Good Bread on the Northside of Dublin

There is no end of choice if you want to eat rubbish bread in Dublin. Tesco have a large range a brutal bread that all tastes the same. Aldi is even worse. Lidl have recently introduced in store bakeries to some of their outlets. These have a good range of tasty and unusual breads. Their prepackaged stuff is still terrible.

Superquinn - Finglas Village for me - is still a winner. The Musgraves  takeover does not appear to have hit quality in their bakery. They have the best French sticks I can find and walking through the bread and cakes there is always a pleasure.

There is a Polish shop across from Aldi in Finglas and it has a wide range of bread. Polish people are serious about their bread. The loaf of multi grain I got was made in Balbriggan and tasted delicious. It was stale the next day which is always a good sign.

Basa Fish from Dunnes Stores

We decided to try out some Basa Fish fillet from Dunnes Stores today. They were farmed in Vietnam and were frozen. They were cheap and so we got these over hake which we had yesterday anyway.
Here is some info about Basa Fish or Panga from wikipedia.
The farming of it does not look like it is the most environmentally friendly, but other than that it is not the worst. It is not endangered in any way.
We cooked the fish in foil parcels to keep it moist. 200 degrees C for 20 minutes did the trick. The fish looked translucent when cooked and although very fresh (well as much as frozen fish can be) it tasted so eggy as to be like eating a piece of omelette. Not great overall then despite the cheap price.
Will give this a wide berth next time and try something else.

Asian Style Salmon with Noodle Soup and Steamed Sugar Snap Peas

After a bit of chopping and prep, this was ready in less than 10 minutes. Delicious and not too heavy.

Serves 1

Ingredients

1 Salmon fillet, washed
2 Spring onions, sliced finely
1 Red chilli - seeds in, chopped
3 Cloves of Garlic, peeled
1 tsp of freshly grated ginger
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 1\2 tsp of Miso Paste
1 tsp fish sauce
Juice of one lime
Portion of egg noodles
Handful of sugar snap peas, washed

Line a steamer with tin foil. This stops the cooking juices being lost. They are added to the soup at the end.
Put the salmon into the foil lined one.
In a mortar and pestle crush the garlic, together with the chilli and ginger until you have a rough paste.
Pile this paste on top of the salmon and press it down so it does not fall off during cooking.
Sprinkle the spring onions over the top and pour over the soy and lime juice. Put this on to steam.
After about 3 minutes put the sugar snap peas on to steam.
Then start cooking the noodles in plenty of boiling water. Make up the miso soup in a big mug. I added some dried wakame seaweed at this stage. Test it for saltiness and add the fish sauce if you need to.
After 10 minutes the salmon and sugar snaps will be cooked. Drain the noodles and put them in the serving bowl. Pour over the miso soup. Gently lift the salmon out of the steamer and place it on top of the noodles. Pour the cooking liquids from the steamer (soy, lime etc.) into the soup. Make sure you get all the spring onions out of the steamer and pile them on to the salmon.

Preserved Lemons in Ireland

I was making a Jamie Oliver recipe for White fish tagine recently and it needed preserved lemons. I looked around for these a bit, but could not find any. I hunted down a recipe on the web and gave it a try myself.
I was sceptical at first. Where was the bitter taste going to go with a bit of added salt and time? Would it really be nice to eat the skin of a lemon in a savoury dish?

I used a bunch of lemons - there are about 6 in the jar preserved, but I used the same again for extra juice.

Method:

Wash the lemons. Unwaxed are best, but I could not get any, so I gave the waxed ones a good scrub.
Cut them into about 8 segments each. Drop these into a layer in the bottom of something like a kilner jar. Sprinkle plenty of salt on top of them. Repeat in layers until all the lemons for preserving are gone, or you run out of jar. Then juice the rest of the lemons - or as many as you need to roughly cover the lemons in the jar. Squish the whole lot down to get them as submerged as possible. Close the jar and wait a month. Leave it at room temperature for this period. Now and again give it a shake to distribute the salty juice. Take a peek whenever you like, they smell great from the start with the lemony tang reducing over time.

The lemons are ready. Take out what you need rinse well and make sure you get any seeds out. I leave teh pulp in, but some people throw that away. They go great in Moroccan style food. The bitterness is gone and they smell and taste great. They are also a talking point for people who come into your kitchen. Making this sort of stuff is way weirder than just cooking :)

Kidney Bean and Salchichón stew

I had a big chunk of salchichon left over in the fridge from a Christmas hamper that I was given. I found this recipe and it was delicious. Even though I was trying to get rid of the sausage when I tasted the end result I was thinking about what sausage to buy next to make this again. Very cowboy.

