Blog Guilt 26 Jun 2014 5:43 AM (10 years ago)
Like almost everybody I know, things have been action packed in my world this year. I’ve been having a wonderful time with forkful, making videos and writing columns and plotting next steps. I’ve been writing for different newspapers and magazines and talking about food on the radio.
I’ve set a date for my wedding to Niall for December this year and am doing my best to repress any Bridezilla qualities that may lie dormant – or perhaps not so dormant – in my personality. I’ve been walking Daffodil and trying to look after myself a bit better (I stopped drinking alcohol nearly a year ago) as I get stuck into my 30s. I remain obsessed with beetroots.
Between one thing and the other, there hasn’t been any time for I Can Has Cook? For now, I’ve moved operations under the forkful umbrella and I would love if you joined me there. We have lots of things planned for the future of our food partnership and to fully focus on that I have got to let go of The Blog Guilt. I may return to these pages for my own entertainment in the future but in the meantime thank you to those who continue to check in here. It really means a lot.
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Winter Beets 7 Jan 2014 2:23 AM (11 years ago)
2013 felt to me like the year of the beet. Beetroot hummus was a staple in my house throughout the year, often paired with smoked salmon but sometimes just enjoyed solo on toast. We even made a forkful out of it. One of my most memorable dishes of 2013 was Katie Sanderson’s Beet Bourguignon at the winter Living Dinners feast held in a crumblingly decadent old Georgian house on Henrietta Street at the end of November. That Sanderson sure knows what to do with a beet.
There are a few things I would like to leave behind in 2013 (overindulging my fondness for the naughty things in life, my propensity for panic and my inability to organise my finances) but beetroots are definitely something I’m taking with me as I head towards the future.
Over the holiday break, I found this Nigel Slater recipe for roast beets and halloumi cheese and served it up for myself and Niall’s New Year’s Eve dinner. A wonderful way to use beets, I have since substituted the cheese for some delicious St Tola ‘feta’, added a few walnuts for crunch and a pinch of chilli for heat.
Irish grown beets are wonderfully easy to find. Fallon & Byrne currently have some fantastically sweet baby Irish beets, which are the ones I used for this bracingly wintery salad.
I’ve read that the leaves from the beetroots make a great addition to a green salad when fried in a little butter – anyone have any other ideas on what to do with the leftover leaves of the beet stalks?
what you need for a beet and cheese salad for 2
8 baby beetroots
Rapeseed or olive oil
Salt and Pepper
Pinch of chilli flakes
For the dressing
Juice of half a lemon
1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons of rapeseed or olive oil
2 tablespoons of hazlenut, walnut or toasted sesame seed oil (walnut oil is easier to find but I happen to have a beautiful bottle of hazlenut oil in my pantry which loves being used for dressings)
1 teaspoon of crushed coriander seeds (so lovely and lemony – available in the Asia Market on Drury Street in Dublin)
To serve
Green salad leaves
A chunk of feta cheese – we used the beautiful St Tola variety (you can of course use crumbly goat cheese or fried strips of halloumi cheese as per the original recipe)
A handful of chopped walnuts, toasted if you like
Pre-heat your oven to 200c/180c/gas mark 6. Chop the stalks from the beetroots and keep for another use (any ideas?!). Scrub the beetroots well and transfer to a small roasting dish. Drizzle with a bit of oil, season with salt and pepper and add a very small pinch of chilli flakes. Cover with tin foil and roast for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until a knife can pierce the beets very easily.
Make the dressing by mixing the lemon, balsamic, oils and crushed coriander seeds together.
When well roasted, remove the beets from the oven and allow to cool a bit before slicing them in two. Put the beets back into their roasting dish and pour over the dressing. Toss well until the beets are glossy with dressing.
Assemble two plates with a generous handful of salad leaves in each. Crumble over the feta and arrange the beets on top before sprinkling with walnuts. Drizzle over any leftover dressing and enjoy.
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winter forkfuls 9 Dec 2013 12:46 PM (11 years ago)
It’s incredible that Christmas has nearly come around again. What a year it’s been.
While I’m not quite ready to sum up the year, I thought you’d like to know that forkful is back with wintery recipes to inspire you through the darker, cozier months.
We kicked off with wild mushroom pizza and shared a grilled pear dessert and are planning on sharing more treats, stews and soups before spring appears again.
I’m hoping to find a little extra time somewhere to tell you about the recipes that have been keeping me busy outside of forkful – I’ve been obsessed with Toonsbridge ricotta this year and have discovered Dove’s Farm yeast which means I’ve been making naan bread, crumpets and even doughnuts for Pete’s sake! It’s been a year of rising. Which has been lovely.
