Another recipe from Catherine's cookbook today and it's a damn good one, you seriously can't go wrong with homemade spaghetti and meatballs, especially on a day like today! Can you believe it's already the 1st of September? This dish would make a perfect little warming supper dish so enjoy!
Meatballs in Spicy Tomato Sauce Meatballs form the secondi or meat course at the Italian table, while pasta is the primi, so they would not traditionally be served together. That said, they work well together, so if this takes your fancy, allow 400–450g of dried spaghetti to serve four. I also sometimes add 50g freshly grated Parmesan to the meatballs and reduce the salt, yum! Have a bowl of cold water beside you when forming the meatballs to dip your hands into, as keeping your hands moist prevents the meat from sticking when forming the balls.
Serves 6 for the meatballs: 50g fresh breadcrumbs 100ml milk 1 onion, finely chopped 1 garlic clove, finely chopped 225g minced pork 225g lean minced beef 1 tsp dried oregano 1 tsp salt 1⁄2 tsp freshly ground black pepper 1 egg, beaten extra virgin olive oil
for the spicy tomato sauce: 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped 1 onion, finely chopped 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped 175ml vegetable stock 500g tinned chopped tomatoes 2 tbsp tomato puree salt and freshly ground black pepper pasta, to serve freshly grated Parmesan, to serve
To make the meatballs, first soak the breadcrumbs in the milk. Mix the chopped onion and garlic with the pork and beef. Add the breadcrumbs, oregano, salt and pepper to the meat mixture and mix well. Add in the beaten egg and mix thoroughly. Roll the mixture into small balls. Heat some oil in a frying pan and add in the meatballs. Fry for approximately 5 minutes, turning occasionally, until browned on all sides. Remove from the heat and set aside. To make the sauce, heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the chilli and onion and cook on a low heat for 7–10 minutes, until softened. Add the garlic, stock, tinned tomatoes, tomato puree, salt and pepper. Bring to the boil and allow to simmer for 5 minutes. Add the meatballs to the sauce and leave to simmer for 10 minutes to heat through. Serve with your favourite pasta and sprinkle grated Parmesan on top.
Ok so hands up you got me, burritto's are not exactly gourmet cuisine, but if you've been at work all day, and have little time to prepare for guests, sometimes this is perfectly acceptable. After all, if it's healthy and fresh, there can't be too many complaints really, can there? I have in the past spent a lot of time in preparing for having guests over, but as time has gone on the easiest and most enjoyable nights are the ones, that seemed almost efortless.
Here is a quick recipe for speedy burritto's!
Mood Food Burrito's!
250g of Minced Beef or a packet of Quorn Mince
2 Garlic Cloves minced
1 tablespoon of Chili Powder
1/4 tablespoon of Oregano
A good pinch of salt and pepper
Half a glass of water
1 Packet of Wholemeal Flour Tortilla Wraps
2 Peppers sliced thinly
1 Red Onion sliced thinly
Punnet of Cherry Tomatoes halfed
1 bag of mixed salad leaves
1 Tin of Sweet Corn
Half a cucumber sliced thinly
The only real effort in this dish is the browning of the meat and the preperation, apart from that you might as well put your feet up and wait for the guests to arrive!
To start, brown the the meat in a large frying pan, and season with the garlic, chilli, oregano, salt and pepper. Add the half glass of water and let simmer for about 8 mins.
Prepare the vegetables and heat the flour tortilla's.
And that's it, serve everything on the table and people can assemble their own burritto to their taste!
