Smokey bacon spaghetti bolognese

I have cooked a lot of spaghetti bolognese over the years and I was pretty much making this one up as I went along, but it worked out great. I put plenty of smoked bacon in there at the start and that was the main flavour along with the beef. After the recent snow and ice the thyme was looking a bit forlorn in the back garden, but I put a big bunch of that in as well.

Heat a good glug of olive oil in a thick based pot. Cut the rinds off each of the 3 rashers of back bacon in a single piece. Throw these rinds into the pot and let them start frying while you chop the rest of the bacon into small pieces. Add the rest of the bacon along with 2 chopped onions. Let the whole lot fry for about 10 minutes. Then add a finely chopped carrot and 2 sticks of celery.
Next add a kilogram of good quality beef mince. This needs to be good stuff. Use cheap mince and the dish will have a greasy flavour. Break the mince up with a wooden spoon and brown it through. Next add plenty of thyme on the twigs. Give it a rinse first, but don't bother chopping it. You will just fish that out of the sauce before serving.
Add 2 tins of plum tomatoes and stir to break them up a bit. About 2 tablespoons of tomato puree goes in next. Give the whole lot a good stir and simmer on a low heat for about 40 minutes. Check that the carrots and celery are cooked through. Fish out the bacon rinds and the thyme. The sauce is now ready, but you can leave it on a low heat while you cook the pasta. I did not add any extra salt to this and just seasoned with some black pepper. when the sauce was ready I took out a couple of portions for baby dinners and then added about a small glass of red wine.

Cook your spaghetti in plenty of salted water. I used wholewheat as I think it tastes better.

Finally grate plenty of parmesan cheese on top of the sauce in the serving dishes.

O'Hara's Irish Red Beer

I had a bottle of this gorgeous brown beer last night and it was delicious to the last drop. It's not easy to find Irish beer in Ireland. I don't count the stuff made by companies like Diageo. These are international businesses driven by profit and slick marketing campaigns. They do what they do, but it's bland mass market stuff. If you don't believe me, try some beer from the Carlow Brewing Company. This is beer with taste at the top of the agenda. Savor is more a word used by wine drinkers, but this is beer that rivals the best wines for its dedication to pleasing the customer, not just emptying their wallets. 

Make sure you ask your local beer shop to get some in. Leave the freezing alcopops on the shelf. Grown up drinkers owe it to themselves.

Pea and parsnip soup with aniseed

This recipe is inspired by the excellent book by Niki Segnit The Flavour Thesaurus. I have added some aniseed to her pea and parsnip soup. The flavours all worked well together and it was dead easy to prepare.
To get the aniseed give one clove of star anise a good whack in a mortar and pestle. Then peel out the individual aniseeds, throw the husk out and crush the aniseeds.

Take 2 large parsnips and peel and chop them into large dice. Fry a chopped onion in a good glug of olive oil. (Don't use extra virgin for this as its likely to burn a bit). Add the parsnip to the fried onions and give it a good stir. Cover with about a litre of vegetable stock. I used Marigold Swiss Bouillon in boiling water. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 10 minutes or until the parsnip is soft. Then add 300g of frozen peas and the crushed aniseeds from one star anise. I am going to use a bit more of this next time, but the flavour of aniseed can be a bit overpowering, so go easy on it first time. Season with some pepper. You probably won't need any salt if the stock is salty enough, so try a spoonful first. Bring it back to the boil and simmer for about 5 minutes. Liquidise and serve.

Ideal mid week and I still have plenty of parsnips from the garden. I never do well with peas unfortunately, so frozen it has to be. Vegetarian, filling and very tasty. We had this for a light dinner for 2 people, but it would be a great lunch in smaller portions.

A Christmas plate

Turkey and ham for four days in a row :-) That's what we do in Ireland; buy the biggest ham and turkey for dinner on Christmas day and continue eating until it's all gone. Delicious, but breaks you down eventually. It being Christmas there were plenty of deli type things in the fridge to make up a tasty supper plate. A good portion of smoked salmon with lemon juice is the main event here. A little pile of capers to sharpen it up. A selection of cheeses - normally we just have sharp cheddar in the fridge, but between gifts and pre-christmas treat shopping we had a good few to choose from. Some nice unpasteruised brie, a small piece of blue cheese and a little heap of crumbly Wensleydale with cranberries. A few gerkins for bite and a selection of crackers finished the whole lot off. We had a glass of Spanish red with this. A perfect break from the big dinners of the last few days.

Frozen pizza on a night in sampling the home brew

Pizza

We got a couple of Dr. Oetkers frozen pizzas for our dinner this evening. We weren't in the mood of cooking and pizza seemed like a good idea. They were simple to prepare by just putting them on the rack of a preheated oven. We just got a new oven and it has a nice digital display which tells us the exact temperature inside. Despite this and preheating the oven to the recommended temperature the pizzas still were not cooked. I thought that 10-12 minutes was optimistic. I don't know why manufacturers do this, but its a pain. Anyway after about 17 minutes they were ready. Very tasty - mine was salami and Emma's vegetable. The bases are very biscuity - not like a bread pizza base at all. Still they did job. At about 800 calories each they would want to be filling though. If you were particularly hungry, they would not fill you up.
Reckon we will make our own next time.

Home brew
Tried the first of the home brew last night. Its very good. Next time I will add a little more priming sugar to get a slightly gassier beer and it also needs more time to mature. Waiting is hard, but know that I have had the first sup I will put it away for a while. A month or two would be ideal. Once I have 40 empty bottles I will brew again. The brew is still a bit cloudy at this stage, but most of that will clear in time. Well worth the effort.

Rocket progress

Rocket progress
The rocket I planted a couple of weeks ago is a couple of inches high on the windowsill. The plan was to put it out in the garden under plastic bottle cloches. I reckon the cold will be too much for them though, so I am going to leave them where they are. If they continue to grow away there they will be handier to reach when they are needed. Might just be fighting with nature to try to grow them at this time of year though.

Beer maturing
The beer has been bottled over a week now. It is sitting in the shed conditioning. Normally I do this in the kitchen, but with a play pen in there, space is just not available. The weather however has not been that cold, so I reckon the residual yeast will be munching away on the added bottling glucose. A put a few litres in plastic drinks bottles (the ones that never became cloches) to kill slugs with and the bottles have pumped up nicely. Reckon I will sample a bottle this weekend.

Last of the courgettes
The last couple of small courgettes are on the plants at the moment. As soon as I pick these I will lift the plants, which are look very past it at this stage. The courgettes produced well as always.

