Tag: baking/ bácáil

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I’m wrecked; no you’re wrecked

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!

Thursday – 14/11/2024

DINNER

Friday – 15/11/2024

DINNER

  • Pizza as always!

Saturday – 16/11/2024

  • Apple & celeriac soup
  • 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!
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Do the hokey pokey

Just in the door from a long overdue trip north to Ramelton to visit my very good friend, Dinners.

All the chats, great food and drink and while the kids and menfolk surfed on Saturday, Dinners and I took to a beachside sauna and had a dip at Dooey Strand. Yes I was in the Atlantic Ocean on 2nd November. For about 30 seconds.

Wild Atlantic Sauna Dooey.

The proliferation of saunas beside beaches, lakes and rivers in Ireland is a welcome development. I think swapping catholic guilt and prudery for more saunas is a most excellent bargain. Himself and I thoroughly enjoyed our sauna on Ceann Trá (Ventry) in the wind and the rain last summer. I’ve also been to one beside the Boyne with friends a few years ago although Himself finds the idea of dipping in the Boyne a bit ick. This from the person who lept into the Seine near Fontainebleau a couple of summers ago. I did too, let’s be clear. One of the nicest swims I ever had after a day full of car and a very heated tent erection.

While we were away (Himself, me and Nipper 3.0) Nipper 2.0 had a “gaff” which is contemporary slang for a party. We returned to many empties but an intact house otherwise.

So a great weekend was had by all. I brought biscuits and cake with me (of course). A lemon poppyseed cake from Nigella’s Domestic Goddess book. I also brought these hokey pokey biscuits. The recipe is from a book called Edmond’s Cookery Book which is the equivalent of a Delia or a Darina cookery book for New Zealanders and was indeed sent to us as a wedding present by another friend named Linda from New Zealand. Hokey Pokey is what they call honeycomb toffee (the inside of a crunchy bar) in New Zealand. These are a cinch but do wait until the sugar/ butter mix has cooled down to start rolling out the balls.

Dinners texted me when we returned and asked me for the recipe so I thought you might enjoy it too.

HOKEY POKEY BISCUITS

  • 125 g butter
  • ½ cup sugar 110g.
  • 1 tablespoon golden syrup or treacle
  • 1 tablespoon milk
  • 1.5 cups / 240g plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda (bread soda)
  1. Combine butter, sugar, golden syrup and milk in a saucepan.
  2. Heat until butter is melted and mixture nearly boiling, stirring constantly.
  3. Remove from heat and allow mixture to cool to lukewarm.
  4. Heat oven to 180degC.
  5. Sift flour and baking soda together.
  6. Add to the cooled mixture. Stir well.
  7. Roll tablespoonsful of mixture (25g) into balls and place on ungreased oven trays.
  8. Flatten with a floured fork.
  9. Bake at 180°C for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Makes 22.

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The Porridge that keeps on giving

Once Upon a time this was Porridge

Ah Pinterest – don’t you just love it? I was all set to uneasily send the leftover portion of porridge to the bin on Sunday when it occurred to me that surely someone in the world must have come up with a better solution than industrial composting for all this yummy leftover porridge. And lo! Pinterest had the answer which I share with you now from Soule Mama – muchos gracias!

Once Upon a time this was Porridge
Once Upon a time this was Porridge

Left over Porridge Muffins

  • 1 cup cooked oatmeal, 
  • 1 egg, 
  • 1 TBSP melted butter, 
  • 1/2 cup milk, 
  • 4 TBSP honey/sugar/maple syrup, 
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder, 
  • 1.5 cups flour, 
  • plus 1/2 cup ‘extra somethings’ – raisins, chocoloate chips, berries, etc. 

Bake at 400F/ 200C  for 20 minutes.

The resulting muffins were more scone-like than muffin like I felt. I tried to take care not to overstir, the biggest danger in muffin making, as it lengthens the gluten molecules, making the muffin more breadlike. A not unpleasant bun so, with a wholesome look. I’ve popped them into the freezer and will extract as required for school lunches on our particularly long Thursdays. It is possible also that my fairy cake sized cake pans were a little small for these cakes but I’m Irish – I make fairy cakes, not cupcakes and not muffins. The addition of some cinnamon, mixed spice or grated apple/ apple streusel might do this recipe no harm.

