So we ended up having an incredibly late night on Friday round C and K’s (the ones with the boat - keep up), drinking vast amounts of champagne and Chablis and tucking into a takeaway Chinese.  I was completely toasted and woke up the next day at midday with a hammerdrill playing havoc with the inside of my head (I know, I know - self to blame).  Happily, I saw both C and K down the shop later and they both looked like crap too.

Hubby was back to work yesterday, which meant that the fellas and I got to have pasta - woohoo!  We rounded it off with a celebratory chocolate mousse.  What?  Surely there’s no carbs in chocolate mousse is there? 

Here goes, then:

Half a large bar (about 100 - 150g) of dark chocolate, snapped into squares (we used Bournville and it was fab)

4 fl oz double cream

2 eggs, separated

Another 4 fl oz double cream

So put your first 4 fl oz cream in a saucepan and heat it up - it doesn’t matter if it boils but don’t let it reduce at all.  Take it off the heat and add your chocolate, stirring to melt it all in.  Let it cool down to finger-dipping temp (you know you want to keep testing it).  Meanwhile, separate the two eggs and whisk the whites until they’re at the stiff peak stage (cue stupid ‘holding the bowl over someone’s head’ routine).  When the cream and chocolate mixture is cool enough not to make scrambled eggs, beat in the two egg yolks, then fold in the egg whites gently. 

Put into cups or glasses or something (small portions here, people) and put in the fridge.  Finally, if you’re at English Towers, where everyone feels the need to ponce about with a perfectly decent recipe, you need to whisk a second amount of cream until it’s fluffy and spoon it on top of the mousse the add grated chocolate so it looks like a cappuccino.  Or even fold it gently through so it looks all marbly (we did this at the table making ooh and aah noises, but we don’t get out much).

This is such a good fun recipe to make with kids.  You can slosh a bit of alcohol in the saucepan with the cream and chocolate - dare I suggest Cointreau or Grand Marnier - or a teeny cup of strong espresso.  You can even make a second quantity with white chocolate and layer them up in a wine glass, or maybe pipe it onto little shortcake biscuits for a party.  Did somebody say party…?

So I’ve had ups and downs with my first year of vegetable patch ownership.  For example, the sweet peas went completely mental but didn’t give me a single bloody flower, the pumpkins, coriander and basil all died (too cold? we didn’t really have any sunshine) and the cucumber covered the whole plot in huge leaves and spidery tentrils, but no cucumbers (well how was I to know it was a climber).  On the upside, there are two or three courgettes ready to go, the dwarf french beans have given us a sizeable crop; the fennel, parsley, mint and thyme are all huge and the carrots are surviving .  In the greenhouse, the tomatoes have been fruiting like wild things, but all the fruit is green and the weather is definitely on the turn here (our morning walk was both rainy AND cold - Bert was not impressed).  The aubergine has a tiny fruit but again it might all be too late.

The rhubarb absolutely excelled itself, growing to triffid-like proportions while I scoured local garden centres for one of those terracotta things to ‘force it’.  My kitchen gardening guru, Mr Titchmarsh, says that by the end of summer, the rhubarb will be too tough to eat, but ours has been amazing.  Sunday, then, saw us tucking into the biggest, juiciest steaks ever, complete with home grown french beans, garlic-roasted butternut squash and some very pleasant home made potato wedges  (four or five medium sized potatoes, cut in half, then into four wedges lengthways, blanched in boiling salted water for ten minutes, then tossed in olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper and baked in a 200 degree oven until golden brown and crispy), followed by a huge rhubarb crumble with cream.

For the crumble, then:

Four or five big fat stems of rhubarb

Big splosh of apple juice or water (say 100ml?)

Sugar for sprinkling

6 oz plain flour

Generous teaspoon ground ginger

4 oz butter

4 oz sugar

1 oz porridge oats

Handful of sliced almonds

So preheat the oven to 200 degrees.  I’ve been poaching my rhubarb first as I’ve been freezing some of it, so weigh out your ingredients, then, and wash the rhubarb, chopping into inch-long chunks.  Pop them in a saucepan with your splosh of apple juice and a generous amount of sugar (to taste, but remember it’s sour!).  Let the rhubarb poach gently with a lid on until it’s just tender but not mushy.  Mine took about ten minutes. 

Meanwhile, rub your butter and flour together (not too fine - a lumpy texture is better), then stir in your ginger, sugar and porridge oats.  Spoon the rhubarb into an oven-proof dish, cover it with the crumble mixture and finally, sprinkle over the sliced almonds.  All you’re doing is cooking the top so it should only take about 15 minutes to come out all golden and bubbling. 

