Supper Happened! 25th July!

Another supper! I'm sorry I'm so behind on these but I'm catching up!...I think. Moroccan food is probably one of my favourite foods. This was also my most prepared and professionally hosted suppers. I was really pleased with how it all came out. Great company as usual and lots of fun!

It was cherry season! I bought cherries. I ate far too many cherries. Took the stones from each....I need one of those stone popper things...but I quite enjoy taking the stones out. Cooked them down with some water and sugar and seived the batch. Left it to cool and made sorbet! Next was the mousse! I like mousse...I've noticed the large number of 'like' in this post. But I liked all of this. The mousse is made with a little spiced rum. It's wonderful and tasty. Lastly I baked the buteer biscuits. My favourite recipe for biscuits. This time I added saffron and lemon zest.

    

I wanted my cous cous to be cold for the supper, so I made it in advance as well. I roasted the squash and mixed in lemon and harissa.

3 hours before my dinner, I made my flatbread dough and left it to rise. Next I moved onto the chicken dish with 1 hour before people arrive. I got this chicken recipe of a wonderful Moroccan-American man by the name of Hassan.I'm very glad to have had the pleasure to have met him and the luck to have received such wonderful recipes from him. If you're ever in New York and happen to be frequenting Dean & Deluca find him and tell him I say hay! The thing I like about Moroccan food is that it is spicy but fresh, citrusy and wonderful all round. It's really a simple dish but has wonderful flavours. I used my own chicken stock to cook it in and it all worked really well.

I turned the oven up to 200°C and rolled out my dough. Flat breads began baking. Last but not least was the clams.....

Sadly I didn't end up with clams for this dinner, we were unlucky and ended up with a Red Tide. I ended up getting my hands on some wonderful mussels. So it was all ok! Panic over. I heated sherry, some water and my dry harissa spice mix. Cooked the mussels for a few minutes about a minute before the mussels were ready to come off the heat I mixed through the samphire. Put some chopped coriander on top. That was it ready to go!

Apologies for the hazy picture. **was organised, forgot to take photos..**

Everything served up. All at once. Bam. We ate, laughed and enjoyed everything.

Supper Happened! July 18th!

My first and one of my favourite dinners with my newest accomplice Danielle!

Danielle and I were in Galway at the Film Fleadh, when we came to the decision that it would be great to do a Japanese meal using Irish Seasonal ingredients. The best suggestion was that it would be great to tempura some courgette flowers. I made a quick phone call to the wonderful McNallys, I was informed they were available...provided I appear on the farm the day I was going to use them and hope it wasn't raining.

I wanted the pickled salad and mackerel to be strong and flavoursome. Mackerel only needs 24hrs to pickle safely. I wanted to intensify the flavour so I left it for 2 nights. The salad is a simple bento recipe on a larger scale.

 

Find your veg that you want, chop it into strips pour over a mixture of rice vinegar and sugar leave for up to 3 weeks in the fridge. With the mackerel I used a mixture of  cider vinegar from Llewellyns and white wine vinegar. Cooked it down with a fennel and orange mix. Covered the fish in onions, fennel and poured over the cooled liquid. I wrapped it well and put a heavy weight on top.

      

I wanted to do something different with the seaweed salad this time, I decided to use rhubarb, broccoli and wakame seaweed with a soy/lime dressing. I roasted the rhubarb for 15min at a high heat with ginger and soy. Seared the broccoli with chilli. Mixed everything with the rehydrated seaweed. Dressed it all in the soy and lime and it tasted great.

The plan was to make soba noodles and it almost worked. It got to 8:00pm, went to roll them...dust. Not good. It's life I guess I had done a test batch earlier that day, with some success. I had decided to add more white flour to the mixture. It just didn't come together. These things do happen and I plan to return to them soon. Out I ran to F&B and ran home.

The joy of pickling was it was done ahead of time, sadly I am sometimes a little distracted..D appeared just after 8:30 to see me running around like a headless chicken. None of the tempura stuff ready to go. Within the next few minutes she was in chopping like a pro while I complained about noodles and gluten. But we were back on track. We began by cooking the flowers which worked amazingly well! The rest followed and we were ready to go! The noodles chilled, their dipping sauce waiting them. Salad and fish on the table. We all set down with small plates, bowl and chop stick. Hungry and warm*

*I was mainly warm....I had also put my finger in the hot oil at least twice.

