Thyme & Tallegio Potatoes with Ham

Tweet

A Side Tasty Enough for a Main


You know those dishes that are meant to be a side but are so good you could just eat a large plate full by itself. Macaroni Cheese is often listed as a side in American diners, where as I could happily eat it all on it's own.


Tallegio is a wonderful rich, moist, oozy Italian cheese. It's a washed rind cow's cheese. I still don't like to use much of the rind - some of it, but not all. Totally up to you though. It goes beautifully with cooked ham and melts over the hot pan fried potatoes, to create a gooey decadent potato dish, to die for. I exaggerate not.

Ingredients
Serves 2 as a large side
5 large new potatoes
4 sprigs of thyme stalk removed
2 cloves of garlic crushed
1 onion sliced finely
Tallegio (as much as you'll allow yourself to eat in one sitting)
Leftover cooked ham (leftover chicken would also be nice) 


1) In a large saucepan fry up your onion over a medium heat with some olive oil and a small knob of butter, until approaching translucent but not quite there. 
2) Add in your potatoes, thyme, seasoning and garlic. Cover the pan and cook over a medium to low heat for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. After 15 of those mins pop in the ham to warm through.
3)Now the secret to getting some of the lovely deep flavour into this dish involves getting some nice brown areas on your potatoes and onions. If your mixture at this point appears slightly anemic, whack up the heat and allow to stick a little to the pan before mixing around. 
4) Break your amazing cheese into bite size lumps. Sit on top of the dish - allow to stand for a few minutes and then the cheese should have melted all round the gorgeous browned potatoes and you're  done.


mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm very sad that I no longer have the ingredients for this in the fridge.

Home-cured Bacon Carbonara

Tweet

My favourite pasta dish of all time

So yes Carbonara is my favourite pasta dish of all time. I've been making it for years. Every so often will get a craving for it that won't go away until I've made myself an enormous bowl of creamy spaghetti. I'm pretty sure it has to be spaghetti - tagliatelle at a push.


Now the most important ingredient in this dish is indeed the bacon. Just to say the pig wasn't a saddleback but a rarebreed Tamworth from the Wishing Well Farm. The University of Bristol carried out a taste test of all breeds of pigs in 1999 and the Tamworth came out on top. They are now in the process of getting a sow to start breeding. Most special about this particular pig is that, it was their first pig. 


We saw Ed Hick butcher a side of the animal at Inishfood in Donegal. Then we all got down to curing our own bit of bacon. I chose a cure that had some bay and juniper in it. The meat was pierced to allow the cure to get deep into the meat. Then you rub the cure well into the meat with your hands. Seal the meat in an airtight container and store in a cool dry place for two weeks for the curing to take effect. The meat needs a turn everyday to ensure both sides as evenly cured. I stored mine in the fridge.

The resulting piece of meat was just some of the finest bacon I've ever eaten. It's nice to have a large piece of bacon to cut from as you can choose how to cut it - ie rashers or lardons. I got 3 breakfasts and a carbonara for two from my piece. Sadly I forgot to weigh it at any point of the process - whoops. The cure brought lovely notes of bay to the meat. Also the fat when fried or grilled turned a lovely dark rich brown - whether that's down to the meat or the cure I'm not sure. There was dark brown sugar in the cure so that might well be it.


I will def be looking into curing my own bacon again providing I can find the same quality of meat to do it with. That might be some tall order though, given the tender love and care this pig received I'm sure.


Now onto the recipe which I took from Donal Skehans new book - Kitchen Hero. Like him I've experimented with many versions before often involving ingredients such as wine, cream, cheddar. The pared back version is more true to the genuine Italian version, and just as tasty.


Ingredients - Serves Two
3 egg yolks - broken up
5 rashers sliced / or pancetta / or my amazing bacon!
Spaghetti for 2 cooked al dente
Parmesan cheese


Method
Cook your spaghetti in plenty of well salted water. While the pasta is cooking fry up your bacon till it's nice and crispy.


Drain the spaghetti and reserve about a cup full of the cooking liquid. Return the pasta to the hot pan - but don't return the pan to the heat. Stir through the bacon and a little of the cooking water. Then quickly stir through the egg yolks. The heat from the pasta cooks the egg yolks and makes a nice sauce that coats well. Stir quickly though to ensure you don't scramble the egg.


Serve with a good healthy amount of freshly grated Parmesan and a good crowd of black pepper.


