Coming soon

We're getting a farmers market! Or rather, according to the Irish Farmers Markets website, it's re-opening.

From Wednesday 24 October and every Wednesday thereafter, there'll be a market at Manor Mills Shopping Centre, Maynooth, between 10am and 4pm.

Yay!

Lime lust - the continuing saga

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, limes.

The other lovely lime-drenched recipe I've added to my 'will make regularly, forever' list comes from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. I was looking for a good wintery lunchtime salad - something that would fill me up without inducing sleepiness, which is kind of a problem for me. That snoozy, cozy feeling that creeps up after too much mid-day starch and when the office heating dial is turned up to 11...

Granted, I'm not working at the moment but hopefully I will be at some point (soon!), so I'm always on the hunt for new, easily transportable lunchbox fare that isn't just another boring sandwich again. This lentil salad recipe ticks all the boxes and makes enough to last several days. In fact, it's better after a day in the fridge, soaking in its punchy lime-cumin vinaigrette (which tastes great when you sop it up with a bit of crusty bread). And, it's easy to keep this dish from getting repetitive if you vary the added extras from day to day.

So, may I present a dish with an rather unwieldy title but more than enough zingy flavour and substance to keep you powering through till dinnertime with nary a snooze:

Lentil salad with roasted peppers, vegetable garnishes and lime-cumin vinaigrette adapted from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison

Makes enough for 2 to 3 lunchboxes

For the lime-cumin vinaigrette, you'll need:

1 garlic clove, minced
grated zest of 2 limes
2 to 3 tablespoons of fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons of finely chopped spring onion or shallot
1/2 jalapeno chile, seeded and minced
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
1/3 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped fresh coriander

1. Combine the garlic, lime zest, juice,, spring onion and chile in a bowl.

2. Toast the cumin and coriander seeds in a small frying pan until fragrant, then immediately remove to a plate to cool. Grind to a powder in a spice mill, the add to the juice mixture.

3. Whisk in the oil. Taste and adjust as needed.

4. Let the dressing sit for at least 15 minutes and add the coriander just before using.

For the lentil salad, you'll need:

1/2 cup of Puy lentils
salt and pepper
2 red or yellow bell peppers, roasted and chopped
lime-cumin vinaigrette (see above)
1/2 cup chopped parsley
1 tablespoon chopped mint
2 ripe tomatoes, deseeded and quartered

Possible extras: feta, hard-boiled eggs, olives, cucumber

1. Cover the lentils with water in a small saucepan, add 1/2 teaspoon of salt and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer until tender but still a little firm - about 25 to 30 minutes.

2. Drain the lentils and toss them while still warm with the peppers, tomatoes, half of the vinaigrette, parsley and mint. Taste and adjust seasoning.

3. Mound the lentils in a platter (or a lovely tupperware box, if taking to work) and garnish with any of the suggested extras above. Or whatever takes your fancy, really!

Cook's notes

Once again, I prefer to use a higher ratio of herbs and veggies to main salad ingredient. There's nothing worse than only finding a few measley bits of roasted pepper in a sea of lentils. Why would you want that? So I've halved the amount of lentils Deborah suggested but pretty much kept the rest of the recipe the same as hers.

Except for the dill. I left that out because it's not my favourite and there's enough herby stuff going on in the recipe that I don't think anyone would miss it greatly. However, if dill is your thing then add 2 tablespoons at stage 2, along with the parsley and mint.

And, of course, because I only used half the amount of lentils, it follows that I just used half of the vinaigrette. Next time I might reduce the oil content of the dressing a bit more as there was already quite a bit on the roasted peppers. But that's a small quibble and doesn't take away from the general tastiness of this dish.

Oh yes - I left out the 1/4 teaspoon of dry mustard specified for the vinaigrette because I didn't have any. Didn't miss it.

Go West...

Mr B.'s work often takes him out and about all over Ireland - so, when he announced that he had to drive over to the West, I jumped at the chance to tag along (what with currently being unemployed and consequently a bit bored). It was the least I could do - keep him company on a long tedious car journey ;-)*

This time it was Spanish Point and then on to Ennis. We stayed at Spanish Point on Thursday night, where I completely forgot to take any pics - memory like a sieve at the best of times. And it was pretty grey the next morning, so a photo wouldn't have adequately conveyed the windswept drama of Co. Clare. Bleak but beautiful.