Most of life's great decisions come from having absolutely no prior knowledge as to how something is going to turn out. That was most certainly the case over the weekend. You might remember earlier this year I got roped into cooking for 800 hungry Parisians for an event on a small island in the west of the city with Le Fooding magazine sponsored by our very own Bord Bia. Well after the huge success at Chalet Des Illes, the delightful Noreen Lanigan, decided she wanted more abuse from me and decided, being a blogger I would be the right person to demonstrate at the third annual Salon Du Blog Culinaire, an event organized by a cookery school north of Paris in the little town of Soissons, in November. The event is quite unique and very timely with the amount of food blogs continually on the increase. It invites lots of France's finest food bloggers to demonstrate their favorite dishes and kitchen techniques in a fairly manic two day period watched on by fellow bloggers eager for culinary inspiration. During the summer I had the opportunity to meet a group of France's top food bloggers who were on a visit to Ireland to discover the fantastic conditions our lovely animals enjoy before they head off the little farm in the sky and onto our supermarket shelves. To put things in perspective here, unlike our own Irish food blogging community which, while thriving and very rapidly increasing in numbers, this group of French food bloggers were 10 of over a thousand. These guys were the cream of crop and are well and truly established with tens of thousands of visitors a day, numerous cookbooks and iPhone and iPad Apps. Not surprising really from a nation who takes so much pride and passion in their cooking that they would be willing to fall out with each other over a bad Boeuf Bourginon! After our visit to the farm, I demonstrated some of our traditional Irish dishes, including Irish stew, brown bread and roast lamb, and was gently reminded again that Noreen had plans for me in November…
Clare Clinton who is interning at Bord Bia's Paris office got the ball rolling earlier this month with emails back and forth to decide the best recipes to show off our finest meat and fish products. Despite me dragging my feet, we eventually decided upon 6 dishes to cook and impress the French food bloggers, including mussels in Irish cider, crab claws with chilli, garlic and lemon, roast shoulder of lamb with rosemary and garlic, a good auld Irish stew and to mix things up a little an oriental steak salad and spicy Beef fahitas.
Myself and Maeve Desmond, who I'm sure many of your may have met at Bloom or the Irish Food blogger event in May, flew to Paris on Friday evening just in time for a late dinner in a beautiful restaurant very close to La Bon Marché. The restaurant proudly serves Irish beef alongside some French classics and the quite adventurous dishes I chose including Carpaccio of veal tongue served with a salsa and for mains Pieds et Pacque d'agneau which on the English menu I was reading from was translated as feet and packets of lamb. I'm big believer in always trying something different in another country rather than something familiar but unfortunately sometimes it doesn't always work out the way I had planned. The veal tongue had a very interesting texture and flavor and was complimented quite nicely by the salsa it was served and was definitely worth the chance of trying, however the Lamb feet and packets, left a little to be desired… The packets turned out to be a strange little dumplings of finely minced pork wrapped in what looked very much like tripe and actually tasted quite nice, but the feet had about as much meat on them as my little finger. Maeve and Noreen played it safe and benefited from doing so with Maeve going for an amazing long wooden platter of beautifully sliced ham and of the Irish beef and Noreen choosing a lentil salad to start followed by the most amazing French black pudding which was really rich and velvety, a stark contrast to what we are used to with a fry! Dessert was a financier de poivre, an individual little flat cake with pear and île flottante a big dollop of fluffy egg white and sugar which was served floating in a dish of vanilla cream and topped with a caramel sauce. After all that we rolled our way back to our hotel ahead of the six o'clock start on Saturday morning.
There is one thing I don't do and that is early mornings, sure I can be full of energy first thing but I fade fairly rapidly during the day! Noreen runs a tight ship let me tell you (This woman has a tractor license!), so at 7.06 with toothbrush still in mouth, I answered to phone to a bright and sparky Noreen who wanted to know were I was! Rushing out the door and out onto the streets of Paris, I stumbled on Noreen and Clare (and a sleepy Maeve!) negotiating the boot of the car with Irish posters, recipe booklets and of course the suitcases. We were all bundled into the car and then the real fun started- our departure from Paris was fairly comical not helped of course by the GPS which took us on the wrong road at least twice.
When we finally arrived in Soissons and at the culinary arts school the 3rd Salon Du Blog was well underway. One of the French food bloggers who had been on the visit to Ireland, was the charming Chef Damien who makes a mean Boef A La Guiness and runs the school and a highly successful website, 750g, which attracts a ridiculous amount of visitors on a daily basis! There was definitely a huge sense of excitement as we were ushered through the halls of the school and passed the many rooms where different food bloggers would be spending their weekend. We arrived at the Bord Bia room which was positioned perfectly smack bang in the middle of all the rooms which guaranteed us constant traffic and visitors and were introduced to our helpers Suella and Virginie. It's always fairly nerve-wracking arriving at a new kitchen so there was some fierce scurrying around to get all the equipment and ingredients before we were due to kick off with our first demonstration at 11am! We got kick started with a great turnout and the rest of the day was so busy that it became pretty much a blur except for the fantastic Bloggers Picnic that had been organized for lunch, where all the bloggers had brought along a little dish to be a part of the most massive buffet of food I have ever seen! One thing that should be noted and that is instantly clear in terms of the difference between Irish food bloggers and French food bloggers, they have no problem telling you they would done something differently, where we might be a little bit more shy to go up and taste test if someone is giving a demo. So it was all fairly nerve wracking to make sure things were cooked just the right way! Either way I love their passion!
