Inishfood

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The Best of Inishowen, and Ireland

So what started out as a few bloggers going to visit Harry's restaurant, became about 60 foodies, producers, farmers and chefs descending on the Inishowen Peninsula. It was a packed 2 days (it would have been 3 had the weather not failed us!) Filled with demos, tastings, lunches, dinners, coffees, drinks and the tasting of fresh blood!

The man that no one will argue was the driving force behind the weekend was Donal Doherty of Harry's restaurant. He made everyone equally welcome and seemed justifiably excited in the shared enthusiasm of everyone there for this ethos and ideas of how we should eat.

The atmosphere and tone of the weekend was unbridled enthusiasm and positivity,  which in recent times is like a refreshing jump in the cold Atlantic - yeouch! The occasion made you feel like you would look back at this weekend in the years to come and say - yes I was there! The simple and very straight forward fact is that we have such a rich and fantastic island here - we should eat as much that comes from it's soils for a multitude of reasons. Supporting our farmers, keeping money on our shores, keeping carbon emissions down, freshness, this list could go on and on. Donal used the term locavorism, a term he really takes seriously in the running of his restaurant, using meat and produce from his closest neighbors.

On a more personal level, recently I have become slightly disillusioned with the blog. A point that arrives in each bloggers life where you think "Do you know what I don't think anyone reads this?" A little down at heel I got myself all the way up to Donegal. Now re-inspired by a wealth of local producers and farmers, who all seemed keen and interested in the bloggers and the work that we do. Donal during his introduction to the walled garden community project, he said that bloggers were responsible for spreading the word. The weekend told me no don't give up, what you do is important to people outside the blogging community.

Now to do a quick pictorial run through of the weekend - get ready to drool!

Darren Bradley - very generously invited us all into his back yard where he has built his own pizza oven. With the help of his neighbor they fired out the pizza for several hours, while we all enjoyed a beer. My favorite slice was of goats cheese, carmelised onions, rosemary and truffle oil pizza.

Men of the moment - Donal of Harry's and Darren Bradley - self named Pizza Guy

After a quick welcome speech from the lovely Kirsten and Caroline of the Irish Food Bloggers Association and the blogs Dinner Du Jour and Bibliocook. It was the turn of Colin & Seanin from L. Mulligans Grocer in Stoneybatter. He introduced 3 Irish brewed and produced beers. Dungarvan Brewery's Helwick Gold, a lovely crisp beer ideal for serving with fish and chicken. A second beer that escapes me now. Thirdly was Dark Arts from Trouble Brewing Company, a truly beautiful porter, it maybe in the running for my new favourite beer.

Colin from L Mulligans Grocer loves his beer

Then it was away down a candle lit drive to Linsfort Castle B&B for storytelling and songs. A great range of stories told from Inishowen natives. The highlight of which had to be Bertie (88?) a true performer and he made me cry.

In the room next door a stew was bubbling on the stove, of venison and Dexter beef, prepared by Raymond Moran the head Chef at Harry's. It was truly tasty. In the following room a table was groaning under a weigh of cakes and a wheel of the creamy goodness that is Durrus cheese and Glebe Brethan cheese too.

Off to bed, breakfast the next morning was prepared by the welcoming Mary at Westbrook B&B.

The day at Harry's was kicked off by the lovely Juan of Coffee Angel, he was using Bailies Coffee Beans in a multitude of different ways to produce a range of coffees. 

Harrys' own butcher butchers one quarter of beef every week, so when it's gone it's off the menu! They have their own hanging room where they hang all their meat. Surprisingly little waste as seen here in this bin!

Then it was over the the enigmatic Ed Hick to demonstrate Pork Curing. We all got stuck in and I have alovely piece curing away in my fridge. I also got talking to the pigs producer of Wishing Well Farm, who told me this was his first pig. I'll be reporting back on my piece when it's ready to go.

Fluffy Blood

Pudding Ingredients

Ed Hick gets down to business

Jack Mc Carthy - you can't hide behind that pudding!

Theatrical Shots of the Puddings

McCarthy of Kanturk Award Winning Pudding

The Happy Butchers!

Lunch was slow cooked the brisket, rib, pot roast & shoulder from Marshall farms very first dexter  5mins from Harry's

After lunch we were treated to  raw milk latte, which was Divine. Then it was onto butter making with Imen from I married an Irish farmer. Great demo and so easy to do - you just need some good elbow grease. I think I've learnt the secret to Imens great photos - it's all her  pretty accessories! 

                                                

Then a tour of the walled garden that Donal along with the help of are setting up as a community garden. 

Pretty Lichen is bad for the fruit trees

A Man with a Vision!

Whippet on the Wall

Curious Horsie

Then home for a quick change of clothes and onto what I can pretty safely call the best meal of my life. Not only because of the quality of the food, cooking and ingredients, but the build up started that morning at Harry's when we got to talk to and meet the producers and farmers, that passion really came through in the food that night.

