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.

Dry Harissa Spice Mix

The next supper was a Moroccan inspired meal. For one of the dishes I wanted to make a broth. I decided to make this spice mix.

What you'll need:

• 4 teaspoons cumin seed, toasted and lightly ground
• 4 teaspoons coriander seed, toasted and lightly ground
• 8 tablespoons dried chilli, chopped finely
• 4 teaspoons smoked paprika
• 2 teaspoons seas salt
• 1 teaspoon caraway seeds, toasted and finely ground
• 1½ teaspoons garlic powder

In a frying pan place the seeds and toast them till they become fragrant. Don't let them burn. I used a mix of different dried chillis I had floating around. Place all the seeds in a mortar and pestle or dedicated coffee grinder, work them down. Mix all the ingredients together. It's all pretty simple and that's that. Give it a few days to settle and combine.

     

Supper Happened July 4th!

Sorry about how far behind I am on these supper posts. It's been a bit hectic lately. So today, I hope to tell you about two supper that have happened! This was somewhat of a hurried supper, I had been working Galway at the Ocean Race and came back on the train to Dublin the night beforehand and was on a train back to Galway in the early hours of the morning the Thursday morning.

The idea for the dinner came to me while I was at Corleggy Cheese's farm preparing to go to Galway. I decided if I was going to be on the West Coast of Ireland I should mainly use what I could get my hands on there. I thought to myself that I'd just ask around the market and see who had the best mussels BUT everyone was talking about Marty's Mussels. So I went and found the number for them called and voilà, mussels. I talked to Catherine Nee (Marty's wife) she informed me all about their mussels, she also brought them to Dublin for me, which was very,very appreciated. They're rope grown, they've got a thinner shell and cook quicker than most mussels I've used in the past. I arrive in Dublin to find these waiting for me:

I got home Tuesday and began to prep, decided I was tired. So relaxed. I had my little sister over the next morning, so the Wednesday turned out to be a very busy day. The supper was easy and very manageable, the main prep came with the making of the ice-cream. The idea to infuse it with elderflower came when I was on the farm, the only problem was getting it to Dublin five days later. We had been infusing vodka with elderflower for some other fun projects so I decided to borrow some of it and make a syrup. I cooked down the vodka with some extra elderflower in it with 4 tablespoons of sugar, boiled off the alcohol. So I used the syrup as the sugar in the custard. Job done, I had elderflower custard. Left it to chill in the fridge for 8 hours or so. I got gooseberries from the McNallys and cooked them down with lemon juice and sugar. We served it with gingerbread people.

Cooking the mussels was simple, at Marty's they debeard nd clean all the mussels. I made my harissa and got a huge amount of coriander. In the bottom of my largest post I heated oil with chopped garlic and shallots.  When te oil was hot enough I added the mussels with a glass of dry white wine.  I didn't necessarily need the wine, but I want to get a good bit of steam to make sure I could get all the mussels cooked properly...I hadn't gotten around to cooking 5kg of mussels before..it went ok. There was a bit of pot shaking, but I just left them to it. IT was great with the thinner shells they cooked great. I put about 2/3 of the batch  into a large hot pot and lay it out on the table, sprinkled chopped coriander over the top and it was ready to go.

As we worked our way through the mussels I served slices of sourdough bread to start to soak up the wonderful spicy juice in the bottom of the pot. With this meal we also had battered aubergines covered in honey infused with rosemary. With Aubergines I always try to get as much liquid out of them as possible before cooking with them. Battered aubergines are not the prettiest things in the world but that taste great. I also made a seaweed salad, with this salad, I rehydrated a mix of seaweeds and washed out a good bit of the saltiness. I then mixed the seaweed with spinach and some seared broadbeans, dressed it in a honey, lemon and dijon mustard dressing.

It all went well. The ice-cream was fresh and light, it was refreshing after a spicy and salty dinner.

Supper Wednesday July 4th

Well I'm away in Galway for the next 9days but going to leg it back ti Dublin for Wednesday. Same deal as last time. Let me know if ya want in! If there's a space consider yourself fed!

Zhoug (a kind of green harissa)

Today has been a very busy day. Making condiments left right and centre. Zhoug is excellent with fish and rice. It doesn't last very long in the fridge but you'll have it for 2 weeks or so. It's just that the fresh coriander doesn't like sitting about very much.

What you'll need:

• 250g long green chillies
• ½ teaspoon green cardamom seeds, green husks removed, finely ground
• ⅓ teaspoon coriander seeds, ground
• ½ teaspoon cumin seeds, ground
• 4 tablespoon of roughly chopped fresh coriander
• 1½ cloves of garlic
• a small squeese of lemon
• 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• sea salt & pepper

Chop the stems off chillis, cut them in half then with a teaspoon scrap membrane and seeds from the inside and roughly chop. Put everything except lemon and oil in a blender and pulse till everything is smooth. Transfer everything to a mixing bowl and add lemon and oil. Mix well and place in a sterilised jar. You should end up with just above 250g of Zhoug.

Harissa

So I love harissa. It's wonderful. You should always have it in the kitchen/fridge. This keeps really well in a sealed jar. Pop abit of olive oil on top to keep the air off it.

What you'll need:

• 250g long, fresh red chillies
• sea salt
• 3 heaped teaspoons of caraway seeds, ground
• 3 heaped teaspoons of cumin seeds, ground
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 roasted & peeled red bell pepper
• 1 heaped tablespoon of tomato purée
• 1 and bit tablespoon of red wine vinegar
• 2 teaspoons of smoked paprika
• 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Chop the stems off chillis, cut them in half then with a teaspoon scrap membrane and seeds from the inside and roughly chop. Blend them with a pinch of salt, half of each of the spice seeds and the garlic cloves until smooth. Keep blending till they're smooth (no little bits) Add the bell pepper and the rest of the spice seeds, the purée and vinegar, and blend again until very smooth. Transfer it to a mixing bowl. Add the olive oil. Don't add the oil when in the blender. Blending the oil in will make the harissa turn a creamy colour. Sprinkle paprika on top of the oil and stir in. Taste and season if you need to balance the vinegar.

I sterilised two 220g jars and it pretty much fills these. In the batch I made today I used some amazing smoked olive oil I pick up in Fallon & Byrne a while ago. Everything for this recipe came from F&B which is rather handy.