All that jollity is, inevitably, followed by exhaustion. Himself had the good sense to take Monday off as well as Friday. I’m an absolutely chronic procrastinator about most things except getting out of bed and just getting the week started. So into work I go.
This week’s menu is fairly standard stuff but includes the midweek treat referred to below as Austrian Hash. This is in fact a delicious dish called gröstl (sp?) that we first acquainted ourselves with while on a ski-ing trip in Zell am See near Salzburg in Austria. While this dish is hardly gourmet, we were generally very surprised and impressed with the food in Austria. The price and quantity, no matter whereabouts on the mountain we were. A refreshing change from the cost of eating at altitude in Andorra and France, in our experience.
Nipper 1.0 turns 21 during the week but he had gone back to his Alps in Switzerland. 21! We celebrated during Himself’s party and then he took off with his friends for the real celebrations! We have agreed to pay for his ski gear hire as a gift so probably that is what got me thinking about gröstl!
I also made Apple and Celeriac soup for the first time. In fact it was the first time a celeriac had come into this house, I’d say. I think I heard a discussion about it on BBC Radio Ulster’s Gardener’s Corner because that’s my life now.
Anyway, I was pure delighted with myself as I had the brainwave of using my frozen stewed apple and this worked very well.
Sunday saw the beginning of the Christmas prep with the baking of the Christmas cakes for Abigail and for us. I actually bake one square cake now and split it between us. It all gets covered in
Meal Plan for Week of 11/11/2024 – 17/11/2024
Monday – 11/11/2024
DINNER
Oven-baked red pepper risotto
Tuesday – 12/11/2024
Bolognese from freezer
Wednesday – 13/11/2024
DINNER
Austrian hash This is a BBC version of a dish called Gröstl (I think!!) We first ate it in the Austrian Alps during our last ski trip. It is delicious but includes the kind of calories you need for a day of skiing. Absolute comfort food!
15-Minute Stir-fried Steak Tacos these are grand but quick and fussy eaters can choose what they include or not. Also recommend making your own tortillas or buying kids wraps. Those yellow hard shell ones that a certain company is trying to foist on an unsuspecting Irish nation for years are crap.
Sunday – 17/11/2024
Lasagne using batch cooked bolognese from freezer. What I love about a lasagne is that you can have all the washing up done before dinner while it’s baking. I need more recipes like this!
Christmas cake: get the fruit soaking up all the brandy and tea.
Rachel Allen’s Nutty Granola. We make a batch of this nearly every week with a pause sometimes in the depths of winter when people get porridge for breakfast. It is great fuel for us cyclists!
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.
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!
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
Preheat the oven to 170oC/gas mark 3.
Grease and line a 900g loaf tin (this is a fairly standard size.)
Put the flours, sieved bread soda, salt and porridge oats into a large mixing bowl and mix them well.
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.
Finally, add the treacle and chopped walnuts.
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.
After the hour has lapsed, remove the bread from the tin and return to the oven to bake for a further 20 minutes.
Remove from the oven and allow the bread to cool down.
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!
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.
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.
I’m very late posting this week’s menu. I should be working on next week’s at this stage! However it’s been a crazy week getting ready for La Rentrée and fitting in all those last minute activities we didn’t manage to make time for earlier this summer.
Saturday
Quick and easy meals today as we headed up north for the afternoon to visit our newest grandniece. Yes I am officially ancient.
Bagels
From the freezer: Jamaican me crazy chili with tortillas etc.
Sunday
Picnic pot luck: tabbouleh,potato salad, and red currant muffins. We were invited to the gorgeous Avondale by family for a picnic and we all brought a few bits and bobs to picnic on. I made muffins with the last of the red currants from the garden.
Poached eggs on brown bread – an easy but delicious tea. Still didn’t manage to mop the floor afterwards. I blame the aftereffects of the wasp sting. My first ever (and hopefully last ever) wasp sting.
Monday
Beans on toast – turned into wholewheat pasta and pesto due to little visitors’ dietary requirements and the fact that I had no bread. Still blaming that wasp sting.
Macaroni cheese with all the trimmings by request from Nipper 3.0 who started in the Naíonra today. All the trimmings means with a tin of chopped tomatoes in the cheese sauce and bacon lardons on the top. Oh me heart! This was requested because I’ve been experimenting with healthier options that haven’t gone down too well at all.