So here's a shot of the colourful O'Connell Street in Ennis on an overcast day:

And a pic of Ennis Friary's south transept, with the autumnal trees peeking through the windows:

And what do you know - the farmers' market takes place on a Friday... I swear I didn't know that until we arrived in the morning! It's a small market but what's there is worth investigating: cheese, bread, veg, interesting garden plants, baked goods and sweet treats aplenty. I scooped up some jam for the in-laws and a jar of Irish honey to drizzle on my morning porridge (after the plum compote runs out), along with some tomato salsa for snacks and a seven-grain loaf to try out.

Mr B. disappeared to get on with his work so I went for a wander around the medieval streets**, poking my nose into all the shops and finding lots of interesting nooks and crannies. It was refreshing to walk around a place that wasn't swamped with all the usual high-street suspects. Good things included:

• Chocolat - funky little shop offering all manner of mouth-watering chocolate treats.
• Food Heaven - the busy but aptly-named cafe where I stopped off for lunch. Friendly staff and an enjoyable warm plum tart.
• Scéal Eile Books - fantastic new and second-hand bookshop with a helpful, chatty owner.
• Open Sesame - a comprehensively-stocked wholefoods shop where the ladies behind the counter seemed to be having so much fun that you wanted to join their gang.

Unfortunately, we had to leave Ennis before dinnertime. But I'm sure we'll be back at some point - there was idle talk of a holiday in the Burren some time next year... So we'll maybe have a chance to explore places for dinner another time. Looking forward to it :-)

*Altogether now, '10,000 bottles of beer on the wall, 10,000 bottles of beer...'
**A lot like my home town of York.

March of the muffins

Well, they do kind of look like they're marching somewhere, don't they? Not a better future anyway, just our bellies!

Sometimes I'll become hooked by an ingredient and keep using it like a woman obsessed until I can eat no more (and then feel a little bit sick as a result - you'd think I wasn't a grown-up or something). Last week, it was the turn of the humble lime.

Maybe there's not enough vitamin C in my diet and my body is trying to tell me something, maybe it's the lack of sunshine which is triggering some deep-seated need for fresh, zingy flavours, perhaps I just like the colour green a lot - who knows. But I wanted to sneak limes into everything we ate last week. And I nearly very nearly succeeded. So this recipe, and probably the next one too, is all about limes.

I first came across Robin Asbell when Heidi at 101 Cookbooks posted this recipe for red rice salad. Heidi loves wholegrains and hearty, healthy fair, as does Robin. So much so that she's written a book called The New Wholegrains Cookbook. Because I'm always interested in shoehorning some more fibre into my diet, I made a mental note to look it up when it eventually travelled across the Pond (American publications sometimes take a while to reach the UK and Ireland, if ever). So I was a bit suprised to see it in Waterstones* on Dawson Street just a couple of weeks later.** Of course, I snapped it up... It's cooking that's good for me, see? It's not an indulgent purchase... Honest!

And lo and behold, there was the recipe that (temporarily) satisfied my lime mania - lime coconut banana muffins made with wholewheat flour. The original recipe contained macadamia nuts. I didn't have any but the lime lust was so strong that I didn't feel that I had time to go out and buy some. I needed those muffins yesterday.

The results didn't disappoint. Strongly lime-flavoured, complemented by the coconut with just a hint of banana in the background. The wholewheat pastry made for a slightly tighter crumb but not the dense rockiness you might associate with 'healthier' treats of yesteryear.

I was sated - for the time being...

Lime-coconut banana muffins with macadamias from The New Wholegrains Cookbook by Robin Asbell

You'll need:

½ cup macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped
2¼ cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup unsweetened coconut, shredded
2 large over-ripe bananas
1 cup brown sugar
4 limes
1 large egg
½ cup vegetable oil
1 cup icing sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with paper cups.

2. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, salt and coconut. In a separate bowl, mash up the bananas and whisk in the sugar.

3. Grate the zest from the limes and add to the dry mixture, then juice the limes and measure 1/2 cup of the juice for the batter, reserving 2 tablespoons for the glaze. Add the 1/2 cup lime juice, egg and oil to the banana mix and beat in thoroughly.

