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The Guilty Cupboard & Lentil Soup
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
It doesn't matter who you are, where you are from or what type of cook you are: we all have what I call a "guilty cupboard" in our kitchens. The guilty cupboard is that one which is eternally jammers with ingredients that were bought out of impulse and never used; these ingredients generally include pastas, grains, flours, flavoured teas, cereals, three types of healthy granola, tins of exotic fruits, sugars, noodles, different types of rice, marinating sauces, jars of exotic pastes, etc. Go on, admit it; you do have one, don't you?
I am now a little over half way through the Market Challenge and the best part is that my "guilty cupboard" has seen the light of day. I have used up a lot of stuff that normally would have found the way into my shopping trolley under false pretense such as 'one day I am really gonna make a great dish with that overly priced wild rice', but that for obvious reasons (mainly that I never got around to make that great dish) ended up in the back of the cupboard only to find the way to the brown bin a year later after a mad kitchen clean up. The last two months have seen my guilty cupboard diminished to I-can-see-what's-in-it levels (which, for my standards, is outstanding).
A couple of days ago, I went to it with gusto when I found a nearly out of date (but not just yet) pack of brown lentils I bought last year. I love lentils: they're good for you, they're tasty and very easy to cook, so for the life of me, I can't understand why I hadn't used that pack in all that time, I bet it was the fact that I didn't even knew it was there! So I took my pressure cooker out, defrosted a pack of frankfurters (not the healthiest of beasts I know, but they my guilty pleasure in chili dogs) and I cooked an old childhood favorite of mine: Sopa de Lentejas Nortenas (Lentil Soup Northern Style) the way my mam used to make it. A word of warning, Northern Mexicans like meat, if you're a vegetarian, keep an eye on the blog for the soon to be blogged vegetarian version of this dish. Enjoy!
Ramirez Red Salsa
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Salsa is one of the most annoyingly misrepresented items in the whole of the Mexican Cuisine (it's up there with Enchiladas and Burritos). Everywhere you go these days you see claims of fresh, authentic, or real Mexican salsa: it is in uninspired menus, in horrid jars in supermarket shelves and in cookbooks with interpretations of Mexican dishes by people who have never had real Mexican food in their lives! I always try not to get too worked up about it, but as you already guessed, I fail at it every time. Yesterday we went for a walk in Dun Laoghaire pier and by pure chance we ended up in one of those restaurants with American Southwestern style food. Now, I'm sure all my American readers would be horrified to see the disservice done to Southwestern food in that menu, but nevertheless, we ended up there and I counted 9 items in the menu with some sort of salsa in them (sometimes I wonder if the whole idea of 'spicing it up' has been taken way too far?). So today, I vow to set the record straight: no more dodgy salsas for you: I give you the Holy Trinity of Mexican Salsa: tomato, chili and onion.
It always amazes me how these three small ingredients can taste so good when made into a Salsa and how different the flavour of the salsa is depending on the type and ripeness of the tomatoes, the type of chili or onions you use and how you cook them: if you roast the ingredients the salsa will be different than if you boil them or fry them. Salsas are a sort of Mexican heritage item; they have been there since before the Spaniards arrived in the American Continent and little or nothing has changed in the way we make them since Aztec and Mayan times. There are tons of different types and recipes and they vary from family to family; I'm giving you here a recipe for a salsa I use regularly at home. Hope you enjoy like it!
Note: I have used generic terms for tomatoes and chili. Please keep in mind that you can use any variety of tomato or chili for these recipe as long as they're fresh. In Mexico we have plum tomatoes widely available and Serrano chili is the preferred choice, but I love it with Jalapeno or the Kenyan chili varieties found easily in Ireland. The most important thing when making your salsa is to use WHOLE chilies. Don't deseed them (it's hard works and all flavour will be gone and you'll be eating what Mexicans would consider just a weed!). If you are worried about them being too hot, use half a chili instead, but for pity's sake, don't take the seeds out!
Easter Egg Crisis! - Part II
Sunday, 24 April 2011
Ok, if you haven't read last night's very late posting, Easter Egg Crisis! - Part I, please do it now (otherwise I'm going to sound like a deranged woman to you on this post). Done it? great! so by now you know that I stupidly forgot to buy Easter Eggs for the Forans, that they don't take nicely to people forgetting Easter Eggs and you have learned of my cunning plan to avoid in laws' utter damnation.
So let me bring you up to speed with my day so far: it's 1:30 p.m. on Easter Sunday and my kitchen has been up and running since 8 a.m. - so what's the big deal, I hear you asking? - well, I did not go to bed till 3:30 a.m. this morning, so this is a BIG DEAL! I prepared the chocolate batter for the cake, which due to my lack of Easter novelty shaped tins, had to be divided in three 5 inch square cakes with a 7 inch round one as base.
Remember this cake has to make it up to seven very angry Forans, so I need flavour and visual impact. I found a bag of Cadbury's mini eggs in my cupboard as well as some Dr. Oetker edible decorations called "Barbie Fun Sprinkles" (go figure why they're called that?) consisting of red, white, yellow and purple balls, hearts and flower shaped bits (refuse to read ingredients in case of too many scary E numbers!), I also found jellies and some blue sugar balls, so they'll be perfect for putting the finishing touches to my Easter Egg Cake.
