March 12, 2008

Days of kale and wonder

Spring may not be properly sprung, judging by this week's storms, but there's still a lightness in the air, a brightness in the mornings and evenings which translates itself onto the dinner table. Not being entirely well organised gardeners, it took us a while to figure out which of the selection of plants still standing (or half battered down) in the garden is kale - the other that we still have growing is purple sprouting broccoli or PSB, although not yet P or S, although we still have our fingers crossed. We're growing a variety called Ragged Jack, with large frilly leaves, and I had only ever encountered curly kale before this so initially refused to believe that it was edible. After confirming that it is indeed edible - more than that, it's actually delicious, with tender and juicy leaves - we have been eating it with abandon.

During the dog days of winter, it made frequent appearances as a last minute addition to stews and soups - that was if someone felt like braving the nasty weather and Very Dark Garden outside. Happily, the Husband's head torch (normally used for camping) proved very useful in a winter countryside setting. Washed, de-stemmed and shredded, it just takes a few minutes to cook in a pan of bubbling winter-time food, softening into a delicious bright greenness in minutes. But there's more to kale than using it just as a last-minute addition other meals. Here's a recipe for those times when you feel like you need a spring tonic - just kale, garlic, chilli, olive oil and lemon juice. After a plateful of this, perhaps on a slice of your own homemade bread rubbed with more garlic and drizzled with some of the olive oil you used to cook the kale, you'll feel ready to face whatever the weather may throw at you.

Kale with Garlic, Chilli and Lemon
For each person
Kale - a couple of handfuls
Olive oil
Garlic - 1 clove, peeled and sliced
Red chilli - ½, deseeded and sliced finely
Freshly ground black pepper, sea salt
Lemon - ½

To serve:
Sourdough bread - 1 long slice
Garlic, olive oil

Wash the kale thoroughly. Remove the stem with a sharp knife, roll up the leaves and cut into shreds about 1cm thick. Start toasting the bread. Heat a glug of olive oil in a frying pan, add the garlic, cook over a medium heat until just golden then add the chilli and shredded kale. Season and stir well. Clamp a lid or plate on top of the pan and allow the kale to cook in its own steam for a couple of minutes. Squeeze some lemon juice to taste then serve on a warm plate, piled on top of the hot toast, rubbed with garlic and drizzled with olive oil.

Posted by Caroline at 8:56 AM | Comments (3)

February 21, 2008

Leeks from the garden

The veggie garden is looking a little sad at this stage in the year. Just a few scraggly kale plants, as-yet-unformed purple sprouting broccoli - but we still have some leeks, when we remember to cook them! We've recently been having a cold snap so I've been making lots of soups and, one day when I happened to remember that we still had to use up the leeks in the garden and actually had some potatoes in the house, I made a version of Clothilde's minimalist Leek and Potato Soup, which she in turn had adapted from Sophie Brissaud's recipe. As I was just after a stock-making session, I used chicken stock as well as water in the soup for more depth of flavour, and finished it off with dollops of ever-present yoghurt. This is very much an approximation of the recipe - I just didn't want to get out the weighing scales!

Minimalist Leek and Potato Soup
Leeks - 4, freshly pulled from your garden, preferably!
Potatoes - 4 medium sized floury potatoes. I used Roosters
Chicken Stock - 2 cups (or just substitute water)
Fine sea salt, freshly ground pepper
Natural yoghurt, to serve

Clean, trim and thinly slice the leeks, keeping the green parts separate. Peel and dice the potatoes. Place the white parts of the leeks and the diced potatoes with the chicken stock and two cups of water into a heavy based saucepan and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer, season, cover and cook for 30 minutes, until the potatoes are beginning to disintegrate and the leeks are soft.

Using a stick blender - the simplest option! - or liquidiser, blend the soup until smooth. Season to taste and heat until simmering again. Add the thinly sliced green parts of the leek, cover and remove from the heat. After five minutes, ladle it into bowls and serve with a little natural yoghurt swirled through the soup.

Serves 4.

Posted by Caroline at 8:27 AM | Comments (0)

February 17, 2008

Valentine's Night - delayed

Due to a car battery failure, our Valentine's treat got put on hold until Saturday night but the fondue was definitely worth waiting for. I didn't make the traditional Gruyere/Emmental fondue but I did put together a variation of Myrtle Allen's Ballymaloe Cheese Fondue, using local Hegarty's Farmhouse Cheddar, a few splashes of Fern Bay Sauvignon Blanc, some garlic and parsley. We dipped cubes of sourdough bread, which had been crisped up in a hot oven, pieces of rosemary flatbread from work, dried apricots, some thinly sliced Gubbeen chorizo and salami, cutting the richness with a few cherry tomatoes, gherkins (my latest foodie love!) and a green salad from West Cork. So simple and so good - I'm a fondue convert.

The following day we were around at my Clonmel-based Cousin's for brunch (yummy muffins!), waxing lyrical about our new fondue set and making her pull an almost forgotten old Christmas present from the back of the cupboard. Don't forget to use it, Ruth!

Simple Irish Cheese Fondue
Well flavoured Irish cheddar cheese - 200g, grated or finely chopped
White wine - 3 tablespoons
Garlic - 2 cloves, finely chopped
Parsley - 2 teaspoons

Put all the ingredients into a heavy based saucepan over a low heat and, stirring regularly, heat until melted and bubbling.

Either serve at the table in the saucepan - you may have to reheat it half way through - or transfer to a fondue pot over a low heat and serve with cubes of bread, pieces of toasted flatbread, dried apricots, thinly sliced salami, cherry tomatoes, gherkins and a green salad.

Serves 2 - although extra cheese and white wine can also be added half way through if you feel like you need a little extra! And make sure you heat up the fondue pot to crisp up any tasty little remnants at the end.

Posted by Caroline at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2008

Valentine's Night Fondue

Happy Valentine's Day! Be you romantic or not, there's just no way of avoiding it. But you can make it easier on yourself. After hearing too many tales of horrendous evenings in restaurants from my waitress sister, I've always avoided restaurants on Valentine's Night in favour of preparing something at home. I'm working all day today so there's not going to be time to prepare any three course meals when I come home tonight - but I've got something even better.

After coveting one since I lived in New Zealand, and further inspired by an article in the New York Times, I recent invested in a fondue pot and tonight's the night that it will make its debut on our table. It's not a huge leap from last year's Baked Vacherin Mont d'Or Valentine's dinner, actually! Once we've made Melissa Clarke's Classic Fondue, she's got plenty of variations on that theme, or we could go Irish and turn to the Myrtle Allen-devised Ballymaloe Cheese Fondue. Whatever you choose to do, enjoy your own Valentine's celebration.

Posted by Caroline at 8:15 AM | Comments (2)

February 6, 2008

Waitangi Day

If you're in New Zealand at the moment, you're probably celebrating Waitangi Day on the beach or with a picnic. You could do something similar in Ireland but you wouldn't last long on a wind- and rain-swept beach and picnics really need to be at home in front of the fire! This wintery weather lends itself very much to warming soups so, after chancing on some lovely sweet potatoes in Fermoy's last remaining veg shop, I decided that it was time to make Meg's Spicy Lentil and Kumara Soup - kumara is a Maori sweet potato that we eat a lot of when we are in New Zealand but can't get in Ireland. The sweet potatoes that I picked up weren't a bad substitute, though, I'll definitely be back to get some more to make more kumara recipes. Now, time to make some Anzac Biscuits for a real Kiwi treat - although I guess I should really be making a Pavalova!

Posted by Caroline at 12:57 PM | Comments (3)

August 30, 2007

By Request: Huzzar's Chicken

Dishes that we cooked or were cooked for us as children always hold a special luster. I had a set of kids' cookery cards from Irish sugar company Siúcra which had great recipes like The Last of the Mohicans Baked Beans (think the recipes were based on classic books!) and a desert of bananas warmed in a sauce made of orange juice (Swiss Family Robinson Bananas, perhaps?).

Paula Daly's much-loved and much-used Stork Cookery Books are full of similarly evocative recipes, including things like Steak Diane, Franzipan Flan, Drop Scones and Gougère. I recently wrote up Paula Daly's Gingerbread recipe after receiving a request for it and subsequently received an email from Sorcha asking me to look out for a recipe for Huzzar's (or Hussar's) Chicken, which she described as "absolutely divine." I found it in the second cookbook, the one with the green cover, and - although I haven't yet had a chance to try it out myself, here you go. I've substituted olive oil for the Crisp 'n Dry and butter for the Stork but, if you're in search for a more authentic-to-the-period flavour, feel free to change them around. Happy cooking Sorcha!

Huzzar's Chicken
1 1.4kg chicken
Paprika - 1 desertspoon
Salt, freshly ground black pepper
Mixed herbs - ½ teaspoon

To fry:
Olive oil - 2 tablespoons

Savoury Rice:
Streaky rashers - 125g, chopped
Butter - 50g
Onion - 1, finely chopped
Garlic - 1 clove, chopped
Long-grain rice - 225g
Chicken stock - 425ml
Green pepper - 1, diced
Red pepper - 1, diced
Salt, freshly ground black pepper

Joint the chicken into 4 or 8 pieces. Mix the paprika, salt, pepper and herbs together and sprinkle over the chicken. Leave covered for 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).

Heat the oil in a pan and fry the chicken pieces until golden brown. Reduce the heat and continue cooking for 20 minutes, turning frequently.

Place the chopped rashers and butter into an ovenproof casserole and heat gently. Add the diced onion and garlid. Cook until the onion softens then add the rice to the pan. Mix well until the rice grains are coated then add the boiling chicken stock and diced peppers.

Bring to the boil then taste and adjust seasoning. Place the chicken pieces on top of the rice. Cover with a lid and then cook in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, until the chicken is fully cooked and the rice is tender.

Serve with a crisp green salad. Serves 4.

Adapted from McDonnell's Second Good Food Cookbook by Paula Daly.

Posted by Caroline at 6:45 AM | Comments (2)

August 27, 2007

Garden gluts: Silverbeet aka Swiss Chard

Beware when you're sowing seeds. Especially if, as happened to us, you've ordered them from the Irish Seed Savers Association or Brown Envelope Seeds and every single last one of the seeds sprout forth. We planted way too many in March, didn't thin the seedlings enough, and now have copious amounts of kale, purple sprouting broccoli and leeks for later in the season so I'm keeping my eye out for recipes for those (will definitely have to check out some of Sarah's ideas for the broccoli!). The squash is trying to escape from the confines of our rabbit-proof fenced veggie garden while I try to figure out what to do with armloads of silverbeet.