Small sunflowers

A few years ago I kept the seed from a sunflower that I grew in the garden. I wasn't sure what I would do with them, but I let them dry out and then put them in a big pickle jar in the shed. Forgot about them last year and just planted a few from a packet.

Early in the season this year, I planted a few from a packet in individual cells of potting compost. Planted out in the garden they suffered various maladies - slugs and high winds taking a few out. Only one made it to decent sunflower height.

Around the time the first set were a foot or two high I decided to plant some of the saved ones. They germinated well and I planted them on the shady side of the garden. No more room on the sunny side, so I thought I would give them a try. I am not sure if it was the shade or the later planting that did for them, but they didn't flourish as they should have.

Towards the end of the summer when the weather was starting to get windy they were about six feet tall. One gusty night most of them got knocked down. I cut about a foot length of the flowers off and brought them inside. At this stage only one or 2 had bloomed and they were very small. A few weeks later though every one I brought inside had flowered beautifully.

This picture does not do them justice as they are bit beyond their best by now, but they were not such a disappointment after all. I have kept more seed - from the early planted one that got really big and will be sure to plant lots of them next year.

Slug traps baited with beer

I have written about the effectiveness of beer as a slug attractor (and subsequent drowner) before, but this weekend I caught hundreds of the slimy critters with just 3 traps. I didn't even think there were many slugs out there, but obviously I was wrong.
I used home brew, but any beer is fine. The cheaper the better of course, don't reckon slugs and snails are fussy.
To make a trap get a large plastic plant pot saucer. These are for holding the water at the bottom of the plant, but they work fine to make a slug trap. Dig a shallow hole roughly the size of the saucer at the spot where you want to catch the slugs. Press the saucer into the hole until the edges are level with the surrounding soil. Then half fill the saucer with beer.
You need to make sure that the rain is kept off these as a good shower will dilute the beer beyond usefulness. I made a few small table like structures out of some wood I found thrown in a ditch, but a small piece of board sloped over the saucer with a rock under one side to keep it tilted should be fine. The benefit of my little roofs is that they are heavy and so don't blow about when it's windy.
Every few days visit your traps and collect the slugs that are around and especially under the saucer. Top up with beer if necessary, but a single shot should last a week or so.
I plop the slugs into a large jar with some salted water in it. This kills them and I put the lid on and keep the jar in the garden until my next collection. When the jar fills up I just throw it in the bin. I don't like the idea of burying the dead slugs in the garden in case any eggs survive. I am not even sure if this is possible, but better to be safe then sorry. Besides, rotten slug stinks and I don't want it lying around the garden.
After a few weeks of using these the number that you are catching should fall off sharply. This is a much better way than using slug pellets which are pretty toxic.

Tomato harvest

There was some frost last week and the tomatoes are getting black patches. I picked the whole lot of them last night.

Some of them are ripening and will finish off on the windowsill. The rest will be made into chutney. I have a huge stock pot that I use for this. The jars and lids are collected in the shed.

Growing tomatoes outdoors in Ireland is always a balancing act between getting the plants outside as early as possible to let them develop while at the same time avoiding any late frosts - certain death for young tomato plants. If the frost gets the plants there is no time to germinate fresh seeds, so you are not growing any tomatoes that year. If you wait too long before putting the plants outside to be sure of missing the late frosts, you are unlikely to get the fruit ripened before the autumn frosts set in. 

Still the chutney is gorgeous and we are just using up our last jar from last year, so the timing is perfect. 

A vegetable bake with cheese sauce and brown rice

I got this recipe from Complete Cookery Course: Classic Edition. My copy is fraying at the edges at this stage, but I can still rely on it for recipes that work. The full recipe is available here.

I know it looks a bit of a mess, but the photo does not do it justice. There is even rice scattered over the worktop :-) The recipe is supposed to be enough for 4 people, but my wife and I ate the lot. We did not have  a starter or dessert, so this was a perfect fit. The recipe sounds like there is quite a bit of effort involved, but there isn't really. I used normal cabbage instead of Chinese leaves and threw a chopped courgette in with the cabbage and broccoli for sauteing. Courgettes are nearing the end of their season, so I am putting them into everything I can.

Herbed pork chops with leek and mustard sauce

This recipe is based on one I got from the website epicurious. It turned out really well and I'll be making it again.

First coat the chops  - I used 2 small ones each - in a couple of teaspoons of rosemary and thyme, which you have chopped small. Take 3 rashers of bacon, derind and chop them into strips. Fry them in a pan until cooked and then set them aside. Next fry the pork chops until they are almost done. 

Then remove them and set aside on a plate. Fry 2 cleaned and chopped leeks in the fat that remains in the pan along with about 3 cloves of garlic. When that is cooked, add a half a litre of vegetable stock and give the pan a good stir to release any carmelised bits from the bottom. Now return the bacon to the pan and add a tablespoon of chopped fresh sage. Put the chops back in and cover the whole lot until the chops are cooked - about 5 minutes for me, but check your chops by cutting into the thickest one. Then remove the chops to a warmed plate and turn the heat up to reduce the sauce. When it has thickened sufficiently turn the heat off. Add 1 teaspoon of natural yogurt and 1 teaspoon of dijon mustard. Give it a good mix and spoon it over the cooked chops. 

I served this with steamed new potatoes, brocolli and carrots. 

The wormery in action

Wormery
The wormery arrived on Monday morning. I only got the chance to set it up this evening. There were 2 bags of tiger worms included in the box along with some bedding compost for them to get started in and some lime pellets - to reduce the ph when necessary.
The kit was very complete and the instructions clear. It is standing outside the back door now with the worms munching on a few handfuls of kitchen waste. Hope my coffee grounds don't poison the little guys.
It needs to be left along for a week now and then fed again. Hopefully everything will be up and running before the weather gets cold and they slow down. Should be some liquid to drain off at the end of November.

Biscuit topped apple crumble

We got a bag of apples off an uncle last week so I decided to make a crumble. I had a packet of hazelnuts in the fridge, with some rough instructions on how to make a rhubarb crumble, so I adapted them.

150g of oat biscuits (I used a mix of hobnobs and digestives)
50g of whole hazel nuts
700g of cooking apples
2 tbsp of sugar
A couple of tbsp of water

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees c.