And on that list I should also include pizza dough which I feel like I’ve somewhat mastered (well, familiarised myself with at least) this year. It even kicked off the forkful winter season – you’ll find that video after the jump.
I really love this forkful – especially Daffodil’s cameo! She’s so darned cute.
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Forkful: Best Video Blog {wow} 16 Oct 2013 6:01 AM (11 years ago)
I’m so pleased to share the news with you that forkful was nominated in the Best Video Blog category at this year’s Irish Blog Awards. It made it all the way to being a finalist! And then, to my spluttering surprise last weekend at The Irish Blog Awards 2013, forkful actually went and won.
Forkful has taken myself and Mark on a bit of a journey this summer. It’s led to other exciting projects that have kept us busy and we hope it will keep leading to delicious opportunities for us. We are really excited about sharing season two of forkful with you folks this winter. Expect to see Daffodil in some kind of Christmas-themed dog suit – that’s all I’m saying.
Thanks so much to those who nominated us for the Irish Blog Awards and a huge thank you to all the judges and organisers who worked so hard to make it all happen. Congratulations to my fellow nominees Adoreabubbles, Eimear Byrne, So Sue Me and {a big shout out to} the talented Joanne Larby from The Make Up Fairy who I happened to share a table with at the event – check out her amazing make-up tutorials on her blog, particularly her Halloween Zombie and Sugar Skull looks.
Finally, thank you to Killian who works with us on the editing side of forkful and thank you to Daffodil for being such a pro.
Until season two, here is our peach salad forkful which was the very recipe that failed to impress at an important family dinner this summer – more on that here!
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Remembering Peaches 16 Oct 2013 4:45 AM (11 years ago)
Remember my sister NiNi got married to France-whah this summer? So, in the week before the wedding, our French in-laws arrived in Ireland and I offered to cook for everyone at my family’s home so that the parents could get to know each other. The invitation prompted a beautiful response from France-whah’s lovely mother and word came back that the in-laws were excited about having a meal cooked for them by a “famous” food blogger.
“Oh… merde,” I cursed, under my breath {for dramatic film noir effect, you understand}. There is nothing like the pressure of expectation to spoil an amateur cook’s winning streak. It wasn’t just my own personal reputation on the line – it was Ireland’s. It was the potential for a culinary comeback that could take away some of the sting of the Henri incident and wash away some of the hurt caused by the thousands of French summer students that have balked at our Irish “baguettes” for the last half a century.
And so, I made it really easy on myself by planning a fool-proof tried and tested menu. I’d make the deliciously simple grilled peach salad that I had made a million times – I was even telling people how to make it through our forkful season one. I’d show off our Irish cheese by tearing pieces of Toonsbridge mozzarella all over it and I’d reduce some good quality balsamic to make a rambunctiously sweet drizzle to wow them all. For mains, I’d throw a bit top quality lamb in the stew pot the night before and wow the French with a succulent, flavoursome stew. Nothing could go wrong.
Until, of course, it did. It was, quite simply, the worst meal I have cooked in a very long time. Ca me fait chier! In all the excitement of meeting my new in-laws (you’d have sworn I was the one getting bleedin’ married), I forgot to grill the peaches. The Toonsbridge mozzarella was as beautiful as always but the salad leaves I had dished onto serving plates suddenly looked sad and wilted. This was made worse by not having enough to go around, making me look like a stingy cook as well as a bad one. The balsamic reduction simmered on as I faffed about trying to speak French {“Votre cheval est belle” etc} until it had reduced to a tar. A tar. So much so that my Mum’s fork stuck to her plate mid-meal.
My lamb stew, cooked the night before and left to transform into the most AMAZING Irish stew ever, had descended into a stringy pile of {tasty, I’ll admit} mush. “Oh, we ‘ave somesing like zeez in France, but, uhhh… we call it ragout,” my in-laws graciously offered as I slopped spoonfuls of what I pretended was a traditional Irish stew upon their plates. At least my roast spuds were spot on. A mistake in the spud department would have been impardonnable.
Thankfully, Mum had made her famous pavlova so she tactfully stepped in to serve dessert. My courses, truth be told, had been a bit of a dizazzo.
But you know what? It didn’t matter a bit. Because no one was really paying attention to the food – what was more important was that our two families were getting to know each other. It turned out our French counterparts are totally awesome. The chatter drew attention away from my below-average meal as the conversation and atmosphere was well and truly above average – and remained so for the rest of the wedding weekend.
