Tempting tipples...

Several of my work colleagues, it seems, are off the jar for January (meaning, for those unfamiliar with that particular turn of phrase, that they are giving alcohol a miss for the month). One did confess, though, to having fallen off the wagon the other day by way of a mid-week glass of wine and, like any forbidden fruit, it was all the sweeter for that. Now, several days later, I can’t say if that conversation was what prompted me to (a) buy a bottle of white wine or (b) add a glass of same to these potatoes, but it might just have been a factor. What I can tell you is that the potatoes are, without doubt, all the better for the addition.

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Potatoes with Leeks and White Wine

This is an utterly simple preparation – potatoes cooked in a pan with some leeks, garlic, thyme, olives and of course that white wine. If you’re like me, you’ll just eat these on their own for lunch, or they would make a nice accompaniment to a plain omelette, some baked mushrooms or a piece of grilled white fish, along with a glass of that white wine you had to open…

You’ll need:

• olive oil for frying
• butter for frying
• one large leek, white and light green parts finely sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 3 medium-sized potatoes (about 600g total), peeled and cut into approx. 2cm cubes
• 0.5 tsp dijon mustard
• 0.5 tsp salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 150ml dry white wine (one you’d like to drink yourself)
• 150ml hot water
• 3-4 sprigs fresh thyme
• 3-4 tblsp green olives, sliced
• 1 tblsp brine from the olives (optional)

You’ll also need:

• A good-sized frying pan – mine was around 26cm diameter – with a lid

The Steps:

• Place your frying pan over a medium heat and, when hot, add about 0.5 tblsp butter and 0.5 tblsp olive oil. When the butter has melted, add the leeks. Stir and fry for 3-4 minutes or until softened. Add the garlic and stir for about a minute more.
• Add the chunks of potato, mustard, salt and pepper and stir briefly, then add the white wine, hot water, thyme, olives and, if the olives have been stored in brine, add about a tblsp of the olive brine. Stir again and bring the potatoes to the boil, then cover the pan, lower the heat and simmer gently until the potatoes are cooked through and the liquid had reduced considerably – this will take around 30 minutes or so.
• Enjoy these potatoes on their or with eggs or fish or whatever else you fancy.

The Variations:

• You could certainly add some parsley to good effect here or some parmesan cheese if you felt like it. A few capers wouldn’t go astray either.

The Results:

• Makes 2-3 servings

]]> http://www.thedailyspud.com/2012/01/22/potatoes-leeks-white-wine/feed/ 12 http://www.thedailyspud.com/2011/09/28/port-trifle-dessert/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=port-trifle-dessert http://www.thedailyspud.com/2011/09/28/port-trifle-dessert/#comments Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:01:01 +0000 Daily Spud http://www.thedailyspud.com/?p=31415

I won’t delay. It is unseasonably warm outside and, that being such a rarity in this parts, I really should take advantage, but not before leaving you with this month’s contribution to the five star makeover series.

hosted by 5 Star Foodie & Lazaro Cooks!

This month’s theme called for a makeover of dishes where wine was a major ingredient. I chose that old-fashioned triumph of sponge, fruit, jelly, custard and cream, the sherry trifle.

My mini trifle tower

I’ve spent the past couple of months topping up my knowledge of all things vine-related with study for a WSET (Wine and Spirit Education Trust) Intermediate Certificate, which culminated with a final exam last night. The WSET course (ably presented by Maureen from Premier Wine Training), has taught me, among other things, that this champagne from Bruno Paillard is really a rather good one to celebrate with.

Champagne Bruno Paillard

But why bother with a wine course? On a recent taxi journey, I ended up explaining my reasons for same to the driver. Among them, that I was in the habit, through the good offices of this blog, of being invited to wine tastings. His ears perked up.

Taxi-Man: “For free, like? Jaze, that’s a cheap night out, wha?”

Me: “Umm, well, yes, I suppose…”

Taxi-Man: “Wudya drink enough to get drunk, like?”

Me: (diplomatically) “Er, well, if that was your intention…”

Taxi-Man: “Ah, shure it’s great to get something for nothing”

I think the taxi-man would have been horrified if I had told him that, in actual fact, after a certain amount of judicious swirling, a lot of the wine at these tastings gets spat right back out. Rather than shatter his illusions, I thought it best to keep that particular piece of information to myself.