Saturday finished off with a giant blogger banquet complete with hoards of Irish cheese, Irish salmon, Irish beef, Irish lamb and randomly enough a little bit of good old Irish dancing! We were sitting having a great time but the minute the music started Noreen told us she had to get up to take some photos and we thought no more of it, a few minutes later we looked down at the dance floor and there she was like Jeanne Butler on acid leading the Ceili putting the rest to shame- and THAT'S how you represent the country! I don't know whether it was the dancing or not but Noreen headed back to Paris on Sunday and we were joined by another lovely lady from Bord Bia, the lovely Bernadette, lovely! :)
On the last demo of the day on Sunday I was accompanied by Chef Damien to demonstrate a very simple dish of crab claws with chilli, garlic and lemon. The whole thing was a crazy combination of both of us trying to translate each other language but somehow I think it worked, and I suppose it did help that we were being filmed for the French tv station! All in all it was an absolutely fantastic event and I think we represented Ireland quite well if I do say so myself. My only wish was that I had got to see a lot more of the other demonstrations, there was a massive variety of food being demoed but I did manage to catch one or two! An absolutely massive thank you to Chef Damien, my two lovely kitchen assistants, the lovely ladies of Bord Bia, and of course all the French bloggers who made me feel so very welcome!
As a food blogger, it's quite often that you get sent offers and promotions by new companies or event organisers on a weekly basis, asking for promotion on the blog. If the product or event is something that catches my attention, I do generally give it a mention or ask for a sample so that I can use it in a recipe for the blog. This was the case when I received an email two weeks ago, from Nigel Cobbe, the owner of the brand new company, Simply Sourced which is a home delivery service throughout Dublin and Wicklow for top quality free range and totally traceable meat. It's a really great concept and having sampled the product it offers a really reliable alternative to butchers and supermarkets. I like the idea that they have a set price and you know the quality of produce to expect!
Nigel told me that their pork is from rare breed of Saddlebacks which have fabulous depth of flavour whilst their beef is from a rare ancient pedigree called the Long Horn -Heston Blumenthal's source for his ultimate steak! Orders are individually butchered to customer's requirements with free delivery throughout Dublin & Wicklow with orders above 50 euro.
Simply Sourced prices are close to and often less than supermarket / butcher prices yet bear no comparison in terms of quality and taste i.e. Denny Rashers are 21 euro/kg, ours are 19 euro/kg. Their handmade sausages are the same price as Tesco Finest and contain over 92% shoulder and belly meat, Tesco's are just over 70% meat content. They also have a gluten free range at no extra cost. All the meat is delivered chilled, fresh and vacuum packed for immediate enjoyment or for freezing for up to 6 months.
I tried the fillet steak in the recipe below and I can honestly say it was one of the best cuts of meat I have ever tasted. The steaks are really velvety and full of flavour, you really don't have to work too hard to make cuts of meat like this tasty. I also sampled the breakfast gammon which was equally tasty and I will definitely be ordering that again! With plans to expand this home delivery service across the country, I expect this will not be the last you have heard from Simply Sourced!
Oriental Steak Salad You can add as many other ingredients to the salad as you want, beansprouts, or snow peas all work great in this. I used fillet steak here, but as this can be quite expensive, other cuts will work just as nicely, try sirloin or a good quality shoulder steak. This recipe can also be made ahead of time, marinade the meat in the fridge, prepare the veg beforehand and only toss with the dressing when you are ready to eat.
