Tried & Tested: I Can Has Cook's Sausage and Bean Bake Thingy

There'll be a nail double-whammy coming up this afternoon to make up for missing Talon-tastic Thursday last week, but in the meantime I just wanted to take a minute to direct anyone looking for an easy and delicious wintry dinner to the sausage and bean bake thingy over on fab foodie blog I Can Has Cook?

I made it last week and it was ridiculously NOM, so I'm happy to personally vouch for its tasty ways.

And let's be honest: it's a rather more sophisticated way to combine sausages, bread, and tomatoes than my usual saussie sambo with ketchup effort.

Image source: I Can Has Cook?

Meal-time musings

One of the reasons you won't see me on the Irish version of CDWM and that I could never be a food blogger is, well, I am really not a great cook. I quite like having a go, but trying to co-ordinate the finishing time of different dishes brings me out in a sweat, and my attempts to make my own pastry always end in disaster (which is bizarre because my hands are always freezing.)

The other reason foodie endeavours like these wouldn't work out is because I rarely enjoy the meals that I prepare. I always expect them to be way more delicious than they usually are, which is very disappointing given the amount of effort (and, on occassion, frustrated tears) that goes into them.

While this meal melancholy is obviously bad news for me and drives Himself to distraction (apparently having someone say "Lookit, don't feel that you have to eat it. I know it's not great" doesn't actually add to the dining experience), it's good news for you! It means that any recipes I post or link to resulted in meals that I liked, so they're probably dead easy, look far more impressive than the level of work required to prepare them would indicate, and are wildly tasty.

Case in point: this seared pollack, pea and watercress purée, and oven-roasted tomatoes recipe from BBC Good Food. 

I've cooked it twice, with a few minor adjustments. I substituted some frozen cod with parsley sauce from the Birds Eye Simply "Bake to Perfection" range for the pollack, used petit pois because they came in a smaller bag than the other frozen peas on offer, and added a knob of butter to the purée. It was still gorgeous. Both times. Even Himself, who is not big into green things and has a special dislike of frozen peas, pronounced it tasty.

Both times.

Result!


Image via BBC Good Food

Dutch Apple Cake: NYOM NYOM

Himself has been having a fairly blah couple of days in work, so last night I decided to get my domestic goddess hat on and make a lovely steak dinner and baked-from-scratch-with-my-own-fair-hands dessert.

The fact that I had to check which cut of steak would be nicest and seek confirmation of the proper name of the dessert were only minor details, hardly the sort of little things that would detract from one's claims of domestic goddessticity. Ehem. Cheers to the lovely Babaduck for setting me straight on both counts!

So, we were in Lahinch over the weekend by virtue of a spur of the moment "let's go to the Cliffs of Moher today!" decision on Sunday morning. (Serious kudos to whoever's behind the Discover Ireland ads that are playing in cinemas at the minute, by the way.) We had this gorgeous apple tart thing after dinner in Danny Mac's and I was determined to recreate it last night. 

It was like a deep-fill apple pie with a sort of sponge-like crust and no messing about with cloves. Babaduck reckoned this was more correctly called a Dutch Apple Cake, so off I went to find a recipe to play around with, and here's what I did in the end.

Dutch Apple Cake

Ingredients
» 2 eggs
» 20g caster sugar, 80g granulated sugar pulsed in a blender in an attempt to caster-ise it, and 75g rich dark brown sugar blitzed in a blender to remove the lumps and achieve the texture of caster sugar
(or you could just use 175g caster sugar, if you're fancy and not short of sugar in your household)
» 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
» 85g butter
» 75ml milk
» 125g self-raising flour
» 2 cooking apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 200ºC/175ºC fan/Gas Mark 6. Line the base and sides of a wide baking tin (I used a 9" round cake pan with removable base, which was poifect) with tin foil greased with a little butter. Or you could use parchment paper if you're fancy.

2. Whisk the eggs, caster sugar and vanilla extract in a large bowl until the mixture is thick and mousse-like and the whisk leaves a figure of eight pattern. This, apparently, should take about 5 minutes, but it seriously feels like an eternity. Use an electric whisk or it could actually take an eternity.

3. Melt the butter in a saucepan with the milk, then pour onto the eggs, whisking all the time. Sift in the flour and fold carefully into the batter so that there are no lumps of flour.

4. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth the surface. Arrange the apple slices in layers over the batter. They'll sink a little, but I gently pushed them further into the batter and smoothed some over them as I didn't want apple slices peeking through the surface of my cake.

5. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 180ºC/155ºC fan/Gas Mark 4 and bake for a further 20–25 minutes or until well risen and golden brown.

6. Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool in the tin before serving with your choice of cream or ice-cream (or custard if you're fancy a bit of a weirdo.)

Adapted from 'Bake' by Rachel Allen


Now Himself is a bit of an apple tart snob, but pronounced this to be "Ohm-Go-. Del-shus" through a mouthful of cake, and this morning suggested that it might even be nicer than my gooey chocolate puddings. Which I was delighted with at first, and then a bit offended about on behalf of my choccie puds. 

It was particularly yum, in fairness, and much easier than mucking about with pastry for a real tart. I know all the tips and tricks, but I still absolutely FAIL at pastry. Even the Jus-Rol prepacked stuff is nearly beyond my capabilities. 

Here's my finished, just out of the oven Dutch Apple Cake, looking tasty in its tinfoil skirt!

Is it really only Tuesday?

It's been a long couple of days.

I mislaid my phone on Friday night and so far there is no sign of it. It's like it has shagged off to that place where odd socks go to hide from their mates. (I have a bit of a phobia about mismatched socks.) The house and car have been turned upside down, and while there's no sign of the phonóg I have found a lollipop stick, assorted dust and crumbs, a pair of broken sunglasses, a ring, and the grand sum of €1.47 in change. St. Anthony has been asked for assistance - I'm hoping he'll oblige because I've promised to settle that old outstanding debt with him if he comes through for me. The green bin is the next port of call, but I've been putting that off all day because (a) it's really windy and I don't much fancy running around the estate trying to gather up blown away bits of paper and loo roll inserts, and (b) it's really windy and I don't much fancy being cold.

I rely on my mobile for chats, and since we've no landline and Himself is in the UK for work it's been very, very quiet around here. I would have collared the postman for a good chinwag about the weather if I'd seen him, and am considering pretending that I need milk or something just so that I can go to the shop around the corner to say hello and be asked for the money to cover the cost of my goods and say thanks.

Heady stuff.

Instead, I'm making raspberry and blueberry sorbet, attempting to sort out my car insurance, and trying to ignore a little voice in my head that's telling me to get my act together pronto.

Sure how can I possibly get my act together without a phone?!


Raspberry & Blueberry Sorbet - serves 4
(a "Rachel's Food For Living" recipe)

Ingredients
125g each of raspberries & blueberries
Juice of 1 large lemon
60ml stock syrup*

Method
Liquidise all the ingredients, push through a sieve to strain.

Pour the sorbet mix into a bowl, cover, and stick in the freezer. After 2 hours, take the bowl out and whisk, pop back in freezer.

Or, for complete fecking eejits like me: After 2 hours, take the bowl out, realise that you never strained out the pips, swear a lot, push the mix through a sieve to strain and go back to square one as regards freezing.

Repeat 2 hours later and add one slightly whisked egg white.


* Per the buke, I made 150ml of stock syrup (a.k.a. simple syrup, bar syrup and sugar syrup - so now you know) by putting 200g of caster sugar and 200ml water in a pan, bringing slowly to the boil while stirring to dissolve the sugar, and then boiling for 2 minutes. Set aside to cool before using - I'm keeping the extra in the fridge in a jam jar (minus the jam) for future foodie adventures. It's good for margaritas and the like too - yum.

Better late than never. Or something.

I was catching up with Jen's blog earlier today after my self-imposed Christmas internet hiatus when I came across some real "Now why didn't I think of that?!" stuff.

You see, over the course of the festive season, while I didn't exactly become a full-blown domestic goddess, I did do some baking.

I made my own mincemeat.

I made Himself carrot cake muffins for his birthday.

I made my own mince pies. (Some were star-topped, so the mince sort of oozed through. Some had full-coverage lids. They were all yum.)

And, er, that was about the height of it.

The biggest problem I had, after trying to decide if Himself was just blinded by love when he declared that the edibles he was given to test were fit for public consumption, was transporting the feckin' things. I actually had nothing to put them in. But this evening I discovered that, rather than just wrapping tin foil around baking trays when I was bringing the goodies over to the in-laws (for shame!), I could totally have dickied up a Pringles tube for the mince pies and either a Crunchy Nut Cornflake or Alpen No-Added Sugar box (the cereals of choice in our gaff) for the carrot cake muffins.

Sigh.

Evenin' all...

Have just had dinner (diced lamb marinated in harissa paste and olive oil, cous cous with black olives, feta, basil, oven-roasted red peppers and tomatoes, served with a big dollop of Greek-stylee yoghurt. Oh yes, I iz just dat fancy), watched three episodes of my new favourite telly show How I Met Your Mother back to back, and am now catching up on Sky Plussed The Apprentice while trying to avoid any spoilers and having a glass of Pinot Grigiot and doing some Beaut.ie-ing and thinking about putting weeny multi-coloured pom poms on the purple curtains in the spare room.


Busy busy busy, ha?

What a corker...

I'm an absolute terror for ripping things out of magazines.

Must-try recipes, decorating ideas, make-up looks, cleaning tips, gardening how-tos, oooh-lovely clothes & accessories: nothing is safe from my tearing talons.

I always have BIG plans for organising this stash of miscellaneous clippings, and have put some of them into practice. I have one big scrapbook full of house-y stuff, and another (bigger - too big to fit in the flipping bookcase, d'oh) one that's about half full. However, I also have plastic folders crammed to bursting point with lots and lots of other bits and bobs. They're stashed in a pile about a foot high that's only getting taller, and really needs to be gone through toot sweet.

When IKEA opens in Dublin on 27^th July, I plan to get kitted out with some gear to at least get the recipes organised. My plan is to pick up this cheap-o corkboard:

It's £2.73 in their UK stores, so hopefully they won't try to take the mick and charge a tenner for it here.

We'll see.

Once I've gotten lots of change back out of my five Euro note, I'm going to take it home and carve it up into three sections, each 21cm wide. Then, I'm going to whack them up inside the door of one of the kitchen presses, pin my recipe cut-outs to them, and reduce my clippings pile by, oooooh, about ½ a millimetre.

But sure every little helps. And maybe if I can actually see the flippin' recipes in front of my face every time I open the press, I might be reminded to cook something printed on them.

That's a plan shamelessly ripped off from the Petersik's kitchen (yoink!) and hopefully when I'm through, the inside my cupboard door will look as neat 'n' tidy as theirs:



Yeh, I know.

We'll see about that too!

Sure what Domestic Goddess In Training would be without one?

While having a lazy trawl around the Interweb for an Irish source for the very cool Umbra wallflowers in John & Sherry's gaff, I stumbled across a very nifty idea for a cookbook holder. The Cooknook, above, looks like it would solve nearly all the problems that confront me when I try to cook from a cookbook. Although it won't make the grub taste any better and is unlikely to prevent me cursing at the tome like the fishwife of a sailor, but then it's not magic.

What it would do:
- keep recipes at eye level;
- keep pages out of the way of spashes (and spills, in my case);
- look a bit cooler than the usual fairly gammy cookbook holders you might see about the place;
- fold back up into the fairly useless dead space under the cupboard when not in use, thusly not cluttering up the worktop or taking up room in the back of a press that could otherwise be occupied by some gone off naan breads.

