Healthy lunches, fruity peanut flapjack and a small moan
So things aren’t going well here at English Towers. In fact, that’s a total understatement. Things are going shite (recession, you b*stard, go take it out on somebody else for a change). Anyhoo, instead of making you read a whole big chuntering moan all about how terrible my life is, I thought I’d tell you about my little trip to the lovely little local school yesterday where I took great pleasure in watching as #2 turned puce with embarrassment as I manned a healthy eating cookery stall. See, they had a fabulous bash for the launch of their new School Healthy Eating Policy, and they kindly invited me along, knowing that I’d be tempted out of my kitchen here at English Towers with the promise of an afternoon of showing off and the chance to embarrass my youngest child.
Now as you probably know, in Ireland there’s no such thing as school lunches. Nope, Sir Jamie of Oliver’s magic wooden spoon hasn’t touched these vibrant shores, and kids are still taking a peanut butter sandwich and a Mint Club to school (ooh, I love Mint Clubs…), furring up their little arteries and basically making themselves into little chubby sumo wrestlers. So in an inspired bit of forward thinking, they took it upon themselves to come up with a healthy eating policy, encouraging the children to bring healthy food in their lunchboxes and banning the undesirables like sweeties, crisps and fizzy drinks.
Yesterday, the school launched their new policy with the help of a fabulous committee of children, a few random Mums (of which I was one) and a very nice lady from the HSE (sorry about the butter thing, Mary, I just can’t bring myself to cook with anything that starts with ‘mono-unsomethingorother). Mrs Galway C and a few other ladies spent hours peeling and chopping masses of fruit and vegetables to give the children the opportunity to taste everything from watermelon to spring onion, and yet more Mums brought in their fabulous home-grown vegetables and fruit (I kept quiet at that point, thinking that the comedy cauliflower from my garden would probably frighten the children). The kids did all sorts of pictures and displays (one of which was a fascinating wall display showing the sugar content of several items represented in actual lumps of sugar – scary).
For my part, I printed up a few healthy recipes and brought along some blueberry muffins, flapjacks with dates and apricots, some easy hummus with lots of dippy vegetable sticks, and a broccoli and salmon quiche (okay, tarte, if you’re posh) for the children to try. Oh yeh, sorry, the recipes:
Fruity Date and Dried Apricot Flapjack
140g butter
2 tbsp peanut butter (or omit and use 170g total butter)
4 tbsp golden syrup or honey
100g brown sugar
30g dates (or chopped nuts)
60g dried apricots, or cranberries work well here too (see pic)
400g oats
So melt the butter along with the peanut butter (if using), golden syrup/honey and brown sugar over a low heat in a large saucepan. Chop the dates (or nuts) and apricots very finely and stir into the butter mixture.
Finally, weigh out the oats and stir them into the mix. Press into a very well buttered non-stick baking tin (I use bake-0-glide as these have the potential to stick, concrete-like to the bottom of the tin). Now, I’ll let you in on a secret, if you let them sit for half an hour before baking, they’ll be even soften and more delicious when they come out. Finally, bake for 15-20 minutes at gas 4/180 degrees until just golden.
Hummus (especially for Anouk):
1 tin chickpeas, drained
2 tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic
Salt and pepper
Squeeze of lemon juice
Place all ingredients into a blender and whiz until puréed. Serve with breadsticks, sliced pitta bread and fresh vegetable sticks for dipping. Hardly a recipe, but very yummy all the same.
There was the odd ‘bleurgh, what’s THAT?’ to the hummus in particular, but plenty more of the kids tried things for the first time, and even vowed to have a go at the recipes at home. And let’s face it, if that makes one less teeny sumo wrestler, you’ve got to chalk it up as a success.
Last word, though, must go to Little Miss Lovely, who, when asked whether she wanted a recipe sheet, waved it away saying ‘oh no, I’ve got the internet’. Bless. My biggest fan.