This dish is full of flavour that belies it's simple ingredients, it will be a while before I go back to my more extensive ingredient list.

Cooks Academy Week 2

Tweet

Monday

Half eaten 'something' of crab

bold Lucy bold bold - I forgot my camera. Today I made a beef and carrot casserole with horseradish cream - that description doesn't really do the dish justice, it was divine, possibly due to the amount of wine that went in there. To go with this we made polenta mash - now don't get me wrong - but this was just gross. If anyone out there has a decent recipe for polenta - please share it with me - it's the one food stuff I am ready to give up on right now, like yesterday would be too soon to eat it again! And I like everything. There were other nice sides knocking around.

I also made a crab starter (it had a fancier name that now escapes me!) Served with avocado and melon balls - 80's tastic. Also made in the class was a smoked mackerel pate - which was delightfully moreish. Will most definitely make this for people sometime soon.

Better to camera phone picture or not

The afternoon was jam packed - choux pastry, chocolate sauce, choux swans, chicken liver pate (butter lordy!) melba toasts, gratin dauphinoise, duck breast, red win jus, and puy lentils. Most of these dishes I have to make tomorrow so prepare yourselves for some seriously yummy pictures - the camera is already in my bag! 

Tuesday 
In early to get together time plan and grab a coffee before hitting the kitchen. It was straight into the choux pastry. Quite a strange thing to make due to it resembling scrambled eggs at one point. But you've not gone wrong here - just keep going and you'll eventually get a very shiny and strong dough that really does not want to drop off them beaters - oh no.

Into a  piping bag and onto a tray in well spaced little lumps. Oven time of 25 minutes and don't open that door or they'll flop.

Next my partner and I prepared a aubergine and tomato tower with goats cheese and basil.  A teaspoon of sugar and balsamic to the usual tomato sauce seemed to make all the difference - as well as some wine!

This plate means business

Oh hello enormous profiteroles - I feel like a mini Alice in Wonderland

Then the main course to prepare was duck served on a bed of puy lentil with carmelised shallot and a reduction sauce. This was challenging as most of this was prepared in the last 45 minutes. As well as having to construct the aubergine tower and also pipe the cream into the profiteroles. Extreme multi tasking - I think I only finished 5 minutes late.

Then a massive clean up before getting to eat it - other sides prepared were potato grating and some kind of gratin sweet potato. Both pretty tasty. My duck was a little rare - mainly for fear of overcooking it. Still good to get constructive criticism on your dish. Everyone is finding their way around the kitchen a little better - feel like I'll be pretty damn handy by the end of this course - and if not undoubtedly a little heavier - eek! 

Wednesday
Short and sweet and to the point.

Lost in a sea of fallen souffles - couldn't get this shot fast enough!

Today I made the most delicious dessert of my life - chocolate orange souffles! Divine and light and melty and gooey all at once, heaven!

Amazing meringue with kitchen scene in the back ground

Followed on quickly by what can only be described as a close second in the most amazing dessert I've ever made. Hazelnut and almond roulade with raspberries. Beautiful crispy and gooey meringue hiding toasty little bits of nuts - with raspberries - out of this world.

This course was worth it - just to have made this!

It was a tough decision to choose between them - but I'd have to go with the souffles on wow factor! BAM WOW


Also on the menu were fish cakes - modest in comparison to the other two dishes - but packed with flavour in all the right places. I seriously can't wait to try out some of these recipes on friends and family - they're gonna be so impressed. Did I mention the very large folder we have for the course which is packed full of these amazing recipes.

Best Fish Cakes Ever

I wonder how many times I've used the word 'amazing' and 'delicious' in this post so far? Tomorrow is Thai day - so a break from the butter and cream, phew!

Thursday
This morning we made one Thai soup, a curry and a salad. Those of you familiar with Thai cooking will know that there is a lot of prep involved and the cooking itself is pretty fast.  
A more relaxed morning resulted, though to get maximum benefit from the class I think we could have prepared some other Thai starter to fill in the time more productively. Maybe because I've cooked quite a bit of Thai food before that I found this morning pretty laid back.

Tom Ka Kai

Red Chicken Curry

The afternoon was a demo from James - a cook in Cornucopia. The afternoon was  a 'Free from' afternoon. He demonstrated how to make some Divine desserts that are suitable for celiacs and vegans. Panna cotta pots with cashew or coconut milk - the coconut was great. A chocolate orange torte with dates and toasted hazelnuts for the base. He also prepared some very tasty tofu and tempeh. The meals were delicious I'd feel happy serving them to anyone. He also showed us how to make cashew milk, how to whip soyaceoliac class as well as a vegetarian class.