Last but not least was the matcha tea ice-cream. I love making ice-cream I've been making lots of it lately and my confidence has risen. I made brittle to go along with it. Cooked down the red beans to a nice consistency and passed them through a sieve.

Making/baking with the sister 2

  Michelle arrived early Wednesday morning, I had just gotten back the evening beforehand. I had to get everything ready that night! So we had a bit of a busy morning. We got right to it..we went for breakfast. Then went looking for biscuit cutters. Then we decided to start getting ready. We got around to making 3 things.

Terribly Chocolatly Chocolate Brownies

So we decided Brownies and ginger bread men would be our baked goods for the day. We also made a Whiskey Marmalade Cake!

What you'll need:

• 300g dark chocolate chopped, plus 150g extra
• 100g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
• ½ teaspoon sea salt
• 3 eggs
• 50g light brown sugar
• 150g caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 100g plain flour

Preheat your oven to 180°C/gas mark 4. Grease a 20cm square baking tin and line with baking paper, get it around the edges too. Place 300g of chocolate, butter and salt in a heatproof bowl over gently simmering water. Let it melt down slowly. In another bowl, break up the eggs and add the sugars and vanilla till its all incorporated.

Whisk it into the melted choclate mixture. Gently fold in flour and 150g of roughly chopped chocolate till just mixed. Pour into prepared tin. Bake for 25min or till it's set. Leave them to cool entirely in the tin. Cut into squares. Eat!

Supper happened! Wednesday 27th!

Well it happened! This is not the first time I've done dinner for people, we do it quite regularly. This will be the first of many I hope that I post about. The plan was to have 6 people over and feed them tasty food. In the end we had 4, the couple that was meant to arrive couldn't..damn work...what'll ya do! But it was fine, it meant I got the pleasure of sitting and chatting..oh and eating with my visiters!

So just to recap the menu was:

Supper:

Slow Roast Porchetta on top of French toast brioche with a side of pan-friend carrots, seasonal greens and caramelised apples.

Dessert:

Frangelico and lime jelly topped with dark chocolate blancmange.

and cheese...always cheese.

The slower you roast porchetta the better, it's salty and moist. I got my porchetta from Hicks in Temple Bar food Market. It was rolled with fennel, garlic and rosemary. At about 8am yesterday morning I popped it out of the fridge and let it come up to room temperature. When 10am rolled around I popped it in a preheated oven.....not that it was that preheated. I had my oven on at 90ºC for the entire day. That was it, I done nothing else for it. The pork was there till 8pm. I took it out 30min before I was to serve it, to let it rest. So within that 30mi gap I made the sides.

I get my carrots and leaves from McNally's also in TBFM, I washed and tidied the carrots. Set them in a hot pan with olive oil. The carrots take about 205min to cook I turn them every 5mins of so till they are good and roasted on all sides. For the last 5min I put a few sprigs of rosemary into the pan with a little balsamic vinegar and honey.

The leaves were a mix of black kale and spinach. There was meant to be catalongna but I forgot to pick it up. BUT anyway it was still tasty. It takes about 10 or so minutes to cook down such a large batch. I poured over olive into the base of pot and threw in some chopped garlic. When it was good and hope I put in the kale then the spinach. Poured in a cup of water mixed with salt, pepper and some nutmeg. Popped the lid on top, a few minutes in mixed the leaves around and that was it.

I got the apples from David Llewellyn in the market...I got everything for the main in the market. I peeled the apples, segmented them and placed them in a frying pan with some of the porchetta run off. I crushed some fennel sprinkled it over the apples with some brown sugar. I let each side caramelise nicely and that was that!

Last but not least was the French toast Brioche. The brioche came from Le Levain, it choose to use the sweet brioche, I thought it would sit well with the salty meat...and it did. I just mixed eggs and set slices of the brioche into it. Put some black pepper over it and placed them in a hot pan with butter.

That was it. The supper. Already to go.

To drink with had some ice-tea....I still have issues remember that I have to give people something to drink. I remembered just in time I guess this time.

Then we moved onto dessert.

