When Bord Bia gave me a gorgeous pork loin recently at the Irish Food Bloggers Event, I took one look at the size of it and divided it into two. After all, there are only two and a half meat-eating people at the cottage (that was before we acquired our latest rabbit hunters, a trio of cats who, we hope, will have a longer life span than their five predecessors. But we're not entirely optimistic). As we weren't long back from France and there was a bit of cider around the house, I cut the first piece into thick slices for James Martin's Loin of Pork with Caramelised Apples and Cider. This, however, was a not entirely successful experiment. I cooked the dish during our sunshine-everyday early summer and the sauce was just too rich for a warm evening. The second time round things went... Similar posts

It was dough at the ready for the first Irish food bloggers Twizza Party (think Twitter plus pizza plus party) last Thursday, organised by Reindeersp of Musings of a med student. A gang of newly acquainted bloggers dementedly (or maybe that was just me!) cooked, photographed and tweeted an assortment of delicious pizzas over the course of the evening. My recipe - for a Roast Asparagus, Knockalara Sheep's Cheese and Roasted Hazelnut Pizza - is below, there are pizzas aplenty on the blogs of my fellow Twitter/pizza lovers and you can find us all on Twitter at Twizzaparty. Dinner Du Jour Babaduck Babbles The Glutton I Can Has Cook? Like Mam Used To Bake An American In Ireland Smorgasblog Pizza judge and jury: Lorraine from Italian Foodies, whose La Cucina deserves a special mention for... Similar posts

In our house we really like pizza, especially when the parents aren't about and the cottage turns into the Sunday lunch stop for the Sister, Little Sister and Small Brother. It's easy to make the dough and sauce ahead of time, leaving the final assembly for when everybody turns up. That way they also get to choose their own toppings, which keeps everybody happy. This is how it works: Sunday morningland ingredients into bread machine for cheat's way of making dough. get phone call from still sleepy Little Sister and give her a list of toppings to pick up on the way over. listen to diatribe about how she has to go to camogie training at 10am on a Sunday morning. tell her to pass the list on to the the Small Brother. chop onion and garlic for tomato sauce. while crying over chopped onion... Similar posts

Pancake Tuesday came early at the cottage this year. I always love to have friends come over to eat pancakes but with the Husband getting home from work late and a Little Missy who is decidedly not at her delightful best in the evenings, lunchtimes are a much better time to entertain. Sunday became our Pancake Tuesday so we were able to invite our three Rockmills Neighbours and, as one of the Husband's English Engineer friends was staying with us for the weekend, he - as well as doing a lot of washing up! - also got fed. This year I made a break from the old routine (ie Spinach and Ricotta Pancake Bake) and, inspired by Julia Child's Gâteau de Crêpes à la Florentine from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, made a Gâteau de Galettes avec Poireaux aux Champignons or Buckwheat Pancake... Similar posts

When I lived in New Zealand, cooking was my way of getting to know the (then Boyfriend, now) Husband's family and friends. Three of his sisters lived nearby in Christchurch and they, together with a boyfriend and various cousins, were regular visitors to our house. When I look back on the recipes that I gathered in those days, they rarely were for dining à deux; instead I cooked roasting tins full of Chicken with Garlic and Lemon, made overflowing pans of Beef and Chorizo Pie and baked large dishes of Chocolate Bread and Butter Pudding. Of all those recipes, this one for a Moroccan Lamb and Apricot Tagine, is one that I have returned to again and again and it was my first choice of dish to cook for Glenroe Ladies' Group last week. A tagine, is quite simply, a stew by another name,... Similar posts

When I was small, we had rhubarb growing in the back garden. Whatever variety it was - we had sourced the crown from some friend or relative so there were no labels - it grew gigantic stems, as thick as a baby's wrist, topped by enormous leaves that we thought looked like child-sized umbrellas. I was never a fan: it was so stringy that it had to be peeled before cooking and I was always extremely dubious about any fruit or vegetable that did such a good job of shining the inside of the saucepan in which it was cooked. Now, all grown up, I just can't get enough of rhubarb. When in season, this Irish vegetable - yes, it's a stem vegetable rather than a fruit - is easily found at the market or supermarket if you don't have enough in your garden and it is always reasonably priced. Over the... Similar posts

As a child, autumn was one of my favourite times of year. Going back to school was much eased by the fact that there were blackberries available for eating on nearby hedges, crab apples down the fields to be gathered and plenty of field mushrooms to be picked. This year, Little Missy in her sling for our daily walks, trying to grab any bramble that comes near her, we've been keeping an eye out for plump sloes and watching as the elderberries ripen, while eating lots of blackberries. Last weekend we visited the Galway-based Schoolfriend. A chunk of Saturday afternoon was spent picking blackberries near her house, her three-year-old holding the bowl for us as the Husband, Schoolfriend and I picked the sweet, inky berries. Her 14-month-old kept an eagle eye on proceedings from the... Similar posts