The chocolate cake recipe I'm using came out of a great book called "Chocolate Cakes for Weddings and Celebrations" by John Slattery, it is a fabulous rich sponge, with bounce and body, perfect for carving or sculpturing cakes. It is not very straight forward to make, but when you've done it once, it will feel far easier to make the next time. I doubled the recipe below to have enough for all my cakes.
I wanted to make a sort of grown up icing, but I did not have enough ingredients to make fondant, so I had to make do with buttercream. It is funny how I always associate buttercream with children cakes. So I decided to experiment with the flavouring of the icing. I love Baileys chocolates, so I made buttercream and flavoured it with Baileys: I will never see buttercream the same again: it was delicious! The Baileys gave it a lovely punch and complimented the flavour of the cake really well. I coloured the butter cream with coco powder for the nest cake and used yellow food colouring gel for the egg icing.
At the end, the cake came out really good, the carving of my egg shape was really difficult so it came out a little wonky, but all was forgiven when they cut the cake and ate it: crisis averte
Easter Egg Crisis - Part I
Sunday, 24 April 2011
One of the things I love about living in Ireland is the addition of Easter to my regular celebrations. In Mexico, Easter is a much more sombre time, you get a lot of Jesus movies on telly and the customary fish on Good Friday plus a plate of capirotada, which is a sort of bread pudding that suffers from a terrible curse: if people actually hear what goes in it, they wouldn't touch it, but believe you me: it truly is divine!
My mam makes a killer capirotada: problem is, as much as I love it, it is one of the few dishes I have failed miserably to reproduce with Irish ingredients only; so another year went by without capirotada in my life, but I keep the faith (and truth be told, I absolutely love chocolate Easter eggs!), which nicely brings me to the reason for my Easter Egg crisis: it is quite simple really, I totally forgot to buy any eggs for the family this year!
I know it sounds very dramatic, but truly, this is capital sin country in the Foran's household; you see, I married into a family who eats, breathes and dies for chocolate. The other half goes through about two kilos of chocolate related goodies a week (no exaggeration!). Forgetting to buy Easter eggs is no joking matter. I have been so busy lately at work that I slipped into a Mexican Easter mood and sort of forgot it was Easter! On top of that, the Forans are not the petrol-station-last-minute-chocolate-egg type, they put thought into buying them, they like a certain percentage of coco in them and organic preferably.
Each year we try and source something different, but I can't really turn up tomorrow to the big family Sunday Easter dinner with a Rollo chocolate egg (which was all what was left at the local food shop today!). So I have devised a plan for tomorrow to save me from total and utter damnation by the in laws: get up early and bake the most amazingly possible chocolate cake EVER! I spent the last hour sourcing recipes and I came across one that I think is going to be awesome! I plan to shape the cake in the form of an egg (if I can figure out how to do it without a proper egg shaped tin!). So wish me luck! I'm going to need it!
To be continued....
Market Challenge - Linguine in Gouda Sauce
Monday, 28 March 2011
I had a date with the other half on Friday: pasta and a movie... problem was, I had no pasta! It was the middle of the week and I couldn't get to a market. Very near home I have a Superquinn, a Supervalue, a Dunnes Stores, an Aldi, a Lidl, a Centra and two Spar shops (big temptation!), but they're all out of bounds during my market challenge, so I thought it would be the perfect time to try and sample some local food shops. I go through Rathgar and Terenure villages on my way to and from work, so on Thursday afternoon I made a pit stop at Terenure Village and went to Nolan's Food Fare for the first time.
Nolan's Food Fare is a family-run business, that has been opened for about a year, but for one thing or another, I hadn't visited before: It's in the wrong side of the road for me (if that makes sense). The shop was a lot smaller than I thought but with a little of everything in it. There's a petite deli, a dairy and meat section, a fruit and veg area, a wine corner, a good selection of Asian, Mexican and Italian foods and even a small section with olives and humus. I was a little disappointed with the ratio of local to imported food (all vegetables, bar the potatoes & parsnips, were imported). The dairy counter is well stocked with Irish produce and the meat section has Irish black and white pudding, sausages, smoked salmon, organic eggs and cured meats, there is also some locally baked bread. The dried goods section was again stocked with mainly imported foods, but I was well impressed with their Italian Section.
I gave the veggies a pass (it's a long way from Mexico for runner beans!), but I bought eggs, bread, double cream, linguine and pene pasta, risotto and Thai rice, a tub of cubed pancetta, 3 tins of chopped tomatoes and a tub of natural yogurt. It all came to 35 euro, which felt a little dear. The staff were really nice and helpful and when I pointed out to the manager that I would have preferred to see more Irish produce in the shelves, he took the point really well and said they try to stock as much Irish as possible but sometimes seasonality presents a problem.
I suppose he was right, we don't eat seasonal any more, it's sort of a lost skill at this point. We're so spoiled with choice: bananas from Mexico, ginger from Peru, Pears from Argentina, Avocados from Israel, Peppers form Spain, tomatoes from Italy, that we don't really stop and think about what's in season any more. Anyways, I paid for my stuff and although a little sore in the pocket, I went home with the happy thought of a romantic Friday night in with my other half. I made Linguinni with mushrooms in Gouda Cheese sauce; although the sauce is not precisely friendly in the aul calorie-intake department, it is absolutely gorgeous and worth a long walk the following day. To accompany the pasta, I defrosted some of the black olive bread (bought in the market on Saturday) and had goat's milk ice-cream with goat's milk caramel sauce on top (sinful); the movie was entertaining and the evening went really well, so here's the recipe, enjoy.