There you have it, then: good, fresh food, quickly prepared and happily scoffed.  I had the leftovers with yoghurt for breakfast then next day too.  Mr Atkins wouldn’t like it but hey, them’s the breaks.

So when me Ma was here, we remarked upon the sheer number of big fat blackberries we saw as we were tootling down the boat road with The Bertster ‘Ooh’, said I, ‘I could make some bramble jelly’.

And so it came to pass that I enlisted a bit of child labour and we set about spending a happy afternoon picking blackberries, getting prickled by thorns and comparing our rapidly blackening fingertips.  Every so often, one of us would yell ‘tractor!’ and we’d all have to hurl ourselves into the hedge to avoid being squished.  Much fun then ensued as we set to work in the kitchen, #1 looking fetching in the Homer apron (woo hoo!), making a big mess and a very small amount of bramble jelly.  You don’t have to ponce about with the muslin if you don’t want to (Hubby popped a curious head around the door to find out why #2 was ferreting in the linen cupboard looking for ‘a Muslim’.  Bless.) but I’m not keen on pips.  Horses for courses I guess.  Here we go, then:

1 kilo blackberries

Juice of 2 lemons

About 1lb sugar

8 fl oz water

So, firstly and most importantly, dollop your berries into the sink and add a good handful of salt and tons of fresh water.  All the nasties will die a horrible death and float to the top (one doesn’t want maggot in one’s scone, does one).  Rinse them thoroughly in loads of fresh water, then bung them all in a big saucepan (it really bubbles up so leave loads of room) with the lemon juice and water, bring to the boil then simmer for 20 to 30 minutes until the fruit is all mushy.

Let it cool a bit then strain it, either in a fine sieve, making sure you really squish it through with the back of the ladle, or you can do it the labour-intensive way and tie it up in a muslin or one of those jam strainer things, and leave it to drip overnight if you want clear jelly.  We got impatient and decided to just squeeze the muslin (although #2 did it a bit hard and it all exploded out of the top) to get out as much as possible.  We were left with exactly one pint of juice, which is handy as the jammy scribbles in my old notebook tell me that for each pint of juice you need ½ kg of sugar (by they way, generally with jam you need ½ kg sugar to ½ kg raw fruit).

Add your sugar, then, and bung it back in the saucepan and bring it to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar.  If you’re a flash monkey like me and have a confectionery thermometer, you need the temperature up to about 220 degrees.  Otherwise, just boil it for about five minutes, dollop a teaspoon onto a cold saucer and see if it wrinkles up when you push your finger into it.  If not, leave it another couple of minutes and try again.

Give your jars a whizz in the dishwasher, or thoroughly clean them in hot soapy water then pour boiling water over them, inverting them on clean kitchen towel to dry, then pour in your jelly and add a circle of waxed paper and pop on the lid.  Go back to the jars every five seconds to wobble them impatiently to see if they really are setting, then store somewhere cool until you bake some fantastic scones to slather it upon.  Slurp.

So pastry, then.  Well it’s a bit of a sod, frankly and I try not to bother if at all possible.  I always get it all stuck to the rolling pin (not being the dantiest of bakers) but hey, my family don’t mind my rustic baking.  I was telling me Ma, then, about Bill Granger’s fantastically easy pastry made with melted butter.  He pinched it off Patricia Wells so I, in turn, pinched it off him, then twiddled it a bit (I know, I just can’t help it).  It makes beautiful, shortbready pastry which is perfect for any kind of pie, but specifically for fruit pies as it absorbs a bit of excess liquid and still remains yummy.

It’s dead easy, too:

4oz butter

4 oz caster sugar

6 oz plain flour

So just melt the butter, stir it in to the sugar and then add in the flour, stirring until it makes a nice soft dough, then press it into a loose bottomed tart tin (ooer) with your fingers, pushing it up the edges.  And that’s it - you’re a pastry goddess (or god, natch).  Bung it in a moderate oven (180/gas 4) for about 15 minutes (keep an eye on it, the baking time will depend on the size of tin/thickness of pastry), no baking beans required.

Now to the filling - basically the world’s your oyster: got fresh cherries?  Perfect.  Strawberries?  Yep, those too.  Only got a tin of pears?  They’ll do fine.  Just make sure you drain whatever you use quite well (especially if the fruit was frozen).  Don’t put any extra juice in as, let’s face it, nobody likes a soggy tart, do they.  I sliced a couple of over-ripe pears from the fruit bowl and arranged them not very artfully in the tart base.  Mr Hyper-critical said I should have peeled them first but he still managed to force down about four slices.