Silverbeet, better known as Swiss chard in this hemisphere, is like a larger and more handsome version of spinach. We grow the rainbow variety, which has red, orange and yellow as well as white stalks. Some recipes call just for the stalks, others for the deep green leaves. You can combine the two but you need to ensure that the stalks cooked for longer. Silverbeet is found in every garden and supermarket in New Zealand. Despite the fact that it's proven really easy to grow here, happily thriving amidst all this summer's rain, it has been difficult to track it down in Ireland.

The Husband was brought up on and loves silverbeet but it's been more of a slow getting-to-know-you for me. New Zealand's Cuisine magazine has proved a good source of recipes as have seasonal cookbooks like Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook and Growers Market by Leanne Kitchen. Stephanie Alexander's books - both Kitchen Garden Cooking with Kids and her Cook's Companion, a very welcome wedding gift! - also have some great ideas and Heidi's recipe from Super Natural Cooking which incorporates fried, crusted butter beans with silverbeet is a real winner. Instead of Spanakopita this weather we're making Silverbeet Pie, a successful way of introducing this vegetable to people who have never tasted it before. Anyone out there got any more ideas? I'm always looking to try out new ways of using it, especially as we can't seem to make a dent on the supply at all.

Posted by Caroline at 7:04 PM | Comments (5)

July 24, 2007

Rabbit recipes

Rabbit is in season at the moment, at least according to one of the emails I got from Eat The Seasons a few weeks ago. I should tell the Husband although, with lush, fresh grass everywhere at the moment, I'm not sure our rabbits would venture into one of the cages for a carrot (even if it was a recently pulled one!) At least they've stopped trying to dig their way inside the fenced-off veggie garden recently and our purple sprouting broccoli, kale, sweetcorn, beans and silverbeet are all thriving.

Check out the article on rabbit here - like all Eat the Seasons entries there's information on the history of the rabbit and tips on buying, storing and preparing your bunny. No tips on cage-enticing though. There are also a few recipes (One-Pot Rabbit, Pot-Roasted Rabbit with Baby Leeks, Stuffed Rabbit with Harissa) that I might have to try the next time we get our hands on one and, for the vegetarians, they even include a recipe for a Welsh Rabbit!

Posted by Caroline at 7:36 PM | Comments (4)

May 8, 2007

A Taste of Yellow: Turmeric

Barbara at Winos and Foodies is currently holding a once-off food bloggers event called A Taste of Yellow in support of LIVESTRONG Day 2007.

LIVESTRONG Day is the Lance Armstrong Foundation's (LAF) grassroots advocacy initiative to unify people affected by cancer and to raise awareness about cancer survivorship issues on a national level and in local communities across the country. LIVESTRONG Day 2007 will occur on Wednesday 16 May.

As Barbara says, everyone has been touched by cancer - I know my family and friends have - and she herself is currently undergoing treatment. For A Taste of Yellow she asked that we make a dish using a yellow food. I immediately thought of turmeric, a spice that I find myself using more and more for its warm, earthy flavour and vivid colour. The fact that it has recently come to attention for its reputed anti-cancer properties makes it all the more perfect for this event.

To showcase the colour and flavour of the turmeric, I decided make a one-pot dish of pilau rice. While this would make a good accompaniment to an Indian curry, particularly a tomato-based one, it is also good eaten by itself and makes a good lunchbox filler for a portable lunch.

Spiced Mushroom Pilau
Sunflower oil - 1-2 tablespoons
Onion - 1, sliced thinly
Mushrooms - 2 cups, quartered
Turmeric - 3 teaspoons
Cardamom pods - 5, gently crushed
Cinnamon stick - 1, broken in half
Yellow mustard seeds - 2 teaspoons
Fenugreek - ½ teaspoon
Bay leaves - 2
Basmati rice - 2 cups
Boiling water - 4 cups
Lemon - 1, juiced
Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper

Heat the sunflower oil in a deep heavy-based saucepan. Fry the onions and mushrooms over a moderate heat for 3-4 minutes until the onions are soft. Add the turmeric, cardamom pods, cinnamon stick, mustard seeds, fenugreek and bay leaves and fry for another 2 minutes until the spices release their scent.

Stir in the rice and turn everything over in the pan until the grains are all nicely coated with the spicy mixture. Pour in the 4 cups of boiling water and season well with salt and pepper. Stir once, bring to the boil then put the lid on and turn the heat to its lowest setting and allow to cook for 15-20 minutes until all the water is absorbed and the rice is tender.

Squeeze over the lemon, fluff with a fork, taste for seasoning and serve. Serves 4.

Posted by Caroline at 7:13 AM | Comments (5)

A Taste of Yellow: Turmeric

Barbara at Winos and Foodies is currently holding a once-off food bloggers event called A Taste of Yellow in support of LIVESTRONG Day 2007.

LIVESTRONG Day is the Lance Armstrong Foundation's (LAF) grassroots advocacy initiative to unify people affected by cancer and to raise awareness about cancer survivorship issues on a national level and in local communities across the country. LIVESTRONG Day 2007 will occur on Wednesday 16 May.

As Barbara says, everyone has been touched by cancer - I know my family and friends have - and she herself is currently undergoing treatment. For A Taste of Yellow she asked that we make a dish using a yellow food. I immediately thought of turmeric, a spice that I find myself using more and more for its warm, earthy flavour and vivid colour. The fact that it has recently come to attention for its reputed anti-cancer properties makes it all the more perfect for this event.

To showcase the colour and flavour of the turmeric, I decided make a one-pot dish of pilau rice. While this would make a good accompaniment to an Indian curry, particularly a tomato-based one, it is also good eaten by itself and makes a good lunchbox filler for a portable lunch.

Spiced Mushroom Pilau
Sunflower oil - 1-2 tablespoons
Onion - 1, sliced thinly
Mushrooms - 2 cups, quartered
Turmeric - 3 teaspoons
Cardamom pods - 5, gently crushed
Cinnamon stick - 1, broken in half
Yellow mustard seeds - 2 teaspoons
Fenugreek - ½ teaspoon
Bay leaves - 2
Basmati rice - 2 cups
Boiling water - 4 cups
Lemon - 1, juiced
Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper

Heat the sunflower oil in a deep heavy-based saucepan. Fry the onions and mushrooms over a moderate heat for 3-4 minutes until the onions are soft. Add the turmeric, cardamom pods, cinnamon stick, mustard seeds, fenugreek and bay leaves and fry for another 2 minutes until the spices release their scent.

Stir in the rice and turn everything over in the pan until the grains are all nicely coated with the spicy mixture. Pour in the 4 cups of boiling water and season well with salt and pepper. Stir once, bring to the boil then put the lid on and turn the heat to its lowest setting and allow to cook for 15-20 minutes until all the water is absorbed and the rice is tender.

Squeeze over the lemon, fluff with a fork, taste for seasoning and serve. Serves 4.

Posted by Caroline at 7:13 AM | Comments (5)

March 21, 2007

Rabbit success

It's been a long time - and two rabbit traps, one from Norfolk and one from New Zealand - coming but this weekend the Boyfriend finally managed to catch a rabbit. When he announced that there was a rabbit in a trap at the back of the garden on Sunday morning I didn't initially believe him but when fresh back steaks and legs arrived in the kitchen there was no doubting. That's one rabbit down - probably about 9999 left to go, judging by their attacks on our newly planted beech trees.

Fortunately I've been collecting recipes for just such an event since we moved into the cottage last year but, as usual, I took my inspiration from several and made it up as I went along. In the interests of Hayden's sustainable cooking challenge, we cooked this with Irish carrots and onions - and some garlic that I personally imported from Barcelona. Although the wine was imported from Chile, most of the ingredients were Irish-made or grown (Odlum's unbleached flour, Kerrygold butter) and locally sourced. As it was a cold weekend, we had our little wood and coal-burning stove running so we were able to keep the house toasty, heat up our hot water and simmer this stew on top of the stove. The stove is not normally used for cooking - we do have an electric cooker too - as it normally takes too much stoking to get it hot enough but on a cold, miserable evening, what else is there to do? Not for the first time, I blessed my cast iron pots as they really are the best thing for cooking on the stovetop.

Because our rabbit was wild, it certainly needed all of the two hours' cooking that it got. Inspired by Jamie Oliver, the Boyfriend put together some herb dumplings which we landed on top of the stew for the last 20 minutes, browning them under the grill for a few minutes at the end. The meat was lean, rich and (almost) tender - it filled me up in minutes - accompanied by plenty of savoury gravy, butter-soft carrots (if you're a fan of not-so-well cooked carrots, just add them in towards the end, before the dumplings go on top) and light as a feather dumplings, crusty on top from the grill, and soaked in gravy underneath. It's a great one-pot meal, perfect for a wintery evening. Now, to try catching another one...

Ballyvoddy Rabbit Stew with Herb Dumplings
Rabbit - 1, skinned, gutted and jointed
Flour - 2 tablespoons
Olive oil - 1 tablespoon
Streaky bacon - three rashers, chopped into large pieces
Onions - 2, peeled and sliced
Garlic - 4 cloves, peeled
Red wine - 500ml
Chicken or vegetable stock - 500ml
Carrots - 4, peeled and cut into large 2cm chunks
Thyme and rosemary - large sprigs of each
Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper

Herb Dumplings
Plain flour - 200g
Baking powder - 2 teaspoons
Butter - 100g
Parsley and chives - a fist-full, chopped finely
Milk - enough to mix
Whole nutmeg, sea salt, freshly ground black pepper

Mix the flour with a pinch of sea salt and plenty freshly ground black pepper. Rinse and dry the pieces of rabbit and toss in the seasoned flour.

Heat the olive oil in a large, cast iron casserole dish or heavy-based frying pan. Fry the streaky bacon and onions for 3-4 minutes, then add the whole cloves of garlic and fry for another 2 minutes. Remove the bacon, onions and garlic with a slotted spoon and put to one side.

Heat the casserole dish again and then put in the rabbit to sear, turning as it browns. Turn down the heat and add the bacon, onions and garlic to the pan, together with the red wine, stock, carrot chunks, whole sprig of thyme and the rosemary leaves, stripped from the stalk and chopped finely. Bring to the boil place the lid on top, turn down and allow to simmer until the meat is tender. This will take from 1 hour for farmed rabbit to about 2 hours for their wild brethren. The dish can also be cooked in a 180°C oven.

Meanwhile, make the herb dumplings. Sieve the plain flour and baking powder into a large bowl. Rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the chopped herbs to the bowl, season well and add enough milk to make a soft dough. Roll into balls about the size of a large walnut, grate some nutmeg on top of the dumplings and refrigerate until needed.