When we were in college, the Brother's Housemate came from a catering household. His mother used to make hundreds of superb Christmas cakes and puddings each year, cook for parties and events and, most importantly to us, make the best Caramel Squares known to students. Living on an unbroken biscuit diet of Cadbury's Chocolate Fingers - our habitual study food (oh, the excitement when a white chocolate variety came on the market) - these were manna from heaven. Every time the Brother's Housemate was able to sneak or was given (we never knew, never asked) a box of them, we would descend on his house like a plague of biscuit-seeking locusts. Although I'll never be able to make Caramel Squares quite as good - the circumstances will never lend themselves in exactly the same way - this... Similar posts

I've always liked to bake. As soon as I was old enough to co-ordinate reading recipes and using a wooden spoon, I was anxious for any cake-making excuse - and most of them involved copious amounts of chocolate. Over the years there have been many good chocolate cakes, from my early attempts using chocolate-flavoured cake covering and marg to (when I started paying for my own shopping!) butter and 70% dark chocolate. This cake, however, although it may not look like much, stands head and shoulders above the rest. I discovered it in the Green and Black's cookbook when we were in New Zealand. We had a friend who was coeliac so I was always on the look out for cakes that were suitable for her and this was a good one. Deep and dark and deliciously decadent, this was a gluten-free cake that... Similar posts

Here's a desert that's perfect eaten outside in the late evening sunshine - or to cheer up a rainy day. There's no real need for quantities as the amounts depend on how many people you are trying to make the strawberries stretch between, how big the glasses are and how greedy your audience! Chop up the fruit before dinner and toss with the sugar so that the juices start to run then assemble the sundaes just before eating so that the biscuits don't get soggy. With each mouthful of sweet fruit, fragrant juice, cool yoghurt and almond crunch you could be almost forgiven for thinking that it's summertime. Strawberry and Peach Sundaes Strawberries Peaches Caster sugar or honey Natural yoghurt Amaretti biscuits Grab a punnet of Irish strawberries: you'll find Wexford-grown berries... Similar posts

Driving to Galley Head Lighthouse is a bit like a magical mystery tour. Although easy to see from a variety of locations along the West Cork coast, the lighthouse - like an ever-receeding mirage - seems to disappear from sight the closer you get. Eventually, however, after driving constantly south of Clonakilty, past numerous private property signs and along a low-lying road, protected on either side by stone walls, you get to where you can drive no further. The lighthouse stands at the tip of a peninsula, surrounded by the sea, and the lighthouse keeper's house that we were staying in is part of a two-sided structure that shelters the parking area at the front from the northern and western winds. We got the perfect weather, opening the window shutters - no curtains could blot out the... Similar posts

A quick marinade to make, with herbs from the garden, while someone else is lighting the barbecue. Avoid chicken breasts - overpriced and tasteless pieces of cotton wool that they are - and grab yourself some cheap and tasty chicken thighs instead. I normally allow two per person or one if I have a lot of other edibles on offer. Because I have a tiny barbecue, I always finish the cooking in the oven to make space for other things - and to make sure that the chicken doesn't dry out too much. Marjoram and Lemon Chicken Large onion - 1, peeled and roughly chopped Garlic - 3 plump cloves, chopped Extra virgin olive oil - 2 tablespoons Lemon - 1, zested and juiced Marjoram or oregano - 1 tablespoon fresh leaves or 1 teaspoon dried Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper Free range... Similar posts

1 saucepan + 1 gas burner + 1 vegetarian + 2 omnivores (1 very much on the carni- side of omnivore) = very simple one-pot cooking in the campsite at night. It's not difficult to do with a small store of non-perishable picnic basket perennials – olive oil, harissa paste, sherry vinegar, grainy mustard, Maldon salt and the tiniest pepper grinder – and a few purchases from the local market and shops, including garlic and onions, sun-warmed tomatoes, the sweetest of sweet peppers, a selection of cheese, pâté and salami (to keep the meat-lovers happy), les oeufs biologique (organic eggs) and a few tins of haricot beans and lentils. All suppers started with chopped onions softening in the pan, the Husband balancing and stirring, while I chopped garlic to cook next and decided what was... Similar posts

