Bibliocook - All About Food

Award-winning blog of Irish food writer and broadcaster Caroline Hennessy.

Tagged: kiwi

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Do

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig

Irish Food: Slow & TraditionalAh, St Patrick’s Day. There’s very little I can say about this Irish holiday without descending to cliché but, one of the great things about being back in Ireland is that we get a day off work. If you’re not busy drowning the shamrock and having a feed of Guinness in some ‘Orish’ pub around the world (or maybe even if you are!), a big pot of Ham and Pea Soup and a couple of loaves of Irish Brown Soda Bread are as good a way of celebrating as any.Happy St Patrick’s Day!

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Do / Eating Out / Lovely Lunches / Travel

Une vacance surprise à Paris

A Parisian picnic - in our hotel room Last Friday, over a glass of wine and some nibbles at a city centre tapas bar, the Boyfriend – after WEEKS of mystery – handed me my passport and…a guidebook for Paris! He had told me that we were going away for the weekend, we would be spending time in a city and that I had to pack for cold weather. Despite lots of guessing – I thought Galway, or maybe Belfast – I hadn’t even come close to figuring out where we were going.

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Cookery Books / Read / Return to Ireland

Irish Food: Slow & Traditional by John and Sally McKenna & Irish Food: Fast & Modern by Paul Flynn and Sally McKenna ***

irishfood_slow_cook.jpgAlthough these wee cookbooks are small – just 64 pages – they are beautifully formed. The Irish Food books are from the same stable that produces the Bridgestone Top 100 guides to restaurants and places to stay, as well as the Irish Food Guide – Sally and John McKenna’s Estragon Press – they are well worth investing in, and at €3 apiece, they won’t break the bank.

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Food for Friends / Kitchen

Cast iron cooking: Spiced Chicken Tagine

Spiced Chicken Tagine in the new cast iron casserole dish I have become a cast iron convert. A Thursday night dash into a post-Christmas sale at Kitchen Compliments on Chatham Street in Dublin led to me becoming the proud owner of an oval “Racing Green” enamelled cast iron Chasseur casserole dish (the Chasseur range is like Le Creuset but a little cheaper). Well, I started off being proud until I realised how heavy it was and that I had to drag it – with the Boyfriend’s help – to an opening at an art gallery, all the way round the (very large) exhibition, to the after-opening drinks in a local pub, and into a bad Mexican take-away on its way home to my kitchen. It survived its eventful night out in Dublin and, since then, has been put to use on many occasions, some of which have, again, involved trips across town.

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Eating Out / Return to Ireland

An afternoon stop: Avoca Handweavers, Kilmacanogue

Saturday night dinner for friends staying over meant a late night, a not-so-hurried rise on Sunday morning and a similarly delayed breakfast. We badly needed to blow the cobwebs away so we drove down to Brittas Bay for a long walk in the surprisingly warm sunshine (and a brief snooze on the beach!). When we arrived back in the car about 3pm, lunchless, the Boyfriend and I were hungry as hunters. Driving back to Dublin we took the opportunity to turn off the N11 into the branch of Avoca Handweavers in Kilmacanogue. Although initially rather daunted by the long line of lunch-ing and afternoon tea-ing visitors, we were distracted by a blackboard full of intriguing choices. By the time we had decided on dishes, we were almost at the top of the queue and gazing at the generously stocked salad display. More decisions had to be made.

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Food for Friends

Bookclub brunch: Smoked Salmon, Cream Cheese and Potato Frittata

A Saturday morning brunch There are seven members of the Bibliofemme bookclub and, every month, one of us hosts a meeting where we discuss the book distributed at the previous meeting. As I had picked the last book – Witi Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider – all the Femmes were coming round to mine on Saturday and, in a change from our normal night-time get-together, we were meeting at 12pm. Normally we just have nibbles and wine – having taken a vow when the club started not to have anyone slaving over a hot stove – but I couldn’t resist the chance to try out some brunch recipes. Although, having carelessly tossed off an invitation to brunch to six people (normally seven but the Artist couldn’t make it back from London), those recipes seemed to be rather difficult to come by.

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Cookery Books / Read

Tom’s Big Dinners by Tom Douglas

tomsbigdinners_cook.jpg With a subtitle that says, “Big-time home cooking for family and friends” you can’t say that you haven’t been warned. Tom Douglas, with his wife Jackie Cross, is the owner of several restaurants in Seattle one of which, Etta’s Seafood, I’ve heard about for years from a friend that worked there some time ago. As is evident from the cover photograph, he’s a big man with a big appetite – the kind of chef that, in short, you’d trust to cook you dinner or to tell you how to cook your own dinner. Don’t go looking for any nouvelle cuisine in this book ‘cos you ain’t gonna find it. What you will find, however, are plenty of recipes that will make you want to march right into that kitchen of yours and start cooking for crowds.

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Cook / Storecupboard Specials

Comfort food: Dal

Dal with baghar Dal – also known as Dhal – is one of my favourite comforting winter meals. On a cold evening when you’ve got wet through on the walk home and don’t feel like leaving the house again, it is enormously reassuring to find that there’s a packet of red split lentils and some spices in the press and a few onions and garlic looking lonely in the vegetable rack. There are as many recipes for dal as there are vegetarians in the world so if you don’t have the exact ingredients mentioned below, don’t worry. The split lentils, onions and garlic are absolutes but you can play around with all the rest.