Twenty minutes before you want to eat, add the dumplings to the simmering stew, drizzle with olive oil, and clamp the lid back on top to allow them to cook in the steam. When they are well risen and cooked, preheat the grill and put the casserole under the grill for a few minutes until the dumplings are golden brown. Serves 4.

Posted by Caroline at 7:25 PM | Comments (9)

February 20, 2007

Pancake Tuesday

Not being very clued in with dates, the first notice I received of the annual pancake flipping day was a display of bottles of squeezy lemon and pancake batter mixes at Morton's in Ranelagh. Pancakes really are one of the easiest things to make so don't bother with the mix - it's normally nothing but flour anyway - buy a real lemon and whip up your own pancakes in minutes with some of the recipes on Greatfood.ie - try sweet pancakes, crêpes, savoury French Galettes or even some fluffy American Buttermilk Pancakes from Bakingsheet.

With a few friends coming round for pancakes and hot chocolate (maybe some Mexican Hot Chocolate?) this evening, I'm using my old recipe for pancake batter (100g plain flour, a pinch of salt, 1 egg, 250ml milk and a dribble of melted butter all whisked together) to make a savoury Ricotta and Spinach Pancake Bake. Sweet pancakes will depend on the mood of the cook afterwards! And always remember, the first pancake invariably sticks and turns into a scrunched up mess. Don't get discouraged - just toss it onto a plate, sprinkle with caster sugar, squeeze a half lemon over and eat it to sweeten you mood while you get stuck into the rest of the batch. Non-stick frying pans have their fans but I wouldn't be without my very heavy cast iron frying pan - no flipping for me, you'd have to have wrists of steel to manage to move this baby so fast - which does a great job every time. Enjoy your pancakes!

Posted by Caroline at 7:58 AM | Comments (2)

February 16, 2007

The easiest Valentine's Day dinner

First, get your hands on a small round soft cheese called Vacherin Mont d'Or. It is a seasonal French or Swiss cheese, which means that you can only have this kind of meal between mid-September and March - like asparagus, it makes it all the nicer as a result.

Preheat your oven to 200°C and take the cheese out of its little wooden box. Remove any waxed paper and sit it snugly back into the box. Tear off a sheet of tinfoil and scrunch the tinfoil around the box to make a nice nest so that nothing can flow out in the oven. Prick the top rind of the cheese with a fork and then, using a spoon, scoop enough of the rind sideways enough so that you can push a small bunch of thyme and a couple of cloves of garlic into the heart of the cheese.

Open a bottle of decent white wine - you'll be drinking this with your dinner later on (New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is a good option) - and pour a generous splash of it over the rind. Land the cheese into the oven for 25 minutes.

You can use this time to lay the table with two plates, a selection of apples from your garden (if the winter stores haven't already been used or gone rotten), some pears, a dish of walnuts that you bought in a Berlin market, the rest of the wine, crusty bread and a good green salad. A simple bowl of floppy butterhead leaves, dressed with a mustardy balsamic dressing will be perfect. When your cheese is warmed through and happily bubbling, serve it up and eat by candlelight, dipping your bread into the cheese and alternating with the nuts, fruit and salad. The molten, creamy unctuous cheese is like fondue in a box - with none of the hassle.

It's a very filling meal so you can get away with making no desert although, if the mood should take you, you could stretch to a few squares of ultra-luxurious Valrhona chocolate or, even closer to home, some of Cocoa Bean's exquisitely-flavoured dark chocolate bars - star anise and ginger or orange zest would both be particularly good contrasts to the richness of the cheese.

Posted by Caroline at 7:34 AM | Comments (4)

January 26, 2007

Always useful Simple Tomato Sauce

This is the most useful recipe to have in your repertoire. I use it - sometimes with the addition of broccoli, chorizo, bacon or chilli - with gnocchi, pasta, cannelloni and polenta, as a topping for pizza and even when baking pancakes. If you can track down some decent Italian plum tomatoes, it's all the better for that; if you can't, just keep tasting and adjusting the flavour with sugar if it's too bitter, red wine or balsamic vinegar if it's too sweet, tomato purée if it needs more body, water if it's too thick. If you have fresh basil, add it at the end to lift the flavour of sauce. I often use thyme - fresh if I have it but sometimes dried - if I want the sauce to have a herby tinge.

Simple Tomato Sauce
Olive oil - 1 tablespoon
Onion - ½, peeled and finely chopped
Garlic - 2 cloves, peeled and sliced
Tinned plum tomatoes - 1 can
Bay leaf - 1
Sugar - 1 teaspoon, or to taste
Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper

Heat the olive oil in a heavy based frying pan. Add the onions and soften over a moderate heat for 3-4 minutes, add the garlic and continue to cook for another 3-4 minutes. Pour the tinned tomatoes into the pan, squashing them as you stir, add the bay leaf and sugar, and simmer for at least 15 minutes to concentrate the flavour. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

With pasta, this will serve two people, with some leftovers for lunch.

Posted by Caroline at 4:11 PM | Comments (0)

December 11, 2006

Truffle experiments...

An early, very generous, Christmas present from my brother arrived on Friday. A rapidly couriered, well padded little box containing a gold mine - a selection of walnut-sized, pungent-smelling black French truffles. Needless to say, I've never before had the opportunity to cook with truffles so this weekend, down at the cottage and far from the internet, was spent excitedly poring over my many cookbooks for recipes and ideas. Saturday night's dinner was an extravaganza of gently Scrambled Eggs with Truffles with a musky Truffle Risotto to follow, all accompanied by some decent sparkling wine (Jacob's Creek Chardonnay Pinot Noir), courtesy of the sister, and plenty of pauses for taste appreciation, much to the Boyfriend's amusement!

A few of the truffles have been frozen in olive oil at home in the hope that they retain some aroma for Christmas festivities and the rest are snuggled in bowls of eggs and rice in my Dublin fridge, imparting their unique flavour to these store cupboard basics. I'm just hoping that they don't fade too quickly and that I'm using them correctly! I'm cooking for a few people this week, including the Bibliofemme Bookclub Christmas Dinner, and, methinks, truffles might just be making an appearance during the meals...thanks Kieran!

Posted by Caroline at 5:14 PM | Comments (3)

October 26, 2006

Harira for bookclub

Our last Bibliofemme bookclub - for The Rum Diaries by Hunter S Thompson - was held at my flat on a rapidly-darkening autumn evening. The previous evening had been cold and dreary as I walked home from my webmaster course so I decided to start a soup, leave it sit overnight, and then finish it off as the girls arrived. I'd recently come across Julie Le Clerk's version of Harira in an old copy of Cuisine so this was a good opportunity to try it out. I had made a meatless version of this last year in Christchurch but this time round I had plans for a complete meal in a bowl, stuffed with lamb, lentils, chickpeas and, after a look at Claudia Roden's version of the fast-breaking soup, haricot beans.

This is really one of those soups best made the night before you need it as the flavour improves so much by the spices having a chance to infuse the other ingredients overnight. And that makes life a lot easier if you have people coming round too. All you have to do as your guests arrive (or while one of them hoovers the floor - many thanks to the Connoisseur!) is reheat the soup, put a few warmed flatbreads or pita breads on the table and a bowl of natural yoghurt and just let everybody help themselves. This cauldron of Harira fed the six Bibliofemmers as well as a hungry - and very outnumbered! - Boyfriend, everyone taking their own soup from the table to their seat where we alternately juggled bowls and the two babies that had also turned up. Filling, suitably autumnal and - most importantly - hassle free!

Harira
Saffron threads - 10
Boiling water - ½ cup
Olive oil - 2 tablespoons
Stewing lamb - 200g, roughly chopped into small cubes
Onions - 3, chopped
Ground cinnamon - 2 teaspoons
Ground cumin - 2 teaspoons
Ground ginger - 2 teaspoons
Canned chopped tomatoes - 3 cans
Chicken stock - 6 cups
Cooked chickpeas - 3 cups
Cooked haricot beans - 2 cups
Brown lentils - 1 cup
Lemon - 1, squeezed
Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper

Soak the saffron threads in the boiling water and leave to stand while you prepare the rest of the soup.

Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan and quickly brown the lamb all over. Remove from the pan and leave to one side.

Heat the rest of the oil and cook the onion over a low heat until softened but not browned. Add the cinnamon, cumin and ginger and fry for one minute. Pour the saffron liquid, tomatoes and stock into the pan, adding the chickpeas and haricot beans at the same time and bring to the boil.

Simmer for 40 minutes then add the lentils, simmering for another 30 minutes or until the lentils are cooked.

At this point I took the pan off the heat and allowed it to sit overnight. The next afternoon, I heated it up over a low heat, adding lemon juice and seasoning to taste.

Served with warmed Arabic flatbreads or pita breads and dollops of natural yoghurt it feeds 6 bookclub members plus one Boyfriend.

Adapted from Julie Le Clerc's recipe for Harira in Cuisine, September 2004.

Posted by Caroline at 7:18 PM | Comments (5)

September 13, 2006

Field mushroom hunting

Last weekend saw the Boyfriend and myself travel down to my parents' place in North Cork. As a result of the warm, damp weather over the past few weeks, I have received constant reports from my mother about the abundance of mushrooms so, with a Beef and Guinness casserole bubbling away in the oven, we off headed for a pre-dinner ramble down the fields with our eyes firmly fixed on the ground.

A few minutes in the Lios field - so named because of the ancient, fenced-off ringfort down in the hollow - and we hit the jackpot. With whoops of delight, we bent again and again to pluck the scatterings of pink-gilled little cuppeens, just peeping through the ground, and the older, larger platter mushrooms. Trekking up and down the field, we quickly gathered a generous bag of fungi. My family, so completely used to picking a few handfuls whenever they walk down to the cattle, turned their noses up at the older mushrooms but, after being peeled and checked for worms, were thrown into the pot in the oven to further enrich the Guinness gravy.

Breakfast was simply the left-over mushrooms fried in butter, served up on slices of toasted Brown Soda Bread. Another trip down the fields before lunch and a further haul make me revisit Denis Cotter's recipe for Mushrooms in Milk that I had made (unseasonably) earlier this year with cultivated Portobello mushrooms. It's a very different dish when made with wild field mushrooms which, although they may not be as meaty or easily obtainable, more than make up for that with their intense flavour.

For anyone interested in doing a tutored mushroom hunt, mushroomstuff.com is running one in Avondale House, Co Wicklow on Saturday 7 October, there's a Ballymaloe Cookery School one on Saturday 14 October or you can take part in Longueville House Hotel's mushroom hunt on Sundays 8 and 15 October. Slow Food Ireland's Fingal Convivium run their annual mushroom hunt on Sunday 22 October in the grounds of Howth Castleand the Four Rivers Convivium also have a Foraging for Wild Food event, which surely includes mushrooms, at Lavistown House on the 23 September.

