Mushroom and rosemary soup

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So, it's time to come clean. Lola and Lu no longer share a kitchen. This sad fact has been swept under the carpet by us somewhat on this blog, but its time to face facts. Lu moved out 2 months ago and Colm and I are continuing on as the sole occupiers of said Kitchen. However, Lu is a regular visitor and thankfully I have a spare room with a bed made up especially for her.

On Monday night, the end of the bank holiday, I decided that since I hadn't been doing any proper cooking in the longest time, I would cook a 3 course meal especially for Lu. And Colm, of course.

We started with this amazingly mushroomy mushroom soup, which I made using some dried mushrooms my Mum brought me back from France last year. You could use a mixture of fresh ones as long as you can get your hands on something other that button mushrooms, it will turn out grand but perhaps not so intense!

Ingredients:

1 medium punnet ordinary mushrooms

1 litre hot beef stock

2 - 3 cups dried mushrooms

1 onion

2 cloves garlic

1/2 litre milk

3-4 big sprigs rosemary

1 oz butter

3 glugs olive oil

1 tbsp flour

2 tbsps sherry

First, soak the dried mushrooms in the beef stock for about half an hour. Meanwhile chop the onion and garlic and saute in a big pot with the lid on until translucent. Add the chopped ordinary mushrooms and 2/3rds of the chopped rosemary. Cook with the lid on until the mushrooms are cooked through and have released their juices, about 10 minutes. Drain the dried mushrooms and add them to the pot. Cook for another 5 mins. Reserve the stock. Add the sherry and stir well. Then sprinkle in the flour and mix in so that it soaks up all the mushroom and sherry juices. Gradually add the stock, stirring well. Simmer to thicken and simmer for a further 5 or 10 minutes. Blend the soup with a stick blender and add the milk, up to 1/2 a litre depending on how thick you like it. While the soup is cooking, you could fry some reserved mushrooms in butter with the rest of the rosemary until crispy to use as a garnish.

Serve with cream if you like, chopped parsley and the mushroom garnish.

Pie Off!!

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Food blogging friends
We got invited by Aoife from I Can Has Cook to enter a pie into the first annual pie-off, so I gladly accepted. I have been reading Aoifes blog for a good while now, by entering this competition I would be meeting her face to face - ha ha! Then we realised we’d already met a few years ago anyway, but that’s another story.

Lola and I thought long and hard over our pie choices, many pies were discussed at length, so thanks guys for indulging our endless food talk. We weighed up our options carefully, considered some bad and good pie puns.

We did make a great Beef and Guinness pie back in July, but we thought we’d need to push the boat out and go a little extra special for this one.

As I undertook the shopping I imagined a master chef style judging -’now this is a big disappointment guys.... hmm awfully bland....’ The pressure was on.
We chose a classic game pie, which we named

Granny Speed on the Game Pie
Now the story behind this was I borrowed a ceramic blackbird from my mum - which you ‘ bake in the middle of the pie’ and it holds the pastry above the filling preventing sogginess and also housing the vent to let out the steam.


This little birdy belonged to my great grandmother whose surname was Speed - get it!
Anyways the ingredients for the pie were sourced from Moore Street and also from Fallon and Byrne. We decided to cook the filing the night before so that the flavours could rest over night and develop properly.


So I wobbled home on Friday after a few Friday pints of Guinness and Rayne prob did most of the work - but I assisted. She even filleted two saddles of rabbit - hats off!Less rambling - More recipe

Ingredients
1/2lb of rabbit - filleted and chopped into 2/3 cm cubes
1/2 lb of pheasant, chopped into 2/3 cm cubes
1/2 pound of venison flank cubed
4 oz of streaky bacon - de-rinded and diced
2 red onions
2 cloves of garlic crushed
1/2 pint of wine
1 oz of plain flour4oz of shitake mushrooms
4oz of button mushrooms
1 bay leaf
a tablespoon of red currant jelly
Seasoning
1/2 pint of chicken stock
Zest and juice of one orange
Puff pastry (bought not homemade - sorry!)

With a little oil - fry off the pheasant and rabbit in batches in your pan to brown on each side. Dont brown your venison as apparently this makes it very tough. Set aside.

Cook your onion for a minute then add in the garlic and bacon - after about 2/3 mins add in the mushrooms. Fry until the onion is transparent and the bacon getting nicely cooked - but not too brown. Stir in the flour and cook for a few seconds before adding in the browned meat, unbrowned venison, wine, stock, bay leaf, orange juice, zest and jelly.

Mix well, bring to the boil and then lower to a gentle simmer. Cover and cook for about an hour and twenty mins. Allow to cool, before refrigerating overnight.

Next day - pop your mixture into a high sided pie dish, around your little birdy. Then cut your pastry to be a lot wider than your dish, as it will puff and shrink. Drape t over your pie dish - and cut a hole for the steam to escape. Brush with some beaten egg. Cook at Gas Mark 6 for 2o mins and then turn down to gas mark 5 for a further 30 mins or so - till golden and delicious on top and bubbly underneath.

The mixture when heated in the oven gets a lot more liquidy so don’t worry if your cold mixture appears a little thick.

The pie-off was a great idea for a fun night. All pies were marked on taste - creativity and presentation. The total scores were added together to determine the winner. We cooked the pies in rotation and then everyone had a little taste then - then a little taste of the next pie - - so nobody got stuffed but everybody was well fed.

Aoife created a shepherds pie with minced venison and juniper berries, which was the tastiest shepherd pie I’ve ever eaten.Darragh created a sumptuous Moroccan lamb pie with toasted cumin seeds rolled into the pastry - a fantastic idea! Nice big lumps of carrot in there too. He added in some 'ras al-hanout' which I've never heard of, so I bet this was the secret ingredient.