Selection of pates and toasted brioche

Butter we made earlier

Breaded Langoustine, Salt Cod and Greencastle Scampi

Pollack with Thai Spices, seaweed crisp and
sweet pepper sauce

Beef Shin Ravioli with horseradish Sauce on wild garlic

Venison Carpaccio, Mc Carthys pistahio, mint and chocolate black
pudding &  Venison Confit with Hazelnut Crust

Football Special Panna Cotta, Buttermilk Ice-cream
& deconstructed cheesecake with Yeats Country
Cream Cheese  

The only thing left to do is thank everyone from my fellow bloggers to the farmers and producers who all gave so generously of their time. Thanks to the lovely Joanna of Smorgasblog for the lift. To Catherine at the Runcible Spoon and the hilarious Aoife of I Can Has Cook for their good company. A big thank you to Caroline and Kirstin of the IFBA. An finally the man who I've mentioned about 20 times in the post - Donal Doherty for sharing his passion and showing us how things can be done when you really believe in the quality of our amazing local produce! 

Pancake Dinner Extravaganza

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Course 1 - Potato Blinis with Smoked Salmon

So as pancake day approached we started to think of what we would make to mark this most singularly culinary celebration. If Christmas was changed to roast turkey day, and Halloween was barn brack day, when instead of going trick or treating/giving presents everyone would be at home making cakes/turkey. It will soon be national fish and chips day too - well in May! 

We thought we’d like to bring a random group of people together in our house, for a feast of pancakes. So we put an invite up on our own facebook, and within 15 minutes we’d reached our quota for the dinner.

We decided on a menu that encompassed a different type of pancake for each course
Starters were smoked salmon blinis
Main course was pancake cannelloni with bolognaise sauce
and ricotta and leek cannelloni with tomato sauce for the veggies
Dessert was Crepe Suzette - kaboom!

Smoked  Salmon and Potato Blinis

Ingredients

6 boiled potatoes
2 eggs
1/2 pint of milk 
about 2 tbsps four
creme fraiche (or cream cheese)
smoked salmon
chives 

The potato blinis were made by mashing about 6 boiled potatoes and combining this with 2 eggs, about 1/2 pint of milk and about 2 tbsps four. I just added things until I got the right consistency- very instinctive of me but not so good for blogging recipes! The batter should be thick in consistency, like whipped cream. I cooked them by getting a heavy frying pan really hot, smearing on some butter with a wadded up paper towel, and putting a tablespoon on the mixture at a time in the pan. I could do about 8 at a time. Cook on one side for about 3 or 4 mins, until golden brown and then flip. 

We served with creme fraiche and smoked salmon but you could top with anything- I was thinking cream cheese would be nice with roasted tomatoes. 

Recipes for pancake cannelloni and crepe suzette to follow before Easter I promise!

Spaghetti and Meatballs

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After the Party....

so it was Sarah's birthday and we had a party, there's was enough mess and chaos to lead me to believe we were all 16 again, raiding your parents drinks cabinet, and drinking the concoction of 6 different spirits mixed into a coke bottle.

Let's just say some of my plants were quite the worse for wear afterwards, including the basil and chili plant, so based on this unplanned harvest I made this nice meal, and fed it to my brother who was visiting before returning to his home in the snowy French alps.

Ingredients -
sauce 1 white onion - finely diced
12 tomatoes - skinned if you prefer and then diced
nice bunch of home-grown basil
1 home grown chili
2 cloves of garlic crushed
1 pound of minced beef
1 large potato - mashed
1 egg
marjoram and thyme (fresh or dried)
Grated Parmesan - a grand old lump - grated
a cup of breadcrumbs
Spaghetti cooked to your liking - my secret confession is I like mini squishy - very non-foodie I know!

I made the sauce first and let that cook away while I made the meatballs and then spaghetti while I cooked the meatballs. Fry the onion up in some olive oil for a minute or two before adding the garlic and sliced chili - cook it all until, it's softened nicely - then add in your tomatoes. Season. Bring to a gentle simmer and cover.

Cook for about 30-40 mins until it's thickened up nicely, it's perfectly ok to use tinned tomatoes here, I just had lots of tomatoes that day. I always add in a small teaspoon of sugar to sauces made using tinned tomatoes.

In a clean bowl - mix together the meat, breadcrumbs, grated Parmesan, herbs and mashed potato. Season. Then bind it all together with the egg. This made about 16 meatballs, and three is a big serving, so have some for tomorrow - make your own Meatball subs if you fancy.

Roll each bit of mixture into golf ball sized balls, then coat them in the breadcrumbs. Heat some oil in a pan and cook your meatballs in batches of around 5 or so. Turn gently and brown evenly on as many sides as you can. Serve them on top of a bowl of spaghetti and topped with some of your tomato sauce. These were just super and perfect for a Sunday night in by the fire.