Next make your custardy stuff.  If you’re feeling flash, use cream.  Otherwise milk will do just fine too:

2 tbsp plain flour

3 tbsp caster sugar

1/4 pint cream or milk

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract (not essence!)*

Mix the sugar and flour in a bowl, then whisk the eggs, cream and vanilla in a jug, pour into the sugar and flour and mix it all together.  Pour this over your fruit and bake the whole lot (on a baking tray in case of accidents, people!).  It’ll probably take at least 40 minutes to set, but again, this depends on your filling.  It might need a bit longer.

Leave it to cool slightly then slice and serve with cream.  It’s rather yummy cold too.  Can I say here that I didn’t have a wide enough tart tin so my pastry got a little too brown before the centre was cooked.  Hey, at least I’m honest. 

*NOTE: For the poncy amongst us, yes you can put your cream or milk on the hob, split a fresh vanilla pod, scrape out the seeds then warm the whole lot gently, reserving the pod before cooling and adding the rest of the ingredients .  But frankly, it’s just as easy to add a couple of teaspoons of good vanilla extract.  I’ll leave that for you to decide.

Unlike in England, where you’re lucky to find an out-of-date Twix and maybe a curly-edged sandwich, the petrol stations in Ireland are a haven for the half starved motorist.  Practically every one will have a deli selling not only the ubiquitous ‘breakfast roll’, an artery-busting ensemble of sausage, bacon, fried egg and maybe even some black pudding, all levered into an enormous half of a french stick, but that most beloved of items in my children’s eyes: the hot chicken baguette.

Every time we get petrol, there emanates from the back seat of the jeep the most pathetic begging and pleading, and no matter how much I quote Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and give empassioned speeches about the miserable fate of intensively farmed chickens, it all falls on deaf ears.  They don’t give a toss if the chicken was free range, nor even if it was miserable, or even a tad depressed - what they want is a chicken baguette - and when they want it is now.

So faced with this irritating chirruping today, I decided that what my children needed was action and not words, and set about teaching them to make a kinder, healthier alternative to the crap they crave.  It just so happens that the fridge at English Towers generally contains the odd bit of cold chicken, either left over from the Sunday roast or from when I get a large pack of chicken breasts, poach them and use half for chicken noodles.  So when we got home, I cattle prodded them into the kitchen and set them to work:

1 egg

Splosh of milk

Leftover cooked chicken

2 slices bread

Salt, pepper

Olive oil

Butter

So first, crack the egg into the bowl, whisk in a big splosh of milk and then slice each chicken breast into three and dunk in the eggy mixture. 

Meanwhile, set a small child to work with the food processor button (safety first here people, children with stubs for fingers will never make Booker prize winners) reducing the slices of bread to fine breadcrumbs.  Season the breadcrumbs well.

Next, whip the chicken out of the egg mixture and into the breadcrumbs.  Toss until both chicken and child are liberally coated with breadcrumbs.

Finally, heat your oil along with a knob of butter until nice and hot, add your breadcrumbed chicken and fry until golden.

Stuff into a baguette and serve with coleslaw and baked beans.  Yum scrum pig’s bum and a bloody sight kinder than anything Spar can offer.   Hugh would be proud *sigh*.

So our local butcher (well, I say ‘local’, he’s a half-hour drive away) does some really nice finely minced pork.  I usually make meatballs in tomato sauce, but since I’ve done both chicken breasts and lamb shanks (simmer for 2 hours until the meat is falling off the bone) in this sauce recently, I thought I’d try something different.

For the meatballs:

500g minced pork

2 slices bread

Parmesan cheese

1 large egg

Dried oregano

Salt & pepper

For the sauce:

1 red pepper, sliced

1 red onion, sliced

1 clove garlic, thinly sliced

1 glass red wine (and one for the cook)

4 or 5 ripe tomatoes, cut into chunks

1 tin borlotti beans, drained and rinsed

Chilli flakes

Handful basil leaves

So bung the minced pork in a bowl, whiz up a couple of slices of bread in the food processor (I’ve got a little attachment on my hand blender which is really handy for this).  Oh, and if you’ve got some - add a chunk of parmesan in the blender with the bread too.  Add the cheesy breadcrumbs to the mince then break in an egg and add a pinch of dried oregano (perfectly acceptable dried herb, honest) and season generously with salt and pepper.  Squish together until well mixed, then roll into meatballs - I go for lots of small ones but if you want cricket balls that’s fine by me.