What you'll need:

• 4 limes
• 100ml frangelico
• However much sugar syrup to bring liquid level to 500ml
• 3.6 leaves gelatine

For the Chocolate Blancmange

• 400ml milk
• 4 leaves gelatin
• 100g 70% chocolate

The night before the dinner I began making the jelly. I juiced four limes, In a measuring cup I made 500ml of a mix of lime, frangelico and sugar syrup. I personaly am a subsriber to the "universal jelly principle" set out by Bompas & Parr. Which is:

Liquid + Gelling Agent = Jelly

I was not using moulds but making the jelly straight in to china tea cups. Which meant I had to use less gelatin. I poured a little of the liquid on top of my chopped gelitin and left it for about 10mins in a heatproff bowl. Once it was softened I set the bowl over a pot of simmering water. Stir till it's dissolved and that's about it, pour the rest of the liquid and give it a big stir. Pour into cup and that's it. It needs about 6 hours to set. The next day I started to prepare the blancmange. With milk based jellys you need less gelatin, this keeps the mouth feel pleasent for everyone eating. I done the same as before but this time while it was on top of the pot I added in chopped 70% chocolate also. No sugar and no water in this mix. This also sets pretty quickly but it's still better to give it a few hours.Something I forgot to do was place small circles of greeseproof paper or cling directly ontop of the blancmange, this stops it getting a skin. But it's no major deal.

We finished the night with chats over a large pot of tea and some cheese. We have the Creeny sheep cheese from Corleggy Cheeses. On the side and on top of everything we put two of my newest jellys of cheese. We had Port Jelly and Vodka jelly infused with elderflower, lemon and assam tea.

Well thanks for reading. I'll put up the next menu in the next day or so. If you'd like to come just let me know. Everyone is welcome.

Thanks

Vanilla Ice-cream

So this was what we began with this morning and it was the last thing to leave the kitchen this afternoon. I like making ice-cream. I make it a good bit. I also fail at making it a good bit. Some of the reason I fail:

• I have an electric hob.
• I can not control the heat being applied to the base of my pot correctly.
• My fridge sometimes doesn't like to chil items I give it.
• I don't own a thermometer.
• I like failing?
• I like scrabled eggs that taste of vanilla?

Well anyway, I decided it'd be best if we started off with a nice simple one for Michelle sometine she could build from change and tweak for whatever reason she wants. I've been trying over the past few months to instill in Michelle the idea that everything you use in the kitchen as far as ingredients are concerned should be the best. Should be fresh. Should be seasonal and such. From her salt and pepper to the milk we use in the making of the icecream. I wanted a good full fat milk. So what better than the best milk you can buy in the centre of Dublin,so we popped up to Sheridan's on South Anne St and grabbed a 1ltr bottle of Teirnan Family's Raw Milk. We were ready. I was nervous. Michelle wanted a sandwich.

What you'll need:

• 250ml full fat milk
• 250ml double cream
• 2 vanilla pobs
• 5 egg yolks
• 100g sugar

With a sharp knife split the vanilla pods in half and scrape out the seeds. Put the milk, cream and vanilla seeds and pods into a heavy saucepan. Warm gently till just below boiling point, pop it off the heat and leave covered to infuse with the vanilla for about 15-20 minutes. In the mean time whisk the egg yolks with the sugar. Gradually add the warm mixture to the egg/sugar mix till it's all added. Return the saucepan to the hob and cook over a low hat stirring constantly. What you want to happen is the custard coats the back of your spoon. On a low heat and being terrified as I always am making this, it might take a while. I go from points of joy with the smell of vanilla floating around to anger and holding my hand back from uping the heat. Just take your time. Rush it and it over heats you'll have scrambled eggs.

Pour everything into a large bowl and chill.

Today I left this to chill for about 3 hours while we baked the rest of our things. I would normally leave it up to 8 hours. I made sure the mix was shallow so it would chill quickly.

I went and collected my freezer bowl. With the kitchenaid freezer bowls they have to be in a freezer for at least 15 hours prior to using them.

**TIP** Do not pour your mixture into the freezer bowl before starting the mixing. It's cold in there and it'll just freeze and cause a few issues **END OF TIP**

I poured my mix in as the arms were turn and waited. I can see were this tune of "I scream, you scream" comes from. It took about 25min before it started resemble ice-cream. I left my mixer on the slowest speed. After about 35min I was happy wit how it looked. Took it out, tasted. Was happy with how it tasted. If you have any left after making this just pop it in a box and leave it in the freezer.