Mushrooms in Milk
Field or Portabello mushrooms - 400g
Milk - 1 litre, plus an extra 50ml
Garlic - 2 cloves, squashed
Fresh thyme - 4 large sprigs
Cornflour - 1 tablespoon

Break the mushrooms up roughly, put in a heavy based saucepan with the milk, garlic and thyme and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 15 minutes until the milk takes on some of the mushroom colour. Mix the cornflour to a paste with the extra 50ml milk and, with the pan off the heat, add to the mixture, stirring constantly. Reheat gently, stirring all the time until it bubbles and thickens. Serve immediately. Serves 4.

Particularly good to accompany a Chorizo and Potato Frittata and very good over hot, buttered toast.

Adapted from A Paradiso Year: Autumn and Winter by Denis Cotter.

Posted by Caroline at 7:16 PM | Comments (2)

July 15, 2006

Ingredient experiments: Pomegranate molasses

When out shopping - especially in ethnic food shops - I'm a demon for picking up new and unusual ingredients that I've no idea how to use. I just see something in Dublin's Asian Market, say, or - very especially - Middle Eastern shop Spiceland that looks interesting and, before I know it, it's in my basket and I'm thinking: "didn't I see a recipe for that somewhere recently?" Hence my food cupboards are filled with lots of things that keep getting pushed to the back and never used. Just a few of the unused items that are taking up space in the cupboard at the moment include:

Sheets of dried Apricots: for making Claudia Roden's Amardine desert
Miso paste: I like the idea of miso soup but, after the first experiment, not so much the reality...
Rosewater and orange blossom water: for other A New Book of Middle Eastern Food recipes. Claudia Roden has a lot to answer for!
Tom Yum paste: for making the addictive hot and sour Thai soup. Sometime.
Dried verbena leaves: I loved the cup of verbena tea that I got at a Vegetarian Society demonstration in Christchurch but I've yet to try infusing these leaves for myself.
Ebly: still waiting to be turned into salads.
Sumac: brought back to Ireland after it spent most of last year sitting in my NZ pantry. It's still sitting.
Mung dal: it's not really the time of the year for cooking dal, is it?
Pistacchio halva: for eating with coffee, except I don't drink coffee at home in the evenings.
Anchovies: because Nigel keeps telling me that I'll like them. This is my second jar. The first remained, unopened, behind me in NZ.

After reading a Middle Eastern edition of Cuisine magazine, I also stocked my NZ pantry with a spur-of-the-moment pomegranate molasses buy which sat there...and sat there...and sat there...until I had to return to Ireland and abandon it. But, newly invigorated by my reading of A New Book of Middle Eastern Food, this was an ingredient that I was determined to find uses for.

Its first outing in my house was when I cooked a Moroccan Lamb Tagine dinner for the then very pregnant Writer and her husband. Wine wasn't on the menu for her that night so I took a tip from Cuisine (their What to do with...... ingredients guide series is invaluable) and made a refreshing Pomegranate Cordial by mixing the pomegranate molasses with some sugar, lemon juice and diluting it with water and lots of ice cubes. So far, so successful. But one idea doesn't necessarily make an ingredient useful and the elegant bottle of dark brown, sweet and sour syrup sat there, ready to catch my eye every time I opened the door of the cupboard. There's only so much cordial a girl can drink.

Further investigation into A New Book of Middle Eastern Food and a recipe from Casa Moro by Sam and Sam Clark gave me inspiration one night this week. I had wanted to use the molasses in a salad dressing but previous attempts in New Zealand had not been particularly memorable. But I did like the look of the Clark's pomegranate molasses dressing -and the idea of trying raw cauliflower! Accompanied with Claudia Roden's Spicy Carrot Dip (a pile of carrots at the bottom of the fridge needed to be used up), some crisply toasted pita breads and a bowl of natural yoghurt this salad made a lovely light supper and an even nicer following-day lunch. Bulgur can sometimes be a little bland but the dressing was pleasantly tangy while the cauliflower and chickpeas added some different enjoyable textures to the salad. Some toasted pumpkin seeds or walnuts sprinkled over next time, as in Roden's Bulgur Salad With Pomegranate Dressing and Toasted Nuts, would also add a good crunchy counterpoint to the other ingredients. Pomegranate molasses experiments a triumphant success. Now, time to turn my attention to some of the other ingredients bulging out of my food cupboards.

Bulgur Salad with Pomegranate Molasses Dressing
Medium-coarse bulgur - 150g
Cauliflower - ½ head, separated into small, bitesize florets
Red onion - ½, finely sliced
Ripe tomatoes - 3, chopped roughly
Chickpeas - 250g cooked chickpeas or 1 x 400g tin, drained and rinsed

For the pomegranate molasses dressing:
Garlic - 1 clove garlic, thinly sliced
Dried mint - ½ teaspoon
Ground cinnamon - ¼ teaspoon
Pomegranate molasses - 2 tablespoons
Extra virgin olive oil - 4 tablespoons
Lemon - ½, zested and juiced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Soak the bulgur in warm water and allow to swell for 10-15 minutes. Drain in a sieve, pressing out excess water and place in a serving bowl. Add the cauliflower florets, red onion slices and chopped tomatoes.

To make the dressing, mix the garlic, mint, cinnamon and pomegranate molasses. Whisk in the olive oil, lemon zest and juice and season to taste.

Pour the dressing over the bulgur and vegetables. Toss well and check the seasoning. Serve with Spicy Carrot Dip, yoghurt and pita or Arabic flatbreads. Serves 4.

Adapted from Casa Moro by Sam and Sam Clarke.

Spicy Carrot Dip
Carrots - 500g, chopped into 3-inch lengths
Extra virgin olive oil - 4 tablespoons
Sherry vinegar - 3 tablespoons
Garlic cloves - 2, crushed
Harissa or chilli paste - 2 teaspoons
Ground cumin - 1 ½ teaspoons
Ground ginger - ½ teaspoon
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
A little extra olive oil and ground cumin to serve

Boil carrots until they are very soft. Drain and transfer to a food processor. Add the olive oil, vinegar, garlic, harissa, cumin and ginger and process to a smooth puree. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Scrape into a serving dish, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with ground cumin and serve. Serves 4, with salad and bread.

Adapted from Claudia Roden's A New Book of Middle Eastern Food.

Posted by Caroline at 10:23 PM | Comments (4)

June 17, 2006

Magic mushrooms

When the weather is good no one wants to spend time in the kitchen and, when the Boyfriend arrived home from the supermarket the other day with a large box of button mushrooms, I didn't much feel like frying them or using them in an omelette strognoff or making a mushroom stroganoff or risotto or any one of the thousand and one things I use mushrooms for. I normally prefer the meatier, large flat Portobello mushrooms but, after spending the weeks in Morocco poring over Claudia Roden's salad recipes in A New Book of Middle Eastern Food, I had an idea for these styrofoam buttons.

I'm not a fan of boiling vegetables - it's all too easy to overcook them and you lose so much of the flavour in the water - so I'm always on the look out for alternative ways of cooking them and I've read a lot about the à la greque technique (in the Greek manner), which is vegetables cooked in a mixture of oil and vinegar, or lemon juice, with seasonings added. Claudia's variation on this theme is called Mushrooms in Olive Oil. I threw everything into the pan quickly, simmered it until the mushrooms were tender and then we headed off to a nearby park to sun ourselves. Coming back an hour later, with some fresh crusty bread, the mushrooms made a delicious light supper. The mushrooms were juicy and well-flavoured, there was plenty of dressing to be mopped up and, with a chunk of crumbly cheddar, we were more than happy. A cool supper - or could be a good lunch - for a hot day.

Mushrooms in Olive Oil
Button mushrooms - 250g, cleaned and quartered
Olive oil - 3 tablespoons
Water - 1 tablespoon
Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper
Lemon - 1, squeezed and zested
Dried thyme - ½ teaspoon or 1 teaspoon of fresh thyme
Garlic - 1 clove, sliced thinly

Heat the oil and water in a deep frying pan and stir in the salt, pepper, lemon juice and zest, dried thyme and sliced garlic. Bring to the boil and add the mushrooms, simmer gently until tender - 7 to 10 minutes - pour into a serving dish and allow to cool.

Taste and season before serving, if necessary. The intensity of the seasonings may drop as the dish cools. Serve at room temperature. Serves 4 as a side dish or 2 as a light meal, with crusty bread and cheese to follow.

Adapted from Claudia Roden's A New Book of Middle Eastern Food.

Posted by Caroline at 8:21 PM | Comments (2)

April 24, 2006

Gluten-free food

Nothing strikes more terror into the heart of a cook than being told that a guest is allergic or intolerant to certain foods. I find that it tends to concentrate the mind, not - as you may think - on what you can cook but, rather, what you can't. Told that I need to avoid spicy foods, my brain invariably starts wandering through all my Indian and Moroccan favourites. For vegetarians, I start musing over soups with meat bases or, perhaps, Mexican Beans - cooked with bacon!

In New Zealand we had regular coeliac and gluten-intolerant visitors and, once I had wrenched my mind away from couscous, bulgur and pasta-based meals, there was no problem. Roast Leg of Lamb, cooked with haricot beans, and served with Garlic Potatoes and Roasted Carrots was a particular favourite. Other safe - and tasty - dishes were Frittatas, curries or even Braised Lamb Shanks with Chickpea Mash. Fellow blogger, Gluten-Free Girl is always a good source of recipes as well.

As a result, I constantly keep an eye out for good gluten-free dishes and, when I first came across Mark Bittman's recipe for a French flatbread, made with gluten-free chickpea flour, called Socca (or farinata in Italy) in an old New York Times article, my interest was piqued. However, getting my hands on the chickpea flour, was a little difficult and, between one thing and another, I almost forgot about it. An entry, however, on The Laughing Gastronome reminded me about the dish and, when I finally tracked the flour down - in one of Dublin's great Middle Eastern shops, Spiceland (also the source of large, wonderfully fragrant bunches of coriander for curries) - I was newly determined to try the recipe.

As the Boyfriend had put himself in charge of dinner that evening, he did all the actual cooking. There was some simple homemade tomato pasta sauce in the fridge, courtesy of his previous night's dinner, which he smeared on top of the cooked flatbread, sprinkling it with a handful of chopped chorizo before finishing it off with grated cheese for a Pizza-style Socca. We ate it hot and the base was very good, moist and supple, a little like polenta. This is perfect snack or light supper for your gluten-intolerant friends or family - and it's also tasty enough to be well worth cooking even if you don't have to cut gluten out of your diet.

