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Who doesn’t like Meringues? They always go down well in my books and are a really great dessert to make in advance because you can bake them ahead of time and they store extremely well. In our case for foodstock we baked off a mammoth amount of them, 700 to be exact on the Monday before the event on Wednesday and when it came to serving all we had to do was give them a scoop of Jameson whiskey cream, a drizzle of chocolate sauce and a sprinkle of chopped toasted hazelnuts!

I have to say that by the end of the night, there was a fantastic sense of team work when everyone who had been helping us all night, came down to the kitchen- the chefs, the girls from Bord Bia, the staff at the Chalet and the guys from Le Fooding, to work together to get the meringues out and ready! Every free space in the kitchen was taken up and there was meringues as far as the eye could see and in no time we were ready to serve up the last course. Let me just say that these chewy mocha meringues dripping with chocolate sauce didn’t last long in front of the eager crowd and within no time at all we had served them all up!

Mocha Meringues with Jameson Whiskey Cream, Chocolate Sauce and toasted Hazelnuts
This batter makes a really chewy, marshmallow meringue, which goes perfectly with the whiskey cream. If you aren't a coffee fan, drop the espresso powder from the recipe and replace it with more cocoa powder.

Makes 12 meringues
250g icing sugar
4 egg whites
2 teaspoons of cornflour
1 teaspoon of white wine vinegar
10g of good quality cocoa powder
2 teaspoons of instant espresso powder
60g of chopped toasted hazelnuts

Preheat the oven to 150oC/Gas Mark 2
Line two baking trays with baking parchment.
Place the icing sugar and egg whites in a standing food mixer and whisk on high for 10 minutes until glossy white peaks form.
Using a spatula, gently fold in the cornflour and the white wine vinegar. When this is mixed through, sift the cocoa powder and espresso powder over the meringue mix and gently fold in.
Using a tablespoon, place 3inch/8cm spoonfuls of the meringue mix onto the baking tray and flatten each one gently in the centre with the back of a spoon.
Bake for 45 minutes.

For the dark chocolate sauce:
30g caster sugar
60ml of water
50g of good quality dark chocolate, finely chopped
1 teaspoon of cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon of espresso powder

Place the sugar and water in a small saucepan over a medium heat and stir gently to dissolve the sugar.
Add the espresso powder, whisk through and bring the mix to a steady simmer for 3 minutes.
Remove from the heat, allow to sit for 1-2 minutes, then add the chocolate and whisk through until combined.
Sift in the cocoa powder and whisk until smooth.

For the Jameson Whiskey Cream
375ml of cream
3 tablespoons of Jameson whiskey
3 tablespoons of icing sugar

Whisk the cream into soft peaks.
Dissolve the icing sugar with the whiskey in a bowl and then add to the cream, folding to combine.

To assemble the meringues, place one on each plate, add a spoonful of Jameson whiskey cream on top, drizzle with the chocolate sauce and sprinkle with the toasted nuts.

Viellée Foodstock - 24th March 2010

Le Chalet Des Iles

Way back in October I got a tweet from the lovely Trish Deseine, who many of you might know from her hugely successful series on RTÉ, where she guides viewers through just some of the vast range of delicious French dishes. Trish was born in Belfast and later moved to Paris, where she mastered her French cooking skills. She asked me if I would be interested in coming to Paris to cater an event and put me in touch with Raphael, from Le Fooding®, a Parisien magazine which seeks out the coolest eateries in the city. After lots and lots and lots and lots of emails back and forth we finally organised everything for the event which is going to be taking place in Paris at Le Chalet Des Iles on the 24th of March. From what I can gather, the event will have live music and is like a mini woodstock with food! It sounds really exciting and with only 2 weeks to go I cannot wait! The event is sponsored by Jameson whiskey and Bord Bia are sponsoring some of the ingredients from my recipes. These are the dishes I will be serving up on the night:

- Irish Seafood Chowder served with Chilled Smoked Salmon

- Kelly's Of Newport Black Pudding and Cashel Blue Cheese Salad

- Mocha Meringues with Jameson Whiskey Cream, Chocolate Sauce and toasted Hazelnuts

- Jameson Ginger and Mint Iced Fire Cocktails

If you just so happen to be in Paris that night, please do come along, I am not so sure how it works with the tickets but I have been told there is quite a demand, and people queue outside the venue to get in, so I guess you could come down and try your luck!