Grandma Maudie’s Cranberry Teabread
So you know when you have that afternoon lull and you think ‘hmm, what I need is a nice cup of tea and piece of cake?’ Well Hubby had exactly that feeling this afternoon – a sudden, inexplicable craving for Christmas cake. A quick rummage in the cupboards revealed a bit of a motley assortment of half packets of various golden sultanas, raisins and ‘fruit mix’ (arrghhh! Peel!) and it got me reminiscing about when me and the much missed and slightly bonkers Grandma Maudie (you know, the one who used share her evening glass of Baileys with the dog) made an Earl Grey teabread together, back at the original English Towers, my Mum’s lovely pad in leafy ol’ Hertfordshire. We couldn’t find half the stuff we needed, but we ‘made do’ with a right dodgy old selection of pack-ends and bits and bobs – resorting to the cocktail cabinet for a few maraschino cherries too, as I recall. Anyhoo, the end result was fairly pleasant as far as I remember, so I set to work and here’s my approximation, with dried cranberries replacing the cocktail cherries, though!
400g total dried fruit (sultanas/currants/raisins, etc)
50g dried cranberries (or those lovely dried sour cherries would be nice)
200ml hot, strong tea (Earl Grey if you’re posh)
1 tbsp treacle
Juice of ½ lemon
1 egg, beaten
60g golden caster sugar
275g self raising flour
1 tsp mixed spice
So first, measure out 400g of any old dried fruit (don’t listen to those old windbags who guff on about the proportion of raisins to sultanas – they’re all just wrinkly little ugly things, let’s face it (the dried fruit, I mean, not the windbags. Although…). Add in the cranberries, then stir the tbsp of treacle into the hot tea, chuck in the lemon juice and pour it all over the fruit. Leave it, covered, for as long as you can bear (overnight would be brilliant, but at least an hour or two) to really plump up the fruit:
Then when you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 160/gas 3. Generously butter and flour a 2lb loaf tin (yes, even if it’s a non-stick one) and set aside. Beat the egg and stir it into the fruit mixture, then add in the sugar, flour and spice. If you don’t have mixed spice you can just add a pinch each of nutmeg/cinnamon/whatever you do have.
Spoon the mixture into your prepared tin:
… and bake it for about an hour to an hour and a quarter, covered loosely with foil for about the first 40 minutes. When a knife poked into the centre comes out clean, it’s ready.
It won’t keep forever, but it’s rather nice warm spread with a little butter, so you shouldn’t have that problem. Oh and it’s virtually fat free, too. Bit of a bonus, there.
Serve with a nice cup of tea, or, in suitable homage to Grandma Maudie, split a generous glass of Baileys with the dog.
Step by step cheese sauce – comedy cauliflower optional
So one of my happier experiments in the garden were these little beauties. They did have a name, but I’ve bloody forgotten now, although I’m sure Poppy’s Mum or GrowUp, my gardening gurus, will let me know in due course. Yesterday, then, we decided to pick one and test it out.
‘Ooh’, said #1, ‘cauliflower cheese!’.
‘Yum’, said I.
‘Bleurgh’, said the other two.
There’s no pleasing some people.
Here, then, are step by step guidelines to making your own creamy, cheesy sauce. What you do with it is entirely up to you: stir it through pasta and bake for easy mac and cheese, use it to layer through your lasagne, pile it on thick toast and grill it…. frankly, you can smother yourself in it from head to toe if you like… be my guest. Anyhoo, digressing. Here she blows, then:
Firstly, make the cheese sauce:
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp plain flour
About 200g random cheese: I used Wexford Cheddar and Parmesan
400ml milk (ish)
Salt and pepper
Okay, so I know this is all sounding a bit random, but honestly it’s pretty hard to get this wrong. Just melt a nice big tablespoon of butter in a saucepan on a low heat:
Then whop in your tablespoon of plain flour. Keep stirring over a low heat while you ‘cook out’ the flour and make a nice smooth paste (or ‘roux’ if you’re feeling a bit cheffy):
Now slowly mix in the milk, stirring all the time. As it bubbles, the mixture will thicken. If it’s too thick, add a little more milk. Season with a little salt and pepper (purists use white pepper so there’s no black bits) and that’s your basic white sauce. To make it into a cheese sauce, just chop up and add in some random cheese:
I used Cheddar and Parmigiano, but you can use whatever takes your fancy. Red Leicester makes it a pretty colour, and blue cheese makes a ridiculously good sauce for steak or pasta. Word of advice, here, people, courtesy as usual of English Grandma: don’t grate the cheese – you’ll end up with a big clump that takes ages to melt – chunks melt far easier (I’m a mine of useless information, me).