Beef and Guinness Pie

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Ohm nom nom As Alan has been in Singapore for the last year eating only foreign muck (joking, he has told me many a tale about the wonderfulness of food in Singapore) we decided that he needed a good auld Irish dish as a welcome home.

I was going to cheat and buy the puff pastry, but they didn't have any in tesco's (bloody tesco parnell street is sooooo bad) so i had to make it from scratch. This was my first attempt at puff pastry, and while it was not actually that puffy, it did taste very good and was nice and light and crunchy.

We made the filling the night before the party for two reasons: 1- less stress on party day (considerable factor when you are cooking for 14) 2- leaving it overnight makes it more delicious. You could do it all in one day if you wanted to though Again, bear in mind that this recipe serves 14 so you can reduce all the amounts accordingly Ingredients: 11/2kg good quality stewing beef, cut into cubes by your butcher.
20 shallots
8-10 parsnips
8-10 carrots
1 large onion
3 cloves garlic
1 can Guinness extra stout
ltr good beef stock flour
salt & Pepper

Heat some oil in the biggest pot you own. Chop the onion and garlic finely and sweat them in the pot, covering them with the lid so they don't burn or colour. Toss the meat in a generous amount of flour into which you have added salt and ground black pepper until all the cubes are well covered. Toss these in the pan with the onions and brown all over. Stir constantly to stop the flour from burning on the bottom of the pan.

When all the meat has browned, add the peeled and chopped veggies (leave the carrots and parsnips in big-ish chunks) and stir until everything is combined. Then pour in the hot beef stock and stir to dissolve all the flour that has stuck to the bottom of the pan. Pour in the can of Guinness, cover and simmer for 15 mins.

Preheat your oven to about 175c and shove the whole pot in there. Leave it for about 3 hours. When you take it out the stew will be melty and gorgeous. Adjust the seasoning at this point, adding more slat and pepper if necessary. If you have time, leave it overnight and let all those gorgeous flavours intensify.

For the puff pastry: (this recipe is from Delia, her complete cookery course is my bible for basics like this)
1 lb strong white flour
8 oz lard
8oz margarine
10fl oz ice cold water


Sift the flour into a bowl with a pinch of salt. Chop up all the fat into inch sized squares and add to the flour. Now add the water and, using a palette knife make a series of straight cuts (like you are cutting a big cake) to incorporate everything. The aim is to leave the fat as intact as possible and still bring everything together into a dough-like ball.

When you have a reasonable ball of dough-like substance, take it out of the bowl (don't worry if it doesn't use up all of the flour) and place on a floured board. Shape it into a rough brick shape, and using a long, floured rolling pin, make 3 depressions across the brick. Make sure the dough and the pin are well dusted with flour at all times.

Then roll the whole thing out into an oblong that is roughly the length of your forearm (not including your hand!) and about 1/2 as wide. Now fold the top third down and the bottom third up so its a bit like an envelope. Seal the edges with a sharp press from the rolling pin. this locks in air, apparently. The dough will now be roughly the same size and shape as your original brick, so make the 3 depressions again and repeat the process again 4 or 5 times. What this does is spread out the large chunks of fat into layers with flour that you have used to dust the board, dough and pin. Clever, eh!

Allow the dough to rest in the fridge for at least half an hour before you roll it out. When you cut the dough in half you will be able to see all the layers of flour and fat, like the strata of a cliff. Because we had so much stew we had to use 2 pie dishes (big rectangular lasagne ones) but if you are making a smaller amount you could use a pretty round dish. Fill your dish up to almost full with the stew filling. Then cover with the rolled out pastry and make nice decorations on top (not a big penis, like Alan did) and a few cuts to allow steam to escape. I was going to put an egg wash over the pastry to make it nice and shiny (just a beaten egg brushed all over the pastry) but I forgot. We served this with boiled new potatoes and steamed broccoli. YUUUUMMMM

Sarah’s Stew

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A hug in a bowl

This is also slightly French due to the amount of wine we added! Make lots of this as it tastes even better the next day.

Enough stewing beef for 4 people

2 tbsps flour

2 onions, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

4 parsnips

6 carrots

about 20 small new potatoes with skins left on

1 bottle red plonk

1 pint beef stock

1 desert spoon worcester sauce

salt and pepper

1 desert spoon balsamic vinager

dried herbs

1 bay leaf

Toss the beef pieces in the flour and brown off in a large, deep pan, stiring vigourously to prevent the flour from sticking. Remove the browned meat from the pan, and add the onions and garlic. Cover and allow to sweat for 5 mins. While this is happening, chop the vegetables into similar sized pieces. Add all the veg and the meat back into the pan with the onions and garlic. Pour in the botte of red wine and the stock. If it looks like it needs more liquid, add some water. The liquid should almost cover all the other ingredients. Add a few grinds of pepper, the worcester sauce, vinegar and a few pinched of whatever dried herbs you have handy. Or you could add a bouquet garni of fresh herbs, left on the sprigs and tied together with string. This can then be removed once the stew is cooked. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 mins. Then cover and place in a hot oven for about 3 hours, or a cooler oven for 4 hours. More than enough time to go out for a nice walk/pint.