Thing is, of course, that everyone has their own take on wine. Mostly when we buy a bottle, it gets drunk (as, occasionally, do we) within 24 hours. We like some bottles better than others, we perhaps get to know a few brand or grape names that we look out for if we’re buying and we quaff away. It certainly doesn’t require a qualification to enjoy it, though a little education can make the process of choosing wine that bit more hit than miss. The best part, though, is that studying wine, by its nature, involves a lot of tasting. Spitting, the taxi-man will be delighted to know, is entirely optional.

If it was your mission to design a new signature dish for Ireland, suitable for service in the finest restaurants, then just what would that dish be?

That’s the question being asked of chefs and cooks, professional and amateur alike, in a competition being run as part of the Só Sligo Food Festival. The festival, one of an increasing number of food-centric events to be found gracing the Irish calendar, will see that particular corner of the north west awash with edible possibilities from the 16th to the 20th of this month.

As to the question of the signature dish, well, I don’t suppose a bowl of coleslaw would cut it?

An Irish coleslaw: it's certainly got the national colours going for it

And yet this slaw is, in its own little way, an ode to the possibilities of Irish food; a demonstration of what you can do even if native Irish fruit and vegetables are thin on the ground (as they were on my last trip to the supermarket). On that trip, I did, however, manage to find natively-grown savoy cabbage, carrots and bramley apples and introduced them to some Donegal rapeseed oil and a splash of David Llewellyn’s cider vinegar for what was a satisfyingly Irish (and Paddy’s-Day-worthy) slaw.

For all its merits though, I doubt that the restaurants of Ireland will be falling over themselves in the race to serve up a new national coleslaw. As an emblematic Irish dish, it falls down on one point above all else: there are no spuds. Personal bias aside, there is no other food so closely bound to the Irish psyche, so a national dish must, of necessity, have potatoes. That doesn’t mean that they can’t cut a dash, though – might I suggest some individual potato cups as just one way to spruce up the spud.

There are, of course, many other things that can justifiably compete for a spot on the national plate: our grass-fed beef, award-winning black pudding, bacon, whether with or without the cabbage, smoked salmon, trout and mackerel, world-class farmhouse cheeses and, most especially on the western seaboard, our native seaweeds. It is a truly daunting task to decide how best to distill that abundance into a plated essence of Ireland. So much so, that I think, perhaps, I will leave that job to the competitors and stick to the coleslaw after all.

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An Irish Coleslaw

Not having been organised enough to get my greens elsewhere, I found myself in the supermarket skirting past broccoli from Spain, celery from Holland and Chinese cabbage from Turkey (if that’s not a contradiction in terms). Apart from potatoes, other Irish-grown produce was scarce, so this is what I made with the cabbage, carrot and apples that I managed to find. A coleslaw-like dish seemed inevitable.

I opted for a vinaigrette rather than mayonnaise-based dressing and, while you can obviously use the oil and vinegar that you have to hand, it’s good to know that there are native Irish choices available, like Donegal rapeseed oil and David Llewellyn’s cider vinegar. I also used local honey and a homemade Irish beer mustard as part of the recipe.

For the dressing:

• 1 tblsp rapeseed oil
• 1 tsp cider vinegar plus a bit extra for tossing on the apples
• 0.5 tsp mustard or more to taste
• 0.5 tsp honey or to taste
• coarse salt to taste
• freshly ground black pepper to taste

For the slaw:

• approx. 125g carrot (about 1 med. sized carrot)
• approx. 125g bramley apple (about ½ a large apple)
• approx. 125g savoy cabbage (about ¼ of a small head of cabbage – any dark, tough, outer leaves removed)
• 2 spring onions, finely sliced
• 2-3 tblsp chopped flat leaf parsley
• squeeze of lemon juice (optional)

You’ll also need:

• A grater or food processor for grating the carrot and apple.

The Steps:

• Make the dressing by whisking together the rapeseed oil, cider vinegar, mustard, honey, salt and black pepper. Taste and adjust seasonings if you need to.
• Peel and grate the carrot and apple and sprinkle the apple with a little cider vinegar.
• Shred the cabbage, toss together with the carrot, apple, spring onions, parsley and dressing. Brighten with a squeeze of lemon juice if you like, then eat and enjoy.

The Variations:

• Of course this doesn’t have to be an exclusively Irish affair – you can add whatever else takes your fancy. Personally, I wouldn’t be averse to some added interest from, say, toasted sunflower seeds or chopped walnuts.