Update 17 May 2006: As Maj pointed out in the comments below, chorizo may not be suitable for those on a gluten-free diet. Always check the label and, if in doubt, there's lots of information about non-friendly additives on US site Celiac.com.

Pizza-style Socca
Chickpea flour - 1 cup
Salt - 1 teaspoon
Ground black pepper - 1 teaspoon, at least, ground black pepper
Lukewarm water - 1 cup
Olive oil - 4 tablespoons
Red onion - ½, thinly sliced
Homemade tomato sauce - 3 to 4 tablespoons
Grated cheese - a couple of handfuls
Chopped chorizo - a handful

Preheat the oven to 230°C. Put a cast iron frying pan or non-stick 30cm pizza pan in the oven.

Sift chickpea flour into a bowl with salt and pepper then slowly add the lukewarm water, whisking to eliminate lumps. Stir in 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, cover and let sit while oven heats, or up to 12 hours.

Stir the sliced red onion into the batter. Pour 2 tablespoons of oil into the heated pan, swirl to cover pan evenly and pour in batter. Return to the oven and bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until socca is firm and edges set.

Heat the grill and spread socca with the homemade tomato sauce. Sprinkle with cheese and set it 5-10cm below the grill for a few minutes, until all is warm and bubbling happily. Cut into wedges and serve hot.

Serves 2 as a light supper. Adapted from a recipe by Mark Bittman.

Posted by Caroline at 10:27 PM | Comments (6)

April 20, 2006

A simple Coconut and Peanut Curry

Ever since I've discovered the glories of butternut squash, there's rarely a week goes by without it being added to a dish or several. As with pumpkin, I tend to use more Middle Eastern or Indian flavours in my squash dishes - cumin and coriander seeds are particular favourites - but, as it's been a while since we've had a curry, I turned to the January edition of delicious. magazine for a recipe with more Asian leanings.

Telegraph food writer Tom Norrington-Davies (looking like a terribly cute yellow-jumpered gnome in the photos!) did a feature on oh-so-seasonal root vegetables under the heading of The Comfort Zone which, somehow, managed to incorporate a Pumpkin and Peanut Curry. As always, I busily messed around with the recipe, substituting squash for the pumpkin, adding carrots, and stepping up the chilli content.

As with all recipes involving chilli, add as much - or as little - as you feel comfortable with and always remember that their strength vary considerably. I am speaking from bitter (albeit slightly warm!) experience, here, after my fingertips tingled for a couple of days the first time I made a Thai Green Curry. Now I do all deseeding and chopping chillies with my hands safely enclosed in rubber gloves.

It might be an unusual ingredient in a curry but it is worth searching out some decent peanut butter for this storecupboard recipe. In New Zealand we used to buy the most amazing peanut butter from Piko Wholefoods that they seemed to make on the premises. There was no salt or sugar added to the mix - it was just, simply, peanuts ground into a paste. Here even slightly substandard peanut butter gives this convenient curry a delicious savoury, nutty depth.

Coconut and Peanut Curry
Hot water - 200mls
Crunchy peanut butter - 2 tablespoons
Tomato purée - 1 teaspoon
Lime - zest and juice
Thai fish sauce (nam pla) - 1 tablespoon
Soy sauce - 1 tablespoon
Fresh coriander - small handful with, if possible, roots attached
Red chillies - 3, deseeded and finely chopped
Garlic cloves - 4, peeled and finely chopped
Fresh ginger - 2cm, peeled and finely chopped
Vegetable oil - 2 tablespoons
Red onions - 2, peeled and cut into thin wedges
Carrots - 4, peeled, halved and cut into 1cm thick slices
Butternut squash - 1 medium, peeled, deseeded and roughly diced
Coconut milk - 1 x 400ml can
Peanuts - 2 tablespoonfuls, roasted and chopped

Measure out the hot water in a large jug, add the peanut butter and stir until it dissolves then stir in the tomato purée, lime zest and juice, Thai fish sauce and soy sauce.

Remove the leaves from the coriander and set aside. Chop the stalks and roots as finely as possible and mix with the chopped chillies, garlic and ginger.

Heat the oil in a large pan and fry the onions over a high heat for a few minutes until they start to soften and slightly brown. Add the carrots, fry for two minutes, then add the squash and fry for another two minutes. Sprinkle over the chilli mixture, cook for one minute and pour over the coconut milk and peanut butter mixture. Simmer for 25-30 minutes until the mixture has reduced a little and the vegetables are tender. Season to taste, then sprinkle with the coriander leaves and chopped roasted peanuts.

Serve with piles of fluffy basmati rice. Serves 4.

Adapted from Tom Norrington-Davies' recipe for Pumpkin and Peanut Curry.

Posted by Caroline at 11:05 PM | Comments (2)

April 17, 2006

Confiture de lait

If there's one thing nicer than Murphy's Seacláid (chocolate) Ice Cream, eaten straight from the tub beside the fire (yep, it's still cold in Ireland!), then it's got to be that self same cold, intensely flavoured ice cream topped with great generous spoonfuls of creamy sweet/salty confiture de lait. Perfect for an Easter treat! Literally translated as milk jam, confiture de lait is a truly luxurious, indulgent toffee caramel sauce, similar to the Argentinean dulce de leche, and often used as a spread for bread, or even to sandwich cookies together.

I picked up this jar of confiture de lait when I was wandering around Beauvais airport in France before heading home to Dublin after a wonderful surprise weekend in Paris. I had come across a description of it before on Clothilde's mouthwatering Chocolate and Zucchini blog so, when I saw it, I couldn't walk away, adding the jar to a haul which included large quantities of cheese, wine, chocolate, salted caramels, cider, bread, rilettes, Calvados, garlic and herbs. It must have got hidden in the cupboard after we got home because I only got the brainwave of using it to top ice cream the other night. Well, it only just survived the opening night, the Boyfriend sneaking heaped spoonfuls, long after the ice cream had gone back to the freezer. It quickly went back into hiding, until the next time!

I've yet to try making it at home but David Lebovitz has a recipe for it here. Methinks that will come in very handy when the jar (quickly) runs out...

Posted by Caroline at 11:10 PM | Comments (4)

March 31, 2006

Irish mussels

Although the huge green-lipped New Zealand monsters nearly put me off mussels for life - too big and way too chewy! - last week I tried cooking Irish mussels for the first time. Coming home from work one evening I nipped in to a local shop called Donnybrook Fair to pick up some essential supper supplies. Walking past the seafood counter down the back, a big sack of navy-shelled mussels caught my eye, along with the price - €2.99 a kilo. Instantly, all thoughts of cheese on toast went out the window as I got a kilo of the mussels, picking up a length of crusty French bread and a bottle of sauvignon blanc en route to the checkout.

The fact that I'd never cooked mussels before and didn't actually have a recipe in mind didn't worry me unduly. Sometimes the best inspirations come on the walk home and en route I decided that I wanted to cook them with something gusty and strong, garlic and tomato being the first things that came to mind. While the mussels sat in the sink I grabbed a few books - Darina Allen's Ballymaloe Cookery Course, Anne Willian's How to Cook Absolutely Everything and several of Nigel Slater's - and looked for a recipe but nothing appealed. The one thing I did pick up was that the mussels didn't need to be cooked for long. After preparing the mussels - scrubbing their shells, pulling the beards off and checking if the shells closed when tapped - I flung a couple of cloves of chopped garlic, some of the sauvignon blanc and a tin of tomatoes into my deep sauté pan with some lemon zest, left it bubble and simmer for a few minutes, then threw in the whole kilo of mussels and clamped the lid on top.

After a few peeps to see if the shells had opened I judged them done and landed the pan on the table, along with the heated baguette, the rest of the sauvignon blanc, a large bowl for shells and some tea towels for mopping purposes. Mussels, as with fresh artichokes - where you have to peel off the leaves one by one and dip them in melted butter to savour the flesh at its base - are so fiddly to eat that a kilo lasts a long time and easily serves two with bread and wine. Sweet and succulent, their wobbly flesh was delectable and the sauce at the base of the pan, further enriched by the juices released from the opening shells, was good and plentiful enough to be used to anoint a dish of pasta the following night. Or it could be poured off into cups and served as a light, but deliciously full-flavoured, soup.

Mussels with Garlic and Tomatoes
Tinned tomatoes - 1 x 400g tin
Garlic - 2 cloves, chopped
White wine - 250ml
Lemon - 1, zested
Mussels - 1 kilo, scrubbed and cleaned

Heat a deep sauté or frying pan over a moderate heat and add the tinned tomatoes, garlic, white wine and lemon rind. Bring the mixture to the boil, turn down the heat a little, and let the mixture simmer for a couple of minutes. Add the mussels and cover the pan. Keep a close eye on it and, when the shells have opened, serve immediately.

Serves 2, with crusty bread and the rest of the bottle of wine.

Posted by Caroline at 8:47 AM | Comments (7)

March 23, 2006

A whole new world: potato cooking

After so many years of steering clear of potato dishes or any recipes involving even a hint of the spud, it's now like a whole new world has opened to me. I'm still not a fan of the floury potato, much loved in Ireland, but I have been experimenting with waxy new potatoes in dishes like Frittata. Well, at least it's a step on from the tinned potatoes I tried in New Zealand that first got me interested in the tuber.

A recent cold snap and the presence of some new potatoes in the fridge (a wonder in itself!) got me to thinking about a wintertime recipe for a French dish, Tartiflette, I had seen in Diana Henry's Roast Figs, Sugar Snow. It's a recipe that I might have leafed over in the past but its combination of waxy potatoes, bacon lardons, sour cream and cheese had me hooked. The traditional Tartiflette is made with Reblochon, a soft washed-rind cheese that is good for melting but, in its absence, I substituted some strong Dubliner cheddar. Seeing as tradition was already out the window, I also added some chunks of garlicy fat-flecked chorizo that we had picked up in a Parisian supermarket.

When she first encountered this dish, in a small restaurant in the French Savoie, Diana had it with charcuterie, gherkins and pickled onions. She normally partners it with a plain green salad so, to cut the delicious richness, I served a plain rocket salad on the side and, to ensure none of the savoury juices were lost, some crusty bread rolls. This is not the kind of meal that you would want to eat before any kind of activity. It is, however, perfect cold weather food. No matter how often I get told that we're coming in to Spring, there's little sign of it in Ireland at the moment.

Tartiflette
New waxy potatoes - 500g (don't bother to peel them)
Olive oil - 1 tablespoon
Bacon lardons - 100g
Chorizo - 50g, chopped
Onion - 1, roughly chopped
Garlic - 2 cloves
Strong cheddar - 100g, grated
Crème fraîche - 50g
Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper

Cook the potatoes until just tender in boiling salted water. Drain and, when they are cool enough to handle, slice in half.