Ingredients

Ingredients:

1 tin of kidney beans, drained and rinsed
2 medium, or one large potato, peeled and chopped into bite sized chunks
Tin of tomatoes
1/4 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp sweet paprika
4 inch piece of salchichon sausage chopped into bite sized chunks
1 tbsp oil
1 litre of chicken stock

Method:

Heat the oil in a large thick based saucepan. A cast iron pot is ideal if you have one. Cook the sausage for about 10 minutes over a medium heat until it is crispy. Try a bit to make sure it is not still rubbery. Add the spices and fry them for a minute until they release their fragrance. Add the potato, tin of tomatoes and tin of kidney beans and the stock. Give it all a good stir. Bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer for about 30 minutes.

This is the finished article. Would go well with some crusty bread and a green salad.

How to make kimchi

I decided to make some kimchi having read a bit about it. The Koreans credit is with the revival of their nation. Tall order for a food, but worth a try I thought.

Recipe

4 tablespoons of salt
1 litre of water
1 Chinese cabbage (Napa cabbage), sliced into rough 1cm discs
5 radishes, thinly sliced
3 chillies, deseeded and finely chopped
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
5 cm piece of ginger, peeled and grated

Add the salt to the water and mix until dissolved.
Submerge the cabbage, carrots and radishes in the brine and hold down with a plate. Leave this over night.
Next strain the vegetables, but reserve the brine for later.

Make up a sauce. There is a lot of variation between different kimchi recipes, but I prefer the combination of chillies, garlic and ginger given in the list above. Mix them into the drained vegetables.

Put the vegetables into a sealable glass jar. I use a Kilner, but anything with a reasonable seal is fine. The reason for the seal is that you don't want the brine to evaporate. If it does the cabbage rots with nasty consequences for your kitchen. A hard smell to get rid of. You only make this mistake once.

Press the veg down into the jar, flattening out the surface. Pour enough of the brine back in to cover the whole lot. Next you need to weigh down the veg to stop them surfacing. For this I use a jam jar with no lid. Make sure that everything is good and clean first. Lower the jar onto the surface of the vegetables and gently press to rise the brine level up. Seal the jar and leave it on a counter top in your kitchen for about a week until it sours. Once it is sour transfer it to the fridge and eat it at your leisure. It should keep for a good while at this stage, but mine never makes it beyond a week :)

When you are waiting for the kimchi to sour make sure to check it every day. My 'checking' involves taking a good big forkful out to have with my lunch. Kimchi is great as an alternative slaw. Very healthy too. Once you do this check press the rest of the kimchi back into place and replace the jar. Always make sure to use clean hands and utensils when touching the kimchi.

My first effort at this stank the house out. The second was lovely until it soured, then it was really good. My third go is nice (not soured yet), but I added finely chopped onions at the sauce stage and they have made it into a bit of a mess. Bit like brewing, so practice makes perfect.

How to make beef stock from scratch

I have wanted to do this for a while, but could not get my hands on the right beef bones - most butchers make excuses about them being all gone already. Not my butcher in Finglas though. Glad to help and chopped them up nice and small to go in the pot. So here goes.

Get about 2 kg of beef bones - large marrow bones are the ones to get. Place them on a roasting tray along with a couple of halved onions (don't peel them, just take off any dirt) and a bulb of garlic sliced across the middle to expose the flesh of all of the cloves. (Here is a post showing a picture of what I mean about the garlic) and put in a 200 degree C oven for about an hour until well and truly roasted - maybe even a bit burned at the edges.

Scrape all of this off the tray into a large pot (your biggest) and cover with water. Add in some roughly chopped carrots, a leek halved lengthways, a tablespoon of peppercorns - don't crush them and a teaspoon of salt. Bring the whole lot to the boil and let simmer for about 4 hours. Strain it while still hot and throw away all of the solid bits. Let the liquid cool overnight and then skim it. Mine had about 3 mm of hard fat on it at that stage. Then you can reduce the stock by simmering it with the lid off for an hour or 2. Split into batches and freeze until you need it.

There is quite a bit of work in this, but the end result smells quite good (if a little bit weird). I have not tried it in anything yet, but will make a beef stew soon to see how it tastes. This uses a lot of cooker time and is probably one to do if you have a lot to do in the kitchen anyway. Better still if you were using the oven anyway and just slid the bones in beside the other stuff for 'free' roasting.