Now, for cauliflower cheese, blanch your comedy vegetable by plunging into some boiling, salted water until just tender:
…pop into an ovenproof dish, pour over your cheesy sauce of choice, top with a little more grated cheese, and bake in the oven at good ol’ 180 degrees/gas 4 for about 20 minutes or until golden and bubbling:
Serve with some big, fat spicy sausages, or a roast dinner, or just on its own as an easy supper. If you’re going for the full body masque, though, go steady on the pepper.
Lessons learned
There’s a little girl (well, I should probably call her a ‘young lady’) in my life who makes me smile every day. She arrives at the door, bang on 7.45am every morning: hair brushed, uniform neat, lunch packed, ready for her lift to the bus stop. She always has a smile, always chats (the dentist went okay, the braces are a bit tighter but don’t hurt too much, she’s pleased about her Dad’s new girlfriend and about the fact that I sewed up her trousers and she’s not treading on them any more) and always waits politely until we’re ready to go (we’re usually waiting for #1 who is scrabbling around finding games kits/lost trainers/bus passes/pencil case…).
This morning at the bus stop, we spy the bus approaching. I wish them a lovely day and they get out of the car, waving me goodbye: my big lad and this lovely girl. As she gets on, she turns and gives me that shy smile. My heart melts.
I smile back at this self assured young lady, shiny in her new uniform, remembering her dancing down the aisle in her beautiful bridesmaid’s dress. Gone is the awkward little thing that hardly spoke, who looked at her feet – or to her Dad – if you asked her a question, and here in her place is a lovely girl, a nearly-teen, enjoying her first term at secondary school, making friends, meeting new people, grappling hefty school bags and new timetables.
Every time I wake up in the morning, groan when I hear the alarm, or worry about the future… money… the recession… the mortgage, I think of this little girl battling through life without her Mum, being a big sister, helping out at home, with a maturity beyond her years and – against all odds – that smile.
Chicken & broccoli pie with step by step easy shortcrust pastry
A funny thing happened on Friday afternoon. A chap knocked on the door and delivered an enormous wicker hamper, stuffed with every possible seasonal vegetable you can imagine. I was in the garden, and was, frankly, slightly confused when #2 came out to find me and declare that ‘some bloke just dropped off a big box of broccoli and stuff’. Anyhoo, it turned out not to be an anonymous food parcel from the locals, (bless ‘em, they’ve had to stand by, helpless, whilst witnessing my shambolic attempts at gardening), but a ‘Best in Season’ hamper from those lovely chaps at Bord Bia, the Irish Food Board. So our weekend was full of absolutely yummy produce, all available right now in an Irish field near you (or a supermarket, if you’re lazy).
Saturday morning, we had a lovely big fry up, along with a huge stir-fry of big, fat tomatoes, lovely fresh mushrooms and some sliced red and yellow peppers. Saturday evening, we had a big pot of leek and potato soup, with some home made cheese bread, and today I set to work making the mother of all pies. So start with the filling then. You’ll need:
1 carrot, diced
1 onion, finely chopped
1 stick celery, diced
4 chicken breasts
1 head of broccoli, split into florets (or 1 leek, which are also fabulous at the moment, sliced)
1 tbsp flour
300ml chicken stock
Slug of double cream
Grab a heavy-based casserole or frying pan, pour in a couple of tablespoons of oil, then throw in the carrot, onion and celery. Fry gently until the vegetables soften, then add in the cubed chicken breasts. A sprinkle of thyme would be lovely here, unfortunately I managed to kill mine. Season well and continue to fry until the chicken starts to go opaque (it doesn’t need to be cooked through), then sprinkle over the tablespoon of flour. Carry on stirring while you pour in the chicken stock and add in a big slug of double cream:
Now leave the chicken on a low heat to bubble gently and reduce a tiny bit while you quickly blanch some broccoli in some boiling salted water and make the pastry.