Preheat the oven to 190°C. Heat the olive oil in an ovenproof cast iron frying pan and cook the lardons over a fairly high heat to colour them. Lower the heat a little then throw in the chorizo and onions and cook for a couple of minutes until the onion is soft. Add the garlic and halved potatoes and fry until everything is hot. Season well.

Dollop spoonfuls of the crème fraîche over the potatoes and sprinkle with the grated cheese. Put the pan into the preheated oven and cook for 15 minutes until the cheese is melted and the crème fraîche bubbling. Serve immediately with a green salad and some crusty bread.

Serves 2.

Adapted from Roast Figs, Sugar Snow by Diana Henry.

Posted by Caroline at 8:42 PM | Comments (2)

February 26, 2006

Comfort food: Dahl

Dhal - also known as Dal - is one of my favourite comforting winter meals. On a cold evening when you've got wet through on the walk home and don't feel like leaving the house again, it is enormously reassuring to find that there's a packet of red split lentils and some spices in the press and a few onions and garlic looking lonely in the vegetable rack. There are as many recipes for dhal as there are vegetarians in the world so if you don't have the exact ingredients mentioned below, don't worry. The split lentils, onions and garlic are absolutes but you can play around with all the rest.

If you don't have the coconut milk - admittedly the one ingredient that drew me to this particular recipe in the first place - you could fry some chopped onions, chilli and sliced garlic with cumin, turmeric and coriander, add the lentils and some stock or water and simmer until they turn sludgy. It was Nigel Slater and his The 30-Minute Cook that taught me about the wonderful propensity that red split lentils have to turn into delicious mush with about twenty minutes cooking and some vigorous stirring with a wooden spoon. I've never looked back.

If you don't add the onions and garlic to the lentils while they are cooking, you can make - as in the recipe below - a spiced butter, known in India as baghar or tadka, to perfume and flavour the dhal. Clarified Indian butter - ghee - would be ideal but, in its absence, I normally use a mixture of vegetable oil and butter. In her Easy Entertaining, Darina uses all vegetable oil which is perfectly acceptable but I have to admit loving the sweet savoury-ness of butter with the earthy lentils. Even though it may be winter outside, the weather lifts when you're eating this spicy dish. Especially if you eat it with naan breads that you've made yourself...

Darina's Dhal
Red split lentils - 500g
Coconut milk - 1 x 450ml tin
Water - 450ml
Ground turmeric - 1½ teaspoons
Lemon juice - 1½ tablespoons
Garam Masala - 1½ teaspoons
Salt - 1½ teaspoons

Garnish
Sunflower oil - 1 tablespoon
Butter - 1 tablespoon
Onion - 1, sliced
Garlic - 2 cloves, sliced
Cumin seeds - 1½ teaspoons
Cayenne pepper - 1½ teaspoons
Ground coriander - 1½ teaspoons
Fresh coriander - a scant handful of chopped leaves

Rinse the lentils then add them to a saucepan with the coconut milk, water and tumeric. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 20 minutes until the lentils are soft and tender, almost mushy. Take off the heat and add the lemon juice, salt and Garam Masala.

Meanwhile, heat the oil, add the onion slices and fry gently until softened and starting to turn brown. Add the cumin seeds and fry for another two minutes. turn off the heat, add the cayenne and coriander and mix well before pouring over the dhal. Sprinkle with coriander leaves and serve with basmati rice.

Serves 6.

Adapted from Easy Entertaining by Darina Allen.

Posted by Caroline at 10:03 AM | Comments (4)

February 23, 2006

In New Zealand, pumpkins. In Ireland, squash.

After mourning the lack of good pumpkin in Ireland, I've discovered an alternative option - squash! Now, there's a terminology question here. What is the difference between squash and pumpkins? I think it was Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion that made the point that all squash in Australia (and New Zealand) are called pumpkins. My own understanding of the difference between the two is that a pumpkin is a rounded vegetable, like that used by Cinderella to get to the prince's ball, while a squash can often be a different shape. That's no hard and fast rule, however!

In New Zealand I usually bought the crown or Crown Prince variety of round pumpkin. It had rich orange flesh underneath a very hard grey-green skin, made gorgeous Pumpkin Soup and, as long as you kept it in a cold place, it lasted very well. Here in Ireland I haven't seen any crown pumpkins as large or as proud as those that I regularly and cheaply bought in New Zealand so my attention has turned to squash, particularly the easy to find butternut type. Butternut squash have a hard yellowish beige skin, covering sweet orange flesh, and are shaped like a pear with a long neck and very bulbous end. They are much easier to peel than the iron-skinned crown pumpkin and I am able to substitute them for pumpkin in all my soup recipes.

For my first time cooking butternut squash, however, I wanted to try something different so I dug out my copy of Denis Cotter's A Paradiso Year: Autumn and Winter Cooking and leafed through it until I reached the pumpkin and squash section. His recipe for Roasted Butternut Squash with Chickpeas and Cumin (chickpeas, mmm...) caught my eye and, with a few adaptations - more chickpeas, especially, that's what I cooked for my first pumpkin/squash dinner in Ireland. Better get some more before they go out of season...

If you want to read more about these versatile vegetables, Elisabeth Luard has a wonderful piece on the Waitrose Food Illustrated website.

Roasted Butternut Squash with Chickpeas and Cumin
Butternut squash - 1, medium size
Olive oil - 1-2 tablespoons
Ground coriander - 1 teaspoon
Scallions - 6
Fresh red chilli - 2
Cumin seeds - 1 tablespoon
Cooked chickpeas - 1x 400g tin
Vegetable stock or water - 200mls
Fresh coriander - 1 small bunch, chopped
Salt

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Peel, core and chop the squash into pieces about 2cm square. Place them in an ovenproof dish and toss with some olive oil and the ground coriander. Roast for 40-50 minutes until tender and starting to caramelise.

Slice the scallions diagonally and chop the chilli thinly. Heat a pan and dry fry the cumin seeds until they are roasted. You should be able to smell them. Add two tablespoons of olive oil, the scallions and chilli, and fry for a minute. Add the chickpeas, stock or water and a large pinch of salt. Bring to the boil and simmer for a minute before pouring over the roasted squash. Return to the oven for five minutes then, before serving, scatter with fresh coriander. Serve with basmati rice.

Serve 4.

Adapted from A Paradiso Year: Autumn and Winter Cooking by Denis Cotter.

Posted by Caroline at 11:13 AM | Comments (2)

February 2, 2006

Common Cold Remedies Meme: Fran's Best Lentil Soup

Ilva at Lucullian delights - an Italian experience tagged me for the Common Cold Remedies Meme. This was started by Raquel over at Raquel's Box of Chocolate when she asked what people do when they have the sniffles - and to pass on any remedies. This is a particularly good time of the year to be investigating ways of killing a cold but - fortunately - I've not had this problem yet. That doesn't mean that I don't know what to do, however...

When I start to get that throat-scratchy, stuffy-head feeling of a cold coming on, Echinacea and food are my first lines of defence. I've been known to cook my reliable Chicken with Garlic and Lemon albeit with lime, instead of lemon, and using masses of chilli and fresh ginger with the garlic. Actually, most times that I feel under the weather, chilli, ginger and garlic are remedies that I rely on. Chicken Noodle Soup is another winner when I'm not feeling good but, when I can't quite manage to drag myself out to the shops, this Lentil Soup is a storecupboard winner. The recipe actually comes via an ex-housemate's mother and, over the years, was passed on to all inmates of 13 Richmond Hill. If you can manage to shuffle into the kitchen you can make this soup and lace it with extra garlic if you're feeling under the weather. It's so simple that, if you have a tin of lentils on the shelf (a must in my kitchen!), it can be whipped up in a matter of minutes. Thyme is an optional extra - if you have it, great. If you have fresh thyme, even better. If you don't have it at all, that's fine too. This is a terribly forgiving soup - just the thing you need to make you feel better. Comfort in a bowl.

Fran's Best Lentil Soup
Olive oil - 1 tablespoon
Onion - 1, chopped
Garlic cloves - 2, chopped
Tinned lentils - 1 x 400g tin
Dried thyme - ½ teaspoon

Heat the olive oil in a heavy-based saucepan. Add the onions and garlic and cook over a medium heat for about five minutes until softened. Add the tinned lentils, liquid and all, and the thyme. Season and heat until simmering. Leave chunky or blend carefully with an immersion blender for a smoother texture. Gorgeous with some crusty French bread or your own homemade brown bread.

Serves 2.

Posted by Caroline at 9:13 PM | Comments (2)

November 22, 2005

Chickpea and Chorizo Stew

Coming across some raw chorizo sausage recently at Verkerks' butchers I decided to try out one of the recipes from the Mediterranean Café's Tapas Evening. I also wanted to try out the Spanish smoked paprika that Chef Nik had used with such success that night but, naturally, the recipe sheet had disappeared. Still, if I've something in my mind, I don't normally let something small like the lack of a recipe dissuade me.

I assessed the situation. I had the aforementioned chorizo and smoked paprika, there were some chickpeas in the freezer and a bag of fresh spinach that I wanted to use before it started wilting. I ended up making a Chickpea and Chorizo Stew which, when I finally did regain my recipe sheet, bore no resemblance whatsoever to what Nik had made. His recipe included giant white Spanish beans, a red pepper and no chilli. But, despite the bastardisation, my recipe was a resounding success with the Boyfriend's sister, who had called over for dinner, and the Boyfriend himself and they demanded that I record it as it was.

As with all spicy dishes, this tastes even better the day after it is made. For that night's dinner I served it hot, with plain rice, and the following day it was delicious at room temperature, on top of toasted sourdough bread and soft homemade goat's cheese.

A note on chorizo: I had only ever used the dried chorizo - a spicy, paprika-infused sausage before I discovered its raw cousin at Verkerks. If the dried one is the only one that you can find, it is better to add it later in the cooking process so that it doesn't dry out and become tough.

Chickpea and Chorizo Stew
Olive oil - 2 tablespoons
Red onions - 2 medium, chopped finely
Chorizo - 2 raw sausages, sliced
Garlic - 2 cloves, sliced
Smoked paprika - 1 teaspoon
Chilli powder - ½ teaspoon
Chickpeas - 2 cans
Tomatoes - 2 chopped cans
Spinach - 1 bag, washed and chopped
Lemon - ½

Heat olive oil in large deep frying pan and add red onions. Fry over medium heat until soft then, if using raw chorizo, add the chorizo and garlic. Fry until chorizo is cooked, add spices and fry for one minute. Add the chickpeas and tomatoes (and dried chorizo, if using), stir to combine and bubble over a low heat for about 20 minutes. Add the spinach and put the lid on the pan to wilt it. Turn up the heat and simmer off any juices released by the spinach. Squeeze the lemon over, stir, and serve with couscous or rice.