The Results:

• Serves 3-4 as a side dish

]]> http://www.thedailyspud.com/2011/03/11/coleslaw-recipe-irish/feed/ 19 http://www.thedailyspud.com/2011/01/20/wine-new-zealand/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wine-new-zealand http://www.thedailyspud.com/2011/01/20/wine-new-zealand/#comments Thu, 20 Jan 2011 16:16:39 +0000 Daily Spud http://www.thedailyspud.com/?p=25871 Do you find that choosing wine can be a bit like a game of roulette?

You pick your bottle based on price tag and a vague memory of having drunk something similar in the past. You fill your glass and hope for the best.

Unlike beer, which, generally speaking, you can rely on to taste the same from year to year, this wine stuff just keeps bloody changing.

Harvest after harvest.

And that – depending on your perspective – is either the trouble with it, or the beauty of it.

It undoubtedly makes life interesting for winemakers and wine aficionados, but not a little tricky for you and me. Multiply grapes by regions by styles by vintages and the choices are bewildering. Though we may get to know broadly what it is we like in a wine when we taste it, we may not have the vocabulary to describe it much beyond red, white or bubbly. So we often rely on those more knowledgeable to navigate the vast cellars, taste widely and recommend. With any luck, they won’t come over all poncey in the process.

Pick a glass, any glass...

In my case, and through the good offices of this blog, I’ve been given the opportunity to indulge in tastings and rub shoulders with those who are winewise. The knowledgeable ones were out in force on Monday, at the annual New Zealand trade tasting in Dublin, where I joined them for a couple of hours in a room with about 200 wines, all available for sampling (it is, as they say, a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it…).

Now, assuming that I manage not to become completely trolleyed during the tasting process (which, you would guess rightly, is a challenge in itself), experiences like this do improve the odds of my winning the next hand in the ongoing game of wine.

I might, for example, remember, if and when I see it on the shelves here, that I particularly liked the wines from Omaka Springs Estates, because their sauvignon blanc, pinot gris, reisling and pinot noir all seemed that bit different from the New Zealand norm.

I will also recognise Brancott Estate – the winery formerly known as Montana – and the original makers of Marlborough sauvignon blanc. Difficult to forget, to be honest, especially when you get to meet the winemaker, Patrick Materman, and not for the first time. Difficult, also, to forget that he thinks the 2010 sauvignon blanc may be the best vintage he’s seen in his 20 or so years with the winery. Whilst I am not remotely qualified to be the judge of that particular statement, I can say that when I put this wine in my glass, it feels like I’m holding another winning hand.

Brancott Estate Sauvignon Blanc: the original of the New Zealand species

Brrrrrrrr. So this is winter. Snow, ice and mercury that hasn’t risen above zero for days.

That coldness outside has seeped into my head and is manifesting itself as a dose of Christmas snuffles. Warming liquids are called for.

Pure hot chocolate, made with 100% cacao: good for what ails me...

When it comes to liquid fuel, the Aztecs had the right idea. Steaming, velvety chocolate is a thing of wonder. Not the late night mug of cocoa that we might have grown up with, but a drink made by heating 100% cacao with water and adding however much sugar you like. It feels like a soothing injection of pure energy.

As luck would have it, I had bought a block of Willie Harcourt-Cooze’s 100% Peruvian Black cacao on foot of having attended a chocolate tasting with Deirdre from Co Couture, an award-winning chocolatier based in Belfast. One of the few Temple Bar Chocolate Festival events that escaped weather-cancellation, I slip-slid my way there and learned to judge a chocolate bar by its snap, to inhale its aromas and allow it to linger on my tongue, until it revealed itself as fruity, nutty, smoky, earthy, or perhaps something else entirely. We tasted, among others, some of Willie’s single-origin chocolate bars, which really highlighted both how different and how good chocolate can be, and today, in my mug, a warm, liquefied shot of Willie’s cacao was just about perfect.

Dear Claire,

Can it be a year since you left already? I hope Canada is treating you well and that your Barry’s tea supplies are holding up.

While the news reports hereabouts are generally doomy and gloomy, at least they aren’t a kind of World War Two bad, in which case we’d be looking for you to send your tea back to us!

The Da – your Granda – who, as a young army cadet, was responsible for doling out rations during WW2, tells me that the tea allowance was 3/28th of an ounce per person per day – which I reckon is about a teabag’s worth. With rations like that, you’d be hanging out for the emigrant relations to do the needful and send tea home (like Grannie, who, according to this custom’s declaration, was sent 10lb of tea in 1942 by a cousin who had emigrated to New York).

Declaration for 10lb of tea, sent in 1942 to my Dad's mother from her cousin in New York

And even with the rationing, I’m sure Grannie would have managed some boiled cake to go with the tea.

