3 very fantastic things

Its all very busy around here these days but I had three fantastic things to say so before I forget:

1. The Clarence Tea Rooms have a great offer on at the moment of €29 for 3 courses. This is not a between 6:15 and 6:17pm kind of offer, its after 7pm and from what I can tell every day. I was there on Friday for dinner with a bunch of friends and they had jazz playing. Very civilized and very tasty. In case anyone is interested I chose the scallops (next time Id take the oysters), the cod with parmesan and herb crust and because Im a complete sucker for chocolate the chocolate fondant. I mention it here only because the taxi driver on the way in was so surprised that he wanted to come as my date and because it was fantastic value
2. Fresh yeast - you can buy it from the lovely bakers in Superquinn. It took me months to get around to asking for this but now that I have there is no shortage of great bread in my house (and yes I do think its much nicer than the dried stuff)
3. New York Restaurant Week starts tomorrow and Im going to be there for a few days. So very excited I dont even know where to start with looking at booking a table! Recommendations?

Update (25/5/10) - Very disappointed with Superquinn who now inform me that they will only sell yeast in quantities of 1kg 500g 250g (reduced twice after some emails to their customer support) after being able to purchase it in some of their stores in much smaller quantities for months now. 

Leftover Irish breakfast pasta al forno

This is about as un-italian and non-gourmet as you get when it comes to pasta dishes but when the paths are very icy and your neighbour cant even manage to get his car out of the drive (nevermind down the road) its good to use up what you have rather than venture to the supermarket. I also find that theres something about a baked dinner that is so much more satisfying when its freezing outside. Its always worth having some pasta, a tin of tomatoes and a few rashers in the house for this!

Ingredients (should serve 2 hungry people after a long trek home through the snow):

• 180g dried pasta such as penne or shells but tortellini will work equally well
• 1 tin plum tomatoes (I always go with whole tomatoes and stick a knife in to chop them in the tin as the chopped ones often seem quite scrappy)
• 1 heaped teaspoon of sugar
• salt, pepper
• a pinch of dried chilli flakes
• 2 dessertspoons cream (optional)
• parmesan
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 3 rashers
• 2 breakfast sausages
• some chopped thyme and rosemary if you have it

Preheat your oven to 200C or 180 if you have a fan oven.

Boil up a big pot of water for your pasta and add some salt. Put the pasta on to boil.

Chop the bacon and push the sausagemeat out of the sausages into little balls. Heat some olive oil in a pan and add the bacon and sausagemeat. Fry for a few minutes and then add the tin of tomatoes. Immediately add the sugar, some salt, pepper, chilli, cream and chopped herbs if you have them. Simmer away until the pasta is cooked

Drain the pasta and put in a gratin dish. Pour the sauce over and grate a thin (or heavy) covering of parmesan over before putting in the oven.

Wash your dishes and keep an eye on the oven, it shouldnt take any longer than 10-15 minutes for the cheese to be melty, crispy and the sauce to be bubbly. Take out and eat.

2009, the year that was

A review of a year where I gave up posting in August? Why not? Maybe it will help explain the lack of white noise from these parts.

I resolve to come here more often in 2010, to remind myself to cook new things more often and to eat in some of the places Ive been dying to eat for years (el bulli is open for reservations if

anyone wants someone to come with them)

Some of my food related highlights of 2009:

• Travel, lots of it - Barcelona (mmmm the hot chocolate), Paris (pastries!), India (amazing street food), New York (pizza), Munich and Berlin for the gluhwein at Christmas
• Living in Granada and eating tapas on an almost daily basis in the lovely Bodega Casteneda
• Travelling around Spain and eating fresh fish and the most amazing tapas and wishing I could learn enough Spanish to move to Cadiz
• 3 months in Ballymaloe cookery school which sometimes feels like it was a dream until I decide to make croissants for breakfast or whip up bearnaise to go with my steak
• Steak! I didnt even eat steak this time last year. Lamb,Pork, Chicken livers - all new!
• Rather than reviewing mince pies as I did last year making bucketloads of mincemeat and mince pies (best pastry recipe) and then spending a whole month feeding them to neighbours,friends and family
• Putting up shelf after shelf in my tiny kitchen for all the cookbooks that have come my way and the files from Ballymaloe
• Getting a shiny new Kenwood and a food processor (which I never thought I would need and now cant live without)
• Eating at The Cliff House hotel which was fabulous even if the head chef wasnt too keen on my use of words for him
• Fishing!
• Meeting some amazing artisan producers from around Ireland
• Getting to know my local butchers on a first name basis
• Convincing people I know to grow veg on their balconies and apartment rooves
• Growing beetroot although not very successfully
• Deciding to keep hens and half building a hen house (more to come on that this year)
• Being inspired over and over again
• Almost completely removing processed foods from my diet (and introducing a lot of butter)
• Catering and working in a restaurant kitchen