Tuesday
Beetroot soup for me and Nipper 2.0 and I can’t remember what the other two had. Toasted sandwiches from the George Foreman grill.
Linguine with mint and almond pesto and tomatoes from River Cottage Veg Every Day! by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall which was a massive hit. Nipper 1.0 who isn’t madly keen on cooked tomatoes and usually ferrets them out. However as they are raw in this dish he gobbled them all down. I am definitely going to cultivate some mint in the garden for future use in this dinner. Yum!
Wednesday
Lunch in Joburger with family after swimming as it is the last day of the holidays.
Chicken pie a la Jamie Oliver which Himself made as I ironed 35 labels onto school uniforms. Why on earth do two boys need 35 items of clothes just for school. Snooze.
Thursday
Packed lunches because they were back to school. Disgracefully uninspired on their first day but we’ll get better! I had garlicky mushrooms with granny smith apple and philadelphia on toasted vienna roll.
Salmon with potatoes and corn on the cob by request from the schoolgoers. As usual I made a mess of the salmon by getting all fancy with the salmon. The fishmonger was very happy to see us back after the holidays. I avoid shopping with the children so hadn’t visited while I had three in tow.
Friday
Packed lunches: Turkey slices and cranberry sauce – a marginal improvement. They also get cherry tomatoes, pistachio nuts and raisins.
While visiting my cousin and her new babba recently I picked up her copy of Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi. I had heard a couple of my friends talking about this chap: who forgets a name that is so nice to roll around your mouth especially when associated with memories of delicious nibbles with friends? So I was intrigued and flicked through a few pages. The recipe below caught my eye (Turkey & Courgette Burgers with Spring Onion & Cumin p.200) and I found it online after a little googling. I have yet to find sumac so first time I made this I just left it out and it was still divine. The second time I made them they had no turkey mince left in Superquinn so I went for lamb instead which I added to the turkey from my freezer. Still they had no sumac in Superquinn (which I wouldn’t hold against them having only become aware of its existence myself in the very recent past) but I picked up a jar of Epicure Lebanese Paste which was nommy. All the family loved these wee burgers which we served with couscous with pine nuts and sultanas or chopped apricots. (I’ll add a picture next time we have them which will be soon no doubt.
Ingredients: 1 lb/500g turkey mince 1 large courgette, coarsely grated about 8oz/200g 3 spring onions, thinly sliced 1 large free-range egg 2 tablespoons chopped mint 2 tablespoons chopped fresh coriander 2 cloves garlic, crushed 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper about 6 tablespoons sunflower oil, for searing
Make the sour cream sauce first by placing all the ingredients in a small bowl. Stir well and set aside or chill until needed.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients for the burgers except the sunflower oil.
Mix with your hands and then shape into about 18 rounded burgers of about 1½ ounces each.
Pour enough sunflower oil into a large frying pan to form a layer about 1/16-inch thick.
Heat over medium heat until hot, then sear the burgers, in batches, on all sides. Cook each batch for about 4 minutes, adding oil as needed, until golden brown.
Carefully transfer the seared burgers to a baking sheet lined with waxed paper and place in the oven for 5 to 7 minutes, or until just cooked through.
Serve warm or at room temperature, with the sauce spooned over or on the side. We served them in pitta pockets with optional tomatoes and lettuce/ rocket.
I’ve never had much luck with shortbread so when I overheard one of the bloggers on Saturday talking about making shortbread for her father on Father’s Day, my ears pricked up.
Joanna of Smorgasblog shared her shortbread recipe with me on Twitter yesterday and I rustled up a batch while making the dinner and putting the nippers to bed. Yes it IS that easy.
which was a massive hit. Nipper 1.0 who isn’t madly keen on cooked tomatoes and usually ferrets them out. However as they are raw in this dish he gobbled them all down. I am definitely going to cultivate some mint in the garden for future use in this dinner. Yum!
. I had heard a couple of my friends talking about this chap: who forgets a name that is so nice to roll around your mouth especially when associated with memories of delicious nibbles with friends? So I was intrigued and flicked through a few pages. The recipe below caught my eye (Turkey & Courgette Burgers with Spring Onion & Cumin p.200) and I found it 
which was nommy. All the family loved these wee burgers which we served with couscous with pine nuts and sultanas or chopped apricots. (I’ll add a picture next time we have them which will be soon no doubt.