Posted by Caroline at 3:20 PM | Comments (5)

November 18, 2005

Fast-breaking soup

The Middle Eastern soup Harira has cropped up in several of the different cookbooks and magazines that I've been reading lately. It's a thick, near solid, nourishing soup (it can be so thick that it's close to getting called a stew!) which was traditionally served to break the Muslim fast during the month of Ramadan but what drew me to it was the fact that it combines both chickpeas and lentils - two of my favourite ingredients. Most recipes also include lamb but, due to my lack of funds when I made this, my soup was almost vegetarian, save for the chicken stock.

The most expensive ingredient in this soup is the delicate saffron - the hand-picked stamens of a certain type of crocus - but it is worth going for broke with this spice as any cheap powdered options are unlikely to be true saffron. Saffron is actually grown in Canterbury by the personable Errol Hitt of Eight Moon Saffron. Earlier this year, under the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship, Errol travelled to eight countries in eight weeks to research saffron around the world. You can buy his saffron in vials of 90 pistils for about NZ$10 but, as you only need a few threads at a time, it is an investment well worth making, especially if you're interested in making this delicious soup.

Harira is the perfect antidote to all the wintry Irish weather that everyone, since I announced that I was going home in November, takes great delight in telling me about. Here in New Zealand I'm just getting into a whole variety of salads, based on leaves – mizuna, rocket, mustard - from the garden but still, I don't think I'll mind wind, rain and cold so much if I'm after a few bowls of Harira!

Harira
Saffron threads - 10
Boiling water - ¼ cup
Olive oil - 1 tablespoon
Onions - 2, chopped
Ground cinnamon - 1 teaspoon
Ground cumin - 1 teaspoon
Ground ginger - 1 teaspoon
Canned chopped tomatoes - 2 cans
Chicken stock - 4 cups
Cooked chickpeas - 2 cups
Brown lentils - ½ cup
Lemon - 1, squeezed
Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper
Fresh coriander - ½ cup, chopped

Infuse the saffron threads in the boiling water and leave for at least five minutes.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan and cook the onion over a low heat until softened but not browned. Add the cinnamon, cumin and ginger and fry for one minute. Add the saffron liquid, tomatoes, stock and chickpeas to the pan and bring to the boil. Simmer for 20 minutes then add the lentils, simmering for another 30 minutes, or until the lentils are cooked.

Stir in the lemon juice and season to taste. Sprinkle the coriander over just before serving.

Serves 6.

Posted by Caroline at 11:06 PM | Comments (0)

November 16, 2005

A one-pot meal for a wet and wild day

There are days in winter - and spring, and autumn - when you wake up to wet and wild mornings and the only thing to do is spend the day indoors, with occasional rain-coated excursions for walks to avoid claustrophobia. Digging through Tamasin Day Lewis' Weekend Food on one such day, I discovered a recipe for Pork Hock and Bean Casserole that made me go digging in the freezer to find the cheap, but meaty, pork hock that I'd purchased last month.

This is a good dinner to get started directly after lunch, letting it simmer away in the oven all afternoon and evening until the beans are soft and the meat is deliciously tender. A brief flurry of preparation at the outset and dinner practically cooks itself. With a few variations - cutting down on the molasses and sugar, especially - it made for a succulent dish. Rich and fragrant, this is a comforting meal for those miserable days when you feel in the need of something robust and strongly flavoured.

I have served this with plain basmati rice and Citrus Green Beans (the beans microwaved on high for four minutes then tossed with butter and lime juice) or alternatively roasted pumpkin and Buttered Coriander Cabbage (shred a Savoy cabbage and cook until tender in a pan where a couple of teaspoons of bruised coriander seeds have been sizzling with some butter). You won't need much for afters but, if you really wanted to gild the lily, you could finish off with a bubbling crumble of seasonal fruit.

Pork Hock with Beans
Pork hock - 1, large
Dried haricot beans - 500g, soaked overnight and drained
Molasses - 3 tablespoons
Brown muscovado sugar - 3 tablespoons
Baby onions - 8, each stuck with a clove, or 2 large onions, halved and stuck with 2 cloves each
Dijon mustard - 3 teaspoons
Star anise - 1
Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Put the beans in a large saucepan, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. Skim and simmer for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix the molasses, brown sugar, onions, mustard and star anise in a casserole dish. Dilute the mixture with some of the bean cooking water then add the still-hard beans and the pork hock. Cover with a lid then place in the oven. After an hour, reduce the oven to 150°C and cook for a further three hours.

Serves 6.

Adapted from Tamasin's Weekend Food by Tamasin Day Lewis.

Posted by Caroline at 3:23 PM | Comments (0)

November 6, 2005

Flatbreads and Focaccia from the Breadmaker

Even though I haven't been mentioning the Breadmaker very much recently, it does get a regular workout. Every so often we're out of Brown Soda Bread and it's just too much hard work to go down to the shop so I just throw ingredients into the Breadmaker bowl and it makes one of its little square loaves - which are, incidentally, the perfect size for the toaster.

Where the Breadmaker really has come into its own, though, is when I use it to make dough rather than finished bread. Take away all the kneading at the start and I'm much more likely to indulge in yeast cookery. There's a rather nice feeling that comes from working away on the computer when your Breadmaker is hard at work, kneading and rising something tasty for lunch or dinner.

Whether it's a simple naan-type flatbread to scoop up mouthfuls of dhal or a large brown focaccia, fragrant with onion and rosemary, for a salad lunch, it's always satisfying - and not very much work - to have your own breads on hand. I've also been experimenting with some Orange Cinnamon Yeast Buns but I've yet to perfect that recipe!

The recipe I give below can be adapted for other types of flatbread. Just use the flavourings that appeal to you - it might be some chopped garlic or fresh herbs or nigella seeds - or make it plain and keep the flavour for the filling, splitting the flatbread like a pita and stuffing it full.

The focaccia is equally adaptable and is still delicious, toasted with a layer of cheese and chutney, the following day.

Homemade Naan-type Flatbread
Water - 310ml
Strong flour - 500g
Dried yeast - 2 teaspoons
Sugar - 1 teaspoon
Salt - 1 teaspoon
Black mustard seeds - 1 tablespoon
Ground coriander - 2 teaspoons
Butter - 25g
Fresh coriander - half a bunch, chopped

Put the water, flour, yeast, sugar, salt, mustard seeds and ground coriander into the bucket of your Breadmaker in the order suggested by the manual. Put it on the dough setting and let it work away.

When the dough has been made - kneading and proving takes 90 minutes on my machine - preheat your oven to 220C. Remove the dough from the bucket on to a lightly floured surface and knead to knock it back. Divide into 12 evenly-sized balls and roll each into a rough flat circle, about 2-3cm thick. Melt the butter and mix with the coriander.

Bake the flatbreads on the bars of the oven racks for 4-5 minutes until puffy and golden brown. Brush each bread with the coriander butter and keep warm in a dish, covered with a tea towel. Serve immediatly.

Makes 12.

Posted by Caroline at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2005

A decadent solo supper

Asparagus is very much in season at the moment in New Zealand with signs hanging by the roadside offering freshly picked spears of this gloriously upright vegetable and quantities of it available in greengrocers. Despite the plenty, I must admit that the Boyfriend and I have been slow off the mark this year and have only had a couple of feeds of it - so far. We need to hurry up and feast before the season ends.

Our favourite way of preparing asparagus is to simply roast the slim spears with butter and parmesan until it tastes good. When I saw the my first bunch of the season at the Saturday market in English Park, its fate was sealed. It was during a weekend when the Boyfriend was at a conference and I had that purchase earmarked for a decadent solo supper. A loaf of ciabatta from the organic vegetable stall and I was all set.

That night I luxuriated in, for once, having an abundance of asparagus to eat. Not having to share was definitely an advantage! I used the ciabatta as a scoop for all the buttery juices, rendering cutlery obsolete. Fingers were definitely made before forks for this dish. Matched with an assertive Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, my Roasted Asparagus had a short, but delicious life. This is such an effortless dish I've not bothered to give measurements in the recipe below. You alone will be the best judge of how much parmesan and butter you would like - but it is difficult to have too much.

Roasted Asparagus
Asparagus
Butter
Parmesan

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Trim the ends of the asparagus spears by bending them and they will break naturally at the point where they become tender. Place into an oven-proof dish where there is enough space for all the asparagus to lie flat. Dot with butter and grate a little parmesan over. Place in the oven. Check after 15 minutes and, using a vegetable peeler, cut some slices of parmesan to lay over the spears. Roast for about 20 minutes until tender.

Serve with some soft ciabatta or focaccia to mop up the parmesan butter and a good glass of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.

Posted by Caroline at 3:02 PM | Comments (5)

October 6, 2005

Pumpkin heaven

My only experience of pumpkins while in Ireland was at Halloween during my first year in Dublin. One of my then housemates bought a pumpkin and carved it into a grinning Jack O'Lantern to sit in the window. I had only ever made Jack O'Lanterns from turnips before and was amazed at how easy it is to hollow out a pumpkin rather than spending ages digging your difficult way through the tough flesh of a turnip! With touching (and undeserved) faith in my cooking abilities, he set the pumpkin flesh aside and informed me that it was my job to turn it into something edible. I failed the challenge, I must admit. Every time I opened the fridge the watery yellow flesh rebuked me and it wasn't too long before it made the trip to the dustbin. Since then I've seen pumpkins appearing in Irish supermarkets in time for Halloween each autumn but I've never even been remotely tempted.

However, it's an altogether different story over here in New Zealand. In autumn, pumpkins in every kind of shape, size and colour are piled high at the markets and, due to their superior keeping abilities, they linger happily on in kitchens long after the first harvest. There are many different varieties, but the Crown Pumpkin - a medium sized round pumpkin with corrugated grey skin and, unlike that Halloween one, sweet orange flesh - is one which I've used most.

Despite that bumpy past introduction, I've really enjoyed eating and cooking pumpkins here. I love roasted pumpkin - toss it in salt, freshly ground black pepper and olive oil and cook at 180°C for about 40 minutes - to accompany stews, especially a recent Bean and Pork Hock one. Any leftovers brighten up a miserable wintery day when converted to Spiced Pumpkin Soup, there's an interesting-looking Pumpkin Salad here and it can be used in curries, with pasta, for a tortilla, to make gnocchi, or in pies. It has a great affinity with kumara, the Maori sweet potato, and the Boyfriend's mother recently cooked us a rich and delicious Pumpkin and Kumara Soup. In short, the humble pumpkin is an entirely versatile vegetable that can be used in either sweet (Govinda's Pumpkin Pie, for instance) or savoury dishes and has an affinity with either spices (cumin, coriander, cinnamon) or herbs (rosemary, sage). I wonder if I'll be able to get pumpkins that taste this good when I'm back in Ireland?