My sister’s wedding was an unforgettable event for our family. We have always been very close and the wedding is yet another shared memory that has made our bond even stronger. I really do love every one of them – even if they’re all a bit bat shit cray-cray at the best of times.
Here are a few snapshots of my parents Eugene and Pauline and my brothers Lorcan and Peter, and of course Niamh and Francois on their big day, as captured by wedding photographer Fionn McCann.
Will there ever be a time that these photos don’t bring a tear to my eye?
If you have in-laws that you are trying to impress (or not, as may be your best strategy), I promise that this peach salad is a total winner. It was the last episode of season one of forkful and is usually fool-proof.
I’m so looking forward to sharing more meals with my new extended family and I hope the next time I cook for them it will be less of a catastrophe as our first meal. I might just leave peaches off the menu next time 
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Catching Up On Forkfuls 31 Jul 2013 6:31 AM (11 years ago)
It has been a deliciously busy summer around these parts between video shoots, wonderful weddings and holidays spent in muddy fields.
I thought I’d share the remainder of our forkful videos before the final episode of series #1 goes live tomorrow morning. There’s our courgette pickles above and our diy pastry below.
I hope you’ve enjoyed them. Daffodil claims she is almost burnt out from all the attention – although we all know she secretly adores it.
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You Know I Love That Beetroot Hummus 23 Jun 2013 11:54 AM (11 years ago)
If you’ve been here before, you already know I love beetroot hummus. I’ve shared the recipe before and it was a key dish at my sister’s hen night.
And so I was delighted to be able to bring the recipe to life with another forkful video, directed and shot by my talented friend Mark Duggan.
Find out more about our forkful ventures on www.forkful.tv.
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More Forkfuls To Share 18 Jun 2013 3:07 AM (11 years ago)
In case you missed it over on www.forkful.tv, I’m happy to share yet another forkful video with you. This time myself and Mark Duggan have featured one of my favourite recipes, carrot cupcakes, and have hopefully made it look as easy as it actually is. I hope you enjoy it.
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Introducing forkful 23 May 2013 2:04 AM (11 years ago)
I’m very pleased to present forkful, a series of food videos that I’ve been making with my friend Mark Duggan. We’ve highlighted a simple winter-meets-summer recipe for our first outing and we get a little help from Daffodil in the kitchen. We’re proud to present them in partnership with Le Cool, who featured us in today’s Food Issue.
Get the recipe in all its sweet detail on www.forkful.tv.
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My Sister’s Hen Night 10 May 2013 8:34 AM (11 years ago)
My beautiful sister Niamh is getting married in July to her wonderful French fiancé Francois (or as we like to call him – France-WHAH?! Oh, how we laugh!). As Maid of Honour, it was my duty to host her hen night on Friday the 26th of April.
My sister is one of the best people I have ever met in my life. She is one of the kindest, most generous and caring people I have had the pleasure to know. I’m not the only person who thinks so, either. And how lucky am I that she’s actually my sister!
So when it came to organising her hen night, I knew all she cared about was having her favourite women in the same room at the same time. It doesn’t happen often as she lives in California and has spent her working life living in Saudi Arabia, the Caribbean, Poland and Dublin. And probably somewhere else that I’ve forgotten. So I knew I could have thrown a party for her in McDonalds and she would genuinely have been thrilled if it meant that everyone would be together.
But I couldn’t not go out of my way to do something special for her, could I? No, I certainly could not. Have a look after the jump to see what we got up to.
In the weeks leading up to her hen night, I had been playing down the night big time. “NiNi, I’m so sorry. I have just been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to really organise anything special, so we’re just going out to dinner in town, ok?”
Meanwhile, I had notebooks FULL of scribbled plans for the night, planning everything down to the minute. Mwah mwah mwah!
So, on the day, I told her I had managed a small little surprise for her and that she had to be at Trinity College at 7pm sharp with Mum in tow. When she arrived, a group of our cousins were there waiting for her. Once the totes emotes hellos were out of the way, she was shown a video message from her fiancé Francois (France-whah?!) welcoming her to her hen night and sending her on a mini-treasure hunt. Because Nialler is such a legend, he not only designed special menus for the evening but he also secretly followed Niamh on her mini-treasure hunt taking iPhone pics of her surprises along the way.
She had to go to the Stag’s Head (the scene of Niamh and Francois’ first date) where some school and work friends were waiting for her. Then they had to go to The Palace Bar (where Niamh took me for my first pint) where the rest of her school friends were waiting for her. They walked around to Westmoreland Street and a hummer was waiting to take them all to my house in Dublin 8.