2009 was a year of making things happen. I left my job and spent 6 months following my foodie interests and had the time of my life. I then came back to reality with a thud and returned to office life, but somewhere out there that may all change again in future.

Wishing you all a fantastic 2010.

Vive España - vivo en españa

There are times that I feel this blog should come with a bit of a health warning. In fact there are people recently who mentioned that I should come with a health warning. My love for cakes and posting recipes here aside, my last 4 months have not been what most intelligent adults would recommend during the current times of economic crisis.

Now as I sit having a beer outside after 11 at night in sweltering 33 degree heat I feel even more that I should put a bit of a warning out there. If your sole aim in life is being sucesful in your chosen career then you should stop reading now and not even consider giving up your job for 3 months of cookery school followed by some time learning Spanish in Granada and more time eating around Spain.

I feel its only fair to announce that it will be a while before these posts are at all sensible again. Im enjoying the heat, wine and food far too much. I will be back with photos sometime soon.

Ballymaloe 12 week cookery course review

I decided that I would love to do this cookery course years ago, but one day last September after visiting a friend in hospital at lunchtime and coming back to a job which I wasnt enjoying I booked the course and put down the deposit. The only person I asked for advice on whether I was being crazy was a friend of mine who thought, he told me afterwards, that I wanted to do a week long course and not potentially give up my job to move to Cork full time for 3 months.

When I started telling people there was this constant echo in response - "your job, that well paid job, are you crazy?". There were very few people who straight up said to me that they were envious, or wished me well or even said that I should do what I want to do when I have the chance to.

Not far off one year later and I am so glad I took the plunge and asked for that sabbatical and then handed in my notice when a sabbatical wasnt possible. Im glad I did something I have wanted to do for years and years, something that was ultimately just for me and threw caution to the wind in these crazy recessionary times (one good thing about Ballymaloe is that the "r" word is never mentioned!).

So what did I get from my 3 months in Ballymaloe?

• Lots of visitors - even those who thought I was crazy in my cookery quest came to visit


• A love of meat again - fillet steak is my friend

• A trip mackerel fishing where I scored on two counts - didnt vomit and actually caught some fish (not that I could gut or eat them due to seasickness)!
  

• Lessons on how to cook lobsters - yum if not entirely scary
  


• A weeks work experience in Ballymaloe House and Cafe - where I cooked for a Michelin starred chef and made more cheese biscuits than will be needed for the coming 3 months


• Lessons on how to skim a stone - failed this one miserably


• A jump from the cliffs into the sea and many beach swims, with jellyfish - I am your hero


• Many, many cuts and burns on my hands. When I am 90 I will point at some of these scars and have some bloody fantastic tales to tell though


• At least 7 pounds of lard deposited on my body - not bad given that we are meant to consume a pound of butter a week


• A schedule of a good 5 weeks workouts to shift said weight from my body before I next see a beach


• A love for butter, softly whipped cream and herb garnishes and an understanding that it will be difficult to survive in a city without those herb garnishes at hand at all times.
  


• A desire to never eat sliced pan again - it will be homemade bread all the way


• Chats with the empire building Darina Allen and her husband Tim who are truly inspiring


• One on one bread making classes with the fabulous Tim


• A sourdough starter called Peggy which will no doubt last a lifetime making amazing breads (of whose offspring I am currently eating while typing)
  


• A new collection of jams, candied peel, stock and kitchen bits and pieces to bring home with me along with 4 over flowing folders of recipes


• The promise of 2 hens to arrive in September for daily fresh eggs


• To insult a famous chef and then eat in his fantastic restaurant and have him apologise however quietly


• A visit to an amazing cheesemaker who makes the cheese that has given me at least one of these pounds on my hips.