Spiced Pumpkin Soup
Olive oil - 1 tablespoon
Onion - 1, chopped
Garlic - 1, chopped
Turmeric -1 teaspoon
Ground cumin - 2 teaspoons
Ground coriander - 2 teaspoons
Garam masala - 2 teaspoons
Roasted pumpkin - 1kg
Chicken stock - 1.5 litres
Coconut cream - 200ml
Fresh coriander - a small bunch, chopped

Heat the oil in a large saucepan and fry the onion and garlic for a few minutes over a moderate heat, until softened. Add the spices to the pan and fry for a moment until the mixture smells fragrant. Tip in the roasted pumpkin and chicken stock, bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 15-20 minutes.

Purée with a hand-held blender or use, as I do, a potato masher for a more textured soup. Add the coconut cream, warm briefly then serve, sprinkled with chopped fresh coriander.

Serves 4.

Posted by Caroline at 6:34 PM | Comments (6)

August 28, 2005

Eat Local Challenge: Spanakopita

There are so many things that you can't go near when you're trying to Eat Local. I had written this piece about Spanakopita ever before I started this challenge but, pressed for choice on Saturday night, it was something I happily turned to. I had spinach and onions from Canterbury, feta from Karikaas, ricotta from Zany Zeus (North Island but still New Zealand!), nutmeg, couscous for the accompanying salad and local free-range eggs from Piko, our brilliant local wholefoods/organic shop but I must admit failure with the pastry, which was Australian. If I had been a bit more organised ahead of time I could have made my own but still, it didn't turn out too badly!

When I was in college in University College Cork, one of our greatest treats was to go out for dinner to the Quay Co-Op. As well as a wholefood and organic shop, rather like Piko, it was also our local vegetarian restaurant. Although none of us were in any way inclined towards giving up meat, we all loved the food (good and filling), the prices (very reasonable) and the fact that they welcomed you bringing your own wine. I think there was a ridiculously cheap corkage of about £2 (this was way back in pre-Eurofication times) and we took full advantage of it for birthdays and other celebrations. I can even remember a party of us turning up with a bottle of wine apiece on Holy Thursday to do our pre-Good Friday drinking in comfort.

One of the dishes we most loved was their Spanakopita - a Greek dish of spinach and cheeses, enclosed in a delicate filo pastry case. One member of the group, who particularly had a weakness for this particular dish, prevailed on the chef on night to give her the recipe. It was something we often cooked for parties or get-togethers while we were in college and, especially as I have a spinach-loving boyfriend, I have regularly made it since then.

Sometimes it can be difficult to get your hands on filo pastry - and not so easy to manage - so, among other things, I have adapted the recipe to use a puff pastry crust. When made with puff pastry it really is a most obliging recipe, always happy to be made well before it is needed and sit around to be cooked at the last minute. I'm sure it wouldn't even mind being frozen for a while and cooked direct from the freezer, although I have not yet lived with a freezer big enough to take a whole Spanakopita. Besides, if the Boyfriend sees that I'm making it, there's no way that I would be allowed to save it for too long.

A word about feta cheese before I move on to the recipe. I always cut it into small cubes and fold it through the spinach and cheese mixture at the end as I like getting little pieces of it scattered throughout the dish but you can blend it more thoroughly, if you like. Also, always taste your feta before adding it. The cheese I used in Ireland was much saltier than the feta I find here so you may need extra salt to compensate. Don't forget to season the spinach and cheese mixture well. It is too late to be thinking of adding seasoning when it is cooked. In the summertime I normally serve this with a salad of diced vine ripened tomatoes and red onions, tossed with balsamic vinegar, and either Tabbouleh or some variation on Couscous Salad.

Caroline's Spanakopita
Puff pastry - two large sheets
Spinach - 1x 300g bag
Ricotta cheese - 200g
Onion - 1, finely chopped
Eggs - 2 plus 1 for glazing the Spanikopita
Freshly grated nutmeg - ¼ teaspoon
Pine nuts - 25g, toasted
Feta cheese - 150g, cubed
Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200°C and place a baking sheet in the oven to heat.

Roll out half the puff pastry and line a swiss-roll tin with it. Wash, dry and chop the spinach then combine it with the ricotta cheese, onion, eggs, nutmeg and seasonings. When well mixed, fold in the cubed feta cheese and put the mixture into the lined tin.

Roll out the rest of the pastry to make a lid and, using beaten egg, stick the layers together. This is when you can put the Spanakopita aside, leaving the glazing and baking until later.

Brush with more beaten egg and cut three slits into the top of the Spanikopita. Place into the oven on top of the hot baking sheet - to ensure that the base of the Spanakopita is cooked - and cook for 40-50 minutes until well-risen and golden brown.

Posted by Caroline at 9:03 PM | Comments (4)

August 22, 2005

The simple things in life - Ham and Pea Soup

As it is winter at this side of the world - although the temperatures seem to have taken a turn for the better lately - I've been cooking lots of soups. I love making anything that just takes 20 minutes of chopping and frying, and then is happy to sit simmering on the cooker for an hour or longer, until it's done. As a result of my interest in dried peas, beans and lentils, there's always a cupboard full of various legumes to be incorporated into soup and one of the best soups around can be made with dried green split peas.

If you have time to soak them, this cuts down on the cooking time but, as long as you have time to let it bubble away by itself, you need not worry about this. I've been working from a recipe by Clare Connery for Ham and Pea Soup and good it is too. Best served on a cold, miserable wintery day with some well-buttered slices of Brown Soda Bread on the side.

When my mother and aunt were about we made this for dinner one night, using a smoked ham hock instead of the ham bone. The following night we fished the hock out of the remnants, stripped the meat from it and made toasted ham and cheese sandwiches to accompany our mugs of second day soup. Delicious!

Ham and Pea Soup
Butter - 25g
Olive oil - 1 tablespoons
Large onion - 1, chopped
Large carrot - 1, chopped
Streaky bacon - 150g, chopped
Green split peas - 250g, soaked and rinsed
Bay leaf - 1
Ham bone - 1
Water - 1.5 litres
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan and melt the butter. Fry the onion, carrot and bacon over a low heat until soft but not browned. Add the green split peas, the bay leaf, ham bone and water.

Bring to the boil then reduce to a simmer for at least an hour or until the split peas have disintegrated into the liquid and there is a whole pot of green slush.

Fish out and discard the ham bone and bay leaf. Season to taste and serve to people with hearty appetites.

Posted by Caroline at 11:45 PM | Comments (0)

August 11, 2005

Chocolate and chilli

I think that my interest in the Mexican combination of chocolate and chilli may have been originally sparked from watching the film adaptation of Laura Esquivel's Like Water For Chocolate in college. The fire of chilli and the dark richness of chocolate seems, to me, to be a rather good combination. The Chocolate and Chilli Biscotti I picked up recently to accompany my flat white (coffee) at the Underground Coffee Company Café in Christchurch was a good example of this and put my mind musing over other ways I could use chocolate and chilli together.

My interest was heightened while browsing at Aji last week. I came across discs of Ibarra Mexican Chocolate - a type of sweetened chocolate laced with cinnamon which is said to be perfect for making hot chocolate or a spicy Mexican mole sauce to serve over turkey. The owner of the shop said that she encourages people add a pinch of Aji's Kashmiri Chilli Powder while making hot chocolate. I didn't need a second telling and took that as well plus, as I had had a run of bad quality of cinnamon lately, some of their Triple A grade cinnamon. As we were going down to stay at a bach near Dunedin for the weekend - and an essential part of bach living are regular hot chocolates - the chocolate and spices were packed with the rest of the food, ready for experimentation.

I wouldn't rave about Ibarra Mexican Chocolate for eating purposes - it's rather sweet and grainy - but, for hot chocolate, it does a wonderful job especially when combined with the chilli and cinnamon. We sat on the deck outside the bach, the Boyfriend trying to catch fish with a hand-line while I, wrapped up in a rug, read one of my stack of books, sipping away on the surprisingly intense blend. Sweet, but with a hint of a kick, it really warms you from the inside out. I used about a ¼ teaspoon of chilli powder for the two of us and that was enough to make the tastebuds tingle. I would suggest adding the chilli a pinch at a time, tasting as you go, as each chilli powder will differ in the amount of heat it delivers. If you can't source the Ibarra Mexican Chocolate, you could try using some bars of good quality dark chocolate.

Mexican Hot Chocolate
Ibarra Mexican Chocolate - half a disc
Milk - two mugs full
Chilli powder - ¼ teaspoon
Ground cinnamon - ¼ teaspoon

Put the milk in a saucepan to heat over a moderate heat. Chop the chocolate roughly and add to the saucepan with the spices. Stir until melted then whisk briskly until near boiling point. Do not allow to boil. Pour into mugs while still frothy and serve immediately.

Serves 2...unless you're very greedy!

Posted by Caroline at 11:41 PM | Comments (2)

May 18, 2005

One-pan dinners

Heading away for a long weekend to a bach (Kiwi for holiday home) by the sea tends to concentrate the mind when it comes to cooking. You know you'll have to bring all your supplies with you, the local shop will probably be five miles down the road and that you'll be having to cook on an unfamiliar cooker with unfamiliar, probably unwieldy, equipment. So it would be a good idea to cook some things that don't involve much in the line of pots and pans.

As I was thinking along those lines, an article on one-pan dinners in last month's edition of the beautifully photographed and styled Donna Hay Magazine caught my eye. What better idea for a theoretical chill-out weekend? The recipe for Pan Couscous with Chorizo and Green Beans sounded like a winner so, before we left the city, I made a stop at the fantastic Peter Timbs Butchers in Edgeware to get some chorizo and also, on a quick trip to the St Albans Market, grabbed a bag of green beans. I've become a huge fan of green beans since discovering how good they taste fresh, just cooked for enough time to still have a bite on them. It's a long way from the sliced frozen sort.

Trying to get organised with food packing, I made a list some days before we left and then managed to only look at it when in the car, to discover exactly how many things I'd managed to forget or leave behind in the fridge. Luckily the local shop in Cheviot was able to fill most gaps but it was only when I started cooking that I realised how many other foodstuffs that I hadn't supplied. Like garlic, for instance. Sometimes I wonder should I be left out of the house at all!

Despite all the odds stacked against it - having to use two pans as the first one wouldn