Note this is also an opportunity to show off my new red cake stand which I picked up in Stock, the most fabulouse but ludditesque shop in Dublin. I recently asked them to order oven gloves for me from Ulster Weavers, in a particular shade of red (sensing a pattern here?). They took my details down in a notebook with a pen. In a PAPER NOTEBOOK. With A PEN FILLED WITH INK. I’m pretty sure they still don’t have a website. Their rivals around the corner are well wise to this fact and appear third in the SERP for Stock Dublin. I just want to call in and lecture them. Okay I admit I have lectured them, gently, a few years ago now.

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Wednesday WIP (Crochet & Garden)

It’s Wednesday which means it’s work in progress day. Since my last WIP I have been quite productive relatively speaking. For a change too the work I’ve done has been for me: I don’t want to fall into that trap of never making anything for myself. Lately I’m going to the other extreme.

When you crochet or knit or make things do you find you’re always giving them away too? It seems selfish or vain to make something for yourself but egotistical in equal parts to give it away. It’s like when someone says, “I’m in a band: here, listen to my demo.” But you can’t because your ears are bleeding from the pain of their music and you don’t know what to say. I wonder to people receive my gifts and think “Sweet lord, what am I going to do with this thing!” I think I’m lucky enough to have polite enough friends who will tactfully place the lovingly crafted object in a less-trafficked corner of the house. That said I recall the sting, after spending a few hours creating something that I think the recipient didn’t realise was handmade, when it was just flung to one side without so much as a thank you. But isn’t that rude regardless of the effort put into the gift!

I know I mentioned on the Rosie View when we were talking about The Great British Bake Off that I could completely understand why the contestants got so upset: sure I was at home sniffling for them because I know the pain of putting your heart and soul into something only to have it flop.

However there was a lesson to be learned from the winners of that series: persistence. Malcolm Gladwell would have us believe that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert or a genius at a skill.

But the difficulty is that by the time we realise this or at the very least realise the truth in this we no longer have 10,000 hours to spare. Not in one block anyway. That’s why a hobby that you can try, try again in short snatches allows you to build up those 10,000 hours. So maybe by the time I’m actually a total granny I’ll be amazing at crochet.

So on to the WIP. Below you can see the business card holder I whipped up not last Wednesday but the Wednesday before to match my iPad holder so it would be easy for me to find while I was networking at dotconf the following day. It’s a bit of a joke but I do love the cheerful colours. It and the iPad cover go with nothing at all though!

I also started the top I described in my last WIP post. It’s going well although the tension isn’t quite right probably because I’m not using the specified wool but it’s just too expensive. I’m worried therefore that this central panel will be too wide thus making the whole top too wide. It is pretty though and I love the colour. You’ll see below that there’s a lot of green in my life at the moment!

And Himself has been busy too and we’ve finally been enjoying the fruits of his incremental 10,000 hours. I wonder if we’ll ever have enough strawberries ripe at the same time for a bowlful each? Nipper 2.0 keeps sneaking out into the garden by himself and finding the ripe ones and shnarfing them before anybody else gets a chance. I beat him to this one here and it was delicious. In the second picture you can see Himself planting some cauliflower and turnip seedlings given to us by our neighbour. In the foreground carrot, onions and beetroot can be seen. Our first batch of potatoes should be ready soon as well.I’m really looking forward to more beetroot brownies: my favourite way to make my pee a funny colour!

I”ve already made loads of the rocket into pesto with parmesan, olive oil and pine nuts.

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Winner bread

I “borrowed” Mum’s breadmaking machine and our first attempt has been a delicious success. I say “our” because Nipper 3.0 was the only family member who was not involved in its creation: much excitement about a machine that makes bread. I picked the recipe up from Bibliocook and the inclusion of fennel seeds is supposed to aid milk production. I managed to get all the seeds except one type and included equal amounts (about 35g) of linseed, pumpkin seed, sesame seed and sunflower seeds. We set the breadmaker to complete before breakfast and the aroma of freshly baked bread that greeted us this morning would put a smile on the face of even the grouchiest morning grump! Delicious!

Here’s a pic of the crumb of the second loaf I made (24/03/2010) – it has a great aniseed-y smell & flavour. Nipper 1.0 really likes it too