A Pastry Pep-talk
Now, I feel a little word about pastry is called for here. Let’s face it, pastry’s a pain in the arse. Frankly, EVERYONE is crap at pastry. It falls apart, or it’s too dry, or it sticks to the board… but that’s kind of the point: it’s supposed to look homemade, so if it’s a bit wonky, or you have to patch it or whatever, who cares? It’ll still be a pie that you made with your own fair hands, and infinitely the better for it. There. I’ll get off my soap box now.
There’s no big ‘secret’ to pastry making, although keeping everything cool and using a light touch definitely helps. For a basic shortcrust pastry ‘pie lid’, you’ll need:
115g plain flour
Pinch of salt
60g cold butter, cubed
Couple tbsp cold water
So weigh out the flour, add in a pinch of salt, then throw in the butter.
Now lightly, with just the very tips of your fingers, start to break up the lumps of butter, rubbing them gently into the flour until you get a mixture that resembles breadcrumbs:
Now, sprinkle over a couple of tablespoons of very cold water, and with a knife, start to bring the mixture together:
If it’s a little dry, sprinkle on a tiny bit more, until you can gently bring it together into a ball with your hands:
If you’re doing the pastry in advance, wrap it in clingfilm and leave it somewhere cool (I find it gets too hard in the fridge, but it’s up to you). Otherwise, sprinkle with a little more flour and roll out, turning 1/4 turn with each roll and making sure it’s not sticking, until it’s slightly bigger than your pie dish or casserole.
Back to the chicken, then. Now just drain the broccoli and add in to the chicken. Don’t worry if there seems to be a bit of excess liquid as some will disappear during cooking. Now just roll your pastry lid over your rolling pin and unroll it over the top of your pie. Because I’m lazy, and let’s face it, this is just home cooking, I just leave it in the casserole and fling the pastry lid on top, tucking over the edges, but if you’re entertaining or whatever, you can put the contents into a pie dish and neatly crimp the edges, brushing with a little milk to glaze the top.
And that’s it. Bung the pie in the oven at gas 4/180 for 20 – 30 minutes until it’s golden brown, and serve with more seasonal vegetables (we had honey roasted parsnips, carrots, peas and creamy mashed potato), then just sit back and bask in the glory especially reserved for people who make their own pies.
Go on, you deserve it.
PS: Big, huge thanks to Bord Bia for all my lovely fresh goodies. If you want to know what’s in season now, check out Best in Season for ideas, recipes, stuff for kids, and links to some rather fantastic food blogs *cough*.
The perfect chocolate cupcake
So this week is National Cupcake Week (as if we needed an excuse to eat cupcakes anyway), so I thought we’d go ‘back to basics’ today with a ressup for the perfect deeply darkly chocolatey cupcake with added… (you can get this)… chocolate! ‘Tis dead easy and a thing of beauty. Brace yourselves, then:
For the cupcakes, you’ll need:
200g bar dark chocolate (something with high cocoa solids is best) – remember only half is for the cupcake mix, the other half is for the ganache.
170g butter, softened
170g caster sugar
3 eggs (fresh from the chicken, preferably, but if not, room temperature is better than straight from the fridge)
115g self raising flour
55g cocoa powder
Double cream
First, then, preheat the oven to 180/gas 4. Snap the chocky into squares and melt it in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water (bain marie, blah blah).
Leave it aside to cool slightly while you beat together the butter and sugar until they’re really light and fluffy (did I mention I have a shiny new KitchenAid to perform this task? Yes? Oh okay then).
Now add in the eggs one at a time, beating really well after each addition.
Sieve the flour and cocoa into a bowl and fold them gently into the mixture.
Now, grab your melted chocolate and pour HALF of it into the mixture. Stir briefly to combine.
Dollop into paper muffin cups in a 12-hole muffin tray, or if you’re really greedy and want to make MASSIVE cupcakes, then just make 8 and stuff them very full.
Bake them for about 15/20 minutes (the bigger ones will take longer) or until the centre springs back up when you push it with your finger. Leave them to cool on a wire rack.
