Irish Barmbrack

A very traditional Irish tea cake, the Barmbrack, is a sweet dough with dried fruit (soaked overnight in tea to plump them up) giving it lots of extra taste and texture. Soft brown sugar gives the brack a rich, dark colour and taste.

Its often eaten in the afternoon, with lots of butter and a hot cup of tea.

Ingredients

• 375g mixed dried fruit (whatever fruits you like best)
• 50ml whiskey
• 250ml cold tea
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 225g plain flour
• 125g brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp mixed spice
• 1 egg

Method

1. Soak the fruit overnight in the tea and whiskey mixture
2. Preheat the oven to 170C. Grease and line a 900g loaf tin
3. Combine the flour, sugar, mixed spice and baking powder and mix well
4. Add the whole egg and mix. Add some of the liquid from the dried fruit and continue to mix to create a dryish batter
5. Stir in the fruit and when everything is thoroughly combined pour into the prepared loaf tin
6. Bake in the middle of the oven for 1 hour
7. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin before transferring to a cooling rack. Best eaten a couple of days after baking, keep wrapped in clingfilm.

Pizzette (mini pizzas)

Pizzetta bianca with red onion, thyme and mozzarella

Liking all things Italian as I do I finally got around to making my own pizzas. I’d always assumed that to make really authentic (read ‘good’) pizza I’d need my own wood-fired oven, which is a bit much to ask when you live in central London! Anyway, turns out that my normal, electric oven can do a mean pizza all on its own!

These are great for dinner or as starters with a Campari spritzer!

To make the pizza dough is easy because its just flour, yeast, salt and water. Then the topping is whatever you have to hand or can dream up!

For 6 mini pizzas (or pizzettas)

Ingredients

• 250g ’00’ Italian flour (ie strong, finely ground flour)
• 7g fast-action yeast (usually one sachet’s worth)
• 150ml tepid water
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp salt

Method

Making the dough

1. Put the flour into a large bowl (even better into the bowl of a stand mixer) and add the salt and yeast on opposite sides. Then mix together
2. Mix the water and olive oil together and start to add to the flour. Mix together until it forms a dough. It shouldn’t be too wet so you may not need to add all the water
3. Tip the dough out onto a floured work surface and knead for about 10 min until it has a firm, stretchy consistency (or give it about 5 mins in the mixer)
4. Put it back into a lightly olive oiled bowl, cover with a tea towel and leave to double in size for about 30 mins (or thereabouts)

Making the pizza

This quantity of dough makes 6 golfball-sized pieces which make 6 small pizzas.

• Heat the oven to 250˚C and put a baking sheet in to heat up.
• Roll out a golfball-sized piece until its thin and put on a metal sheet – I used the bottom of a springform cake tin (this makes it easy to size and gets the heat immediately onto the bottom of the pizza)
• Add the toppings – less is more and make sure that everything is cut thinly so that they’re cooked when the dough is
• Bake for about 6 min

You can use whatever toppings you like, I used these lovelies (salt and pepper on all, of course):

• red onion, mozzarella, thyme, grated parmesan cheese
• mozzarella, courgette, red chilli, grated parmesan cheese
• potato, rosemary, taleggio cheese – par boil the potato slices before you cook them on the pizza
• sausage, red onion, mozzarella
• spinach, parmesan, raw egg, freshly grated nutmeg – blanch the spinach for a minute in boiling water first then squeeze out the water and chop finely
• For a quick and easy tomato sauce base, use tomato puree and some water

Moules marinière with white wine, bay leaf and shallot

Moules marinière

Muscles (moules) in a cream and white wine sauce for an easy and classic French dinner. The bay leaves add a great aromatic flavour to the dish

Serves 2 as a main course

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg muscles
• 2 dried bay leaves
• 25g flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
• 1 medium sized banana shallot, finely diced
• 300ml dry white wine
• 20g butter
• 2 tbsp cream
• salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Soak the muscles in cold water for about 20 minutes while you clean them – pulling off the beard and any bits sticking to the shell. Throw away any that are broken or that won’t close when lightly tapped
2. In a large pot, fry the shallots and bay leaves in the butter until the shallots are soft
3. Add the white wine and boil for a few minutes to drive off some of the alcohol
4. Add 3/4 parsley and the muscles and cover the pot. Cook for about 5 minutes
5. When all the muscles have opened add the cream and cook for a couple of minutes
6. Serve the muscles with the liquid, a sprinkle of parsley and lots of crispy French baguette to soak up all the juice

Chilli Suppli

Chilli Suppli

You might have heard of arrancini, those deep fried, orange shaped rice balls that go down such a treat in Sicily. Well, in Rome they have their own version of these but with a twist. Instead of a Sicillian surprise filling in the center of the rice ball, a Roman supplí has the rice and filling mixed together.

The most amazing version I’ve ever tried was from a tiny shop in Trastevere in Rome selling pizza by the slice and supplí. The shop was a simple affair, not much more than a counter, a couple of chairs and a front door!  But in Rome (and Europe generally) you can buy food from somewhere like this and you know its going to be great! The specialita della casa was a chilli supplí made from rice, meat and lots and lots of dried chilli. Totally mind blowing in every way. And one was definitely enough unless you wanted a whole lot of trouble later on! But if you love chilli, they were the business. Sadly, when I went to the shop when I was in Rome over the New Year it had closed down. Well, it lives on here!

Here’s my version of a chilli supplí. I’d made a rice and pork ‘ragu’ to stuff some peppers and what I had left over I turned into supplí. Because you shape the supplí between you hands you can make it any size you like, from a cherry tomato size to a small orange size. How much of the ragu you make depends on how many supplí you intend to make and the size of each. For these mini explosions, smaller is better.

Ingredients

• Rice, Italian 
• Sausage meat
• Onions, diced
• Tomato passata
• Dried chilli flakes
• Salt and pepper
• Breadcrumbs, dried
• Vegetable oil for frying

Method

1. Cook the rice in water. Heat the dried chillis in a little water and leave to rehydrate 
2. While the rice is cooking, sweat the diced onion in olive oil until soft then add the sausage meet and cook through. Then add the tomato passata and cook for 15 minutes
3. Drain the rice and add to the sausage mix – you should aim for a dry mixture because it will be easier to shape and will hold that shape while deep frying
4. Add the chillis (not the liquid if there is any as this will make the whole thing too wet to handle) to the sausage and rice mix and when combined start to shape portions into balls – of whatever size you like, smaller is better till you know how hot they are! –
5. Cover a large plate or a baking tray with dried breadcrumbs and roll the suppli to completely cover them in breadcrumbs
6. Fry then till golden brown in hot, but not smoking, oil (otherwise they’ll burn) and dry on kitchen paper

Easy ‘hollandaise’ sauce

This is so good that I had to post it goes great with fish or asparagus.
Comes from the Garden Organic site, see link below.

The lemon sabayon is a technique Raymond Blanc developed many years ago, which yields 3 times more than a classic hollandaise and 5 times less fat.

Makes: 4 portions

Ingredients:

• 4 Egg yolks, medium organic
• 50ml Water
• 70g Butter, unsalted melted or cubed
• Salt to taste
• 10ml lemon juice

Method:

1. In a large bowl whisk the egg yolks and water to a frothy consistency. Whisking the eggs will create more volume and not only give you more sauce but make it a lot lighter.
2. Place the bowl over a pan of boiling water and continue to whisk until it becomes thicker
3. When the eggs are at a mayonnaise consistency, remove from the heat and continue to slowly whisk in the butter, followed by the rest of the seasonings

Source: http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/goorganic/asparagus.php