Me likey.

What can I say, I'm a culinary genius. (And modest to boot.)

We are staying in Himself's mother's house for a few days, "babysitting" his 16 year old sister who will be starting her Junior Cert in 15 days time but seems unperturbed by the prospect of looming exams. She's certainly not letting them stand in the way of a hectic social life.

That's really a blog post for a whole 'nother day - this post is mostly me crowing about how I made crab cakes [crab cakes!!! Far from crab cakes I was reared, wha'] for dinner last night. And they were a great success - unheard of for the debut of a meal prepared by moi, because usually it takes me two or three or, ehem, even four attempts of a recipe to work the kinks out. And I never usually like things I've cooked myself; sometimes I think that slaving over a hot stove when you're not *that* into cooking really takes the enjoyment out of a meal.

Anyway, these little laddies looked fantastic and were absolutely deeeeelicious, topped with guacamole and served with a rocket and baby plum tomato salad.

"Delicious" was the general consensus, but Himself's sister was having none of it: she went with spaghetti hoops or some such for her main meal of the day and made various "ewww", pukey, "they're so gross" noises about my lovely crab cakes.

Frankly, though, I refuse to be insulted by the opinion of someone who (a) is a teenager, and (b) thinks that a frozen Margarita pizza is the height of culinary sophistication.

Money Money Money...

So, the winning ticket for Wednesday's big Lotto draw was bought in Tesco in Newbridge. I heard about this when a barrage of women rushed at me in work first thing on Thursday morning and demanded to know when I was last in Newbridge, and if I'd been in to Tesco while I was there. They were all fierce disappointed to discover that no, I wasn't the lucky duck single winner of the jackpot. I'd have thought that the fact that I'd arrived into work rather than taking the day off to go look at big country piles in Wicklow would have been a big tell, but apparently not.

On account of not being millionaires, when we went out for dinner last night we went for an Early Bird menu. By virtue of its location, we wound up in Kitty's Bistro on Baggot Street, which was really only alright. Our brie starters were overdone and not exactly piping hot, Himself's bangers-and-mash mainer was incredibly salty, and our "oh yes, served hot" chocolate fudge brownie desserts were only barely on the tepid side of stone cold - and wierdly hard and crumbly to boot. In fairness, though, I have to say that the cranberry relish accompanying the brie was lovely and my main course [oven-roasted salmon fillet with honey Dijon glaze, rosemary potatoes and veg] was genuinely delish.

Wouldn't be rushing back.

In other news: it looks like I might finally get the spare bedroom painted this weekend! Sing hosannas. Still have to get undercoat up on one of the short walls but then it'll be Farrow And Ball's Strong White [or "light grey" to you and me] all the way. Think I'll toddle off now and do up a moodboard for the room to distract my mind from all the things I could be doing with a grand sum of €14,543,033.00.

Sigh!

Why the dearth of pudding pictures?

So, you may have noticed that no pictures of my Incredible Individual Gooey-Centred Chocolate Puddings have materialised since I last created them on 9th February. There are two very good reasons for this. One is that I forgot to take any pictures.

The other is that I inadvertantly grilled rather than baked them so they didn't rise as majestically as my first batch and were a little bit crunchy-looking on top. NOT very photogenic.

Ah well. Third time's the charm, right..?

Lyndar in "Actually Can Bake" Shocker!

Well, people, I have oodles and oodles of news for y'all, what with having a trip to New York sprung on me on Christmas morning, attending the wedding of our friends Pum & Alex on New Year's Eve, and actually going to NYC for a 6 day jaunt and celebrating my birthday there.

That'll all have to wait, though - right now I have to share with you my culinary success of last night! Pum & Alex called down for their first visit as A Married Couple and something to eat from Himself's shiny new Rachel Allen cookbook. Himself had told me that I was on dessert duty... and that He wanted me to make something from scratch.