My aunties and other cousins were waiting with me at my house to welcome the hens to Niamh’s Coop, her pop-up restaurant for the evening. My cousins had helped me decorate the room with pictures of Niamh hanging up by twine above borrowed tables that seated 23 people.
We ushered all the hens into my little back garden and served The NiNi Cocktail – Zubrowka vodka mixed with ginger ale and apple juice. We also had canapés of smoked salmon blinis with mustard and honey creme fraiche and crushed pea crostinis made by whizzing up some frozen peas with ricotta, mint, salt and pepper and topping with salty feta.
Then we got everyone to sit down (miraculously fitting everyone in my kitchen!) and we served dinner after another special video message from Francois.
My Mum and I cooked a meal inspired by my amazing sister’s life. We had beetroot hummus, goat’s cheese and pomegranate dip and roasted aubergine as a kind of Middle Eastern inspired mezze to start. I made a Caribbean Jerk Chicken which we had with salad and Mum’s delicious spinach rice pilaf. For dessert, Mum made her world famous pavlova and my aunts brought lots of their amazingly delicious baked goods.
As the final surprise of the evening, my gorgeous friend Robbie (who is my goddaughter Freya’s uncle) took a break from rehearsing for Carmen to come in and sing Eidelweiss from one of Niamh’s favourite movie of all time The Sound of Music. And that’s when the waterworks really started!
So as not to push my luck with my lovely neighbours – I had NOT anticipated quite how noisy 23 hens would be, particularly during our group rendition of Doe! A Deer! – I had booked taxis into town at 11.30pm and most of the party moved on to The Workman’s Club, which was the perfect spot to dance away til the early morning.
I’m so glad that we were able to pull off a tailored hen for my sister. The cherry on top was that we only had to charge the hens €20 each to cover the hummer, drinks and dinner. And I genuinely got such a kick out of cooking for so many people.
Apart from being able to delegate to my Mum and having her share the workload by making one of the starters, the rice and all of the desserts (she is so amazing), a major part of the food’s success was the starters and desserts were ready way in advance. The choice of chicken made things very easy too because I had them marinated in their roasting dishes in the fridge for a few hours before the party and it was just a case of whacking them in the oven when the party arrived, re-heating the rice and bunging a few bags of salad leaves into big bowls and making a big batch of honey lemon dressing.
I used Jamie Oliver’s Jerk Chicken from his 30 Minute Meals, which I’ve cooked for four people before following the exact recipe below. It’s absolutely delicious. I’m quite bad at maths so when I was quadrupling it or whatever to cater for 23 I got a bit confused and just kind of threw all the ingredients in with wonky measurements but it turned out great! Point is this is a great recipe that’s easily doubled, tripled or quadrupled – as long as you can do the maths! And even if you can’t it doesn’t really matter.
What you need for Jamie Oliver’s Jerk Chicken for 4 people
(From Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals – buy it here)
4 spring onions, trimmed and roughly chopped
A small bunch of fresh thyme, leaves picked
3 fresh bay leaves (or dried if you don’t have fresh)
A pinch of ground cloves
A pinch of ground nutmeg
A pinch of ground allspice
2 teaspoons of salt
6 tablespoons of golden rum
6 tablespoons of white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon of runny honey
1 Scotch bonnet chilli, seeds removed and finely chopped
4 cloves of garlic, grated
4 free-range chicken legs (ask your butcher to butterfly them as it helps them stay really juicy and tender)
Put all of the ingredients, except the chicken, into a food processor. Whizz until you have a thick, green sauce – that’s your jerk! Add a bit of olive oil or a drop of water if you’d like it to be a bit more liquidy.
Put the chicken legs into a roasting dish and spread the jerk sauce evenly over the chicken legs. Top with a bit more runny honey and you can even add a squeeze of lemon or lime juice if you like. You can cook it immediately or you can let it marinade for up to 24 hours if you want.
Pre-heat your oven to 200c/180c fan/Gas Mark 6 and cook covered with tin foil for 30 minutes. Carefully remove the tin foil and cook the chicken for another 10 minutes or until the skin is crispy and golden and the chicken is cooked through.
Serve with green salad and rice (this brilliant yellow rice has become my foolproof recipe). And a nice cold beer. Or Prosecco. Or even A NiNi!
Thanks to all the hens who made Niamh’s night so memorable and thanks to my amazing Mum Pauline for all her hard work in helping me pull off my plan and never once saying “WHY CAN’T WE JUST GO TO A REGULAR RESTAURANT LIKE A NORMAL FAMILY?!!” And finally thanks to my sister NiNi for always being there for me and for being such a gorgeous person to throw a party for. Love you!
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