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Archive for the ‘All things food’ Category

Baked Bacon & Egg

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , , , , on May 9, 2013 | 1 Comment »

I shared this recipe over on our website…. but thought it was mean not to share it here too as it is totally delicious!

As you will remember we had our Bacon Competition for St. Patrick’s Weekend. I’ve already shared the winning recipe, Bacon & Cabbage Soup, with you, and was full of great plans to try the other recipes in the weeks immediately after, but life as always got in the way.

Finally, today, I got a chance to try Ruth McKenna’s recipe.  Ruth’s recipe is absolutely delicious.

Baked egg, with bacon and sprinkle of black pepper

It was particularly lovely to make them today using our own bacon, first baby spinach leaves from the garden and our own eggs.  Only thing we bought was the goat’s cheese.

We greedily ate 2 each!  You must try this.

Ingredients (for 4 eggs):

  • 4 streaky rashers
  • 4 leaves of spinach
  • 35 g goat’s cheese
  • 4 fresh eggs

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 deg. C

Eggs, spinach, goat's cheese and rashers

 

Grease a muffin tray.  Line each depression with a slice of bacon.  Next add your spinach leaf.  Crumble some goat’s cheese (or feta cheese) in next.  Break an egg over the whole lot.

BakedEgg2

Bake for 15 – 20 minutes depending on your oven and how you like your eggs.

Enjoy!

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An Invitation from Nicholas Mosse

Posted in Recipes, tagged on May 8, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

I was truly honoured recently to be asked to write a post for the Nicholas Mosse Entertainment blog.

Pop on over and read the 2 recipes I shared there…. they are great to serve as a ‘coolant’ with a curry :)

Screen Shot 2013-05-08 at 16.39.30

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Warm Rice Salad

Posted in All things food, Recipes, tagged , , , , on April 7, 2013 | 9 Comments »

This recipe is such a part of our ‘regulars’ here in Redwood, that I never even considered sharing it with you!  That is until Dee from Greenside Up was over and we served this salad with pulled pork.  Dee loved it and asked if it was up on the blog…. and I realised it wasn’t.

And then when Mona and Ron from WiseWords were here…. they said the same…. share!

Talk about what’s right under your nose!  We would probably have this salad once or twice a month.  And I never thought of sharing.  Woops.  :)

Rice Salad

It is perfect with so many things…. barbecued chicken, pork, ribs, duck…. anything at all.

It has been adapted from a very old series of cookery magazines I used to buy.

Ingredients:

  • 2 oranges.
  • Vegetable stock – amount will be explained in a moment!
  • 8 oz basmati rice
  • Cinnamon Stick
  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 2 carrots, sliced
  • 1 pepper, sliced
  • 50 g/2 oz dried apricots
  • 50 g/2 oz toasted nuts – whatever your preference is.
  • Salt and pepper
  • 1 tbsp. white wine vinegar
  • Parlsey.

Method:

Peel one of the oranges and cut the strips into very fine shreds.  Squeeze the juice from both oranges and top up with vegetable stock to bring it to 500 ml/17 fl oz.

Put the rice, orange juice mixture and cinnamon stick into saucepan.  Bring to the boil.  Stir.  Then cover with a tight fitting lid and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes.  Remove from heat and leave to stand for about 10 minutes to absorb last of the liquid.

Stir in 1 tablespoon of olive oil, and keep warm.

Heat the remaining oil in a saucepan and fry off the cumin seeds, stirring frequently.  Add the orange shreds, carrots, pepper, apricots, nuts and salt/pepper.  Fry for 5 minutes.

Mix the rice and vegetables together and stir in the wine vinegar.

Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve.

Enjoy!

 

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Farm Fresh Recipes – A Review

Posted in All things food, Recipes, tagged , , , , , , on March 24, 2013 | 4 Comments »

A couple of weeks ago as I sat here working away at the computer, something caught my eye…. a tweet from the folks at Cico asking for people to review a book.  Now most of the time, these things flash up in front of me and I ignore.   Why did I not ignore this tweet?