In fact I thought of you when I found a recipe for ‘Canada’s Cake’ on the inside cover of one of the Ma’s old cookbooks. It’s a version of boiled fruit cake which Ma says that her ma (Grandma) made often, having gotten the recipe in 1924 at a local church bazaar on Valentia Island.

I couldn’t resist making some to mark your first Canadian year.

Happy anniversary kiddo.

Love,
Auntie Spud

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Canada’s Cake

This is my rendition of the recipe for Canada’s Cake as handed down from my Grandma. It’s a boiled fruit cake, where dried fruit is simply boiled in water with some spices and other flavourings, cooled and then mixed with flour and baking soda. It’s an old-fashioned treat that you can eat as is or you might like to spread with some butter if you have it. It’s simple, unfancy, economical and won’t win prizes for elegance, but is still worthy of a place on the teatime table.

You’ll need:

• 450g sultanas (or other dried fruit)
• 200g demerara sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 0.5 tsp gnd cloves
• 1 tsp malt vinegar
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tblsp butter
• 400ml hot water
• 450g plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

You’ll also need:

• I used an 18cm round cake tin that was about 7.5cm deep. This made for a very full tin and very tall cake, which took longer to bake than I’d anticipated. I would be inclined to use a 20cm square tin next time.

The Steps:

• Add the sultanas, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, vinegar, salt and butter to a medium-sized saucepan along with the hot water. Bring to a boil over a medium heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
• Remove from the heat and allow the mixture to cool fully (I left it for about 2 hours).
• When you’re ready to bake the cake, preheat your oven to 150C and grease and line your baking tin.
• Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in a teaspoon of hot water and add to the boiled fruit mixture along with the flour. Mix until combined.
• Scrape the cake mixture into your baking tin and bake until a skewer inserted comes out fairly cleanly. This took about 2 hours for me but start checking the cake periodically after about an hour. You’ll also want to cover the cake with foil at that stage, as any fruit exposed at the top of the mixture may burn.
• Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 30 minutes or so and then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling. Once it’s cool, go and get the kettle on. Any cake that remains after teatime can be wrapped in foil, stored in an airtight tin and should keep for at least a couple of weeks.

The Variations:

• You can really vary the dried fruit and spices according to what you have and what you like.

The Results:

• One old-fashioned fruit cake which will serve one large Irish family for tea.

Well, the answer to that question is almost anything you like.

I mean, you’re more than likely to find oats and butter and sugar, but, really, you can add whatever else takes your fancy (just take a look at Sarah’s five flavours of flapjack post, which is what got me started down this road in the first place). If you’re me, the “whatever else” might just take the shape of some Baileys Irish Cream (which is no more than you would expect from someone (hic!) who has been known to add kahlúa to their porridge…).

Presenting Baileys flapjacks

I’ll admit, though, that the decision to add a splash of Baileys in this case was pretty random. The bottle of Baileys happened into my line of sight as I went about my flapjack-making business and into the flapjacks it went. Simple as that.

At least that’s how it happened the first time.

For subsequent batches (and there have been several), the first step has always been to fetch forth the bottle of Baileys. Very shortly thereafter I will be found scarfing down gobfuls of the uncooked, Baileys-laced mixture. By the time the cooked version (what’s left of it) is gone, well, whaddya know, it’s time to go looking for that bottle again…

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Baileys Flapjacks

The real beauty of these (or any) flapjacks is just how simple they are to make. Melt what’s meltable, add the liquid ingredients to the dry and you’re done. Well, apart from the baking part that is, which you can omit entirely if you just want to eat the raw mixture (and I promise not to tell anybody if you do so).

You’ll need:

• 175g unsalted butter
• 50g dark muscovado sugar
• 2 tblsp golden syrup
• 2 tblsp Bailey’s (or other Irish cream liqueur)
• 0.25 tsp fine salt
• 50g sunflower seeds
• 250g porridge oats (rolled oats)
• 25g dessicated coconut
• 50g dried cranberries or dried sour cherries

You’ll also need:

• A shallow baking tin – mine was 28cm x 18cm x 2cm deep – and parchment paper to line it

The Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 160C and line your baking tin with parchment paper.
• Place a small, heavy saucepan over a medium heat and add the butter, sugar, golden syrup, Bailey’s and salt. Heat until the butter and sugar have melted, stirring periodically.
• Meanwhile, place a small, heavy frying pan over a medium heat. Add the sunflower seeds and toast them, stirring frequently, until starting to brown – about 4-5 minutes.
• In a large bowl, whisk together the oats, coconut, sunflower seeds and dried fruit. Make a well in the centre and add the melted butter mixture. Mix to combine and scrape into your baking tin, flattening the mixture out and pressing it into the tin with a spatula or the back of a spoon.
• Bake in the centre of the oven until golden brown, around 20-30 minutes. Allow to cool in the tin before slicing into squares or bars and, if you don’t scoff the lot straightaway, store what’s left in an airtight tin.

