Almost a month ago to the day, I was first introduced to the magic of North Cork butcher Jack McCarthy of Kanturk’s meat produce. He was one of the three exceptional butchers (alongside TJ Crowe and Ed Hick) who took part in Inishowen Food Festival at Harry’s Restaurant, all of whom shared the same passion for outstanding meat.
Since our Butchers’ Masterclass, I’ve picked up Tipperary based TJ Crowe’s gorgeous bacon (available in Fallon & Byrne) and I’ve bought incredible gourmet pork directly from Dublin’s Ed Hick at Saturday’s Temple Bar market. And although present at Inishowen but not demonstrating on the day, Tipperary’sJames Whelan Butcher main man Pat Whelan’s ah-mazing Wagyu steaks deserve a mention here as outstanding and totally unique Irish meat.
Coming away from Inishowen, however, it was Jack McCarthy’s chocolate, mint and pistachio black pudding that was the recurring food craving for the weeks to come. The recipe was inspired by something Dermot Gannon from The Old Convent in Clogheen (which looks unbelievable by the way) had created using some of Jack’s black pudding.
When I enquired after where I could get my hands on some more of the amazing stuff on Twitter a week or so ago, I was contacted by Jack himself wondering whether I’d be interested in receiving some more along with a few other samples of their produce?
He didn’t have to ask me twice, that’s for sure.
As Niall said after tasting Jack’s sausages: “The man is clearly some kind of meat genius.” I absolutely concur.
Tuesdays blow! They do. Most of the people around you are invariably in a foul mood, which multiplies into skirmishes over communal staffroom milk once it meets your own personal Tuesday Funk. Argh. I despise Tuesdays.
Once again, my culinary chum chorizo has come to my Tuesday Night Dinner Rescue. I love chorizo because it does the work of three ingredients – it adds a depth and intense flavour with, like, NO effort at all. It’s amaze.
I whipped up a super quick tortilla with hardly any fuss after work this evening, and though perhaps high in cholesterol with the eggs for some of your diets, a Spanish omlette/tortilla/frittata/whatevayawannacallit is a great mid-week dinner for Busy Bees and Tuesday Victims.
Last week, myself and a five of my fellow food bloggers (Catherine from Runcible Spoon, Emily from From Chila Village, Lily from The Amateur Mexican Cook, Rachel from Gastronomics, and Vicky from S’Tasty) were treated to a Carlingford oyster shucking and Dublin Bay prawn preparing class at new fish restaurant Matt The Thresher over on Pembroke Street.
Our host and teacher was head chef Stephen Caviston, who talked us through all there is to know about shucking oysters and de-pooping prawns. That last phrase was not part of our curriculum but one that I’ve added for the purpose of this blog post, you understand.
Ok. So it’s not really called Trapattoni sauce. It’s called Trapani-style rigatoni and it’s a super quick fix beautiful pasta sauce to make your mid-week dinner taste amaze.
It’s from Jamie Oliver’s 30 Minute Meals, which doesn’t seem to be ageing all that well as a whole cooking concept. I’m still getting a lot of use out of the book, even if it’s just for picking out easy and quick tricks like this pasta sauce.
Rigatoni is a wonderfully ginourmous pasta, and takes about 14 minutes to cook. In that time, you can whizz this sauce together in your food processor or hand-held blender, and all of a sudden your Tuesday/Wednesday night meal has gone from meh to WAHEY!
I was reminded of this sauce last week when my friend Aoife Barry made me a very similar sauce for an entirely vegan pasta lunch. This recipe isn’t vegan because of the addition of anchovies, but remove them and this is a good one for meat-lovers, veggies and vegans alike.
You do need a food processor or a little whizzer for this, however. I got my food processor in Argos last year for €39, and although it won’t last me forever, it’s a very handy machine, and will certainly keep me going til I can get a better model. Even one of those info-mercial handheld gizmos are brilliant for these kinds of sauces.
My (slightly charred) Double Ginger Cake with L Mulligan Grocer Kilbeggan Whiskey cream
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is the very first cake recipe I’ve posted on this blog.
The main reason behind my cake-baking inaptitude is I don’t have a major sweet tooth. If I did, cakes and buns and shortbreads would have been on the top of my list when I started learning how to cook. Instead, the last few years I’ve been stumbling around my kitchen acquiring the basic skills of (increasingly less basic) savoury dishes.
But as I continue on this food-based journey of learning, it would be only right to pursue an acute awareness of all pantry ingredients. And so, I endeavour to learn how to cook more sweet things. For the sake of knowledge, you understand.
Man, I can justify the eating and making of anything.
This Double Ginger Cake is a recipe I first learned at Lynda Booth’s Dublin Cookery School last year when I attended her brilliant Baking Course, but had quite forgotten about until I added it to my Paddy’s Day Eve feast menu last week.
One of my greatest flaws is that I can be a bit of a lazy learner. If I pick something up I’ll usually get the basics and leave it there. I play 5 or 6 chords and a handful of songs on the guitar. I could just about get by in a French cafe ordering a coffee and a croissant. The art of skillfully applied make-up has alluded me to this point in my life through sheer laziness.
Food, however, and my relatively recent all-encompassing enthusiasm for it, is the one area where my aversion to learning seems to have let up. My ardour for learning about food is the most committed I’ve been to learning about anything in my entire life.
I had this realisation while making the trip home from one of the most incredible and inspiring food weekends I’ve probably ever had. I realise I’m only at the beginning of my food journey, and somewhere along yesterday’s drive from Inishowen in Co Donegal to my flat in Dublin I copped that this food journey was going to be a very long and supremely gratifying one. Yup. I’m in for the long-haul.