Now, for the ganache, take the rest of your melted chocolate, place it into your shiny new KitchenAid (oh yes, okay, you can use a bowl and a whisk if you don’t have one) and whizz whilst gently pouring in just a slosh of double cream. Don’t go mad – you need it thick enough to pile lusciously on top of your chocolatey cupcakes:
Finally, lock the door, take your cupcakes and sit in the corner of the kitchen, stuffing them into your face in a slightly deranged manner. Or if you’re really mental I suppose you could even share them.
The Friday Photo: Bertie Ahern talks shite
I saw this on an advertising hoarding yesterday. Really, this needs no words.
Flares, dead ducks, coop extensions Disney monsters and aliens
So since we bought the two new pullets at the Mullagh Fair, Hubby’s new project, the Great English Towers Chicken Coop Extension, is going quite well. There’s been plenty of drilling and hammering (and swearing), but the finished item will double the size of their roosting/nesting space and hopefully stop Minnie, who was once the lowest in the pecking order and has now morphed into some sort of evil chicken bully, from pecking the new babies to death before they grow old enough to actually lay anything. As soon as Hubby can get ‘this f*cking bit to fit into that b*stard bloody thing there’, then the chooks will have plenty more room to manoevre.
Panini, the new little speckly one, who Mr Lovely thinks might be a Rhode Island Red after all, seems to escape pretty much unpecked, but poor Elvis, the slightly camp-looking Minorcan with the enormous flares (hence the gender dismorphic name) sadly gets the brunt of everyone’s aggression, rushing madly around cheeping and trying to avoid getting brain damage from continually being pecked on the head.
Talking of Mr Lovely, we went up to see their brand new ducks this morning only to find one dead. Poor Middle Lovely had only just put in a pond for them (he’s the teeniest, but most enthusiastic smallholder – it’s pigs next, apparently) and the one remaining duck was waddling about, quacking despondently. I know it’s part and parcel of this smallholding business, but I still felt quite sad. I tried not to cry in front of Mr Lovely though (I’m such a girl), as he and Hubby would never have let me forget it, the gits.
In other news, two more lubly pressies have arrived from the wonderful chaps at Disney (‘good grief’, said Hubby, ‘are you sure you’re not sleeping with anyone at Disney?’). First up was a new Blu-ray version of Monsters Inc. This caused muchas excitement as we’re all big fans, and last night a popcorn and Malteser-fest ensued whilst it got its inaugural viewing. I know I’m scathing about the Hubster’s big ugly monster telly that I’m not allowed to touch – not even to dust – not that I actually ever do dust anything, but still… anyhoo, you really could see every little strand of fur on Sully’s back with the combo of HD TV and Blu-ray disc. (Ooh, listen to me, I’m all technofabulous!)
My other pressie was a new Wii game called Toy Story Mania. Now me and the other Disney 7 girlies had a bloody ball on this ride at Walt Disney World. It changed even the mildest-mannered Dulwich Divorcee into a sharp-shooting, evil killer (‘die, m*therf*ckers, die!’). Happily, shoot ‘em up games are my lot’s absolute fave, and this one’s eye candy into the bargain (I love those little alien thingies – they’re soooo cute!). By the way, my #1 son just looked at this picture and said ‘Mum! You can’t put that on the blog, it says ‘great knob’!!’ Er no, that’s a J, darling.
Oh, and while Hubby’s been building and the kids have been happily killing aliens, I’ve been doing a bit of experimentation in the kitchen. Watch this space for a nice fruity teabread, coming soon!
All the fun of the fair and National Organic Week 2009
So after wondering whether this weekend would be a let-down after last weekend’s shenanigans, it turned out to be enormous fun. The sun shone, #2 had his mate D to stay, and we had a nice evening with D’s Ma, otherwise known as Poppy’s Mum ( my friend and gardening guru, originally from Cork and now from just down the road), her Hubby P and their other two lads. A nice evening was had by all.