The Variations:

• Of course you don’t have to add Bailey’s – substitute with cream or melted chocolate, leave out altogether or replace with another flavouring. You can also play around with the choice of dried fruit, nuts, seeds and/or chocolate chips.

The Results:

• Makes around 27 6cm x 3cm flapjacks

Not that they’re necessarily wrong about that you understand, but they must think I’m in a truly bad way if they’re sending me five bottles of vodka at a time. Five!

For all you know, these bottles could be quite large

Actually…

I must confess.

The bottles were only little.

Five miniatures containing samples of vodkas from Absolut, flavoured with citrus, ruby grapefruit, pear, raspberry and vanilla, and with cocktail recipes to match. Not that I think you need much by way of instruction when it comes to drinking these little vodkinis. Inhale and you’ll find them like a concentrated fruit cordial, the pears and raspberry especially so. A slice of lime and some tonic or soda water and you have some adult fruity fizziness (and, after working through the full five bottle range, a somewhat sozzled spud – I am nothing if not thorough in the, umm, research that I conduct on your behalves).

All of this was by way of marking Absolut’s sponsorship of Dublin’s upcoming Fringe Festival and their commissioning of new work for the festival by comedy dance troupe Ponydance. All terribly laudable, though I would love it even more if they sponsored a Fridge Festival. Just a suggestion, mind. Food for thought, as it were.

In the absence of such a thing, you should, by all means, go out and enjoy the Fringe Festival (and a cocktail or two) or check out the myriad events happening around the country on the evening of September 24th for Culture Night.

No fridges appearing on Culture Night either (I checked) – but I see that there is a least one performance that evening in the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery entitled Potatoes, which I very much suspect has nothing to do with eating spuds, but I live (and drink) in hope.

“Give them my love”, says he, “and tell them to keep brewing the Smithwick’s for me and for you”.

I think he might just have had a tear in his eye as he wished me well, being quite overcome at the thought that I was on my way to visit the Smithwick’s brewery. Having discovered my intended destination, Anthony’s eyes had lit up and his expression become more animated. At the mention of the Irish ale that is Smithwick’s, he had announced proudly “that’s my drink, so it is”.

We had swapped beer stories and talked about that certain solidarity that exists among Smithwick’s drinkers, perhaps the result of always being the odd one out in a sea of Guinness and lager stalwarts.

Smithwick's through the years

I will admit that, having been a Smithwick’s drinker for years, I was just as excited as Anthony was about my visiting the brewery. Forget that I was leaving a half-unpacked house behind me, a visit to Smithwick’s trumped all.

The new Smithwick's draught tap

Located in the heart of Kilkenny city and, with an impressive 300 year history, Smithwick’s is the oldest operating brewery in Ireland. Only recently opened for tours, with an itinerary that brings you through some of the operational parts of the brewery, and also to the medieval ruins of the 13th century St. Francis Abbey within the grounds of the brewery, this is one for the list if you’re in the Kilkenny area.

St. Francis Abbey

By the time I had glimpsed this Irish beer at various stages of its development and inhaled the warm brewery deliciousness, I might just have had a tear in my eye too. Talking afterward to head brewer Ian Hamilton, I remembered why I had spent such a long time drinking Smithwick’s in the past, even if I had never consciously considered the components of its desirability: a delicate, fruity aroma, natural tawny port colour and balance of bitterness and malt in the taste. Even after almost 30 years as a brewer with Smithwick’s, Ian retains an enthusiasm for the ale that, like the beer itself, is refreshing and leaves you wanting to imbibe forthwith. Which I did.

To the left - 100,000 pints of Smithwick's.
To the right - my first post-tour pint. Only 99,999 more to go.

Indeed, I enjoyed the visit (and the pint) so much that I might just have to visit again when next passing that way – which, with any luck, will be soon. October’s Savour Kilkenny festival, featuring the full breadth of food and drink on offer in the Marble City, is writ large in my diary. If the festival should involve savouring Smithwick’s, so much the better.