The thought came to me because of Inish Food and all of the people that came together to make this past weekend happen. Inish Food started as a tweet by Italian Foodie suggesting that some of us foodies on Twitter should go “on tour” this year to visit restaurants around the country. Harrys Restaurant in Bridgend, Inishowen, Co Donegal was suggested as the first destination, with Kristin and Caroline from The IFBA getting involved to organise the numbers for a dinner. They were thinking maybe 6 to 12 bloggers might visit Harrys one Saturday night sometime in 2011.
Instead, Donal Doherty of Harrys took the idea and ran with it, leading to an assortment of some of Ireland’s most passionate and dedicated food producers, writers and eaters to coming along to join the party. In the end, there was an estimated 60 people involved in the weekend, most of whom stayed for the flabbergastingly delicious dinner – or feast, rather – on Saturday night.
At one point on our tour through the walled garden near Harrys that Donal has taken over with great plans for its future, Kristin from Dinner du Jour and The IFBA said to myself and Lucy that she imagined we would look back on this day in 40 years and be able to say “I was there.” Then we all got a little weepy at the amazing-ness of the weekend and how lucky we were to be a part of such a diverse group of people, brought together by a simple passion for beautiful, local food.
I believe the reason that it could prove to be a We Were There weekend was because for many of us it crystalised a commitment to supporting local food and spreading the word about outstanding Irish food. As David Tiernan from Glebe Brethan Farm said, “Irish is local.” We’re such a small country and there is so much incredible produce being grown and created all over the country, with only more to follow. As a blogger, a cook, and an eater, I have never felt more proud and excited for the future of what this little island has to offer to the culinary world.
Mushrooms. I totally get why people hate them. They’re weird and woody, strong and over-powering. But it is, in fact, those very qualities which endear them to my tastebuds.
It’s true that I’ve yet to meet a mushroom soup that didn’t make me feel bleurghsome, but I am, however, a big fan of mushrooms in all other guises. Mushroom risotto, mushrooms on toast, mushrooms in a creamy pasta sauce…it’s all good.
An essential part of enjoying mushrooms is the quality of your fungi. Most farmers’ markets will have a lovely variety of ‘shrooms to pick from, from luscious Irish types to delicious ones flown in from abroad. The meatiness of these beauties will have you scorning those anemic “mushrooms” that supermarkets insist on stocking, in what can only be described as an under-handed attempt at eliminating our taste for mushrooms FOR EVER.
Woke up this morning to find out that I Can Has Cook? has made it to the list of finalists for the Food and Drink category (sponsored by Bord Bia) at this year’s Irish Blog Awards.
As it’s unlikely that I will have to make a speech on the 19th of March in Belfast – given the strength of my category – I’ve decided to say a few words here. Much like the tipsy distant relative who embarrassingly takes it upon themselves to make a speech at a wedding.
I said on Twitter last week when the shortlist was announced that the best thing about food blogging is our community. Apart from the obvious perks of making me a better cook, starting my food blog two years ago has brought me so much more than I expected, from trips to Australia to an induction into The Marmarati.
Not only does my food blog justify my voracious appetite, it has also introduced me to the most wonderful community of people who are so generous with their time and food tips, and have been such a brilliant source of information and inspiration to me.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that there may not be such a thing as Best Food Blog because we are all amazing in our own ways. Hope that’s not too cheesy for y’all.
Although not quite through its first quarter, 2011 has seen me conquer some of my Baking Fears. As I’ve said many times, I’ve discovered that the secret ingredient in cooking is confidence. I’ve been slowly building my baking confidence with reliable recipes, like Nessa’s Family Kitchen scones, or Darina Allen’s brown bread for beginners.
Darina’s Brown Bread for Beginners recipe, from her ah-mazing book Forgotten Skills of Cooking, is fool proof. And I should know, because I am a fool when it comes to baking. And a few other things, probably. I’ve followed this recipe and made about 8 batches of this bread in the last six months. It was, in fact, the recipe I used when I attempted my very own first batch of homemade bread last year. What’s great about brown bread is that there’s no faffing around with yeast and no kneading, no fear of Hot Hands Syndrome putting all your hard work to waste by ruining the bread at the last minute. None of that. It’s so simple.
Curiously, every time I make it, it’s a bit different. Not in a bad way, just…different. I don’t change any of the ingredients. I don’t even change the brand of the flour. Yet, I’ll notice that the dough is either more wet or the final bread is more spongy. Baking is so WEIRD. Like, WTF?!
Of all the various ways this bread has turned out, it’s always been pretty delicious. So, if you’re a baking novice like myself, get stuck in. And have your jam of choice ready.
Every week since signing up to Home Organics, we’ve received a lovely big head of broccoli in our fruit and veg bag. The first two weeks, I was at a loss as to what to do with it, feeling truly uninspired by this most healthy of brassicas.
It’s not broccoli’s fault. It really isn’t. It’s the fault of my four years of boarding school dinners, and the drowned brown-tinged dull lifeless broccoli that was served alongside limp and lifeless cauliflower (yes, I did just read that in a Cheryl Cole accent) that were slopped upon my plate, leading to an inward groan of repressed homesickness.
It’s the fault of my sister and I going on a highly misguided five day “detox diet” in our early 20s which consisted entirely and exclusively of porridge for breakfast followed by a broth of broccoli and mushrooms cooked in vegetable stock (vegetable stock!!!) for dinner. We got to day three before we collapsed in our parents’ kitchen and inhaled an entire loaf of white bread between the two of us.
So, I was feeling pretty uninspired by broccoli. Thus, I did what any tweeter would do if they found themselves in the same position – I asked Twitter how was I to fall in love with broccoli again?