4. Stir the wet mixture into the dry mixture, then fold in the macadamias. Divide the mixture into the 12 muffin cups. Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre of a muffin comes out clean. Cool on a rack.

5. When the muffins are completely cool, put the icing sugar, two reserved tablespoons of lime juice and vanilla into a bowl. Stir thoroughly to make a stiff paste. If it is too dry, add a few more drops of juice. Drizzle the glaze across the top of each muffin and leave to set before serving.

*OK, I was in Waterstones but my new bookshop allegiance is to the excellent Hodges Figgis. Although, reading that Wikipedia entry, it seems all my money is going to the HMV group, whichever shop I buy from.
**Although it's probably coincidence, it tickles me to imagine that there's someone at Waterstones who reads Heidi's blog and buys in books on her recommendation.

The first porridge of the year

We haven't quite hit the first hard frost of the year but fog is now making a regular appearance around these parts, wrapping itself tightly around the house in the early hours and making the prospect of getting up just that little bit less appealing.* Although it usually burns off by lunchtime, the mornings are now dreary, chilly and a touch spooky. Halloween is around the corner, that's for sure.

Time, methinks, for porridge. Comforting, slow-energy-releasing, delicious porridge.

The picture isn't up to much because I'm a photo-idiot (just point and click, right?) and haven't figured out indoor photography yet. And I wasn't prepared to shuffle out into the chilly garden to get a shot while I was still wearing my pyjamas and modelling a particularly glam bedhead hairstyle.** There's no need to put the neighbours off their breakfast.

Everyone has an opinion about the 'right' way to make porridge. It's funny, really, considering that the basic ingredients are oats, water and salt, but there you go - there are probably as many recipe variations as there are porridge lovers in the universe.

So we'll sidestep that highly controversial issue and concentrate on the extra goodies - like, say... the spiced plum compôte in the picture above (seamless link, no?).

Truth be told, I only made it because I bought a disappointing batch of plums last week. They were hard, they were sour, they were, all in all, badly in need of an extreme makeover. But sometimes good dishes can come out of the least promising ingredients.

Simmering them in orange juice with cinnamon and cloves until they started to collapse into jammy, spicy sweetness certainly did the trick. Suddenly these were transformed into plums that were not only edible but delicious and pretty more-ish to boot. So I've been happily ladling a couple of spoonfuls over my porridge all week.

To make this dish, I've tweaked a recipe from Vegetable Heaven by Catherine Mason. Although it was originally a plum and fig compôte in the book, I didn't have any dried figs in the house...

Spiced plum compôte, adapted from Vegetable Heaven by Catherine Mason

You'll need:

100 ml fresh orange juice
2 cloves
3cm stick of cinnamon
450-500g plums, cut in half and stoned
50g soft light brown sugar

1. Put the orange juice, cloves and cinammon to warm in a wide frying pan with a lid while you prepare the plums.

2. Add the plums to the pan in a single layer, bring to the boil, turn down the heat, cover and simmer very gently for about 10 minutes or until the plums are cooked.

3. Push the plums to one side in the pan and add the sugar to the liquid, stirring to dissolve. Serve warm with porridge or Greek yogurt.

Cook's notes

If you'd like to add the dried figs that Catherine Mason originally specifies then you'll need 'a handful'. Just add them to the pan at stage 2, along with the plums.

The original recipe called for 4 cloves but I found that was just two too many.

And I halved the amount of sugar the recipe called for, otherwise the dish is just too tooth-achingly sweet - for me, anyway :-)

Despite all my recipe tweaking above, I love Vegetable Heaven and would highly recommend it to anyone - veggies and omnivores alike. Along with some beautiful illustrations, it's stuffed full of fantastic recipes. Many of them would be particularly good in the winter months as they feature lots of starchy, satisfying combinations to ward off the cold: potato and smoked garlic gratin with mixed greens and brie... pumpkin stew with coconut, chilli and coriander... baked celeriac mash topped with poached eggs... damson clafouti with sloe gin syrup...

*OK, getting out of bed is never appealing, as I've ranted about before - but you know what I mean...

**A short pixie hairstyle means I look like a grumpy hedgehog in the morning, or so I'm told.

Here and there

A little bit of Scotland...

... in the heart of Dun Laoghaire, at the People's Park: