Category: cócaireacht/cooking

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Fab 50 Weekly Menu

This week was all about preparation. Himself was celebrating a milestone birthday and had invited about 70 of his closest family members and friends to mark this momentous occasion with him.

Meal Plan for Week of 04/11/2024 – 10/11/2024

Monday – 04/11/2024

PREPARATION

The party is planned to start at 8pm so I am not planning to feed 70 people (or even the half that are likely to turn up) but as Himself has ordered a keg from Brew Crew definitely soakage will be required.

We don’t have enough plates or cutlery anyway for a party even a quarter that size.

I had decided therefore to begin the preparation on Monday with 2 delicious traditional Irish brown soda loaves from an ICA recipe that I picked up in a free booklet with The Irish Times many years ago. Always be checking those recipe booklets: I know that those recipes are often very well tested!

However after a week off the previous week and a boozy weekend away, I had a lot of catching up to do, got home later from work than planned and just wasn’t in the baking mood. So I postpone until Tuesday.

We still have to eat but will be dragging a lot of prepared meals from the freezer, the first being these tempting sounding treats. Anyone who listens to her podcast would know that my cousin Bea would be horrified.

  • Curry from freezer – actually a delicious recipe for Slow Cooker Chicken Tikka Masala from Taming Twins. Though I would normally avoid recipes that use prepped curry paste due to all the added salt, she acknowledges that this recipe “sits firmly between the two camps of ‘a jar will do’ and ‘this dish takes many careful hours and rare ingredients to perfect’.” Deliciousness on a school night? Yes please!
  • Naan from freezer: again on a weekday Himself would usually make from scratch but Dunnes have just added these to their range and they are delicious.

Tuesday – 05/11/2024

DINNER

  • Five-bean chilli – a quick and easy veggie option and then I get back on track with my party prep. Normally I have dinner with my parents on a Tuesday on my way home from work but Mum completely understands when I explain I am getting a headstart on the preparation. <sarcasm>She is also a very organised person. </sarcasm>

Preparation

Walnut and treacle brown bread

Serving Size:
12
Time:
1hr 50 mins
Difficulty:
Easy

Ingredients

  • 350g wholemeal flour
  • 50g plain flour
  • 1 level teaspoon bread soda aka baking SODA aka bicarbonate of soda
    1 pinch salt
  • 50g porridge oats
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 dessertspoon sunflower oil
  • 500ml buttermilk
  • 2 large dessertspoons treacle
  • 75g chopped walnuts (optional)

Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 170oC/gas mark 3.
  2. Grease and line a 900g loaf tin (this is a fairly standard size.)
  3. Put the flours, sieved bread soda, salt and porridge oats into a large mixing bowl and mix them well.
  4. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs together with the oil and add to the dry mixture.
    Next, mix in the buttermilk and mix until it reaches a ‘sloppy’ consistency.
  5. Finally, add the treacle and chopped walnuts.
  6. Pour into a 900g loaf tin and smooth the top of the bread with a wet spoon. Sprinkle some seeds or porridge oats on top of the bread and bake in the oven for one hour.
  7. After the hour has lapsed, remove the bread from the tin and return to the oven to bake for a further 20 minutes.
  8. Remove from the oven and allow the bread to cool down.
  9. The baked bread freezes well so consider making more than one!
    Recipe Credit: Edward Hayden

Wednesday – 06/11/2024

PREPARATION

So I have decided to make these mini-quiches (more later on these.) Now obviously I know I can buy any kind of pastry but at €4.25 for 640g it also makes delicious sense to make 1kg for about the same price. Well about the same price because I had to stop in Spar to buy the butter and it cost nearly a fiver. Doh.

I’ve been making this rough puff pastry for a few years and if you follow the instructions you can too! With Christmas on the horizon, it makes DELICIOUS mince pies. Enjoy!

DINNER

Thursday – 07/11/2024

Chicken & chorizo stew from freezer again from Taming Twins. I’m not crazy about this because the chorizo doesn’t have the nice texture it gets when you fry it off (as seen in this delicious bean and chorizo stew from 2006). It’s what the writer calls a “dump” recipe, where you dump all the frozen ingredients from a freezer bag into your slow cooker meaning you can prep at the weekend and pull out in the morning, slow cook and go. The whole idea is one and done so I get it. What you gain in speed, you deffo lose in flavour.

As we were tucking in, there was a ring at the doorbell.

