Salad Archives - Gimme The Recipe - You came for the food now stay for the romance!

Summer eating & the living is easy – Irish baby potato salad

Posted on June 4, 2022June 4, 2022 by sheila kiely

Baby Potato Salad Recipe ⬇️

Boiled baby potatoes-chopped bite size
Chopped spring onion & chives
Salad cream
Salt & pepper

An Irish classic potato salad is made with salad cream, no BBQ is complete without it! Whether you’re a ‘Chef’ or ‘Heinz’ salad cream household is a personal choice & up to you.

As the summer holiday season gets underway it has so far been a very disappointing start for us in Ireland weather-wise and I had to turn the heating back on last week to ward off the cold. We’ll take the sunshine when we get it though and will cook and eat for the season. I’ve lots of summer recipes to share with you and you will find accompanying reels (videos) over on my Instagram for each of the recipes that I will post. I’m planning on one a week at least and the photo below shows some that I will be sharing.

I’ve often seen comments re recipe blogs where disgruntled readers are like ‘okay, I don’t want to wade through your life story before I get the recipe’ and with my blog being called ‘Gimme the Recipe’ that’s what I’ll be doing first. The recipes will be as succinct as possible and will generally be just a matter of combining some delicious ingredients with very little faffing.

We’re on a holiday weekend here in Ireland at the moment so I’m off to try and get the dog to walk the beach in the drizzle of soft misty rain that has decided to descend on West Cork today. It will be in the freshest of air and with a background lull of breaking waves. Life is good.

x Sheila

Selection of Summer Recipes by Sheila Kiely

Healthy Summer Eating – Zhoug Freekeh & Summer Roast Vegetables

Posted on June 17, 2015 by sheila kiely

Zhoug Freekeh & Summer Roast Vegetables.
Healthy Summer Eating.

Greenwheat Freekeh -What is it?:
‘High in protein and fibre. Greenwheat Freekeh is a nutritious toasted grain that makes a wholesome alternative to rice & couscous.’

In the summer months you want something tasty, healthy and filling that’s easy to make and doesn’t have you tied to the heat of the kitchen. Freekeh is perfect. I came across a box in my local SuperValu and was curious to try it out.

Delicious served hot as shown here and great the next day chilled and bulked up with some salad leaves and feta cubes.

Along with roast vegetables the flavour is being brought to this freekeh dish with a zhoug paste.
Freekeh and zhoug – two words I’d never encountered until 2015. That is the amazing thing about food, there’s always some new exciting ingredient to discover and something equally different to do with it.

The zhoug paste recipe that I used was from the Irish Food & Wine Magazine – recipe by Garrett Fitzgerald of Brother Hubbard.

NB: This makes a vast quantity of zhoug paste – 2 ramekins of zhoug paste, so I would advise halving the ingredients/quantities. My pictures aren’t as vibrantly green as they should be as I’d no green chillies and used red chilli paste instead. Use zhoug paste as you would a pesto to ramp up any salads, pizzas, sandwiches etc.

Zhoug Paste: (recommend you halve these quantities)
You will need:
50g fresh coriander
50g fresh parsley
2 x green chillies
2 cloves garlic
half tsp cumin
3 tbsp oil
3 tbsp water
Method:
Combine all ingredients in a food processor.

Roast Summer Vegetables:
You will need:
1 Red Pepper
1 Courgette
1 Red Onion
Rapeseed or olive oil
Method:
Preheat fan oven to 200C
Chop the vegetables into bite-size chunks
Place veg on a baking tray and drizzle with oil, toss to combine
Roast vegetables in hot oven for 20 to 25 minutes until getting tender but still retaining some bite.

Freekeh:
You will need:
100g greenwheat freekeh
500ml water
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil
Method:
Pour 100g freekeh and 500ml water into a saucepan with 1 tsp salt and 1 tbsp rapeseed oil
Stir, bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
Drain excess water.

Zhoug Freekeh & Summer Roast Vegetables:
Stir the roast summer vegetables through the hot freekeh along with 1 tbsp of zhoug paste and a little oil if needed.

Enjoy.
‘Til next time, Sheila.

Recipes, What's for Dinner Mom?

Carrot & Sesame Seed Salad

Posted on April 2, 2015 by sheila kiely

It’s almost upon us, warmer weather and the season of salads and outside eating. When’s it going to come though? There’s been promises for days of higher temperatures but my phone is telling me that we’re not going to rise about 15C anytime soon. I’ve started making the switch already though and most meals are being accompanied by some type of salad. I just can’t wait to be able to take my plate outside and enjoy it under a blue sky embalmed with a wafting warm air.

Here’s an easy carrot and sesame seed salad and it’s even easier if you’ve a food processor with a grater attachment.