Friday
Italian Day - ci ci!  

Some Impressive Pasta Skills

We start off with tiramisu. A dessert that I always thought was merely an assembly of some ingredients coffee and cream is actually more complex than that. And involves sugar boiling. This process has some interesting stages with odd names - short line, long line, soft ball and hard ball. All of these to do with how the syrup falls from the spoon. Practice will make perfect. Add the syrup at 'soft ball' stage to whipped fluffy egg yolks. Mix lots. Then add in cream cheese, then mascarpone, then wiped double cream! Woo hoo dairy overload - oh and there was marsala in there somewhere.


Dip your biscuits in coffee mixed with rum and more marsala. Layer this with your magic dairy concoction with a little dusting of cocoa powder on between. This is the boyfriends favourite dessert - he'll be delighted with the leftovers this evening.

We were shown how to make pasta on Wednesday think I've forgotten how since then, but no my notes remind me. 00 flour and eggs dash of olive oil - that's it. Mix in well, then knead like mad for 10 minutes./ I've learnt there is a stance for kneading - spread your weight and get your whole body weight behind it. Tutor will notice if you're not giving it socks so get your back into it. After kneading it well - give it a wee rest in the fridge while you prepare your yummy filling, pesto, tomatoe sauce or whatever you need to put with it.

I made ravioli with ricotta, sun dried tomato and parma ham filling. Rolling out the pasta is fun - but most defiantly a two person  job. Free pasta also cooks in a flash. Another group in the class made wafer thin tagliatelle and it cooked in one minute - my raviolis took about 5/6 minutes. A nice subtle colour arrangement on my plate got me some good comments for presentation - and good feedback on taste so happy days.

Not my dish! Amazing melt in your mouth tagitelle

Mine - yup I made this! Hurray

My tiramisu was kinda ugly so no photos I'm afraid (bold Lucy bold)


The afternoon demo included risotto Milanese which is made with saffron giving it a great colour and taste. There was also a rich and dark French onion soup with chessey gruyere croutons. Our lovely dessert and pastry tutor showed us how to make an incredible Normandy Apple Tart. The swirls of apple making a rose in the centre of the tart - fab! Sampled warm with a creme anglais - amazing. That does mean that today I ate three dessert lucking I'm doing a 5k run tomorrow then, though I should prob do 3!

Squid and fennel with squid ink pasta

Tweet

Rings of gold

In Venice there is an annual tradition which dates back a thousand years in which the Doge would every year throw a gold ring into the lagoon to symbolise the city's Unique relationship to the sea, in fact, its metaphorical marriage to the sea. Of course Venice is unique, its a city in the middle of a sea, built upon thousands and thousands of wooden poles driven into the lagoon mud. It shouldn't really exist but it does, and that is what gives the whole place its magical and otherworldly atmosphere.

This extra special relationship the Venetians have to the sea carries through to their food of course, and this dish is inspired by some squid ink pasta with black squid in sauce that I ate at a restaurant called Ai Beccofico in campo Santa Stefano in December. Apparently it is a signature dish of Venice, where Colm and I went for a few days holiday. Though it was my third visit, it felt like a different place without the hoards of summertime tourists. Despite it being FREEZING, It was my favorite visit as the city was amazingly quiet and at times swathed in freezing but very picturesque fog. It was great to see actual Venetians going about their daily business, including buying fish from the mind blowing selection at the Rialto Fish market, where I shopped for our dinner. Self catering is great sometimes!

I bought this squid from an asian fishmonger in Dublin town. It looked so pretty that in my excitement I forgot to ask the fishmonger to clean and skin the squid! I learned the hard way that squid have weird cartilage bones that look exactly like the clear plastic from a biro! I couldnt find squid ink anywhere, but I did manage to get the black squid ink pasta from Fallon and Byrne. Im sure Little Italy in Smithfield or any good Italian Deli would also be able to oblige

Ingredients, serves 3-4

2 squid, cleaned & skinned
1 large bulb of fennel
3 shallotts
2 cloves garlic
juice of 1/2 a lemon
1 glass white wine