I am not sure!  Perhaps what I was working on was just boring me!  Anyway I checked out the link and instantly loved the idea of recipes working through the seasonality of the year.  I immediately signed up and was delighted to receive my copy a couple of days later.

Farm Fresh Recipes by Heather Cameron

Farm Fresh Recipes by Heather Cameron

And what a book…. I love the recipes and the photographs are just totally amazing!  A really beautiful book.

The book starts with the story of how Heather is now a farmer.  Her story is so similar to ours.  Her husband, her Mum and herself bought a house they liked which just happened to be in the midst of a 40 acre farm outside Vancouver.  While we don’t have 40 acres… we bought this house not knowing what we would do with the 5 acres around it!

Heather, the house you bought must have had the same interior decorator as ours!  Paisley borders, blue nylon carpet, swaggy and lacy curtains!  All so so familiar!

Heather’s farm is called ‘Missing Goat Farm’…. there has to be a story there… and I want to hear that :)

But onto the recipes.  There is a wonderful collection of recipes to suit each season.  I cannot wait for my rhubarb to come on so I can try out the rhubarb and rosemary jam – doesn’t that sound such a delicious combination.

Another thing I loved about this book…. the ingredients are listed in both US and European measurements.

The first recipe I decided to try were the little merignue tarts.  Heather makes her lemon curd using Meyer lemons.  I’ve never seen them available here, so I used our regular lemons and followed Darina Allen’s directions for the lemon curd.

Meringue Tarts

Lemon Meringue Tartlet

Lemon Meringue Tartlet

These are so delicious – you could eat an awful lot of them!  You have been warned.

For the Meringue:

  • 4 egg whites
  • 200 g (1 cup) caster sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the Crumb Crust:

  • 125 g (1 1/4 cups) digestive biscuit crumbs
  • 50 g (1/4 cup) granulated sugar
  • 60 g (1/4 cup) butter melted.

Preheat oven to 180 deg. C/Gas 4.

Beat the egg whites until they begin to firm up.  Slowly start to add the sugar.  You may need to stop and scrape down the sides.  Keep beating for about 15 minutes until the egg whites are firm and can stand up on their own and the sugar has dissolved completely.  Fold in the vanilla extract.

Mix the crumb crust ingredients together in a bowl.  Press the mixture firmly into individual, lined muffin pans.

Bake the crust in the preheated oven for c. 10 minutes.  Let the shells cool completely and then spoon in your lemon curd filling.

Pile the meringue high as you can on top of lemon curd.

Bake the tarts in the oven for another 10 minutes, but keep your eye on them, so the meringue doesn’t over brown.

Let cool and then enjoy!

Look at all that lovely lemony gooeyness

Look at all that lovely lemony gooeyness

Farm-fresh Recipes by Heather Cameron can be bought right here.  Trust me you will enjoy it.

Thank you to Cico books for sending me this beautiful book.

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Irish Bacon & Cabbage Soup

Posted in All things food, Recipes, tagged , , on March 16, 2013 | 2 Comments »

So you know we had the competition recently for a ‘bacon’ recipe to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.  Well we had a winner – Paul Hurst who it turns out lives just 10 miles away from us!

We had a number of entries all of which sound so delicious and we will be trying them all out and sharing them with you…. I am especially looking forward to trying the Bourbon Old Fashioned with a bacon infusion!!!!

Poor Barry, our chef judge, from Harte’s Bar & Grill in Kildare had a challenge to choose a winner!  Thank you Barry for taking on the job.

And of course thank you to all who sent in their recipes.

So here is Paul’s recipe for Bacon & Cabbage Soup which he has adapted from Clodagh McKenna’s recipe.  I made a batch for our lunch today…. you should consider making a batch to have before, or after, any parade you might be attending…. it is delicious and warming! :)

Paul did say he adjusts the recipe to taste and by eye!  I had to do the same!  This recipe is a slight variation on Paul’s.