I hope you're not sick of me talking about Foodstock just yet as I have two more recipes to share with you after todays, so bear with me! One of the things I absolutely loved about the event was the super chilled outdoor feel to whole evening, people sat by open fires enjoying music, sipping cocktails and enjoying the food. Despite the huge amount of people who descended on the little island for the night, things ran very smoothly from what I could see, with a system for everything! Before things kicked off, we all got these cool red stamps elevating us to VIP status and I am all about that! :) When Raphael from LeFooding got in touch with me about the event he asked us to come up with a specially designed cocktail for the night and this is it!

Jameson Iced Fire Ginger Mint Cocktail
This is a fantastic little fiery cocktail perfect for outdoor slurping in the summer! Feel free to play around with the balance of flavours here, adding more ginger if you prefer a numbing heat, or more mint if you require a cooler menthol taste!

Makes enough syrup for 8 cocktails
200g caster sugar
200ml water
100g of peeled fresh ginger, finely chopped
20g fresh mint leaves

Dissolve the caster sugar and water together in a pot over a low heat. Add the chopped ginger and bring slowly to the boil. Simmer for 5 minutes.
Remove from heat, stir through the fresh mint and allow to cool.
Set aside to steep for at least 2 hours.Strain off the ginger mint syrup and refridgerate until ready to use.

Serve over crushed ice with a sliver of stem ginger,
1 part Jameson whiskey
2 parts ginger mint syrup

One of the most exciting things about Foodstock was getting to show of some really fantastic quality Irish products, and it wasn’t really until I actually arrived in Paris that I realised the importance of this. Myself and Raphael spoke about organising what he called a “Dégustation” so that everybody at Le Fooding could sample the dishes we would be serving up. When we arrived at the hotel we met with the lovely Constance who would be tasting the dishes along with two of her colleagues from the magazine to give us the green light. It was only after I served up the Kelly’s of Newport Black Pudding and Cashel Blue Cheese salad that I realised how specifically Irish these products really are and just how distinctive the flavours were. I have to say with the initial reaction I was really proud, not just to be serving up a salad that went down well, but also to a certain extent that I could claim these fantastic ingredients as my own!

On the night when we served up the salad, I’m pretty sure people were a little bit apprehensive about trying the black pud but when they did the reaction was really great and we had people coming back for seconds! Louise a lovely Danish girl who is living in Paris and working for Le Fooding was overseeing the serving of the food and was on the tables with me all night. There was a system they were using where you could only get a portion in exchange for a coloured ticket. Now anyone who knows me will know that I am colourblind and have trouble differentiating similar colours or different shades which made it extremely hard to be strict with the tickets when it came to serving in the dark! However Louise was on hand with a fantastic sense of Scandinavian organisation covering up for my shoddy ticket skills and making sure things ran smoothly!

If you are Irish, this is a lovely little salad to show off some of our distinctively Irish produce to foreign visitors and if you're not you can always substitute the cheese and the black pudding for something more regional! Let me know your suggestions! :)

Kelly's Of Newport Black Pudding and Cashel Blue Cheese Salad
Make sure to prepare everything ahead of time and only assemble with the dressing when you are ready to serve!

Serves 8
280g of Kelly's of Newport black pudding in 1cm slices
120g of mixed baby leaves
80g of Cashel blue cheese broken into chunks
40ml of balsamic dressing

Balsamic dressing (makes 55ml of dressing)
3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon of Jameson Whiskey
1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard
Salt and pepper to taste

Arrange the black pudding slices on a baking tray, and place in an oven at 200oC/Gas Mark 6 for 7-8 minutes.
Whisk together the ingredients for the dressing.
Dress the salad leaves lightly with half the dressing and toss to combine.
Arrange the leaves on serving dishes with a slice of black pudding and a little crumbled Cashel blue cheese.
Serve with an extra drizzle of dressing.