Fry the meatballs in a heavy-bottomed frying pan (they tend to release their own oil, but if you have very lean mince you might need a splash).  When they start to brown, add the sliced pepper, garlic and onion.  Continue to cook until the onions become translucent and the peppers start to soften, then add a nice big glass of red wine (or stock if you’re virtuous) bubble away a bit and then add the tomatoes, beans and about half of the basil, along with a generous pinch of dried chilli flakes.  Pop a lid on and continue to cook for another ten or fifteen minutes (longer if you’ve got massive meatballs - ahem) while your rice or pasta is cooking.  Season to taste.

Just before serving, sprinkle over some more fresh basil and grate over some parmesan.  Serve with pasta or rice and the rest of the red wine if you haven’t already drunk it all.  Hic.

So you’ll like this.  My car’s been knackered most of the week, so shopping has been a little difficult.  Hence, an uninspiring bag of chicken breasts in the bottom of the fridge was all that greeted me yesterday, on a mission to prepare something yummy for Sunday lunch.  More rummaging produced a ball of mozzarella, still in date, half a butternut squash and a couple of onions.  Oh.  Undaunted, I set to work and the result wasn’t half bad.  Good enough, in fact, to share with you.  Brace yourself:

Chicken with Tomato, Olives and Mozzarella

2 tbsp olive oil

1 clove garlic, finely sliced

1 large onion, cut in half then finely sliced

6 chicken breasts cut in half, or this would be lovely with big fat pork chops 

1 tin plum tomatoes

Chicken stock

2 tsp sugar

Ball of buffalo mozzarella, torn into pieces

Handful basil

Couple of handfuls black olives, roughly chopped

So heat up the oil (I like a knob of butter in there too, it smells so nice) in a large, heavy-based casserole (oh, for Le Creuset’s new teal range - I love it so).  Bung in your chicken breasts (or pork), season with salt and pepper and just brown on either side.  Remove them from the pan and throw in your garlic and onions, frying until translucent.  Put the chicken breasts back in, adding the olives and the tin of tomatoes.  I quickly whizz the tomatoes with a handheld blender first, purely because #2 doesn’t like big lumps of tomato.

Quick moan here: buy a decent tin of whole plum tomatoes like Napoli or something.  Don’t buy those dreadful tins of chopped tomatoes - they’re so watery and you want a nice velvety sauce with this. 

Add about 1/2 pint of chicken stock (I’m certainly no stock snob, I just bung a cube into the empty tomato tin and fill up with boiling water), season again (I know, but it needs it), sprinkle over the sugar, then give it a stir, cover it and put into a moderate oven (180 degrees) for about 20 minutes (30 if you’ve got fat pork chops).

Just before serving, stir through the torn mozzarella and sprinkle over the basil.  As you serve it, try not to get too cross at the big strings of mozzarella chewing gum that tangle across the plate.  Slurp.

EDIT: I tried this recipe with lamb shanks tonight - increasing the cooking time to two hours and leaving out the mozzarella.  It was incredibly nice.

Ahhh, Hubby and I love the boat road down to the lough.  This time of year it’s filled with the most beautiful sights and smells: the baby burgers and all growing up into potential rump steaks, their mamas still snorting protectively as we pass, the brook gurgles and bubbles, hidden amongst a hundred different wild flowers, butterflies flutter by (sorry) and recently a beautiful, and surprisingly large Pine Marten dashed out in front of us, a teeny baby swinging alarmingly from its mouth.

This time of year, the Elders are in full bloom too.  The beautiful smell makes us both nostalgic - me for the cricket meadow back home, and Hubby for getting up to no good near some trees, probably.  So I happened to mention to Hubby that I’d seen a recipe for them deep fried in a kind of tempura batter.  I’d also squirreled away a recipe for Elderflower Champagne from the River Cottage website (which I obviously then fiddled with) and we resolved to gather a load the next day and give it a go.