I know straight away what I wanted to make - individual chocolate ganache puddings similar to those served by Roly's at the Taste Of Dublin Festival in 2006. [I'm no foodie, but sometimes I dream about those puddings.] After an entire day spent panicking and researching recipes and then panicking at the fact that I don't own a mixer or any similar cooking paraphenalia so how the feck would I make something that lovely, I settled on a bastardisation of a Nigella Lawson recipe. I added a teaspoon of Vanilla essence to the batter to make sure they wouldn't taste flat, and my chocolate of choice was Green & Black's, naturally. Oh, and I used a muffin tin - what non-cook would have ramekins handy, like?

Gooey Chocolate Puddings

Ingredients:
125g best quality dark chocolate, finely chopped
125g unsalted butter
3 large eggs
150g sugar
35g plain flour, preferably Italian 00
Butter and flour for preparing ramekins

Method:
Before you’ve even taken your coat off, put the chocolate and butter in a bowl and suspend over a pan of simmering water. Whisk every now and again until melted. In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar and flour until just blended. Gradually whisk in the melted chocolate and butter. Set aside to rest.

Grease four 250ml ramekins with butter and add flour to cover the butter, tapping the ramekins to get rid of the excess. Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 6/200°C about half an hour before you want to eat pudding. And I’d leave cooking them until you’ve finished the main course. It doesn’t matter if there’s no food on the table for 10 minutes, and these do have to be done on the last minute.

So pour the mixture into the ramekins and put them on a baking sheet in the oven for 10-12 minutes, until the tops are firm and cracking slightly and the edges set. Serve immediately and consider providing a jug of cold, cold cream for people to pour into their pudding’s hotly deliquescing interior as they eat."

Recipe from Greeneyez.co.uk

They really looked the part and, much to the complete shock of everyone present, they were ab-sol-ute-ly delish. I served them fresh-out-of-the-oven warm with vanilla ice cream and quite accidentally overshadowed Himself's fabulous steaks with thick home-made chips. Oopsie!

My only regret is that I hadn't charged the camera since our return from Noo Yawk, so I couldn't document my triumph in pictures. I intend to rectify that on the 9^th February, though, so watch this space!

Domestically disabled... right?

While wandering through Avoca on Suffolk Street looking for C*******s gifts a couple of years ago, I found a mug emblazoned with the above image. It was just so me. In the time-honoured tradition of "a present for you... a present for me...", I decided to treat myself.

I can't cook or bake [I overdo everything because I'm terrified of giving people food poisoning with my offerings] or do laundry [things literally fall apart after I've washed them]. This ineptitude has never really bothered me.

Until now.

Maybe it's just that my 26^th birthday is looming and I'm feeling that I ought to feel too old for non-stop Futurama or That 70s Show, but in the last couple of months I've found myself drawn more and more to all things cooking-y. I find myself watching UKTV Food [damn you, Sky!]; I like the look of Nigella Lawson's offerings. I can even watch and - wait for it - enjoy programmes from Jamie Oliver and Rachel Allen. Thanks to another Rachel, one of my virtual friends from Beaut.ie, I have been introduced to the world of foodie websites via her own shiny new foodie blog, Fairy Cake Heaven. She has me wanting a red heart-shaped Le Creuset pot to make stew and dumplings and brown bread ice cream.

What the hell is happening to me?!

Mmmmmmargaritas

Myself and a crew from work had dinner in Luigi Malone's in Temple Bar on Thursday 03rd August last [I know it's a while ago at this stage, bear with me a sec!] We ordered two pitchers of margaritas for the table - one classic, one strawberry - and they were absolutely de-lish. Since we will be having a house-warming sometime soon [well, as soon as we get the place redecorated coz eh I have a reputation as a bastion of good taste to uphold: no way can I let people see the house in it's current lesbo-riffic state], I e-mailed the folks in Luigi Malone's the day after to beg them for their margarita recipes... and they sent them back to me within the hour! Vay kind of them. So, if you're invited down for the partaa-ay, here's a sneak peek at what you can expect to be supping [the edibles menu has yet to be finalised but hey, we all know this is the most impartant part..!]