Bacon & Cabbage Soup

Bacon & Cabbage Soup

Ingredients:

  • 5 streaky bacon slices, diced
  • 2 potatoes, diced
  • 1 tablespoon of Oregano
  • 1 onion diced
  • 2 gloves of garlic crushed
  • 1 tablespoon of butter
  • 1 lt of homemade chicken stock
  • 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
  • Salt & Black Pepper.
  • 2 cups (about half a head) of Savoy cabbage, diced

Method:

Melt the butter in a heavy based saucepan, add the bacon, onion, potato and garlic.  Cook over a medium heat for 10 minutes.

Add your stock, tomatoes and oregano and bring to the boil.

Simmer for about 10 – 15 minutes until potatoes have cooked.

Then add your cabbage and simmer for a further 5 – 10 minutes depending on how tender you like your cabbage.

Season to taste.

Irish Bacon & Cabbage Soup

Enjoy your St. Patrick’s Day

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St. Patrick’s Day Recipe Competition

Posted in All things food, tagged , , on February 21, 2013 | 17 Comments »

2013 is certainly flying by!  It is only 3 weeks to St. Patrick’s Day.

St. Patrick in Lorrha!

St. Patrick in Lorrha!

So to celebrate we thought we’d have a bit of a competition….

Do you have a favourite bacon recipe?

Or do you have a bacon recipe that you can give a St. Patrick’s Day twist to?

Are you willing to share your recipe?

We’d love to have your recipes.  We will share them on our website/blog.

We will have an independent professional chef choose his favourite…. and yes, there will be a prize – a box of pork/bacon – for the winning recipe.

The nitty-gritty:

  • The recipe must include bacon!
  • If the recipe is not your own, please give credit to the source.
  • Please include a photograph of your dish.
  • By entering the competition you agree to having your recipe shared on our website.
  • Competition is open to all  but unfortunately the prize – a box of pork/bacon – can only be shipped within the island of Ireland, apologies to those overseas.
  • Closing date is midnight on 10th March.
  • Send your entries to margaret(at)oldfarm(dot)ie

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Galway Foodie Forum

Posted in All things food, tagged , on February 6, 2013 | 16 Comments »

Yesterday we went to the Foodie Forum at GMIT.  It was the second year of the event.

I hadn’t planned on writing a blog post about it, but quite a few people who missed it have asked how it went.  So here goes.

Once again the schedule for the day was pretty full on.  You have to be quite ruthless in your decision-making about what you can attend.

Schedule for Foodie Forum

Schedule for Foodie Forum 2013

I decided that I wanted to attend both debates and also go watch the sushi demonstration.

First debate session was entitled “GM Foods – The Elephant in the Room”.  I won’t go through the entire debate as I believe a video link will be posted on it. Each panelist spoke for approx. 5 minutes and then the debate was open to the floor.

GM debate panelists

GM debate panelists

So here’s my synopsis:

Martin Ruffley  (GMIT) : “As there is no risk perceived (in GM food), it follows that there is no risk”

Seamus Sheridan (Green Party Spokesperson on Agriculture) : “The safety of GM food in the human food chain is not an issue, it is a biodiversity issue”

Eleanor Winters (Nutritional Therapist) : “Even scientists are unsure of how genes will mutate”.

Dr. Ewan Mullins (Teagasc) : “there is no risk of cross-contamination with potato crops”.

In my opinion the two people who spoke the most sense were Eleanor Winters and Dr. Mullins.  Dr. Mullins explained why they had chosen to grow a gm potato crop and admitted that the Teagasc website does not outline their position fully.  I still don’t agree with gm, but I have to admit he spoke very rationally about their position.

I did reprimand/tease Seamus Sheridan later for his headline grabbing statement and told him he should be worried.

Then there was time for a little bit of networking, and a quick bite of lunch.

Sorry guys – this is directed at organisers – do something about the signage!  It took us about 20 minutes to find the ‘street market’…. and yes, we did ask the guides on hand.

A quick bit of very nice pizza, and on to the next debate.