First toast the hazel nuts under a hot grill. This only takes a few minutes. Keep an eye on them as they burn easily. When they are done, allow them to cool and chop them roughly.
Next chop up the biscuits and give them a good bashing. No point in getting too fussy about this, nice and rough is just fine.
Peel and slice the apples and put them in a pan with the water and sugar. Bring to the boil and simmer gently for about 5 minutes. Pour the lot into a casserole or deep pie dish. Mix the biscuits and nuts together and spread them over the apple mixture. Put it in the oven for about 15 minutes. Serve with some vanilla ice cream.

Beetroot harvest and saving tomato seed

These are a couple of beetroot that I pulled up yesterday. We had them with mackerel and the horseradish and natural yogurt sauce. Along with some new potatoes from Wexford they made a delicious dinner.

A courgette and tomato soup for lunch

The garden is bursting with vegetables at the moment so it seemed like a good idea to make a light soup for lunch. There are about 5 courgettes in the fridge and a small bunch of tomatoes in the fruit bowl which need to be eaten so that more can be taken in off the plants. The first of the leeks are also ready to eat. I didn't get many leeks to germinate this year (new seed next year I reckon), but those I did plant out came up well.

I decided to make a light soup using as much of this stuff as I could.

First sweat these vegetables (finely chopped) in a good glug of olive oil.

1 onion
3 carrots
3 celery sticks
1 leek

This takes about 15 minutes. Then add a litre of light vegetable stock - I used marigold powder, but anything else including chicken stock would work fine.
Then skin 4 or 5 tomatoes and chop them into quarters and cut 2 small courgettes into thick matchsticks.

Throw these into the pot and season with pepper. Bring to the boil and simmer gently for about 10 minutes.
Serve with plenty of chopped fresh parsley and some bread and cheese. It makes a lovely lunch. We used the currant bread that I made a couple of days ago, toasted and spread with real butter and topped with slices of cheddar. 

Start of the tomato harvest and autumn weeding

Tomatoes ready to pick
I picked a couple of orange tomatoes last week as we were going away for a few days and I didn't want them to fall on the ground while we were gone. They were a bit bland when we ate them, too excited to wait until they had ripened fully on the window. The sun has been good to us over the last week despite the huge downpours of rain that we have had. The tomatoes are all starting to ripen. It will be a good harvest this year I reckon. I picked the three ripest ones today, but will wait until the others ripen and will pick them as needed. I think I will try to make a tomato ketchup this year. It's something I have always wanted to have a go at and it looks like we will have enough ripe tomatoes this year. A big batch of chutney is on the cards too along with a batch or two of tomato soup.

Parsnips
The parsnips are still growing strong. Waiting for the foliage to die off until we start eating these. They are mainly a winter veg though, so probably better to wait until they get a couple of frosts before we make something nice and cozy with them. There is a great temptation to take a peek to see how they are doing. All I know at the moment is that the foliage is big and healthy. That's gotta be a good thing I suppose.

Weeding
I weeded the whole patch today. There wasn't a huge amount of stuff. When the vegetables are big they tend to crowd out the nasties. But better to keep the weeds in control anyway to stop them getting a chance to go to seed.

Slugs
I did not see many slugs on my travels today. My collection effort a couple of days ago must have gotten the bulk of them. About a week ago I threw a batch of spent hops from my recent brew onto some cleared ground in the vegetable patch. It is effectively cooked (boiled for about an hour) so I did not want to put it into the compost heap. It attracted a load of slugs. I picked all these up and killed them, but I don't think this is a great idea as unlike the beer traps that I normally put down the spent hops don't kill them. They get to breed with a nice supply of food. Not good. My wormery arrives on Monday, so from now on cooked stuff including spent hops can go in there. 

Currant bread

Made some currant bread today. Only took a few minutes to put together. I used the electric mixer to make it a bit easier.

Preheat your oven to 200 C.

Throw the following in a bowl:

500g plain white flour
good pinch of salt
120g of sultanas or currants
2 teaspoons of sugar
1 teaspoon of baking soda
300 ml of buttermilk
1 egg


Give the whole lot a good mix. Dust your hands with some flour and shape the dough into a ball in the bowl. Put a layer of non stick cooking paper on a baking sheet. Grease this with some butter or margarine. Turn the dough out on to this and shape it into a rough round. Cut a deep cross into the top of the loaf. Bake for 45 minutes. Tap it on the base to make sure its done.

Brewing update and a plan to grow hops

Brewing update
The beer that I am brewing is progressing nicely. It is sitting in a 25 litre plastic fermentation vessel (bucket) in the corner of the kitchen at the moment. The vessel has a snap tight lid which lets gas out when the pressure gets high enough. I tend to release the lip of the lid for the first few days of fermentation to prevent the lid buckling under pressure. This is also a good way to check the progress of your beer as the vigor of the fermentation is related to how long it takes the lid to bulge upwards.
Based on this the fermentation is slowing down after one week exactly. This is what I would expect. Will leave it where it is for another week or two before bottling it and hopefully having the self control to let it condition a bit.

Growing hops in Ireland
I saw pictures of another home brewers garden a few years ago and he was growing hops for his own use. They seemed to be very vigorous and he said they were easy to grow. I think hops used to be a big crop in Ireland, but as far as I know nobody except Rupert in Cork are growing them commercially any more.
A while searching on the web revealed that a lot of people are interested in this, but few are doing it. To grow hops you need a rhizome (chunk of underground plant stem) or a young plant. There is a supplier in Germany called Eickelmann which seems to get good reviews. The stems are not expensive, so I reckon this is worth trying out in the spring.
I reckon I will need a much bigger garden if I am every to try growing barley for my beer, but I would really love to give malting and all grain brewing a go. Growing hops will hopefully be an easier introduction to growing for brewing.

Food safety scares in the US

There has been a spate of food safety scares in the US recently. The latest concerns an elevated level of salmonella infections in eggs. Several different products have been affected in previous scares, including spinach. What do you have to do to spinach to make it dangerous enough to spark a governmental response?

Increasing amounts of the food that Americans consume is produced in huge factories by a shrinking number of large companies. As the number of companies producing food drops the impact of a problem with a producer gets bigger. The food security of large sections of the developed world is left at the mercy of the directors of a small number of companies. The recent financial crisis has shown that leaders of corporations are not to be trusted with the greater good. Food giants will be no different, and the impact on society could be just as devastating.

At a recent inspection of an egg producer (they are not farmers any more) piles of dead rats, manure and maggots were found a short distance from the egg production area.

In a world where so few people know how to produce any of their own food, what would be the impact of the shutdown of a significant portion of the current manufacturing machinery?

How do ordinary people protect themselves against this threat?

It is difficult to see how a person can protect themselves fully against this without being self sufficient and I am not advocating that for most people. However growing some of your own food. Cooking as much of your food as you can and finding out where it all comes from are three steps that can make a big difference to your well being, both now and in the case of a bigger scale problem in the future.

Potatoes for Christmas, saving rocket seeds, slug hunting and sunflower seeds

Potatoes
Going to try to grow some spuds in a container this year for winter. Have always used the excuse that I don't have enough space for potatoes, but I will give a container a go and see how I get on.
Have placed 3 healthy medium sized tubers from a shop bought bag of Wilson's garden potatoes into a cardboard egg box on the windowsill in the kitchen. When they sprout I will plant them in about 15 centimeters of compost and add a layer of compost as the foliage grows.

Rocket seeds
The rocket has gone to seed. Very quick as always, but I left it there to let the pods ripen a bit. Took them all off the stalks today and tidied that bit of the vegetable patch up. This is the seeds after I picked them.

Rocket seeds in their pods

I have put them on newspaper to dry out for a few days before I put them into a jar for storage.

That's rocket to the left and something else leafy on the right

 I have also planted a few of the rocket seeds in a pot for the windowsill. I read that they can be planted in September and should do ok. I am skeptical, but am going to give it a try anyway.
The rocket came in a packet of mixed leaves and I took pods from some of the other leaves and am saving those too. Not sure what they will come up with, but it will probably be fine to eat next summer.

The first few rocket seeds are under there

Slug hunting

We had a relatively slug free summer this year. It is very wet out today and I took a jam jar full of slugs out of the garden. Important to keep them under control and get them out before they get a chance to reproduce. I don't like using slug pellets, so I will use some of the waste beer when I am bottling next week to make some traps. 

Sunflower seeds

I only got one decent sunflower this year. Picked it today and have left it on the bench in the shed to dry. We have plenty of sunflower seeds saved from a few years ago and they germinated very well this year (the problems came with neglect following germination), so I think we will eat this years ones after roasting them. 

Review: Monart restaurant, Enniscorthy, County Wexford

Monart is a spa and hotel set in some beautiful parkland outside Enniscorthy in county Wexford. The complex consists of the old dwelling house connected to the new spa and restaurant buildings. We have been here a few times for afternoon tea and lunch in the bar, but had never been in the main restaurant. For our anniversary we decided to treat ourselves. A baby sitter was engaged for the evening and we headed down the road to the restaurant. 

The buildings, both old and new, cannot be faulted. The old house through which you enter has been immaculately restored. There are several sitting rooms leading off the main entrance way where guests (not just residents) can relax in Georgian  elegance. At this time of year the fire places are unlit, but have been neatly stacked with cord wood for the coming cold evenings. 

A glass corridor connects the old house with the reception area and the new buildings. Outside the corridor has been impressively landscaped with mosses and rocks to give a modern and yet relaxed background to the ultramodern glass walls of the tunnel. Candles had been placed along the length of the corridor to give a beautiful light and atmosphere. 

We made our way to the main restaurant and were seated by the maitre d'. When we made our reservation we had been offered a choice of 7:30 or 9:30. As we had to get back to a baby sitter we opted for 7:30. On our way to our table we noticed that only one other table in the large room was occupied. As the evening wore on the tables filled up gradually with people arriving at more convenient times. We assume that these were residents who were given choice of the times. For such a pricey place this is not an acceptable way to treat guests. 

For starter I had  chicken breast wrapped in cured Italian ham. It was impressively served on a large slate. I am not normally a fan of this type of service, but it really was picture perfect so it worked very well. The taste unfortunately did not. The chicken did not taste of anything. The cured ham which was wrapped around it and scattered over the plate was similarly tasteless. I have never eaten cured ham that was so bland. Not sure where they managed to find this, or why they bothered. There was also a pair of sauces artfully scraped across the slate. A white one and a brown one. Neither one tasted of anything at all and I could not honestly identify them. They just served to lubricate the taste free protein bits. In addition my starter had balls of rice which had been wrapped in bread crumbs and fried. These were dry, flavourless and a waste of time. All in all, this dish looked fantastic, but eating out is not an art competition and the taste was a big disappointment. 

My wife had a prawn bisque for her starter. It was ok, but not great. It did seem to taste a lot of shell rather than prawn flesh. It was served with a little fried won ton which I was told was nice. There was only one of them, so I did not get a sample. 

The main courses were better. My wife's black sole was superb. Very fresh, well presented on the bone (a choice was offered) and melt in the mouth. There was also plenty of fish which can be a problem in fancy restaurants. 

I had a fillet steak for main. The flavour was not particularly good and it was a bit dry. It seemed to be cooked medium rare which is what I had asked for, but the reason to eat steak like this is so that it will be  moist and juicy and it was was not. There was a large quantity of other stuff strewn about the plate and piled on the steak. The gravy was okay - sticky and dark brown, but again not tasting of very much. The mushrooms were nice enough. An aubergine paste was spread around the steak and tasted good. 

A small plate of vegetables and a boiled potato were served with our main courses. My wife's first potato was black and was sent back, but unfortunately the potatoes were reheated from cold and tasted disgusting. This was a huge slip up for a restaurant which is clearly aiming at diners with fancy palates. 

The service although extremely formal was excellent throughout our meal. But the restaurant lacks atmosphere with all of the diners seeming to whisper to one another. 

Overall the bill with 4 glasses of wine and no desserts came to 128 euro excluding service and the meal did not really match up to this. The food lacked flavour to such an extent that I found myself wondering if I had some sort of cold when we left. We won't go to the restaurant again, but will hopefully be back for lunch and afternoon tea in the other parts of the house. 

First tomatoes from the garden

The first of the tomatoes from the back garden are just ready. Well nearly. We picked these yesterday. They don't have great flavour yet, but they should finish ripening over the next week or two. If we get some more good sunshine we should be sorted.

The courgettes have been growing well for the whole summer, but the tomatoes should be the star of the show. Hopefully we won't be overrun with chutney this year and will get plenty of ripe ones.

Vegetarian curry with tamarind

I went through a phase of making Laksa a while ago and had some tamarind paste left in the press.  Tamarind is used to sour curries and I thought it would make a good addition to a curry just made with mild curry powder. The tamarind is soaked in a small quantity of boiling water first and then pushed through a metal sieve. You don't eat the seeds. I also added some garam masala which I have had lying around for ages. I really just want to get rid of this. It is rarely called for in the recipes that I use and I don't like throwing anything out. I picked a good handful of small chard leaves from the garden too. I wanted to get a nice tart tomatoey flavour, so I added a few chopped sun dried tomatoes to the mix too. The rest of the ingredients are largely what I had to hand.

2 Onions
2 Carrots
2 Celery sticks
3 cloves of garlic (from my father in laws garden)
The stalk of a broccoli head that we used up during the week
1 Chili with the seeds removed
A handful of sultanas
1 tablespoon of sunflower oil
2 tablespoons of mild curry powder
1 teaspoon of garam masala
A chunk of tamarind (about 20g)
1 tin of whole tomatoes + the tin filled with cold water
3 sun dried tomatoes chopped very small
1 teaspoon of vegetable stock powder
A handful of small chard leaves

Chop all of the vegetables into bite sized pieces - except the onions and garlic, chop these finely.
Fry the onion and garlic in the oil for a few minutes. Add the curry paste and garam masala and fry for another minute or 2 to release the flavours. Then add all of the other ingredients except the chard and give it a good stir. Cook for about 30 to 40 minutes until the vegetables are all tender. Throw the chard in for the last few minutes.

I served this with some boiled white basmati rice. It had a lovely rich flavour.

Hogan's Deli and Coffee Shop, Celbridge

This is a lovely little place for lunch on Celbridge Main Street. I am not a big fan of sitting in a pub in the middle of the day eating lunch and I don't eat much fast food. When you take those two options out of the picture you don't have a huge amount of choice in Celbridge. Hogan's is very nice though. A bright place with a nice selection of quiches, salads and other lunch time meals. They do sandwiches and panini too. The coffee is good and the service is very friendly and efficient. A welcome addition to Celbridge.

Freezing Swiss Chard

This is some of the Swiss Chard from my garden in Celbridge. It has a few slug holes at this stage of the year, but once it is washed well and cooked it is delicious. Most people I mention this vegetable to have not even heard of Chard. I saw it first on a Jamie Oliver programme. He plants a square meter of it and gets enough to feed his family for the whole season. The yield is great alright and its very hardy. 

That said, it is coming to the end of the growing season, so I needed to freeze some to stretch the supply out a little bit. 

First I cut the medium and large sized leaves off with a scissors at the base of the leaf. I did not bother with the stem. They are not as nice to eat as the leaf and I am not sure how well they would freeze. Then I filled the sink with salted cold water and washed the leaves. I did this individually to make sure that there were no garden pests or cocoons anywhere. 

Then I blanched the chard. I got a large pot of water on a rolling boil. I plunged the chard into this and gave it a good stir around. Then I put the lid back on the pot and timed the boil for 2 minutes. Finally I removed all of the chard from this boil and put it into a large bowl of ice water for a few minutes. The drain the chard and put it in freezer boxes. 

I have had bad experience with freezing some other vegetables before (cauliflower is very nasty) and so I did a small test batch earlier this week. We ate that in the borlotti bean minestrone that we had a couple of days ago. It was delicious, so I did the rest and got a good sized freezer box out of it. The chard shrinks a good bit when you process it like this, so that is enough for maybe 10 meals. 

The plants themselves are still in good condition and have plenty of smaller leaves (an inch or two in length). I am going to leave these as they are until we get frost - which will probably kill them fairly quickly. In the meantime I will let them grow and keep eating any that are of sufficient size. That way I can stretch out my frozen chard as long as possible. 

Brewing some ale

Today is brewday. I haven't brewed anything in over a year now so I thought it was about time that I got back into it. I had a couple of bottles of India Pale Ale left in the shed from the last batch I made. I had intended on using these to kill slugs in the garden, but when I opened the first one it smelled great. Drank them both and the slugs lived to crawl another day. All the books say to let it mature, which is hard advice to follow when you have spent a few weeks working up a thirst, but it is advice worth following. I reckon getting a new brew on as soon as you finish making the first is the only way to get near to this. Hopefully the beer overload will result in some of the bottles getting forgotten about for a few months.

The brew is a simple one. Just 3kg of liquid malt extract and some fuggles hops. I was watching Country File on BBC a few days ago and they were interviewing a hop farmer. He said that their industry was devastated by the huge rise in popularity of lagers. Lagers don't use fuggles, but ales do, so I decided to do my bit. 

Here are what my boiling hops looked like when they were ready to throw into the pot. That's my copy of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing in the background and the weighing scales is sitting on my brewing diary. Looks a bit blank, but I was just getting warmed up.

The smell in the kitchen when you are boiling wort is great. Like having your own private brewery. This is what the rolling boil looks like. The noise is my gas hob on full blast to keep all that liquid boiling furiously.

The wort is cooling in the sanitized fermentation vessel in the corner of the kitchen at the moment. Once it gets to about 25 degrees C I will pitch the yeast and let it get to work. It will take a week or two to finish fermenting and then I will bottle it and try to wait for it to mature. That's the hard bit.

Update: I pitched the yeast last night and the lid of the fermenter is stretched tight in a dome of carbon dioxide this morning. This is the equation for fermentation of glucose into alcohol:

C₆ H₁₂ O₆ ---> 2 C₂ H₅ OH + 2 CO₂ 

So for every molecule of CO2 that is pushing that lid up, a molecule of alcohol is floating around in the wort. The more alcohol in there the less likely the brew is to get contaminated. The risky bit is nearly over. I can relax and just let it brew away. 

Borlotti bean minestrone

The finished product

We have had a tin of borlotti beans in the press for the last while. They were inherited when some friends moved house and cleared out their kitchen. We weren't really sure what to do with them, so I took a look on the web to see if I could get any ideas. A lot of the recipes that I found used them with tomatoes, garlic and olive oil, so I decided to make a minestrone.

First put a good glug of olive oil in a cast iron pot on a medium heat. I used some nice Greek stuff that I got in Aldi. Next you need to soften some finely chopped vegetables over a medium heat to make the soup base. I used a couple of carrots, onions and celery sticks, but I reckon you could vary that easily enough. About 20 minutes should be plenty to soften these.  

Then throw in the tin of rinsed borlotti beans, a tin of whole plum tomatoes and a litre of vegetable stock. Season with salt, pepper and plenty of fresh rosemary. I blanched and froze some chard from the garden earlier this week and so I added this to the pot. Cabbage is more common, but any boilable green leafy vegetable would be fine. Let this all simmer for about 20 minutes.

That's it done except for the pasta. This is best left until you are ready to eat. If you add the pasta too early and leave it to sit it will keep sucking up liquid and you will end up with a soggy mess. I used wholewheat spaghetti which I broke into chunks 3 or 4 inches long and threw them but pretty much any pasta will work. About one normal main meal portion of pasta is fine for these quantities. Just keep the pot bubbling until the pasta is cooked and you are ready to go. 

This fed both of us well for our main meal. It would be a very nice lunch or starter in a smaller portion. This is very healthy stuff. The only things to watch are that you don't over do it with the oil and that your stock is not too salty. 

Mackerel, beetroot and horseradish sauce

Jamie Oliver has a recipe for trout with a horseradish sauce. This is very similar, but with mackerel instead of the trout.

The beetroot in the garden is perfect at the moment. A couple of inches across each. We had 2 of these globes each for dinner. Washed them and twisted the leaves off. Then we steamed them for about 30 minutes, checking them with a skewer to see when they were perfect. They are easy to peel by hand under a slowly running cold tap. Just push the skins off with your thumbs and leave the beets aside on a plate until you have the other stuff on the plates. They will retain their heat for about 5 minutes in a warm kitchen as long as you don't slice them before serving.

The mackerel was from a fishmongers in Howth. They had cleaned it already and it was still cheap as chips. When mackerel is fresh there is nothing to touch it. When I got back from the shop I froze this in batches of 2. It defrosted fine at room temperature and then we roasted it for 15 minutes at 180 degreed c with a bit of salt and pepper on top. The skin crisped up nicely.

The sauce was made from equal quantities of natural yogurt and horseradish sauce in a jar. About a tablespoon of lemon juice and a good grind of salt and pepper. Mixed this up well in a bowl and stuck a spoon in it for serving ourselves at the table (or couch in this case).

We steamed some of the father in law's potatoes to go with this. Very tasty and healthy too.

Food rules

I have been trying to eat a bit healthier for the last while now. This means mostly vegetarian stuff. I found Michael Pollan's book very useful in deciding what's on the menu.

It all boils down to this pithy little line: Eat food, mostly plants, not too much . 

The eat food bit means stuff that has received little or nor processing. It turns out that by cooking from scratch you can stick reasonably well to this advice. It takes a while to change from using processed stuff to more natural equivalents, but it is worth the effort. Buying less meat saves money, so buying organic vegetables and oil becomes a more realistic choice. 

We threw out our Flora spread. Real butter for everything now. We had toast for breakfast with just butter. Delicious. No need for any jam or marmalade. Using fake spreads is just lubricant for your mouth really. I don't care what they say in the promotional material, factory produced stuff is not for eating.

Mostly plants. The garden is bursting with vegetables at the moment, so we are spoiled for choice. Made a mint and garlic dahl as part of dinner yesterday. Very nice. Good to find a use for the mint that is trying to take over my vegetable patch. Couple that with the huge range of fruit and vegetables at Lidl and Aldi and we don't have any excuse for not eating more vegetables. 

Not too much is a bit harder. I am a great believer in eating until you are full. Especially for the main meal of the day. As long as what you are filling up on is good food then it should not matter too much. Not that I am disagreeing with the evidence for calorie restriction, but I just don't want to suffer unnecessarily to be healthy. 

A Spanish pork and beans stew

We had this in Spain a couple of years ago. It is often served as a tapas portion with some white crusty bread and goes very well with strong red wine.

Fabada

Ingredients

400g dried butter beans. Most types of white beans will work fine here.
600g piece of bacon
2 bay leaves
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 Rashers of back bacon chopped up - include the rind if it is thin enough to fry and be edible.
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, sliced thinly
1 teaspoon paprika. I used La Chinata. (This is one of the most over the top websites for a spice that you will ever see. Take a look)
200g chorizo sausage
2 tins of tomatoes


Method


Soak the beans over night. Cook them according to the packet instructions. Usually about 40 minutes simmering is plenty. Drain them and put them aside. 
Cook the piece of bacon in about 2 litres of water with the bay leaves. This usually takes about 50 minutes. It will depend on weight. 20 minutes per 500g plus 20 minutes. 
Trim the fat off and chop the bacon into bite sized pieces.
Fry the rashers and cut them into strips. 
Cut the chorizo into matchsticks and fry it for a few minutes. Discard the oil that oozes out when you cook this. 
Fry the onion and garlic in the oil and add the chopped cooked meats. Add the tomatoes and bay leaves and simmer for about an hour.

Garden peas from Wexford

I was mad into growing peas when I was a kid. Something about the perfect little peas inside the pods that you would watch growing day by day. The number of peas I used to get would fit into 2 cupped hands (child's ones), so not a great yielder. I reckon they take too much work and produce too little yield in the garden to bother with them now. My father in law on the other hand has heaps of space and can turn his hand to any crop that he fancies. Good Wexford soil helps a bit, but he is just good at gardening full stop. He grew these beauties this year and gave us a big bag.

From Drop Box

The Flavour Thesaurus was a great help again and pointed in the direction of Pea and Mint soup. I know pea and mint are supposed to go together, but I had never tried it. The mint in the garden needed picking. I can never figure out what to do with it, but this was fantastic. Will be making it again. We have another batch of the Wexford peas left, but then I reckon I will try this one with frozen peas.

Pea and mint soup

Finely chop a carrot, stick of celery, a few cloves of garlic and an onion. Heat a glug of good olive oil up in a heavy based pot. Sweat the veg for about 10 or 15 minutes. Now add the peas. I used about 3 mug fulls of the garden peas. Add 3 teaspoons of Marigold vegetable stock powder. Cover the veg with boiling water and simmer the whole lot for about 30 minutes. Finally add a good bit of mint which you have finely chopped and puree the lot with a stick blender. 

I served this for lunch with some buttered home made brown bread. The photo is not great (no matter how many pixels your phone has it will still take naff photos), but the soup was gorgeous.

Beetroot and Apple with Horseradish dressing

I got a new book called The Flavour Thesaurus. It gives combinations of foods that go well together. This recipe is based on one of her recommendations on beetroot. The garden is full of it at the moment and we were looking for something to do with the glut. Don't like pickled beetroot particularly, so this was the first thing we tried:

Ingredients:
1 medium sized beetroot
Half of a nice tart apply - leave the skin on
Horseradish sauce (jar stuff is fine)
Natural yogurt


Method:
Wash the muck off the beetroot and twist the leaves and stems off. Steam it for as long as it takes to cook. This depends on size. For tiny beets its about 15 to 20 minutes, for the hefty one I used it was about 35 minutes. Use a skewer to check if it is done. Then hold the cooked beetroot under a running cold tap and rub the skin off. Use a knife to cut out any bits that garden nasties might have taken a chunk from.
Now chop the beet into small cubes. Leave this aside. Cut half an apple (I used a Jazz apple from Aldi) into similar sized chunks.
The dressing is made of 2 teaspoons each of the Horseradish and the yogurt. Mix these well in a bowl big enough to take the chopped beet and apple. Add some salt and pepper. Throw the chopped veg and fruit in and mix it all up. Dish this out on to 2 plates.

I served this with home made brown bread and a tin of mackerel from Aldi. Delicious. The quantities above serve 2 people for lunch.

A packet of Rashers and Irish Food Quality Certification

I was in Tesco last week and needed to pick up some bacon. I was planning on making some split pea and bacon soup - a Delia Smith recipe that my wife and I love. I have made this before with a chunk of smoked bacon chopped up small and it was delicious. I thought a packet of rashers would do in a pinch.

There was a huge selection of rashers in the chilled cabinet. They all however seemed to be essentially the same. There are a number of flavours, but who wants flavours in their rashers? Food companies perhaps. This avoids having to produce tasty bacon. There were no free range ones, no organic. Just streaky or back and the bunch of flavours. I bought a packet of Denny back rashers.

When I opened the packet I could see how thin they were. As I separated them they tore. I had to scrape them apart with my fingers. They were covered in some sort of sticky goo. Probably the added flavours. The first few I cooked under the grill smelled of fish oil (presumably what the pigs had been fed). As they cooked a white foam oozed out of them. They were flavourless except for the strong 'smoke' that had been added. I fried the last few and they were just as bad.

I have made the mistake of buying Denny products before. Probably because of the amount they spend on advertising. It strikes me as sad that in a country that is supposedly so reliant on agriculture food producers are intent on making bottom of the barrel muck like these rashers. This is of course an Irish Quality Assurance Scheme product. Here is a link to the producer rules for this scheme.

I live in a major suburb. We subsidise this industry to a vast extent and they don't seem to produce anything worth eating. How are Bord Bia supposed to sell this junk in foreign markets? I can imagine the Germans or the French laughing at us. Food in Ireland is frequently viewed as a producers right to sell and the consumer can take what they are given.

I think the Quality Assurance Scheme is a base level which all farms should achieve. This should not be an opt in and should be removed from packaging as a marketing tool.

Secondly a new scheme needs to be introduced aimed at the quality of the end product. Professional grading panels could be used to determine what products are of the highest quality. A set of grading levels - 1, 2, 3 etc. could be used to show which products were the best. What type of feed had been used could be indicated on the package along with the lack of additives and housing conditions for animals. These products could command a premium price. This move away from commodity production should improve margins for everyone in the supply chain. The consumer will also benefit from real choices in the quality of what they buy.

I would certainly pay a lot more for bacon that taste like bacon. I won't buy Denny products again though.

Thai style bean burgers

Made Thai style bean burgers last night. Bit of a disaster really. I used dried beans and soaked them for several days (we were away for the weekend, so left them in the fridge). The burgers turned out to be a sloppy mess. I definitely can't blame the recipe for this foul up. Not too bad tasting, but definitely not worth making again. I made sweet potato wedges to go with them and they were very nice. Olive oil on them and a lot of rosemary. Almost made up for the sloppy bean burgers :-)

Lamb jalfrezi

Got a jar of jalfrezi paste in the Asian market a while ago. Here is the lamb curry that I made with it:

Ingredients:
500g of shoulder of lamb pieces
1 tbsp of vegetable oil
2 tbsp Pataks jalfrezi paste
1 onion chopped up
Tin of tomatoes
1 green chilli
2 small dried chillies
Half the tomato tin of water

Method:
Heat the tablespoon of veg oil in a thick bottomed sauce pan. Add the onion and fry for a few minutes to brown it. Keep stirring it and make sure it does not burn. Add the curry paste and fry for another minute. This gets the flavours out. Add the meat and stir it around to brown it for a few minutes. The add the rest of the ingredients. Bring to the boil and then turn down low and put the lid on. It takes about an hour to cook. It's done when the meat is tender.
I served this with some cous cous and a big blob of lime pickle.

Another Laksa

Made laksa again the other night. This is getting to be a favourite. We used to get Asian soups a lot in Cafe and the flavour was great. I could never really figure out what it was until I tried the Laksa from Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Dinners.

In this one I did not use tamarind or lemon zest. Think this was a bad idea to leave them out. The tamarind is a bit of a hassle, but it is worth it. This was still very nice. I got the recipe from Ainsley Harriott's Feel Good Cookbook. Some very nice recipes in that one.

Sticky carrot side dish

This is a Jamie Oliver recipe. Decided to do this instead of just steam the carrots.

Peel and chop the carrots and stand them in a pot snugly. Put a big knob of butter on top of them. Season and stuff some bay leaves in between them.
Fill it half way up the side of the carrots with stock or water.

Bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer with the lid on. Wait until the carrots are cooked and then remove the lid and reduce the stock until you are just left with the butter sticky at the bottom of the pot. Now you have to wait until the bottom of the carrots caramelises.

A minute too long and they will burn. These look burnt, but they were very tasty.
If I was doing this again I would use less stock and try to keep a bit of bite in the carrots.
That is chicken breast coated with cream cheese and pesto and wrapped in bacon along with some asparagus and masked potatoes.

The aftermath of this looked a lot worse than it was. Soaked the pot over night and the burnt bits just came off.

White yeast bread

Had some friends coming over for lunch on Sunday, so made a beef stew with red wine.
Made this loaf of bread to go along with it. I just followed the instructions on the packet of flour and it came out perfect. So much for yest bread being complicated. I egg washed the top and put some sesame seeds on there too to make it look the part. Improved the flavour too.

Smoked coley chowder

Had some smoked coley in the freezer and fancied this for tea. It was really excellent and I got to use some more of the nice leeks from my garden. Nearing the end of that supply. As usual, when they are all gone I will keep stumbling over leek recipes and will not be able to bring myself to buy any following the spring time glut.

Ingredients:
20g of butter
300g of smoked coley (which is just another name for pollock apparently)- I got this in the fridge compartment at Aldi.
3 large potatoes, peel and dice them to about 1cm
1 pint of whole milk
1 pint of vegetable stock
2 leeks, chopped small - give them a rinse too. They tend to bring the garden with them
1 Onion, chopped small
3 rashers of smoked streaky bacon, chopped up small

Method:
Melt the butter slowly in a thick bottom large pot. Add the leeks, rashers and onion and give it all a good stir. Put the lid on and cook on a low heat for about 5 minutes. Then add the potatoes and stock and season with salt and pepper. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 15 minutes until the potatoes are done.
While that is cooking you need to cook the fish. Put the milk in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Be careful not to burn or over boil it as this will spoil the taste. Add the fish and let it simmer gently for about 5 minutes. Check that the fish is done - it should break into flakes easily. Then turn off the heat under the milk and remove the fish to a plate with a fish slice or slatted spoon. Break the fish into flakes and add these to the potato and vegetable mixture. Leave any skin and bones out. Pour the milk into the soup through a sieve (this catches any bones or bits of skin that might have fallen off and also stops the nasty curdled bit that you used to get on your breakfast cereal ending up in your soup). Also sieve in any of the bits from the fish plate so that you don't miss out on any of the flavour.
Simmer the whole lot for about 5 minutes.
Ladle it into large bowls. I put some coriander on top of ours because it was in the fridge, but parsley would be ideal.
I served it with buttermilk scones and butter.

Herb and flower seeds in pots and the first go at tidying the border

I planted a bunch of herbs and flowers in plastic pots today.
The parsley plant that had been doing its thing well for the last couple of years finally gave up to encroaching grass. I lifted the whole tussock out with the fork. Read here that they only last about two years anyway.
Chives went in a nice earthenware pot for the kitchen windowsill. The rest went into old plastic pots, not display stuff really. I will have to get some nicer earthenware pots to cover those ones up before they are allowed into the kitchen.
Did not bother planting rosemary again. It is a waste of time. Read that the best way to propagate this is vegetatively. Just have to find someone who will let me perch a pot of compost beside their rosemary bush for a couple of weeks :-)
The sage bush is still doing fine, so no need to replant there.
The others were basil, sunflowers, coriander and dill.
Next I need to get the tomato, chard and beetroot seeds and get them planted out.
Had great success with tomatoes last year. Chard is something that we tried a couple of years ago on the advice of Jamie Oliver (not direct advice, he was on the telly!) and have not looked back. It grows like wildfire and is very nice in a lot of different dishes. Beetroot is delicious steamed with a horse radish and creme fraiche dressing and some fish. This is also a Jamie Oliver recipe.

French Bread

French bread

Not that French when you make it in Celbridge, but nice all the same. Getting yeast bread right takes quite a bit of practice, but I will try to point out some of the pitfalls.
The main differences between this and a basic white yeast bread are that this has 3 risings and steam is used in the oven to give the characteristic crust of French bread.

Ingredients:

250g Strong white flour

200ml tepid water (use half boiling and half tap and the temperature will be fine)

7g Sachet of dried yeast

Quarter tsp of salt

Method:

Add the yeast to the water and give it a stir. Add this to half of the flour and salt in a large bowl. Give it a good stir. It should be the consistency of very thick pancake batter at this stage. Cover it in cling film and let it stand for about 3 hours at room temperature.

It will have increased in size by about a factor of 3 and started to collapse in on itself. Ready for the second stage. Don't be afraid to leave this for longer than the 3 hours. Yeast bread involves plenty of patience and rushing it will give you a brick loaf. That said, try not to lose heart if you get bad results. Figure out what happened (ask a question here) and try again. It is worth getting this right. Then again your first attempt might be boulangerie stuff.

Next add the rest of the flour. Mix it in and use your hand to roll it into a ball. You may have to add some more flour to make sure that it is workable. Lightly flour a work surface and knead the bread for about 15 minutes. If the mixture gets a little too sticky dust it with some flour, but try not to overdo it. Wetter dough is better. The 15 minute knead is hard work, but very enjoyable. Make sure your hands are clean and sleeves rolled up before you start. I much prefer to do this by hand rather than use a mixer.

Now put the ball of dough back into the bowl you took it from. Cover it with some lightly oiled cling film and put it in a warm place. I use the hot press, but a warm kitchen is fine. Leave it for about 3 hours. You can see why it is so difficult to have this stuff for breakfast and why bakers get up in the middle of the night.

Following that rising the surface of the dough should be smooth and soft. If you press your finger lightly into it the depression should remain after you remove your finger. In the bottom right of this picture you can see the mark of my finger.

Next you need to shape the loaf. This dough will work in pretty much any shape - plaits, mini rolls or baguette shapes. Here are some rolls that I made a few weeks ago using a recipe very similar to this:

You can also use a lightly oiled loaf tin.

If you are doing baguette shapes you will need a clean tea towel and a large baking tray. Fold the towel into 3 pleats on the baking tray. The pleats will act as trenches for your bread to do its final rise in. Without the pleats to constrain the dough it will just all spread out flat. Not very baguette shaped.

Cover the pleats in plenty of flour. Break the ball of dough into 3 roughly equal parts. Roll each one out into a sausage shape. Lift up one end of one of the sausages and fold it into the centre. Press it down hard so that is sticks. Now do this with the other end - pressing it on top of the first finger mark. Lift this folded sausage into one of the pleats in the tea towel. Repeat this for the remaining 2 dough sausages. Finally cover the whole lot in another clean tea towel and leave for its final rising.
Bake for 25 minutes in the centre of a hot oven - about gas mark 8. Steam is used to give the crust to real French baguettes. To simulate this in my humble domestic cooker I put a pot of boiling water on the bottom of the oven. The crusts turned out looking very nice.

French onion soup

French onion soup

This serves 2 people and makes a very nice lunch. There is quite a lot of work in preparing it - lots of stirring, but it is worth the effort once in a while.

Ingredients:
25g of Butter
400g of onions, thinly sliced
600ml of beef stock, a good cube is fine
Some French style bread
25g of emmental cheese, grated

Method:
Melt the butter over a medium heat in a thick based pot. Add the onions and cook with the lid off for about an hour. You will need to stir it a lot during this time to prevent it sticking. Next add the stock and stir well. You want to get any crispy carmelised bits off the base of the pot and into the soup. Bring it to the boil and cook it for about 5 minutes more.
Slice the French bread at an angle and toast it on both sides under the grill. Then pile the cheese up on top of the toast. Melt the cheese under the grill. Pour the soup into warmed bowls and place the croutons on the top.