I cooked my first sweet and sour dish in 1984. Pork, of course. The recipe came from Ken Hom’s Encyclopaedia of Chinese Cookery Techniques, a cookery book classic and one I bought the minute it came out that year, on foot of Ken’s successful BBC TV series. I still refer to this book on a ...
BLOG, Recipes
Now the lavender in the garden is in bloom it’s time to make one of my favourites and certainly one of the most intriguing ice creams. Lavender ice cream, being quite perfumed, is not to everyone’s taste. That said, I love it, particularly teamed with home made aniseed cookies or shortbread biscuits spiced up with ...
Elderflowers, those creamy sprays of pungent flowers visible in every park and hedgerow, are perhaps the most abundant and useful of all wild foods and we are nearing the end of what has been a bumper season. Dublin’s elderflowers have begun to fade but many trees in cooler parts of the country (e.g. Wicklow) are ...
Simple, tasty and one of my favourite dishes at the minute, I suppose because they are colourful and because the fresh oregano on the patio has recovered after a hard winter. 4 large red or green bell peppers 8-12 cherry tomatoes 16 leaves fresh oregano or 1 tsp dried 3-4 portobello mushrooms, diced (or a ...
Despite my 12.5% Italian ancestry and my lifelong adherence to the Azzurri I was a bit hesitant about including an Italian dish with people like Italian Foodie around the site. Still, Pollo alla Cacciatora is a great cold weather comfort casserole and a favourite that I cook regularly, so here goes… ‘Cacciatore’ means ‘hunter’. All ...
Last night, herself brought home glistening fresh hake and “some scallops, for a treat”. Four whacking great kings, as it happened. Treat indeed. Foraging in the fridge for potential accompaniments I came across a bulb of fennel, complete with fronds that looked like it could do with eating up. From the fruit bowl, a ...
Sometimes my cooking gets into a rut and I have to shake myself out of it. When people come to dinner I tend to rely on the ‘tried and trusted’. Sometimes, though ‘tried and trusted’ morphs into ‘tired and disgusted’ (with myself, for my lack of effort). Last weekend , between waiting for FF ...
robert burns/shirley spear This year I won’t be doing my Burns Night thing. The thought of cooking haggis on crutches just doesn’t appeal. On the 25th January, anniversary of Scotland’s national bard, I’m heaving the dreaded knee op – not the full bifter plastic joint, I hasten to add, just a vacuum out, scrub and ...
Another tasty recipe for lobster. A ‘pirogue’ (pee-roag) is a Louisiana term for the wooden canoe used for fishing and negotiating the swamps and lakes, Ponchartrain included. By extension, it also means a vegetable that’s been hollowed out and filled. I’ve used aubergine here; you could equally well use large courgettes, marrow, squash or a ...
LOBSTER AND LEEK RISOTTO Preparing the beasts is not rocket science. Cut off the claws, as near to the body as you can. Whack them lightly with a hammer or the blunt end of a cleaver. Peel off the shell and prise out the meat (using fingers and a metal skewer). Twist off the head. ...
Recipes