“A sense of place” – The Local Food Story.”  I suspect this debate took a completely different turn to that which was intended!  The chair Ciara Jackson from Grant Thorntons began the debate with some statistics of how much ‘Irish’ food people are now buying.  The panelists then discussed the direction of food tourism and how it can impact on localities, how the ‘story’ is so important to food.

Perhaps, it was my fault, when I suggested that while it is all very nice to think of tourists enjoying our food while they are here, it is really people living here that we (as producers) need to be buying our produce – otherwise the artisan food industry is not sustainable.  So my quotes from this debate would be:

Mona Wise (WiseWords) on the subject of food tourism : “I feel more strongly with every recurring year that our country has no tradition which does it so much honour and which it should guard so jealously as that of its hospitality.” (taken from The Dead by James Joyce)

Seamus Sheridan :  “Every town in Ireland should have a civic food market where local people can access local food’

John McKenna on how to stop the multiples governing food prices : “stop shopping in multiples”

Sean (I believe a butcher) definitely the quote of the day : a tin of pedigree chum costs more than a pack of 6 burgers”

If anything could be taken from this debate I think it would be that we have to try to encourage Irish people to shop local.  I don’t think it is feasible to say ‘don’t shop in multiples’, perhaps a better way would be to ask people to buy more local.  What do you think?

Another thing I think I should point out…. there were far more people at the second debate.  There were an awful lot of producers at the second debate – why did they not attend the first debate on gm?  An interesting question don’t you think.

I never got to the sushi demonstration…. I was too busy doing some more networking!  It was so lovely to meet up with some people I hadn’t seen in years, and to meet new people – way too many to mention on here, but you know who you are!

And for another take on the day check out Sinead’s blog post.

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Redwood Fish Soup

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , , on December 4, 2012 | 4 Comments »

I hate waste.

There is a ‘system’ for leftovers in this house.

Humans → dogs/cats → pigs → hens → compost heap

So last week we had hake for dinner which I cooked a la Neven Maguire’s recipe – Hake with Clams, Fennel and Cherry Tomatoes – except it was minus the clams.  Let me tell you it was delicious.  I had one large piece of hake which was just a little too big for the two of us.

20121203_191236

So next day I had a small piece of cooked hake left and some of the wonderful squashed tomatoes (the last of our own crop).  Now there was no way this was going to the dogs or cats!  Humans come first!

So I decided to try my hand at adapting the recipe and making a soup/chowder with it.  I obviously mustn’t have had much faith in my ability as I never took a photo!!!

Recipe:

Serves 2

  • 1/4 oz chopped chorizo
  • 1/2 onion chopped
  • 4 cherry tomatoes
  • Pinch sugar
  • Pinch paprika
  • Dash of rice vinegar
  • dash of Olive Oil
  • 1 oz butter
  • 1.5 oz flour
  • 1/2 litre fish stock
  • Leftover sauce and fish.

Method:

Heat olive oil and fry off the onion and chorizo for about 3 minutes.  Add in the cherry tomatoes, sugar, paprika and rice vinegar.

In a separate pan, melt the butter and add in the flour.  Cook, stirring continuously for about 2 minutes.  Slowly add in the fish stock a little at the time.  When all blended in, add the remaining mixture, plus your left over sauce.

Bring to the boil.

I blitzed the soup at this stage, which turned it a lovely creamy pink colour.

Flake in your left over fish and serve with some crusty bread.

Enjoy!

 

 

 

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An Irish Minestrone Soup…. almost

Posted in All things food, Recipes, tagged , , , , , , , on November 13, 2012 | 2 Comments »

The weather has been so grey since yesterday….. yes, I’d say there are 50 shades of grey out there…. DEFINITELY!

This is just reminding me that only last week, I was still harvesting (granted from the polytunnel) but there were delicious tomatoes, peppers, and my hugely proud of aubergines! Yes, for the first time ever I managed to grow aubergines (egg-plant to non-Irish folk).

I am not going to let this greyness get in on top of me!!!!

So last week we had the end of harvest mixed bag of vegetables that needed using.

aubergines (eggplant) tomatoes

I thought a variation of Minestrone Soup???