1 handful flat leaf parsley

Black pasta made with squid ink

Parmesan cheese

Start by chopping the squid into rings and separating the tentacles ready to be cooked. Then chop shallots and garlic and cooking them in some olive oil in a frying pan. Add the chopped fennel and cover the whole thing with a lid to soften the vegetables. Cook for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, put your pasta on to cook. When your pasta is almost done, add the squid to the fennel and onion in a medium hot pan and fry very quickly, about 2 minutes only. Then add the white wine and lemon juice and bring it up to a simmer for 1 minute, stiring continuously. Drain the pasta and throw it into the pan with the squid and fennel. Mix it around, throw in a handful of chopped parsley and serve with the parmesan cheese and some sprigs of the fennel leaf that sometimes escapes the chop!

Clam Linguine

Tweet

Warm and clammy

I can't believe how long I have left it to blog this recipe! This was the main course at the dinner party we had back in August and its now November, shame on me! Lucy has been holding the fort on the blog front recently as I seem to be going through a cooking drought, and have, embarrassingly, cooked a number of things recently that were NOT Delicious!

However,

this recipe definitely is not one of those. This was perhaps one of the most delicious things I have cooked with pasta and I think blogging it now might help me get my food-mojo back! Onwards and upwards!

Recent Clam related activity: I was in California in September and when in San Francisco sampled their famous clam chowder served in a sourdough bread bowl. The bowl was not really my thing, but the chowder was spectacular. Then in Monterey I ate 'steamers', a bowl of steamed clams, which made me want to cook with clams again and reminded me that I still had not blogged this recipe. I also like saying the word 'clams' in an American accent... 'Claaaaaaaayms'... oh the hilarity!

Clam linguine (Serves 10!)

Ingredients

1kg fresh clams ( i got ours at Kish fish near Smithfield)

10 shallots, finely chopped

white wine

6 cloves garlic, finely chopped

500ml cream

100 grams butter

glug olive oil

juice of 1 lemon

enough linguine (i used a packet and a half!!)

Parmesan cheese

freshly chopped parsley

Melt the butter along with the olive oil in a large pot. Add the shallots and garlic to the butter, cover and saute for about 10 mins or until soft and translucent. Meanwhile, start cooking your linguine. add the (washed) clams to the shallots and pour in 2 wine glasses of white wine. Simmer for 5 -8 minutes or until all of the clams have opened. If there are any that have not opened, throw them away as they could make you and your guests sick (I was a bit paranoid about this happening!). Add the lemon juice at this point. When the linguine is cooked, drain it but reserve 1 cup of the cooking liquid. Add the cooked linguine into the pot with the clams and mix it well. If it looks a bit to dry or starts to stick together add a little of the cooking water from the linguine. Garnish with chopped parsley and some lemon wedges but serve the Parmesan on the side as there is a school of thought that says Parmesan should not be served with seafood pasta dishes, weird huh?

This was absolutely delicious and went down a storm with our 10 guests. Its also nice for the 'stick a pot on the table and let everyone dig in' style of dinner parties.

Oven Roasted Tomato & Caramelised Garlic Bruschetta

Tweet

Never Mind the Electric Picnic here's the Acoustic Dinner Party

So to distract ourselves from the fact that we weren’t at Electric Picnic - we had some friends over for dinner on Saturday night - the menu was loosely summer Italian, I really enjoyed all the courses - especially the starter  which was inspired by a meal we had at Junior’s in Ringsend recently. If you haven’t been you should try it - it’s a great restaurant. I’ve been there twice recently - for dinner and brunch!

Pre-dinner Nibbles

Ingredients
Makes 9
1 head of garlic
18 baby tomatoes
3 teaspoons of Maldon Sea Salt
3 teaspoons of Caster Sugar/Light Brown Sugar
Olive Oil
Good quality sourdough bread
1 clove of garlic

Cut the whole head of garlic across the middle - so that each clove is cut in half. Mix together the salt and sugar in a bowl.  Then dip the head of garlic cut side down into the mixture - so that it sticks. Then on a oven proof tray - put the remaining sugar and salt in two piles. Place the two pieces of garlic cut side down on the two piles. Cover the garlic with tin foil. Place in the oven at gas mark 6 for 30 mins until they are tender.

While these are cooking - coat the tomatoes in a little olive oil and bake these along with the garlic - so they should be ready at the same time. If you have them on the vine keep them that way - as they’re less likely to loose their delicious juices in the roasting process.

