual 30-35, I held my breath as I turned it out. When I gingerly lifted the cooking pan away from the cake it, amazingly enough, looked fantastic despite all the messing about. Looks are one thing but the real proof is in the eating and there wasn't a crumb left to bring home. Enjoyable as it was, the evening wouldn't have been half as much fun without the cliff hanger ending!

The cake recipe is below - if you don't have an ovenproof frying pan, you can of course make this in a 25cm (10 inch) baking tin like these ones from The Kitchen Dresser.

My first local cookery demonstration - as reported in our local paper, The Avondhu!

The days are getting colder, nights are drawing in and it's time for some warming homecooked meals. Fancy trying out a few new tastes and flavours? Have you ever wondered what to do with butternut squash or sweet potato? Wanted to try making a Moroccan Tagine but not been sure of what it involves?

Glenroe Ladies' Club is holding a Winter Warmers demonstration evening with food journalist, broadcaster and Ballymaloe-trained cook Caroline Hennessy on Wednesday, 4 November in the Community Hall, Glenroe at 8pm. On the night we'll be starting with a Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Soup, moving on to a Moroccan Lamb and Apricot Tagine, served with a Nutty Lemon Couscous, and finishing with a Caramelised Plum Upsidedown Cake.

There's nothing pricy here: using vegetables and fruit in season means cheaper shopping, slow cook some inexpensive stewing lamb until it melts in your mouth and jazz it all up with a few warming and easily accessible spices. Looking forward to seeing you there! Everybody welcome.

"Try not to drool too much!" That was the Husband's parting shot as I left the cottage, en route to interview Willie Harcourt-Cooze at the Temple Bar Chocolate Festival on Saturday. It's not that I have the habit of going weak at the knees with my interviewees, no matter how charismatic - while at Savour New Zealand I managed Anthony Bourdain without so much as a missed heartbeat - but the Husband knew how much Willie's Channel 4 programmes had drawn me in, had witnessed my initially fruitless search for the 100% cacao bars in Ireland and had sourced a very well-received stash of those and the just-released chocolate bars for my birthday.

Did I mention that I also bought a copy of Willie's cookbook as soon as it came out? And that his hot chocolate is the afternoon pick-me-up of choice at the cottage? And that his cacao gets grated into and on top of many dishes (especially eggs fried in chilli oil) as we, as exhorted to by Mr Harcourt-Cooze, keep one of the bars on the worktop, next to the olive oil, salt and pepper? Hmm...maybe the Husband did have a point.

After the calm of the cottage, there was a real buzz on the streets of Temple Bar on Saturday with the weekly food, book and design markets taking place alongside the weekend-long chocolate festival. It had started on Friday with a variety of workshops, including one on truffle making with Gillian from Some Say Cocoa, Some Say Cacao, and a screening of the original Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The workshops continued on Saturday, alongside master chocolatier Benoit Lorge's cooking demonstrations and Willie's own talk on his adventures in making chocolate, from bean to bar.

While a lot of the events took indoors, the festival was made visible on the streets on Saturday by MaSamba Samba School's Chocolate Caravan, drumming oompa loompas (pictured) roaming the streets of Temple Bar. Sunday was Chocolate Fair day but I was long gone by the stage, my interview with Willie on tape and the transcription started. He was a pleasure to talk to, the encounter sweetened by the fact that he turned up with some of his new chocolate releases for me to try. I'm a sucker for good chocolate, even when it's not delivered by a charming man. And the interview? That's coming up soon in the Mail on Sunday. I'll let you know.