So that’s what it started out as…. but it didn’t end up as soup!!!!

You are probably wondering about the strange mix of vegetables?  I hate to see waste and there were a few bits and pieces lingering that just needed to be used up.  Hence the potatoes went in there too!

Ingredients:

  • 1 onion
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • Olive oil
  • 1 medium aubergine (egg-plant)
  • 1 large courgette (zucchini)
  • 6 or 8 fresh tomatoes
  • Handful of runner beans
  • 1 pepper
  • 2 or 3 small potatoes cubed
  • 1 lt of chicken stock
  • 1 tin of tomatoes
  • Pasta – quantities will be explained in a bit!!
  • Selection of fresh herbs – I used oregano and basil
  • Salt and Pepper

Method:

Finely chop the onion and garlic.  Heat the oil in a large saucepan and gently colour the onion and garlic.

Chop your other vegetables into cubes and add these into saucepan with the stock and the tin of tomatoes.

Bring to the boil, then simmer gently (about 20 minutes) until the vegetables are almost cooked through.

At this point I added in about 2 ozs of Penne pasta with the herbs and seasoning and cooked for another 5 – 10 minutes.

And that was (I thought) my Minestrone Soup ready for lunch the next day!!!!  So you could just stop here!!!!

We did not!

When himself came home….had a taste and smell….. and suggested that it would make a nice pasta bake.  Yes, the carnivore himself, suggested a vegetarian pasta bake!

So next day, I added in a further tin of tomatoes.  About another 4 oz pasta.  Topped it all with Mossfield Cheese.

Baked in the oven for about 25 minutes.  Sprinkle with fresh basil.

Pasta Bake

Comfort food at its best!

And healthy :)

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

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Oldfarm Buttermilk Chicken

Posted in All things food, Recipes, tagged , , , , on November 6, 2012 | 5 Comments »

Do you have this thing going on?  You read a recipe, or mark one and say “I must try that”….. then time passes, days, months, years even and you still haven’t tried it?

Well that’s the way it was with me and this recipe.  Having heard/read about it, probably 4 years ago, I finally got around to doing it last week!!!!

When we get a chicken here – be it one of our own, or a bought in free-range one – generally speaking we portion it out and freeze what we aren’t going to use immediately.  So it was that last week I found 2 or 3 packs of chicken wings in the freezer – they too had probably be lurking about for a while!

We had the buttermilk and I grabbed the opportunity to try the recipe.  So far, so good!

Aha! Not so!

I check the recipes.  I knew Mona and The Chef over at WiseWords had a buttermilk chicken recipe in their book (have you got that book yet? You should!).  Checked out the recipe…. it called for flour (we were all out), and deep frying (I don’t have one)!

It was a day when Alfie was away with the car.  I am home alone, ‘carless’ in Redwood, nearest shop 4 miles away.

Did the ‘google’ thing to come up with some other ideas, and here’s how I adapted the Buttermilk Chicken dish.

Buttermilk Chicken with oatmeal coating

Ingredients:

  • 6 x chicken wings
  • Half litre of Buttermilk
  • 1 tsp brown sugar
  • Salt & Black Pepper
  • 4 oz  Jumbo Oat flakes
  • 4 oz  Pure Gram flour
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds

Method:

Place chicken wings (or whatever portions you are using) in a shallow tray.  Sprinkle with salt, pepper and brown sugar.  Cover with buttermilk.  Leave to soak overnight.

Next day line a baking tray with some parchment paper or tinfoil.  Place a cooling rack on top of baking tray.

Mix your flour, oatflakes and cumin seeds together and dip each piece of chicken into mix to coat.  Place your coated chicken pieces on top of wire rack and leave to stand for about an hour.  (This gives them a chance to dry out a bit.)

When you are ready to cook your chicken pieces, heat your oven to 180 deg.  Place the chicken pieces (still on the wire rack) into oven and cook – the chicken wings took about 30 minutes.  Obviously bigger pieces will take longer.

The oatmeal gives a really crunchy coating to the lovely succulent chicken underneath!

Enjoy :)

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