In the season of making merry I’m getting to dine out more often than usual and on a recent night out in Cork I had my first E L E C T R I C experience. I have to say I was very impressed with the food and as I was in a party of 24 thought they did a great job overall though some dishes did go back to be reheated. Mine however was perfection. I chose the ‘Saddle of Dromoland estate venison with koffman cabbage, dauphinoise & gravy’ and it was truly melt in the mouth sublime.
That was my main course and for starter I had picked the Butternut Squash & Coconut Soup which I’ve since recreated at home. I’m pretty sure that theirs had some coriander in it too so if you have some lurking about perhaps throw in a handful.
This sweet bowl of comfort cheered me up on an icy cold day that saw pellets of rain bouncing off the overhead velux windows as I tried to keep warm while I worked in the office today.
Today’s also the day that a little bit of panic niggled at me as the kids revealed that there are only 13 days left until Christmas. There’s much to do but there is much to look forward to as well as my family trails home from different parts of the world. As one of 7 siblings it is rare that we all get together so this Christmas season which sees one of my sisters getting married will be one of major celebration.
Let the countdown begin…
Butternut Squash & Coconut Soup:
Serves 6-8
You will need:
3 x butternut squash (approx 450g each)
750ml vegetable stock
200ml coconut milk
sea salt & black pepper to season
Method:
Prepare the butternut squash and cut it into chunks.
Cook the butternut squash in a saucepan of boiling water until tender and then drain.
Add the vegetable stock to the butternut squash in the saucepan and bring to the boil, reduce to a simmer and then add in the coconut milk.
Heat through, season well, blend and serve with some crusty bread.
(Next time I will try roasting the butternut squash in oil perhaps with some garlic cloves first instead of boiling for a deeper flavour).
Enjoy.
Til next time, Sheila
Category: Dinner Party
Cheesy Potato, Bacon & Parsnip Bake
Bunged up as I am with a head-cold I am in need of comfort food. This variation of a potato gratin is based on Paul Flynn’s (The Tannery Restaurant) ‘Cheddar cheese, smoked ham and parsnip bake’ and is exactly what I will be looking forward to this evening. I cooked one earlier this week and placed it in the fridge for reheating later – it was to be served with bacon and cabbage as I thought the creaminess of the potatoes would save me having to make a sauce.
On my return that evening from one drop-off or another I pulled the tinfoil cover off the top to be greeted with a half-empty baking dish. No prizes for guessing that the always starving, 14 year old boy in the house had been the offender and was now happily sated, albeit temporarily, and had thrown himself onto the couch while his mother squawked pointlessly. The half we had left was supplemented with some mashed potatoes and white sauce while forks fought to scrape up the remaining cheesy bits in the baking dish. It was a perfect accompaniment to the bacon and cabbage but as the teenager will attest it is also heaven on its own. If you feel in need of TLC and comfort food this is it.
A variation of this recipe is a ‘Smoked Salmon Gratin” which is to be had over on CookwithAvonmore where Paul Flynn will personally guide you through this and a number of his other recipes on videos.
This was my first time to try out Avonmore’s Cooking Cream – I like the pouring spout and the fact that it has 50% less fat than standard cream can’t be a bad thing either.
Serves 6 as a side dish or 1 to 2 greedy people as a complete meal.
Cheesy Potato, Bacon & Parsnip Bake
You will need:
1 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil
6 rashers
850g potatoes (4 medium/large)
1 parsnip
3 cloves garlic
250mls milk
250mls Avonmore cooking cream
100g cheddar cheese
A little butter for greasing the baking dish.
Method:
Pre-heat the fan oven to 160C / Gas Mark 4.
Heat the oil in a frying pan, chop up the rashers and cook them in the pan until beginning to crisp up over a medium/high heat.
Peel and thinly slice the potatoes and parsnip.
Peel and crush the garlic.
Place the sliced potatoes, parnsip and garlic into a saucepan with the milk and cooking cream and bring to a gentle simmer for 15 minutes. Stir regularly, coating the potatoes and parsnips with the creamy milk until the potatoes are almost tender.
Use a little butter to grease a baking dish and pour in half of the potato mixture spreading it out into the dish.
Scatter the cooked rasher on top and then pour the second half of the potato mixture on top.
Grate the cheddar cheese on top and cook in the oven for 30 minutes until golden.
Enjoy.
Til next time, Sheila
Sticky Toffee Pudding.