Pitcher* of Margarita/Strawberry Margarita**

- 100ml lime juice
- Sour Mix (100ml lemon juice + 100ml lime juice +10gr sugar)
- 175ml tequila blanco
- 75ml Triple Sec/Cointreau

Combine all the ingredients in a shaker with plenty of crushed ice. Shake it up until the shaker's too cold to hold, then strain and pour into a chilled, salt-rimmed margarita or cocktail glass [or serve on the rocks or with crushed ice depending on taste.]

* pitcher size is 3l
** For Strawberry Margaritas, add 275ml of blended strawberries

What goes in...
While it's true that you can’t make a tasty margarita from a crappy tequila, it's also a fact that there's no point in using a truly top-shelf bottle of tequila in a cocktail. If you can at all afford it, do spend the extra bucks to go with a 100% blue agave tequila. The cheap tequilas you probably got drunk on in college are made with only 51% blue agave (the minimum required by Mexican law) with the remainder consisting of pretty nasty distilled spirits that are made from sugar plants. The really cheap stuff will give you one whopper of a hangover, and it doesn’t even taste that good going down.

Tequila is divided into three basic categories: blanco/silver, reposado, and añejo. Blanco is tequila that's bottled without aging, so that it retains the pure, strong flavor of freshly distilled blue agave. Reposado has been aged in oak for between two months and one year; añejo is anything that’s been aged for more than a year. A prime-quality añejo would be completed wasted in a cocktail, as all those subtleties of flavor that make it the fine drink it is would be overwhelmed by the other ingredients. A blanco, on the other hand, or a good value reposado, is perfect for making margaritas. All this is good, since it's unlikely you can afford a premium añejo anyway :p

If you’re not a tequila connoisseur, your first inclination, when you go to the offie to stock up on your margarita mixings, may well be to go with the name brand, that being good ol' Mr. Cuervo, no doubt. Sadly, though it's name is virtually synonymous with tequila, most of the Cuervo tequilas aren't particularly good. They'll make okay margaritas, but for something a little nicer, you could try Hornitos, Herradura Blanco, El Tesoro Blanco, Porfidio Silver or Patrón Silver.

How to rim a glass with salt
Use coarse kosher/sea salt, not your ordinary old table salt for rimming your cocktail glasses – it has a better flavor, and will look nicer too. I find that sea salt straight out of the canister is a bit too coarse to stick easily to the glass, so I recommend mashing it up a bit using a mortar and pestle (not too fine; just squish it around for a minute or two). Pour the salt into a small plate or a shallow bowl that's big enough to accommodate your glass. Wet the rim of your glass with a slice of lime. Dip the rim in the salt, rotating it around if necessary to make sure you salt the entire circumference.

Making margaritas for the masses
If you’re serving up large quantities of margaritas to guests, you’ll save yourself some time and effort by making up a big batch in advance (max. 8 hours beforehand). Combine all the ingredients in a pitcher or similar large vessel, EXCEPT ice. You don’t want to add ice for one very simple reason: it’ll melt, and dilute your beverage. Keep the pitcher in the fridge or on ice in a cooler. If you’re not a tequila connoisseur, your first inclination, when you go to the offie to stock up on your margarita mixings, may well be to go with the name brand, that being good ol’ Mr. Cuervo, no doubt. Sadly, though it's name is virtually synonymous with tequila, most of the Cuervo tequilas aren’t particularly good. They’ll make okay margaritas, but for something a little nicer, you could try Hornitos , Herradura Blanco, El Tesoro Blanco, Porfidio Silver or Patrón Silver.

Tips etc adapted from DigsMagazine.com