You will need:
5 medium carrots
2 small white onions
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
2 tbsp sesame seeds
Method:
Peel and grate the carrots and onions.
Mix the honey and white wine vinegar together and stir through the grated carrots and onions.
Dry fry the sesame seeds until turning golden and sprinkle on top of the salad.
Enjoy.
‘Til next time, Sheila

What's for Dinner Mom?

Cannellini beans in classic basil pesto with roast cherry tomatoes & griddled courgette ribbons.

Posted on March 27, 2013March 28, 2013 by sheila kiely

Cannellini beans in classic basil pesto with roast cherry tomatoes & griddled courgette ribbons.

This is what I’m all about, tasty food that’s easy to make and with ingredients that are easily obtainable from your supermarket because, let’s face it, that’s where most of us shop.

Tinned beans are a superb standby and I highly recommend stocking up on a few different varieties. If these are in your store-cupboard and you’ve a handy jar or squeezy bottle of pesto in your fridge then you’re always within reach of a super tasty and nutritious lunch. Here I’ve upped the flavour stakes with cherry tomatoes that are bursting out of their skins with goodness and griddled courgette ribbons that are quick and easy to prepare.
Handy hint: when you’re rooting around in the utensils drawer and cannot lay hands on the speed peeler a cheese slicer makes an excellent substitute.

You will need:
250g cherry tomatoes
Rapeseed oil
2 courgettes
400g tin cannellini beans
2 tbsp classic basil pesto
Salt
Method:
Heat the fan oven to 200C / Gas Mark 7.
Place the rinsed cherry tomatoes on a baking tray, drizzle with rapeseed oil and roast in the oven until beginning to burst their skins – 10 to 15 minutes.
Meanwhile use a speed peeler or a cheese slicer to make courgette strips/ribbons.
Heat a splash of oil in a large griddle or frying pan on a medium/high heat and quickly fry the courgettes to lightly brown on each side.
Set aside to drain excess oil on kitchen towel.
Drain and rinse the cannellini beans under cold water then place in a bowl and gently mix through the 2 tbsp of basil pesto. Stir through the cherry tomatoes and courgette ribbons & serve.
Enjoy!
Til next time, Sheila.

Events & Adventures in Food, What's for Dinner Mom?

Salad Days (….return of the butterhead)

Posted on June 14, 2012August 3, 2012 by sheila kiely

Finalmente! A new post. That word of Italian was one of the many gleaned from a beginner’s course that I’ve taken over the past year and it culminated in an exam last week so cramming was required hence the void in cyberspace that a blog post should have filled. (What do you mean you hadn’t noticed 🙂 ) And why Italian? Well my youngest sister is marrying a Sicilian this summer and I’m hoping to communicate with a little bit more than pointing and smiling.
As well as being a beginner at Italian I’m also a beginner at gardening. Up until very recently when conversation turned to gardens or gardening, mulching and cutting back etc. I would retreat quietly and blush inwardly. It’s a low maintenance garden with grass, bordered with trees and a beech hedge . Prize-winning begonias definitely do not feature. Hardly surprising then that I approached the task of planting a raised bed in a somewhat cynical fashion.
Planting began indoors and seedlings were then planted out, in what most definitely was not my finest moment. The inner wayward child emerged while I attempted to untangle flimsy roots and as the lettuce plants flopped over I turned my back on them and left them to fend for themselves. Rain came, sun came and then really heavy rain came but somehow those weary looking lettuce leaves and flimsy carrots, parsnips, spring onions and strawberries, guzzled nutrients from the soil and began to bulk up. The leaves are truly flourishing now and it is beyond satisfying to step outside in the morning to tear off a few leaves and stuff them into the children’s school sandwiches. Again at lunch time I’ll nip off a few more and they’ll often make it to the dinner table too. Growing stuff is BRILLIANT.

I’m in my second week of not buying or throwing away lettuce and there is no comparison between the flavour of local and fresh VS chilled and well-travelled.
A true test I felt had to be that 80s classic salad plate, long since relegated in favour of more adventurous salads featuring sophisticated sounding leaves such as frissee, rocket and of course the baby variants of spinach and watercress. Forks clashed as we shredded leaves and mopped up salad dressing and the plate was cleaned with relish.

Butterhead lettuce is back people (you read it here first!). Accompanied by my eldest son’s first harvest of tomato and good old hard boiled egg I dressed it up with a zingy salad dressing.

Zingy Salad Dressing
You will need:
3 tbsp mayonnaise
3 tbsp natural yoghurt
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp mixed herbs (dried)
Method:
Simply mix all the ingredients together.
Enjoy.
‘Til next time, Sheila.