Friday – 08/11/2024

Dinner

Preparation

Okay now things were serious. We were in day-before-territory. We had to pick up the keg and glasses from BrewCrew and I wanted to do a trawl of a few charity shops to get some extra glassware. We also needed to get a few more snacky bits from the shops and also some non-Guinness drinks (beer and non-alcoholic beverages.) I had also decided we would offer everybody a Dark and Stormy cocktail when they arrived so I needed as much ginger beer as I could find (just enough) and dark rum. If you would like to try this yourself at home, I recommend Bundaberg Ginger beer, although Fever Tree is okay too, and Kraken Dark rum. Delicious.

We also are very fancy in these parts and have a Sheridan’s CHeesemonger in our local Dunnes so I picked up some nice cheese, crackers and other charcuterie.

But things didn’t go as planned. Even though we had both taken the day off, Himself got dragged back into work. I kinda hung around to see if he could get out of it so everything was knocked off schedule.

I did make it to Oxfam Home on Francis St. where I picked up a gaggle of glasses, some really cute dessert plates and a couple of serving platters. Not necessarily cheaper but at least reused! Everything into the dishwasher when I got home.

  • Ligurian Focaccia Himself made this, a tried and tested favourite here at home, to which he added roasted red peppers (jarred!) and blue cheese and another with serrano ham and black olives. Cut up into squares and served on a wooden board, this was a big hit.
    • While he had the oven on he also made a batch of Rachel Allen’s Nutty Granola again from Home Cooking. Not for the party but essential for breakfast!
  • Easy 5-Ingredient Mini Quiche Cups – another big hit but I was horrified to discover, as I yoinked it out to start baking, that my mini muffin tray was only 12 holes not 24. So I had to make six batches instead of the planned three.
    I used my Rough Puff from the fridge (very well rested!), cutting numerous circles with this mad device that I “borrowed” from my parents’ kitchen many years ago. Basically it has two metal half moons back to back on a spindle which has a handle attached. You roll it across your pastry and it creates numerous circles. Perfect for mass production like this. I rolled out all the discs and rested them while each batch was baking.
  • Grilled Chicken Caesar Lettuce Wraps these were also delicious. Not an obvious finger food but I liked the idea of including something a little healthier and green. Mostly I was getting them into their marinade.

Saturday – 09/11/2024

PREPARATION

All the Nippers pitched in prepping the house. The weather was forecast to be unseasonably balmy until 1am so we set up the bar in a gazebo on the patio which worked out perfectly.

We put the returned Nipper 1.0 to work chopping crudités and slicing limes (for the dark and stormys) and lemons.

We bought ice in the local Tesco which we used to fill our super camping coolbox and filled it up with soft drink, bottled beer, some white wine and prosecco. Big thanks to everyone who brought drinks too!

Of course, I had to bake and decorate a cake. Mum had agreed to bring her delicious coffee and walnut tray bake and I had planned to make cinchy but delicious toffee squares with a lemon drizzle icing. Himself loves these delicious banana nut brownies from Darina Allen’s cook book but as I was attempting to go cutlery and crockery free I knew they would be too squidgy. So instead I made two round cakes of this Banana Chocolate Cake and added chopped hazelnuts. I filled it with a praline ganache and decorated with a plain ganache (for fear it would look like an actual pile of shit.) It turned out very well and delicious.

I took zero photographs. I am definitely taking some of my learnings from this experience and will be applying them to my own future significant birthday celebrations…

Sunday – 10/11/2024

Dinner was supposed to be Lasagne with Bolognese from the freeezer but ended up being a mixemgatherem of whatever was leftover mainly chicken caesar salad on brown bread, crackers and cheese and Nipper 3.0’s Halloween haul. I was VERY tired. Forgive me.

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The little things bring it: Cannellini Bean and Bacon Soup

Cannelin Bean and Bacon Soup

Serendipity. Sometimes the little things bring it. Rocking up to my local Supervalu to restock after two weeks holidays and finding a new line of Batchelors tinned beans* give me a little blasht of serendipity. You take it where you can get it, right?

I’m all for change but, gosh darn it, I want to be the one making the changes! When my local Superquinn switched to Supervalu I saw a few of my favourite products disappear off the shelves. Admittedly there are some new or expanded ranges but I can no more buy Doves Farm Yeast, for example. I have to schlep all the way to The Hopsack in Rathmines to pick it up. I use this nearly everyday. The range of De Cecco pastas has shrunk to insignificant – no more fusilli or lasagne sheets – but thankfully The Best of Italy in Dunville Avenue, close to the ancestral home, seems to be the importer for this brand and so stocks a dazzling range of my favourite pasta. I’m easily dazzled, folks.