Well, it’s not a particularly hard process, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll be left with anything remotely drinkable at the end, but if you’d got some Elderflowers blooming near you, give this a go.  It’s a bit of a laugh:

Elderflower Champagne

Elderflowers (you’ll probably need 20 to 30 flower heads)

2 kg sugar

4 litres hot water plus another 2 litres cold

2 limes, juiced and zested

2 lemons, juiced and zested

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

Dried yeast

So gather your flower heads and give them a quick rinse to get any bugs out.  You’ll need something to make your champagne in - I used a new bucket from Woodies - make sure it’s very clean, obviously.  Pour in the hot water and add your sugar, stirring until it dissolves, then top up to 6 litres with cold water.  Stir in the lime and lemon juice and zest, the vinegar and the flowers.  Now cover the top of the bucket with a clean tea towel or a baby muslin or something (not clingfilm, it needs to breathe), and peg the edges so no flies or icky things can get in.  Leave it somewhere like a utility room - not too hot and stuffy and nice and airy - for a few days then add a couple of pinches of dried yeast, stirring well.  Re-cover and leave for another four days, then strain well (through muslin or a clean cotton cloth) and bottle.

We used screw-top wine bottles that had been sterilised by washing in hot soapy water, rinsing, then baking in the oven.  I’m not sure if this is safe, but nothing exploded so hey ho.  Now you can leave your champagne anywhere from a couple of weeks to six months to mature (in the garage, in case of explosions) before chilling and cracking it open.  Apparently the end result is very mildly alcoholic but makes a lovely mixer with gin too.  I’ll let you know.  Cheers!

So I often get emails asking after Little C and Lou.  D battles cheerfully on, holding down a full time job as well as combining Mum/Dad duties at home.  It’s now, unbelievably, nearly two months since their Mum died and with the added childcare pressures of the summer holidays, it’s a wonder he doesn’t spontaneously combust.

Happily, Little C and Lou are cheerful, muck-in with everybody kind of chaps, so it’s no hardship to have an extra couple of smalls about during the hols.  There are obviously stumbling blocks (I for one feel very weird if I ever have to tell them off), but D also has a lot of support from his wonderful family, so nobody ever feels overwhelmed.  One problem I do have is with food.  Little C, like #2, is not a big eater, and finding something that everyone will eat can sometimes be a struggle.  I’d never be one to force kiddies to eat stuff they don’t like, but I’m not going to let them eat Nutella sandwiches, either.  Happily, with her usual forward planning and attention to detail, C left behind a folder of recipes; everything from how to make mashed potato to how to roast a joint is explained perfectly and, sitting in D’s kitchen the other day flicking through them, I noticed this little beauty.  And do you know what?  It was hoovered up by everyone - even the veg-phobic Little C.

1 tbsp olive oil

2 litres stock

1 onion

1 celery stalk

2 carrots

1/2 swede

1 parsnip

Handful frozen peas

Couple of handfuls red lentils

So heat your olive oil in a large heavy based pan, and chuck in your chopped onion and celery, sprinkle with salt, then fry gently until translucent.  Then add your stock (either defrosted chicken stock, or made with cubes - whatever), and finally chuck in all your chopped vegetables and the lentils.  Bring to the boil and let it bubble away for a good half hour or more until all the veggies are soft.

Whizz in the blender until completely smooth and serve with plenty of warm cheese bread. 

Good ol’ C, eh?

So last night we all sat down for a nice family meal to celebrate the end of term/prizes/the promise of good reports to come (#2 looked slightly green at the mention of those), etc.  I made little meatballs with my lamb kebab mixture, which I baked in the oven, along with some of #1’s famous tomato sauce.

Hubby, generally a stranger to the kitchen (unless there’s scrambling of eggs or anything to do with chillis) contributed this exceptionally good couscous recipe (well, come on, couscous is hardly cooking, to be fair).

8oz couscous

1/2 pint chicken stock

4 tbs olive oil

1 tbs sultanas (or very finely chopped dried apricots would be good, I think)

Couple of sliced spring onions

1 tbs chopped flat leaf parsley

2 tbs chopped mint

4 tbs good olive oil

2 small finger chillis, deseeded and finely chopped (Hubby used 6 and we’re still breathing fire)

Salt and pepper to season

So once your meatballs (or whatever you’re eating this with) are nearly cooked, put the couscous in a bowl along with the sultanas and pour over the hot stock.  Stir, then cover the bowl with cling film or a plate or somethng and leave for five minutes.  Meanwhile, heat your oil in a pan and bung in your very finely chopped chillis.  Swirl around so that the chillis release their oil, then you can turn it off.  After five minutes, when the couscous has absorbed the stock and the sultanas are all plump and lubly, fork the couscous through to fluff it up and pour over your chilli oil.  Add the chopped herbs and spring onions, season to taste and if you want to go mad, serve with a little sprinkling of chopped pistachios. 

Enjoy.  Oh, and an added bonus is that you get lovely minty burps afterwards.  See, not only do I provide you with lubly recipes, but you get fragrant indigestion into the bargain.