Working Saturdays means that any weekend entertaining needs to be planned and organised well in advance, especially when it comes to Saturday night barbeques at the cottage. The Naas Cousin was coming to stay so I grabbed the opportunity to get a few of the cousins together. There wasn't anything complex on offer: free-range chicken drumsticks marinaded for a little while in my thrown together barbeque sauce (mix enough tomato ketchup, wholegrain mustard, cider vinegar, soy sauce and seasonings to coat the chicken. Allow to stand. Throw on barbeque.), some decent meaty sausages, homemade mini-beef burgers and an assortment of roasted vegetables (red and yellow peppers, spring onions, large mushrooms with garlic butter and lemon, sweetcorn with smoked garlic salt). The Husband normally... Similar posts

It's not exactly salad time yet but, when a gloriously sunny Sunday coincided with the local point-to-point races and the family coming round for a pre-race lunch, I couldn't resist poking out an old bag of puy lentils (still working my way through two kitchen's-worth of ingredients!) to combine with the last of our Ushiki Kuri squash. This squash variety is due to become a garden staple - we had a fantastic yield last autumn, they stored well and the skin is thin enough to be eaten, all good things from a small garden patch. I decided to give the squash a Moroccan accent, roasting it with a sprinkling of Ras el Hanout. The current blend that I am using is a sweetly aromatic sachet that I got while in Morocco, and contains, amongst other spices, black and white peppers, cloves,... Similar posts

Sunday was family dinner day. One of the advantages of living in the countryside in North Cork is getting to spend more time with my family - and getting to try out lots of new recipes on them! This time round I decided to go with something very simple - Roast Chicken with Garlic and Lemon. "That doesn't sound like you at all," the Little Sister said suspiciously when I was talking to her on the phone that morning. "What's the catch?" The last time she was around we were talking about serving her rabbit from the back garden so her reserve wasn't entirely unwarranted, although unnecessary on this occasion. A good chicken needs no disguising. I just pushed some lemon thyme under the skin on the breast, tucked a few cloves of garlic and half a lemon inside the cavity and landed it in the... Similar posts

I have made this dish a couple of times for Pancake Tuesday as I love to have a pancake main as well as desert! One of the best things about it is that many of the elements can be made beforehand. This year I made the pancake batter on Sunday, the pancakes and tomato sauce on Monday, then assembled, baked and served on Tuesday. I was feeding six people after work on Tuesday night - hence no pictures! - so I did a double mixture of the pancake batter and also doubled the amount of Simple Tomato Sauce. The ricotta and spinach filling that I use isn't a mile away from the one I normally make for Spanakopita and it's also good when used to stuff cannelloni. Ricotta and Spinach Pancake Bake For the pancakes: Plain flour - 200g Salt - a pinch Eggs - 2 Milk - 500ml Butter - 1 tablespoon,... Similar posts

Our last Bibliofemme bookclub - for The Rum Diaries by Hunter S Thompson - was held at my flat on a rapidly-darkening autumn evening. The previous evening had been cold and dreary as I walked home from my webmaster course so I decided to start a soup, leave it sit overnight, and then finish it off as the girls arrived. I'd recently come across Julie Le Clerk's version of Harira in an old copy of Cuisine so this was a good opportunity to try it out. I had made a meatless version of this last year in Christchurch but this time round I had plans for a complete meal in a bowl, stuffed with lamb, lentils, chickpeas and, after a look at Claudia Roden's version of the fast-breaking soup, haricot beans. This is really one of those soups best made the night before you need it as the flavour... Similar posts

For the last round of European Blogging by Post, I decided to make some Dukkah to include in my parcel for Petula in Italy. An Egyptian blend of coarsely ground nuts, spices and salt that you eat with pieces of crusty bread dipped in olive oil, I had never come across Dukkah before going to live in New Zealand last year. There it is often available at the many weekend markets dotted around the South Island and many food producers - Wild Country, elgani, Attitude Foods - make their own particular variation. Back in Ireland, I was suffering from Dukkah deprivation so, inspired by Claudia Roden (again!), I used her recipe to make this version. Rather than dig my weighing scales out of the press, I used a normal teacup to measure the ingredients in the proportions that Claudia suggested.... Similar posts

On Friday night two friends were arriving in from Cambridge in time for a late supper. They didn't arrive until after 9pm, fortunately, as the previous night at Mackerel and an after-work engagement party ensured that I didn't get home until around half seven. Walking home from town I nipped into Spiceland to pick up some pita breads and a tin of dolmades (rice stuffed vine leaves) and together with a few house basics - potatoes, carrots, chorizo, eggs - decided on a simple tapas-style meal with a Mediterranean flavour. Once cooked, a whiz in the food processor turned the carrots into Spicy Carrot Dip, which I served with the pita breads and alongside some a bowl of natural yoghurt, sprinkled generously with ground cumin. The potatoes, chorizo and eggs all went into one of my current... Similar posts