Oh and just to explain the name, here’s her baby, Poppy the Peppy Puppy in all her glory. Isn’t she just adorable?:
On Sunday, Poppy’s Mum came to pick up D and mentioned that she was heading to the local Fair at Mullagh. When she mentioned there would be chickens, #2 was desperate to go, so we tagged along. I thought these two little stallholders (or should that be smallholders?) were absolutely adorable:
It was a curious mix, to be honest, from market stalls selling air guns (‘Mum….?’ ‘NO!’), to others selling ducks…
… chickens…
and even pigs and puppies. There was some really lovely Irish produce too. I picked up some of this fabulous Lavender Marmalade from a very nice lady called Ciara from Slievebloom Farmhouse Foods…
…and #2 demolished a couple of these:
Of course, you always get the odd idiot, like the pillock selling two little spaniel puppies out of a crate. I harangued him about leaving them in the heat with no water, and of course was completely ignored. I noticed that two little girls reappeared two minutes later with a bottle of water and he looked on, detached, as they gave the poor little things a drink. Generally, though, it was well run and the animals were well looked after. It was strange to see people heading back to their car with cakes, bags of home-made honeycomb and, erm… chickens!
We bagged a couple of new pullets, a rather pretty Minorcan, with blue black feathers and pretty little ruffled feet(right), and a kind of speckly little version of Minnie, our Rhode Island Red. Not sure of the breed but they’re both very cute:
Oh, and all this talk of Irish food brings me neatly on to my next subject. The lovely lads and lasses at Bord Bia, the Irish Food Board, have asked me to tell you all about National Organic Week here in Ireland. There are tons of events and tastings going on right across Ireland (although none in Cavan…tsk, tsk) where you can go and experience a little bit of Ireland’s amazing organic produce.
Highlights for me would be the Organic Food Market, from 12 noon on 17th September at the Dublin Food Co-op, Newmarket, Dublin 8, or maybe an Organic Farm Open Day & Cookery Demonstration with Clodagh McKenna on 16th September at the Nano Nagle Centre, Ballygriffin, Mallow, Co. Cork. If you’re in Galway, the new Eyre Square Outdoor Food Market has its grand opening on 17th September (grand opening ceremony at 1pm) where there’ll be food demonstrations, sampling (yay!) and live entertainment.
Anyhoo, there’s a full list of events here and if you’re lucky enough to live in Ireland, try to head along to a couple. Meanwhile, I’ll be outside tending my ever-expanding chicken empire. Toodles.
The Friday wedding spesh: the gory details
Okay, so obviously as usual I have to maintain the mystique which means you don’t get to see ALL the shots (email me if you want any more), but I’ve picked out the best moments of our day for you to see. From the top, then:
Mable the Merc gets a pink moustache (thanks Moon!):
Moon and Ali being very silly, part 1. It took me about 14 increasingly cross texts to get them out of the pub, too:
The boogie down the aisle (thanks to my adorable niece Lu for these pics). For some reason I seem to have ‘the claw’ with me again. And corr I could seriously ‘out’ some anonymous bloggers with these photos… you know who you are!!!:
The beautiful cake, forever to be known as the ’6am cake’, as that’s the time she finished making it on the day. ‘One day, the full story of that bloody cake will come out’, said Jen’s other half. Oh, do tell! But seriously, how gorgeous is it? God job, Jen, good job (and there’s that claw again):
Our first dance:
Mad Uncle Ali whirling me around the dance floor (you know it’ll end in tears):
…’erm Alg, you’re going a bit fast…’:
The moment it all went horribly wrong (look at his face, he’s going ‘Sis, what are you doing down there?!’):
Two really ugly gatecrashers. Oh no, hang on, it’s Moon and Mad Uncle Alg being very silly, part deux. Moon later decided that to ensure his lift home didn’t leave without him he would steal Mrs Lovely’s shoes. Every time I saw him after that he was guarding the shoes zealously. It worked, though, they got him home, where me Ma was exasperated with the giggly silly buggering about. Kids, eh?:
And here I am wearing my wedding present from Disney. I couldn’t persuade Hubby to wear his top hat mickey ears, sadly:
Well, it wouldn’t have been the perfect day without a little Disney magic, now would it:
