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.