Back to the beans. We were just back from our holidays. I was still in my one pot cooking mode after 2 weeks of Trangia creativity and rooting around my “Get into my mouth” Pinterest board when I came across a link to this beautiful photograph by Rachel Hathaway with accompanying instructions which fitted my mood: comforting, warm (it’s gotten colder), and easy to prepare ahead. I’ve made it three times since and I think I have it now. This is also a hit with the Nippers.

Cannelini Bean and Bacon Soup

Ingredients for Cannelini Bean and Bacon Soup
Ingredients for Cannelini Bean and Bacon Soup

Ingredients

1 tbsp olive oil
125g smoked bacon lardons (I use the Dulano lardons from Lidl, always have a stock of them in the freezer)
1large onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 carrots, diced
1/2 tbsp Selection chopped fresh herbs, chopped (I use sage and rosemary which taste great with beans and bacon and grow well all year round in Ireland. Do it!)
1tbsp tomato puree
2 cans (400g) canellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 litre chicken stock
1 Parmesan rind (optional)
  1. Heat the oil in your favourite soup pot and, once hot, add the bacon.
  2. Once it’s beginning to render a little add the onion and cook until soft.
  3. Add the garlic and soften but don’t burn and lastly add the carrots and cook for about 3 minutes.
  4. Add the drained and rinsed beans, tomato puree and the herbs.
  5. Cook, stirring, until all the ingredients are evenly mixed.
  6. Lastly add the stock (home made or sure, feck it, from a good quality cube. I like Kallo Just Bouillon Stock Cubes which are low in sodium.)
  7. If you are using the Parmesan rind, add now.
  8. Bring to the boil and simmer for 45 minutes.
  9. Remove Parmesan rind and discard
  10. You can if you like blend some of the soup but I didn’t think it needed it. Some of the cannelini beans will soften into a lovely mush.
  11. Serve with delicious crusty bread (both the aformentioned Hopsack and Best of Italy stock lovely sourdoughs.)

Cannelin Bean and Bacon Soup
Cannellini Bean and Bacon Soup

A couple of notes:

You can, of course, make this with fresh beans correctly prepared.
You may find that smoked bacon makes your soup too salty so do try with an unsmoked variety i.e. chop up some traditional rather than smoked rashers.
Adding a Parmesan rind is a soup tip I got from the Corkonian and I save all my rinds in the freezer for this very purpose. It brings an extra depth to the flavour. Try it!
I’ve tried this recipe with black eyed beans and while this will render the kitchen table very tuneful the cannellini beans really are a must.
* So new, in fact, that they don’t even feature on their own website. You heard it hear first!
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Hot in her (apple) leather

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I first read about apple leather on the Fox’s Lane blog a while ago (Northern vs Southern Hemisphere) and I just thought I have to try that. We have a very fruity apple tree but the apples get a bit spotty and aren’t all that appealing. Once peeled they are grand and we larrup them into crumbles with blackberries from the bottom-of-the-garden wilderness. We slosh them stewed onto delicious Irish pork chops and joints. We stir them semi-stewed into yoghurt. The apple leather has proven to be another hit and if I had an Aga or Stanley range I would make fruit leather 2 weekly. Apparently you can make it with any fruit that stews or purées to a thick consistency. As things stand it’s a bit of an indulgence that takes up the oven for a large chunk of time. The resulting leather is perfect for lunchboxes in a school where no sugar is allowed.

What you need:

  • Apples – the sweeter the better, it’ll save having to add honey or sugar
  • A large tray
  • Silicone baking paper (I’ve bought this in Lidl)
  • A day/ evening in
  1. Preheat oven to 75C/ 170F
  2. Line a large oven tray with your silicone paper. One recipe I read suggested using cling film as the oven doesn’t get that hot but I baulked at that idea. If you have a silicone mat now is it’s time to shine!
  3. Stew your apples with a few tablespoons of water or juice of a lemon
  4. Sugar or honey can be added to taste at this point. You could also add a spoonful of cinnamon
  5. Either transfer cooled apples to your blender or use your handheld blender to get a really smooth sauce.
  6. Spread the apple sauce as evenly as possible over the tray trying to avoid thinning edges as these will dehydrate too fast.
  7. Stick it in the oven for 6 – 8 hours. I switched mine off and went to bed and took it out the next day while we used the grill so it’s not a fussy process. You are drying it out, not baking it.
  8. When it is done it will no longer dent if you stick your finger in the middle.
  9. Peel silicone paper off and, using a scissors or sharp, cut into strips or any agape you like.
  10. Enjoy!
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Menu for Week commencing 17/08/2013

Saturday

Moroccan Lamb Burgers with Rice and Bean salad.