Serves 4 4 x 120g fillet steak 1 cucumber, thinly sliced 2 carrots, thinly sliced 6 spring onions, finely sliced on the diagonal 1 red pepper, thinly sliced Small handful of chopped coriander to serve
For the marinade and dressing: 1 chilli, deseeded and minced 1 thumb sized piece of ginger, finely minced 2 cloves of garlic, finely minced Juice of 1 lime 1 teaspoon of sesame oil 1 teaspoon of thai fish sauce 1 tablespoon of soy sauce 3 tablespoons of sunflower oil
Place the steaks on a plate. Mix all the ingredients for dressing/marinade together and pour 1/4 of the mixture over the steaks. Toss all the veg together in salad bowl and set aside. Heat a large griddle pan and fry the steaks for 3-5 minutes on either side depending on their size. Remove the steaks and allow to rest on a chopping board for a few minutes. Add the dressing to the salad and toss to combine. Slice the steak thinly, sprinkle with a little chopped coriander and serve with the zingy salad.
The funny thing about the food writing biz is that you end up preparing things way in advance of certain events and Christmas is one of the major ones which editors and researchers panic about and will have you cooking turkeys and hams even before Halloween has passed! However it was very refreshing yesterday to be shooting lots of leftover Christmas dinner recipes for RTÉ's 4Live in the middle of the Christmas season with snow on the ground outside. We thrashed through 6 great festive dishes including, cranberry and white chocolate muffins, leftover ham pies, and a Christmas cheesecake. A big thanks to the lads, Robin, Mark, Niall and Tony who left the house last night stuffed... or so they told me! I'll post some of the recipes from the day during the next weeks but for now just in case you have been suffering from Christmas overload, how about some real food?
Roast Garlic Shepherd's Pie I was never really a big fan of shepherd's pie growing up, mainly because it was churned out most weeks (sorry mom!) so we became far too used to it, which realistically is a terribly ungrateful complaint, but it's only in the last few years I have fallen in love with this classic little dish all over again. I make mine with a twist by stirring mashed roast garlic through the potato, to be honest I normally make it with two bulbs of garlic because I'm a bit of a garlic fiend, but if you are pushed for time skip the garlic and just make the mash, it will taste just a good. Another handy tip to remember is that once you have assembled the shepherd's pie to the point just before you put it in the oven you can actually freeze the pie and cook from frozen if you fancy prepping a few in advance!
Serves 4 1 garlic bulb 2 tablespoons of olive oil 1 tbsp sunflower oil 1 large onion , chopped 2-3 medium carrots , chopped 500g pack minced lamb 2 tbsp tomato purée 2 teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce 400ml beef stock 800g potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks 75g butter 50ml milk Sea salt and ground black pepper to season
First things first, get the garlic in the oven! Preheat the oven to 200oC/Gas Mark 6. Slice the top off the garlic bulb just enough so that each of the cloves is exposed and place on a roasting tray. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon of olive oil and season with a some sea salt. Place in the oven to roast for 40 minutes or until soft and tender. When the garlic is cooked, remove the roast cloves from their skins and mash with the back of a fork. While garlic is roasting, add the potato chunks to a pot of cold water, cover, place over a high heat and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the potato is tender when pierced with a fork. When the potatoes are cooked, remove from the heat, drain into a colander, then add back into the pot with the butter and milk. Using a potato masher, mash the potatoes until smooth and creamy. You may want to add a little bit more or less milk and butter, it is up to you! Add in the mashed garlic and season with sea salt and ground black pepper, stirring to combine. Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a medium frying pan over a medium heat and soften the onion and carrots for 5-6 minutes. Turn up the heat and allow the pan to get hot before you add the minced lamb. Using the a fork break up the meat and allow to brown and cook through for 3-4 minutes. Stir through the tomato purée and Worcestershire sauce until combined and then pour over the beef stock. Bring to a steady simmer, then partially cover and cook for 45 mins. Preheat the oven to 180oC/Gas Mark 4. When the lamb is ready, season with sea salt and ground black pepper and transfer to an ovenproof baking dish and top with the roast garlic mash, using a fork to make a nice topping. Give the topping an extra sprinkle of ground black pepper and bake in the oven for 25 mins until the top is starting to brown and the mince is bubbling up around the edges. Serve straight away for a delicious and comforting supper!