What can I say? Sweet, divine and utterly satisfying. I experimented with this Sticky Toffee Pudding last week and as the best light of the day for photographing is around lunchtime there was no possibility of me turning my back on this to whip up a sandwich when I could indulge in forkful after forkful of heaven. What a lunch and ooooooooohh the sauce. That sauce langoured in the fridge for almost a week and I felt very Nigella-ish every time I turned my back on the world to dip in for a sneaky spoonful.
This was one of those dishes that I had avoided making, having had the suspicion that a lot of effort was required but truthfully it is simple. My eldest forced my hand when he shoved one of my foodie magazines under my nose and said ‘make that Mom.’ I must admit that the request/demand was made in June and even though I went out and bought the dates back then, it’s taken me until September to get around to making Sticky Toffee Pudding. The magazine had long since been mislaid so I went on-line to get the gist of the recipe and with a bit of nipping and tucking came up with this version. I decided to cook the puddings in a sort of bain-marie, where they baked in the oven standing in some water which I anticipated would give a steaming effect and hopefully render them moister. The dates I bought were vacuum packed and had a shelf-life of at least a year. Being in a pack size of 250g I adjusted my quantities upwards as I didn’t want a couple of unused dates looking at me until they eventually passed their best.
This quantity will make 8 medium-sized puddings in individual ramekin dishes. I found that those that weren’t devoured immediately heated up perfectly well in the microwave with a dollop of the sauce on top.
Makes 8.
Sticky Toffee Pudding
You will need (for pudding):
250g stoneless dates
some boiling water (for soaking)
100g unsalted butter
225g dark muscovado sugar
200g self-raising flour
3 medium eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
You will need (for sauce):
100g unsalted butter
150g dark muscovado sugar
229ml double cream (strange quantity, but that’s how it’s sold)
Method (for puddings):
Pre-heat the fan oven to 160C / Gas Mark 4 (cooked at this temp for first 25 mins, temperature is raised for last 10 mins).
Place the dates in a bowl and cover with boiling water, leave to stand and plump up for 5 minutes.
Use a little butter to grease the inside of the ramekin dishes and place in a roasting tray filled with cold water to come half-way up the side of the ramekin. (You may need to use two trays.)
Use an electric mixer to cream the butter and then the sugar together.
Drain the water from the dates and roughly chop them, then use a mini-chopper or food processor to chop them finely, they will be sticky but you don’t want to bite into a big lump of date.
Continuing to use the electric mixer, add the chopped dates to the butter and sugar and mix well.
Add in an egg followed by a couple of spoonfuls of the flour and the baking powder and bicarbonate of soda.
Continue to mix adding an egg at a time followed by the flour until all is added and well mixed.
Sprinkle a little crumbling of dark muscovado sugar in the base of each of the buttered ramekins before filling them with the pudding mixture.
Bake the puddings in the bain-marie in the fan oven at 160 (Gas Mark 4) for 25 minutes, then increase the heat to 180 (Gas Mark 6) for a further 10 minutes.
Use the end of a spoon to prise around the edge of each pudding and then turn them over onto a plate and serve with warm sauce on top. Best served heated.
Method (for sauce):
Put the butter, muscovado sugar and double cream into a saucepan over a medium heat and mix well as the butter melts, raise the heat, bring just to the boil, then immediately reduce to a simmer for a few minutes.
Enjoy.
Til next time, Sheila.
Blackberry & Apple Chutney
We’ve been making crumbles, pies and jams out of the wild blackberries in West Cork for the past couple of weeks now and yesterday I decided to try my hand at a chutney. We love red onion relish with cheese in our house and I’m forever buying it but I’d never made it before so the time had come to experiment. Being out of balsamic vinegar The Gravy Man was dispatched to the local shop to buy some and even though they were out of it he returned triumphantly with a half a bottle. The owner of the shop – Dermot Sheehan – very kindly gave us his own bottle from his kitchen at the back of the shop.
The blackberries were easily foraged from the ever-ripening bushes that line the laneways of the village.
Goleen village is unspoiled and sits close to Mizen Head. If you get the chance to visit you will return forever.
You will need:
2 medium red onions
2 tbsp olive oil
300g blackberries
200g cooking apple (1 medium sized)
150g brown sugar
75ml balsamic vinegar
Method:
FInely chop the red onion and add to the 2 tbsp of olive oil heated in a saucepan over a medium heat.
Continue to gently cook and soften the red onion in the oil for 10 minutes.
Peel, core and dice the apple and wash the blackberries.