When you come back the house will smell amazing.

Shepherds Pie

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Beef up the Security Pie

Right so long story short - a bad man got into our house, Delo saw him off. He didn't get anything. Then he came back again. Then Delo saw him off again.

So while the girls and Delo beefed up the security and I beefed us up a pie to calm our poor nerves. When our neighbours heard they brought us over a bottle of wine, so it all ended well.

Thanks Delo and thanks Shelia.

I added in some extras like leeks, carrots and a tin of broad beans, as pie for 2 became pie for 4 and then 5, and there was enough to go around. The beans really added an extra dimension, complemented well by the beef and the cheesy potato topping.

Ingredients

1 pound of beef (from Madina on Parnell St - where they minced it freshly before your eyes, nice to see it's fresh, not nice to hear the sound of it going through the mincer - eugh)
2 medium onions
3 cloves of garlic - crushed
2 tablespoons flour
2 carrots - cubed
1 leek - sliced 1 cm rings
1 tin of beans - whichever kind you think would work - I used broadbeans (red ones not green)
Stock/Stock Cube
5 large potatoes - boiled
Some milk
Some grated cheese (I used cheddar)
Salt & Pepper

Boil your carrots along with the skins until tender - remove carrots, discard skins and keep water for later.

Fry up the onion with the garlic for a few minutes until it starts to go tender. Then add in the leeks cook until the onions are translucent and the leeks are getting soft. Then add in the beef and cook until it all goes brown. Then add in the flour mix well, then sprinkle over your stock/stock cube, and add a dash of Lea & Perrins. Combine the carrots and beans with the meat.

Use the water from the carrots to make the sauce - add a little at a time until you achieve your desired consistency. then simmer for a few minutes, making sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of your pan. Mash your potatoes with some milk, salt & pepper and half the cheese.

In a oven proof dish - layer the meat mixture on the bottom - top with the potato and then sprinkle with cheese. Bake at Gas Mark 7 for about 30-45 mins until it looks golden and crispy and wonderful. Serve with some green veg - to balance out the colours of your plate. Your break in worries will be a thing of the past...... ahhhh

Massive Man Curry

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Well Delo's not massive by any means he is pretty tall and did cook most of this curry so we'll name it after him

Bank Holiday Monday - Beef and Lime Masaman

Oh to follow a recipe faithfully – you never have all the right ingredients – so there was a level of confusion as to how the lime works with potatoes – that is as yet undecided. Though after working late last night, and running out of the office cause I got scared of vampires, I had the leftovers and for some reason they were extra delicious - must be the fear adrenalin

After looking for time some time for some galangal I had found some so I was excited to use it in a recipe.


We had some left over beef from our stew on Sunday that we got from the local Indian (and everything else) shop down the road. I forget the name of it now – hmmmmmmm Poppy’s? Aula? I’ll get back to you on that one, but I love that shop.


Ingredients
Half pound of beef – sliced thinly (the thinner the more delicious I find)
I onion – cut into little moons
1 large green chilli (de-seeded or not)
I red pepper in 1 inch squares
4 potatoes – cut into 2cm cubes
2 inches of root ginger - grated
3 gloves of garlic – sliced thinly as you can
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 ½ teaspoon galangal
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon salt
I teaspoon palm sugar
Zest and juice of one lime
Dash of maggi brand seasoning
3 tablespoons of oyster sauce
2 tablespoons soy sauce
¾ can of coconut milk
lots of black pepper

Marinate sliced beef in 2 tablespoons of oyster sauce and half of the soy sauce ( for as long as you can pref overnight though don’t worry if you can only manage to do it for the time you have to prepare the rest of the dinner) Boil cubes of potato until just tender in some slightly salted water.

Fry up ginger, chili and ginger in a small bit of veg oil, over a med-high heat for 2-3 mins then add in the onion, cumin, coriander, turmeric and galalngal till, cook for a few mins till onion starts to go see through – then add in the beef – cook for 3-4 mins, then add in the peppers and coconut milk, palm sugar, lime juice, potato, seasoning, rest of he oyster and soy sauce. Stir well and leave to bubble for about 2 mins.

Serve with a sprinkle of fresh coriander if you have it. If you want to eat it with rice half the amount of potatoes used in recipe – that’ll make it more authentic!



Lovely pictures of curry also with kind thanks to the massive man! Cheers Delo