Saturday 11th August, The day we ate everything from Temple Bar Food Market! /  by Kevin

Myself & D decided to have a day of eating supplied from Temple Bar, breakfast..twice..lunch..in a cinema..and dinner..with salads.

So breakfast begun with, slices of the most wonderful bread I have ever tasted. The rustic loaf from Le levain Bakery. Topped with sliced seasonal very wonderful and delicious cherry tomatoes from the McNallys and slices of Jamon iberico bellota from The Real Olive Co. finished with a supper fresh poached eggs. There was black pepper from Len's Grains and balsamic vinegar from David Llywelyn. Oh also fried pears from Healy's Organic Vegetables! It was amazing.

Then we moved onto more bread! Toasted. We spread McNally's better and Orange Marmalade over it. Warm, melting and wonderful.

Next it was off to the cinema to see 'El Bulli - Cooking in Progress', I decided that I needed popcorn for the movie and D decided we needed actual food. We decided to go with both. We had a baguette from levain so we came up with a filling of roast tomatoes, D's white bean humus, sliced artichokes and mizuna leaves. I wanted to make 'Thai basil pesto popcorn' With an hour before the movie began we go working on with cinematic treat. With 20min to spare we headed for the lighthouse cinema. Walked into the screen at 15:29 and sat to watch this amazing movies....so amazing. How they look at food, how they treat each individual ingredient, some dishes just consisting of a single ingredient treated in a new and interesting way. I came out feeling very inspired.

The awesome sandwich:

     

The pesto Popcorn:

An artist's rendition of how our popcorn and sandwich looked.*

White Bean Hummus Sandwich

*The artist happens to be D. It's all very handy. She has also designed my new business cards! Click the popcorn if you'd like to see her other work!

I love Temple Bar Food Market, it's close to my home. Some of my favourite people in the world are there let along some of the more delicious food you can get your hands on. I feel honoured to be part of the community.

Supper Happened....kind of...August 1st /  by Kevin

Well...sometimes....things don't work. I think I was being stupid. I wasn't interested enough in the menu, it was half-hearted and because of that it was not a good supper.

I was embarrassed to serve it to people. I charged no one and I would never have paid for what I gave people. To begin I forgot to put the carageen in the panna cotta....I put in agar not thinking...then I just didn't set. So I whipped up a batch of raspberry sorbet. That was nice.

I could not find sea spinach...so I went with spinach. The mushrooms tasted of white wine....in a bad way. The crust on the pastry was pretty much a chestnut crumble under mushroom.

The fritters were fine. The batter was bland and uninteresting.

The salad was its usual self, I have made it before.

I sat at the table and couldn't bring myself to eat more than a bite of each item of food. This supper taught me a lesson, I can not word this lesson but it happened.

This is the end of this post. Not to positive, but I am looking forward. I'm terribly happy with this weeks coming up Secret Supper in the Joy of Cha. It has no meat in it and I am entirely happy to make it and know it'll taste amazing.

.....also...I may have put tarragon in the dip for the fritter instead of rosemary...this I realised at about 1am....for this I have no excuse....

Chocolate Caramel Biscuits /  by Kevin

This is another one of the numerous biscuits myself and the sister make together. I oddly don't have a picture of the finished product. I guess I'll have to make them again.....

What you'll need:

for the biscuit

  • 100g unsalted butter, softened
  • 125g caster sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 175g plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder

for the caramel

  • 1⁄2 of one 379g of condensed milk
  • 3 tablespoon light brown sugar
  • 50g unsalted butter
  • 1 teaspoon golden syrup

for the topping

  • 125g dark chocolate

For the cookies, cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the egg, mix well, add flour and baking powder. Combine. Shape the dough into a log about a thumb in diameter, wrap in cling and leave in a fridge for 1 hour.

When the dough is firm, preheat the oven to 165°C/gas mark 3. Slice about 15 biscuits. Place on a prepared baking tray. Bake for about 15mins. They might be a bit ready beforehand pop them out once they're a pale golden colour. They'll be soft. Leave them on the tray for about 10min and move them over to a rack ro cool.

While the biscuits are cooling make the caramel, place all ingredients in a small pot over a low heat. Stir regularly, allow the mix to thicken. The moment you see the caramel setting on the side of the pan it's ready. Transfer to a shallow pan and cover in cling, let it cool for 30min. Once it's cool, divided it into 15 balls and place it on top of each biscuit. Flatten.

Melt the chocolate over a pan of simmering water. Once it's melted make a mess....or use a slotted spoon. Dip the biscuit into the chocolate and leave to sit on a rack in the fridge to set.

Eat.

Imagine lovely chocolate dipped biscuits.....maybe i'll just make more...and take a photo and eat more....

 

Supper Happened! 25th July! /  by Kevin

Another supper! I'm sorry I'm so behind on these but I'm catching up!...I think. Moroccan food is probably one of my favourite foods. This was also my most prepared and professionally hosted suppers. I was really pleased with how it all came out. Great company as usual and lots of fun!

It was cherry season! I bought cherries. I ate far too many cherries. Took the stones from each....I need one of those stone popper things...but I quite enjoy taking the stones out. Cooked them down with some water and sugar and seived the batch. Left it to cool and made sorbet! Next was the mousse! I like mousse...I've noticed the large number of 'like' in this post. But I liked all of this. The mousse is made with a little spiced rum. It's wonderful and tasty. Lastly I baked the buteer biscuits. My favourite recipe for biscuits. This time I added saffron and lemon zest.

    

I wanted my cous cous to be cold for the supper, so I made it in advance as well. I roasted the squash and mixed in lemon and harissa.

3 hours before my dinner, I made my flatbread dough and left it to rise. Next I moved onto the chicken dish with 1 hour before people arrive. I got this chicken recipe of a wonderful Moroccan-American man by the name of Hassan.I'm very glad to have had the pleasure to have met him and the luck to have received such wonderful recipes from him. If you're ever in New York and happen to be frequenting Dean & Deluca find him and tell him I say hay! The thing I like about Moroccan food is that it is spicy but fresh, citrusy and wonderful all round. It's really a simple dish but has wonderful flavours. I used my own chicken stock to cook it in and it all worked really well.

I turned the oven up to 200°C and rolled out my dough. Flat breads began baking. Last but not least was the clams.....

Sadly I didn't end up with clams for this dinner, we were unlucky and ended up with a Red Tide. I ended up getting my hands on some wonderful mussels. So it was all ok! Panic over. I heated sherry, some water and my dry harissa spice mix. Cooked the mussels for a few minutes about a minute before the mussels were ready to come off the heat I mixed through the samphire. Put some chopped coriander on top. That was it ready to go!

Apologies for the hazy picture. **was organised, forgot to take photos..**

Everything served up. All at once. Bam. We ate, laughed and enjoyed everything.

Dry Harissa Spice Mix /  by Kevin

The next supper was a Moroccan inspired meal. For one of the dishes I wanted to make a broth. I decided to make this spice mix.

What you'll need:

  • 4 teaspoons cumin seed, toasted and lightly ground
  • 4 teaspoons coriander seed, toasted and lightly ground
  • 8 tablespoons dried chilli, chopped finely
  • 4 teaspoons smoked paprika
  • 2 teaspoons seas salt
  • 1 teaspoon caraway seeds, toasted and finely ground
  • 1½ teaspoons garlic powder

In a frying pan place the seeds and toast them till they become fragrant. Don't let them burn. I used a mix of different dried chillis I had floating around. Place all the seeds in a mortar and pestle or dedicated coffee grinder, work them down. Mix all the ingredients together. It's all pretty simple and that's that. Give it a few days to settle and combine.

     

The secret suppers continue! /  by Kevin

It's happening again!

This week I've tried to focus on the best fruit & veg (in my opinion) from Temple Bar Food Market! Hopefully the only things I'll need to go to the shop for will be polenta and flour! It's the usual, €25 for 3 courses, BYOW with a €5 corkage or have a chat to us about other options. Hope to see you there!

Supper Happened! July 18th! /  by Kevin

My first and one of my favourite dinners with my newest accomplice Danielle!

Danielle and I were in Galway at the Film Fleadh, when we came to the decision that it would be great to do a Japanese meal using Irish Seasonal ingredients. The best suggestion was that it would be great to tempura some courgette flowers. I made a quick phone call to the wonderful McNallys, I was informed they were available...provided I appear on the farm the day I was going to use them and hope it wasn't raining.