Before I met the lovely Sofie from Sweden, meatballs for me were always associated with Italy. Combined with a thick tomato sauce and soft melt in the mouth pasta, they make a dish which is a staple of the classic Italian mama's recipe repertoire. If I was to name one recipe that is ideal for food therapy its this, there is something strangely yet extremely relaxing about rolling the meat into satisfying little balls and plopping them into boiling hot creamy tomato sauce. Relying solely on the heat of the sauce to cook and infuse the little balls to perfection.
The recipe itself is pretty fool proof, and will give you results making you feel like the perfect Italian mama or papa!
Mood Food Meat Balls
500g of Minced Meat (Pork or Beef)
2 Garlic Cloves Minced
2 tsp of Dijon Mustard
2 tbsp of Tomato Ketchup
1 tbsp of Oregano
Good pinch of salt and pepper
For the Tomato Sauce:
1 Garlic clove chopped finely
1 Onion chopped finely
2 tins of chopped tomato's
1 tsp of Tabasco sauce
1 tsp of dried oregano
1/2 cup of red wine (optional you can use water but the wine gives a richer flavour when the sauce reduces)
1/4 cup of milk
Good pinch of salt and pepper
In a large bowl mix the meat and the ingredients with a fork making sure to mix well. Take about a teaspoon full of the mixture and roll with your hands into a small ball. It's better to make the balls smaller as they cook quicker and are a lot easier eat. Work your way through the mixture and set the balls on a large baking tray. Place the balls in the fridge allowing them time to firm.
Now for the tomato sauce, it's a fairly standard affair, heat a large saucepan and add a drop of olive oil, fry the garlic for a minute and then add the onion. Fry the two till golden and soft and then add the tinned tomato's. Bring the mixture to the boil and then stir in the Tabasco sauce, dried oregano, and red wine. Reduce the heat and allow to simmer for about 15 minutes or until the sauce has reduced.
Add the meatballs to the sauce pan, making sure they are covered by the sauce, I know your thinking raw meat in my sauce surely I'll be poisoned! But no believe me it works and keeps the meat lovely and tender. Bring the sauce pan back to the boil and simmer for another 15 mins.
Serve with some good quality tagliatelle and there'll be clean plates all around!
This has to be one of my favorite Turkish street foods. I got the great opportunity to watch how they are made, not out of choice, I might add! We had ordered 2 of the pizza's at this little restaurant right beside the local mosque in Fethiye, and the owner spotted me taking pictures around the place earlier. He quickly dragged me in to the kitchen, full of pride and instructed me to take pictures of the pizza's being made!
Not that I was complaining, the guy who was doing the cooking, gave me a full demonstration and from the speed he was producing the pizza's, it was pretty clear that he had done this before! The small pieces of dough are rolled out into long thin oval shapes and then a mix of meat, egg and herbs is placed on top. The dough is then folded in towards the centre to form a chewy crust. Don't let the idea of pizza throw you, this is nothing like it's Italian cousin. The recipe here is adapted from a Turkish cook book, with the advice of the Fethiye pizza maker, thrown in for good measure!
Turkish Pizza (Pide)
5 Cups of Flour.
4 Tablespoons of Butter.
1 Sachet of Active Dried Yeast.
2 Cups Of Milk.
1 Teaspoon of Salt.
1 Teaspoon of Sugar.
3 Eggs.
250g Minced Lamb.
1 Beef Tomato, finely chopped.
A Good Handful of Coarsely Chopped Parsley.
1 Medium Onion, finely chopped.
A Good Pinch Of Salt and Pepper.
Warm the milk and stir in and disolve the yeast and sugar. Sieve the flour into a large bowl and make a small well with your hands. Pour the yeast milk and sugar mixture into the well, with the butter, Salt and 2 eggs. Combine the mix until you have a rough dough. Turn the dough out and knead until it is nice a soft. Set aside under a damp tea cloth to rise for about 45mins. Mix the minced lamb, 1 egg, tomato, onion, salt and pepper, in a bowl and set aside.
When the dough has risen, seperate into egg sized pieces and flatten them into long oval shapes on a floured surface. Place the meat mix in a long line, on the dough and make sure to leave about 2cm on either side for the crust. Fold the dough in on either side and place in an oven for 10 minutes, at 240oC.
Serve straight away and slice into smaller pieces.