• Demonstrations and talks from some very inspiring food producers

• Quite a few lovely photos
  

• My first A in an exam in years - 89% in my wine exam (which I wasnt planning on taking at all as was feeling like I knew nothing)

• Fear in most of my friends about choice of restaurant and wine!
  

• To meet and befriend such a varied group of people including a 3 time World Champion and Olympic rower (and yes I got to touch thse medal and god knows youd need to have some neck to be able to carry it), a surfer who surfed for Tahiti, a possible squillionaire eating his way around the world and some very cool wasters like myself.

I dont regret my decision for one second despite the slight insanity it has caused in the food.ie household. I am now given to things like waking up in the middle of the night and making bread rather than toss and turn myself back to sleep and have planted enough pots of herb garnish for my neighbours to think it may be a new business idea. It was all worth every pound and every penny.

How not to go about cooking lobsters

Lobster are apparently about €3 cheaper per pound at the moment due to this crazy warm summer that we have had so far according to local Ballycotton fishermen (or according to the Irish times it has something to do with the downturn in the restaurant trade). Lobster also happened to be one of the things I was most excited about cooking at the school.

Little did I know when these lovely fellas caught my eye how much trouble they were going to make or how they would leave me cowering behind my shield of saucepan lid screaming like a little girl (along with half the rest of the kitchen lobster novices). If you havent cooked lobster before you could no doubt learn a lot from my mistakes!

Firstly when putting them into your saucepan they might pretend to be dead or asleep but dont believe them. Keep your fingers well away from their claws - grab them down their back.

Next fill up the saucepan with cold water and for every 4 pints you use throw in 6oz of salt. This is definitely a time to keep an eye on them as the big fella in the picture below climbed out and into the sink at exactly this point. Lobsters are loud when they climb into sinks, loud and scary.

The loudness gives you no indication of how fantastic tasting they will be once they are cooked, but theres still some fighting to do before they get to that point. When you have the water and salt in the pot make sure you cover it with a tight fitting lid. Then stick the pot on the heat, a low heat so that the water slowly warms up. According to the RSPCA this is the most humane way of cooking lobsters because they chill out as the water warms and then die in their sleep. The teachers in Ballymaloe also claim that they are at their most tender when cooked this way.

My lobsters had a bit of a party as they fell asleep though, a bit of a loud thumping party where one of them tried to escape the pot despite the water not even being at the lukewarm stage yet. This is when I started shrieking like a girl and cowering behind the saucepan lid that had been pushed to the floor. Then when the lobster had been returned to the pot and the lid removed from my very firm grip I spent the remaining ten minutes holding the lid on the pot (you could also use a really heavy weight - like a 50kg barbell if you had one).

Once they have stopped kicking and you have had a peek to see that they are turning pink then you can remove them and put them into a pot of boiling court bouillon until they are a really lovely pink colour like above. There isnt any great way of checking that they are cooked other than the pinkness all the way along their tail. Dont worry too much though because you can always take out the flesh and cook it a bit more in some butter (lots of butter if you want to be true to Ballymaloe of course).

To get that meat out (something that does look like it could be a lot of hassle) you should stick your knife in right at the cross in the middle of his head and cut down towards the front of the head. Then turn the lobster around on the chopping board and chop down in the opposite direction towards the tail. It should look something like the above but dont worry if it looks really green, that just means its not fully cooked - fry it up in a some butter until all the green turns pink. There is quite a bit of meat in the big claws too (dont worry too much about those small ones.

You could also put this into a nice creamy winey mushroom sauce and return to the shells as we did or just eat it from the pot dipping it into melted butter as you go.

For a bloody scary looking (and sounding) creature these were fantastic, well worth a try.

Last day of cookery school

Ive been planning so many updates, really I have. I just havent had time to write them. Today is the last day at Ballymaloe Cookery School for me and while half of me is completely heartbroken to be leaving this beautiful part of the world and all the lovely people I have met here, the other part is dying to be finished with these exams - 3 written ones today!



I promise to update next week when I will be hanging around the area with far less homework to do (but some work to do all the same - more on that later). For now I hope you can keep yourself amused with some of the pictures I have taken over these past amazing 12 weeks.