I wanted the pickled salad and mackerel to be strong and flavoursome. Mackerel only needs 24hrs to pickle safely. I wanted to intensify the flavour so I left it for 2 nights. The salad is a simple bento recipe on a larger scale.

 

Find your veg that you want, chop it into strips pour over a mixture of rice vinegar and sugar leave for up to 3 weeks in the fridge. With the mackerel I used a mixture of  cider vinegar from Llewellyns and white wine vinegar. Cooked it down with a fennel and orange mix. Covered the fish in onions, fennel and poured over the cooled liquid. I wrapped it well and put a heavy weight on top.

      

I wanted to do something different with the seaweed salad this time, I decided to use rhubarb, broccoli and wakame seaweed with a soy/lime dressing. I roasted the rhubarb for 15min at a high heat with ginger and soy. Seared the broccoli with chilli. Mixed everything with the rehydrated seaweed. Dressed it all in the soy and lime and it tasted great.

The plan was to make soba noodles and it almost worked. It got to 8:00pm, went to roll them...dust. Not good. It's life I guess I had done a test batch earlier that day, with some success. I had decided to add more white flour to the mixture. It just didn't come together. These things do happen and I plan to return to them soon. Out I ran to F&B and ran home.

The joy of pickling was it was done ahead of time, sadly I am sometimes a little distracted..D appeared just after 8:30 to see me running around like a headless chicken. None of the tempura stuff ready to go. Within the next few minutes she was in chopping like a pro while I complained about noodles and gluten. But we were back on track. We began by cooking the flowers which worked amazingly well! The rest followed and we were ready to go! The noodles chilled, their dipping sauce waiting them. Salad and fish on the table. We all set down with small plates, bowl and chop stick. Hungry and warm*

*I was mainly warm....I had also put my finger in the hot oil at least twice.

Last but not least was the matcha tea ice-cream. I love making ice-cream I've been making lots of it lately and my confidence has risen. I made brittle to go along with it. Cooked down the red beans to a nice consistency and passed them through a sieve.

Supper Happened! July 11th /  by Kevin

Apologies about that massive delay! It's been all go here lately. There are many plans in the works!

So I decided on this supper around the same time that i had decided to do te July 4th dinner. I had been in Galway and met James McGeogh. Who kindly gave me some of his AMAZING smoked black pudding. James studied butchering for seven years in Germany, where he gained his interests in air dried meats and smoked meat.....anyway, he gave me some of his black pudding and the idea popped into my head that it would go wonderfully with really well with some kind of sweet compote. So I needed a platform to deliver it. I decided that scotch quail eggs would be the answer.

The dinner was well and truly booked out when  found out one of the attendees was wheat and cows-milk intolerant. She offered to eat around anything that contained wheat (she had not looked at the menu) once I explained there was no escaping wheat she offered to not attend, but I insisted that I could make everything to suit her diet. With a few substitutions I soon had a wheat/gluten/cows-milk free meal under way.

I prepared the quail eggs by soft boiling them, letting them cool then wrapping them in the black pudding that I minced further down and added some cream. For the alternative I made  smoked mix of sausage meat and treated them the same. Rolled everything in polenta and left to stiffen up in the fridge.

The yorkshire puddings were a bit more of a challenge in the intolerant department..I used a mix of self raising flour, xanthan gum, egg and goats milk....they were more Yorkshire muffins in the long run, but I was informed were rather tasty. Everyone had steak the one way (no substitutes there) I deglazed the pan with some madeira wine and my salsa verde mix.

Finally came the wonderful challenge of a tolerable pasta. There was a huge amount of ideas, recipes and tips (which always worries me...no has really got a simple working idea for it) I knew I didn't need it to be overly elasticy, so I just needed to make sure there was lots of protein to bind it all together so I decided on fresh duck eggs, with an extra yolk throw in on top for good meusure..

and it worked! Success. I filled all the ravioli and that was that! I was done. Ready to serve and everybody could eat and enjoy.

Here are photo compliments of Liz, who was one of my intolerant people!