Remove the garlic and tomatoes from the oven and allow to cool. Then pop them out of the skins, mix together in a small bowl to form a paste with a small bit of olive oil.

Toast the sour dough - spread each piece of toast with a little purred garlic and top with a  few torn basil leaves and two tomatoes.

This is the smallest part of the dinner but thought I’d better start today or we’ll never get it all down. Stay posted for the next five installments - yup 5! Wow we’re mad as a pastry brush around here

Roasted Tomato and Parmesan Sauce

Tweet

For Pasta, Bread or Dipping

I say bread and dipping without having tried it myself, but I bet it's work, try it before I do!

Growing up my Dad would be traveling a lot during the week, so on Saturdays he would often make the lunch. I think he found cooking a nice way of unwinding. One of his signature dishes was pasta and tomato sauce. He was always sure to have the plates warmed and have plenty of grated cheese ready to lash on, it was eaten before watching the rugby beside the fire and drinking tea in Spring. Good memories.

After a lazy morning - I made a tomato and pasta sauce for Lola who was working away pretty hard. I think she liked it. We also watched the rugby long enough to see a try - perfect! 

Ingredients

12-14 small tomatoes on vine

6 cloves of garlic (in their skins)

1 small red pepper, cut into 8

1 small red pepper, cut into 8

2 tablespoons of freshly grated Parmesan

2 handfuls of rocket

grated cheddar cheese

8oz pasta 

Olive Oil

Seasoning

Pre-heat the oven to Gas Mark 7. In a baking dish put the tomatoes, garlic and peppers and drizzle with olive oil. Bake at the top of the oven for 45 mins until getting black at the edges. I use my stick blender for the next step, but if you have a food processor - use that. Pop the roasted garlic out of it's skins, if it's properly cooked it should just pop out easily. Then liquidise everything as well as the Parmesan together. It should make a good volume of sauce.

Stir into cooked pasta, serve in warmed bowls, topped with rocket and grated cheese. If using this as a dip, it could be cooked a little longer to just thicken it up a little.

Happy Saturday

Almond Pesto

Tweet

With roasted vegetable pasta

Lu and I recently came across this new company, fruitfellas, who are better known as Rob and Gav, two lovely lads who for a mere 20 quid will deliver a box of gorgeous, colourful fruit and veg straight to your door. If like me you don't have a car, this is a godsend as it eliminates the need to carry tesco bags up a hill with your arm muscles straining and the bags cutting into your hands. Also, the produce is fresher & nicer than Tescos, and straight from the markets of Dublin to keep everything nice and local, kinda.

We got very excited about or box of fruit and veg, and, finding out that you can also get fresh herbs we ordered a silly amount of basil and flat leaf parsley. One week later, said herbs were still sitting around the kitchen looking slightly the worse for wear. 'We could make pesto if only we had some pine nuts' said Lu 'No way', I'm never eating pine nuts again, I'm too scared of getting Pine nut mouth' said I.

This pesto is subsequently made with almonds, which worked out perfectly. I don't know whey I never tried it before. Much cheaper than pine nuts too which I have seen at an aforementioned super market for €8 a bag!

Almond pesto

NB- I didn't really measure anything, so this is a kind of guesstimate recipe. Use your instincts about how pesto should look and you will be fine

Ingredients

1 big bunch Basil

1/2 a big bunch Flat leaf parsley

about a double handful of flaked almonds (i dunno, about 1 cup in American measurements)

about 100 ml olive oil

2 oz Parmesan cheese, finely grated

1 small clove garlic (or half a big clove)

salt and pepper

In a food processor, whizz up the herbs and almonds. Then add the olive oil slowly while you whizz until the mixture reaches your desired consistency (you know, pesto-like) stop whizzing and transfer to a bowl. Add the Parmesan and crushed garlic clove and mix with a fork. Add salt and pepper to taste, and more olive oil if you think it is too stiff.

We made a delicious pasta with this pesto.

We roasted some vine tomatoes, whole cloves of garlic(in their skins) red peppers and broccoli (that we had blanched in boiling water) all for about 40 mins. Then we cooked some pasta, threw in all the veg (took the skins of the roasted garlic first!) and a couple of big dollops of the pesto. Man was it good! It was so good I decided that Lucy and I are true culinary geniuses (genii?)

Speaking of which, I will be blogging a recipe from my new Julia Child cook book very, very soon, so get ready for butter, and lots of it.

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Tweet

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.