 

Sunday

Lunch: We’re expecting a family of guests this week so want to make something that has been tested on kids (hence the skewers) and something new that reminds of our holidays (hence the tapas from a new book from my friend who was visiting from Barcelona.)
Chicken and cherry tomato skewers with couscous and Broccoli and Avocado salad and Chickpea & black pudding tapa.

All going to plan I will rustle up some Wellington Squares for the sweet toothed among us. Apparently we currently have so much condensed milk in the cupboard at the moment that Himself tells me “It’s like the war.” I’ll post this winner of a recipe which I found years ago online but can no longer find.  If I have time I might make a crumble for the grown ups to use up the blackberries I picked in the wild, brambly part of our garden.

French Peasant Soup
French Peasant Soup

Dinner: A cup of French peasant soup (made Saturday) for tea for anyone who is still hungry after lunch. (No actual peasants are hurt (except maybe their feelings) in  the making of this soup.) You’ll note from the pic that I have also added potato and carrot to this soup. I love me a bit of potato in a stewy soup like this.

Monday
Lunch: Pizza rolls – these are from Rachel Allen’s Home Cooking which I got from my godmother. Not a book I would have picked myself but it has fast become a standby for me. There are some great, realistic family recipes in it.
Dinner: French peasant soup with Superquinn’s lovely brown bread. But really I have to crack this brown bread thing: if millions of Irish peasants could make it in a hovel in the howling wind and rain I should be able to make it! Mine always turns out rock hard on the outside and squishy on the inside 🙁 All advice welcomed in comments below.

Tuesday
Lunch: Tortellini with leftover pizza sauce from yesterday.

Salmon Alfredo getting shnarfed by Nipper 2.0
Salmon Alfredo getting shnarfed by Nipper 2.0

Dinner: Salmon Alfredo – I know pasta twice in one day. Hmmm. I love pasta and when I wonder about how much we eat Himself always says, “You’re a grown-up, you can eat as much pasta as you like.” I might switch the tortellini to another day so.

Wednesday
Picnic
Bean and chorizo stew (make Tuesday) – This is a receipe I found in a newspaper years ago (Saturday June 28 2003 to be precise; no idea which paper!) that we make fairly regularly. It’s absolutely delicious with new potatoes or crusty bread or indeed couscous. It’s a great summer recipe to use up your tomatoes if you are green fingered enough to grow them but also makes a hearty winter dish if you can brave the garden for a spring if the evergreen rosemary.

Thursday
Gnocchi w/ pesto
Nut roast with cheese and tomato layer – This was requested by Himself this week when I said we have too much meat in this week’s menu. I think he was trying to avoid me trying Aloo Gobi on the children and the fights cauliflower would produce. This recipe is infamous in my own family as I made it as a teenager and vegetarian. I had received the Cranks’ recipe book from my aunt in England as a Christmas present and was encouraged by my mother to prepare something. It wasn’t until my family were desperately trying to be polite and supportive about my efforts that I realised I had put in a tablespoon of yeast extract (read Marmite) instead of a teaspoon. Yech.

Friday
Picnic
Eat out after a trip to Makeshop as it is our last day of summer holidays for all as Nipper 3.0 starts in Naíónra (preschool) on Monday!

Saturday
Toasted sambos

 

[ ]Savoy cabbage
[ ] Strawberries/ raspberries
[ ] Lemon
[ ] Beetroot
[ ] Carrots
[ ] Low fat mature cheddar (Dubliner or Kilmeaden)
[ ] Tomatoes
[ ] Cherry tomatoes x 2
[ ] Bananas
[ ]Oranges
[ ] Apples
[ ] Peaches
[ ] Avocado
[ ] Smoked salmon
[ ] Ham
[ ] Bagels
[ ] Filled pasta
[ ] Milk
[ ]Tinned pineapple
[ ] Tinned beans
[ ] Raisins
[ ] Juice tropicana
[ ] Tinned tomatoes
[ ] Gnocchi
[ ] Brown pasta for macaroni
[X] Garlic mayo
[ ] Cat food
[ ] Cider/ white wine (We recently tried Stonewell Cider from Nohoval, Co. Cork, an area we are very familiar with and we are hooked!)