Add the apple and blackberries to the softened onions and cook with a lid on over a low heat for 10 minutes until the apple is getting soft.
Remove the lid and add the brown sugar and balsamic vinegar, turn the heat to high and stir well until it begins to bubble. Turn the heat down to a simmer and allow to cook and reduce for 25 to 30 minutes.
Store your chutney in sterilised jars.
Enjoy with some great cheese.
Til next time, Sheila.
Crab-Cakes with Sweet Chilli & Pineapple Salsa
Fact. Crab meat is expensive. I bought two 100g tubs of it in ‘The Fish Shop’ in Schull today at 4 euro 40 cent each. That works out at 44 euro for a kilo of the stuff which is almost on a par with fillet steak. That would explain why it features in a cake form on so many menus being stretched with potato to fill it out. This recipe therefore is getting filed away in the Dinner Party category to be pulled out for special occasions.
Make them in miniature as party bites or starters, or serve a large one with the salsa as a substantial lunch. The recipe for both of these dishes is based on those demonstrated by Greenes restaurant Cork at this year’s Cork Summer Show. I hadn’t written down exact quantities for either and also had to improvise on some of the ingredients i.e. white wine vinegar instead of rice vinegar, Derrycamma Farm Rapeseed Oil With Chilli instead of sesame oil.
The salsa is vibrant, fruity, fragrant and piquant. Piquant? Where did that come from? When I am writing, words sometimes pop into my head, words that I have never ever spoken, like piquant, and I have to then look them up and invariably go yeah, that’s a perfect word, still clueless as to where it came from.
(FYI, when I googled it this was the definition I got “agreeably pungent or sharp in taste or flavor; pleasantly biting or tart: “.)
This salsa would work just as well as a side dish with bbq’d meats as with fish.
(This makes a salad bowl full of salsa)
Sweet Chilli & Pineapple Salsa
You will need:
1 Pineapple
3 different coloured peppers
1 red onion
2 red chillies
large bunch fresh coriander
2 tbsp olive oil (or 1tbsp olive oil & 1 tbsp sesame oil)
1 tbsp white wine vinegar or rice vinegar
3 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
Juice of 3 limes
Method:
Finely cube the pineapple and peppers and mix in a bowl.
Finely chop the deseeded chillies and the red onion and add to the bowl.
Roughly chop the fresh coriander and add.
Make up the dressing in a cup or bowl mixing the oil, vinegar, chilli sauce & lime juice. Taste and adjust the sweetness (more chilli sauce) or sharpness (more vinegar) to your taste. Add to the bowl and mix well.
Enjoy.
When it came to making the crab-cakes breadcrumbs were required. I ended up with these super healthy breadcrumbs because I had to use up the stoneground wholemeal bread that I had messed up in the shop. WARNING: When you see a sign in the shop that reads ‘Do not put warm bread in the slicer’ pay heed to the sign and do not ignore it. The warm bread half disintegrated as I sliced it, so I packaged it up and approached the checkout thinking that the assistant might take pity on me and not charge me for this self-made messed up bag of semi crumbled scrumptiousness. But charge me she did, and rightly so, they’ve had enough of my type through the doors now me-thinks and lesson learned, I shall not be putting warm bread in the slicer in future.
The breadcrumbs were made from a mixture of stale baguette and aforementioned stoneground wholemeal bread.
(Makes 4 large crab-cakes)
Crab-Cakes
You will need:
200g crab meat
600g potato (4 or 5 medium sized)
2 spring onions
80 ml fresh cream for mashing
Plain flour
2 eggs
Breadcrumbs
Olive oil or sunflower oil for frying
Method:
Pre-heat the fan oven to 180C Gas Mark 6
Peel and boil the potatoes
Mash the potatoes with cream, then add in the chopped spring onions and the crab-meat and mix well.
Place the flour into one bowl, the beaten eggs into another and the breadcrumbs into a third bowl or large plate.
Wet your hands slightly and shape the crab-meat mixture into 4 round cakes/patties.
Heat a pan on the hob with a generous amount of oil over a medium to high heat.
Dip each crab-cake in flour, then in egg and then in the breadcrumbs coating them well and then place in the hot pan.
Cook for 2 minutes on each side until golden in colour.
Place the crab-cakes on a baking tray and finish cooking them in the hot oven for another 10-15 minutes until heated through.
Serve with the Sweet Chilli & Pineapple Salsa.
Enjoy.
Til next time, Sheila.