When icecream attacks

Generally, I feel like I should be blogging about healthy food (which, despite the evidence of this blog so far, is what we generally eat - honest), searching out new culinary delights and reporting back on interesting local producers...

Then I stumble across this...

Oh yes - proper Mr Whippy icecream, the likes of which I haven't seen in years. For anyone around the age of 30(ish), this was the taste of childhood summers - right up there with Munch Bunch ice pops and sherbert fountains (proper E-number-crammed crud). Only I don't think that the portions were as big back then - I mean, look at that picture, it's an icecream behemoth! It's coming to take over the world in a bad B-movie near you!

For some reason, Mr Whippy disappeared off the map years ago (or maybe I've just been walking around with a blind spot to all things icecream-related - I didn't develop a real sweet tooth until I met Mr B, so it's entirely possible). Later, there were other brands claiming to offer the same soft, creamy vanilla treat but they were serious fakers - too powdery, too hard, too flavourless, damn it - and my hopes were always dashed.

The best bit, or perhaps it's the worst bit, is that you can pretty much get the real deal in any newsagents around the country.

I will make amends immediately for this serious lapse in reporting by seeking out proper artisan icecream and ordering David Lebovitz's Perfect Scoop.

Just peachy

It doesn’t matter if I walk into a shop with a strict list of ingredients, I will inevitably walk out with something I never knew I needed until that precise moment. That’s why my cupboards are crammed with crap, er, esoteric foodstuffs.

Anyhoo, what I like to call the ‘supermarket zombie effect’ – brain switched off, automatic pilot engaged as you wander numbly round the aisles to the strains of muzak and whinging children – kicked in the other day at the supermarket and I left with 10 peaches. (Two packs for 4 euro! Bargain! But how does that work for the farmers?)

Once I’d returned home and re-engaged my brain, I examined my haul and I’ve got to say that I didn’t have high hopes for the little suckers - most of my impulse buys turn out to be bad ideas that end up mouldering in the cupboard, fridge or a bowl somewhere until they look like science experiments. However, probably because it’s peach season, these ones were really pretty good. More than that, they were excellent. Yay for seasonality and eating things at their proper time.

Normally, when I’m lucky enough to stumble across perfectly ripe fruit, I like to eat it in its raw state, juices messily dribbling down my chin (you can’t take me anywhere). So it’s been peaches with everything for the past couple of days. Then my baking gene kicked in and I just had to do something that meant at least a few of those peaches, some flour, sugar and butter would meet up in the oven to perform some kind of sweet alchemy. (Eurgh. Why am I hearing some kind of Barry White-esque tune as I write that? I’m not bloody Allie McBeal.)

Dorie Greenspan to the rescue again (although not from my sudden Barry White problem). I’m really going to have to write some kind of slavishly sycophantic fanmail to this very sweet-sounding lady – all the recipes I’ve tried so far from her latest book has produced amazing results. I’m also going to have to make sure I don’t publish every single recipe from her book online, otherwise her publishers might, understandably enough, get a bit pissed off.

The original recipe is for a winter upside-down cake with cranberries – something I’m bookmarking for the festive season. This version is the alternative she suggests for the summer months and it’s sublime – the already succulent peaches become silky soft, melting on your tongue, and then there’s the lighter-than-expected cinnamon-scented sponge which complements the fruit beautifully…

I love cinnamon a lot – so much so that I usually chuck in some extra when I’m baking. But, bearing in mind how well Dorie’s other recipes have worked so far, I exercised unheard of restraint and just put in the one teaspoon she recommended. And, of course, she’s absolutely right.

Upside-down peach cake from Baking – From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

You’ll need:

1 cup of plain flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
A pinch of salt
3 ripe peaches
190g butter at room temperature
1 cup minus 2 tablespoons of sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract
1/3 cup of full-fat milk

1. Put a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Grease an 8-inch round (and 2-inch deep) cake pan and place it on a baking sheet.
2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt, and set aside.
3. Melt 80 grams of the butter in a small saucepan. Sprinkle in 6 tablespoons of the sugar and cook, stirring until the mixture comes to a boil. Pour this evenly over the bottom of the cake pan. Set aside.
4. Skin the peaches by dropping them briefly in boiling water. Pit and slice the peaches, then lay them out in a pattern on top of the butter/sugar mix in the cake pan.
5. In a large bowl, beat the remaining 110g of butter until smooth. Add the remaining half cup of sugar and continue to beat until creamy – about 3 minutes.
6. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition and scraping down the bowl as you go. Add the vanilla and briefly beat this in too.
7. Using a wooden spoon (or a lower speed on a stand mixer, if you have one), add half the dry ingredients, mixing only until they disappear into the batter. Mix in the milk and then the rest of the dry ingredients.
8. Spoon this mixture over the peaches in the cake tin and smooth the top with a rubber spatula.
9. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until the cake is golden and a thin knife inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.
10. Remove from the oven and allow to sit for 30 minutes, so that the peachy juices have a chance to settle into the cake.
11. Carefully turn the cake out onto a plate and serve.

A feast of fennel

A trip to the Dublin Food Co-op at the weekend threw up some lovely surprises – a raw food stall, which I think VK will be very interested in, a comprehensive dried goods section for all your pulse-, legume- and grain-based needs, a baker offering several yeast-free and gluten-free alternatives, and veggie producers selling, amongst other things, one of my all-time favourite vegetables – fennel.

I hadn’t seen any in the local shops – maybe they don’t stock it because there’s little demand for it, or maybe they’re being ultra-strict about seasonality as fennel only really comes into its own about now. Whatever the reason, it’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to cook with fennel, so I greedily popped four bulbs of aniseedy goodness in my basket and skipped off with a big smile on my face. Clearly, I don’t get out enough if this sort of thing counts as exciting.

Bulb number one was eaten straight away – raw and unadulterated. Some people find it too harsh/unpleasant but I’ve always been a savoury girl rather than sweet (no jokes from my family, please) so the pleasure of that refreshing, sharp flavour is something I look forward to and enjoy enormously.

The second one was thrown into a salad for some extra crunch and bite. Numbers three and four went into the following pasta dish, the aniseed overtones baked down into a backnote to complement rather than overpower the other ingredients.

This recipe is adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Happy Days. He recommends it as a tasty side dish and then, in a throw-away note, mentions that it would make a sexy little pasta. I’ve never used it as the side dish – I can’t get past making this creamy, soothing, very satisfying dinner.

Fennel, tomato and ricotta pasta – adapted from Happy Days by Jamie Oliver
(Serves 2)

You’ll need:

2 fennel bulbs, cut into quarters
A punnet of cherry tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
leaves from 3 sprigs of thyme
Olive oil
A few dots of butter
About 125g of ricotta
A handful of grated parmesan
14 black olives, stoned and sliced

Enough pasta for two

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6.
2. Put the fennel quarters in a saucepan, cover with water and simmer for 10 minutes.

3. Drain the fennel, then add to a large roasting dish, along with the tomatoes, garlic and thyme. Slosh some olive oil in the pan and mix the vegetables up to make sure they're well coated. Then dot some bits of butter around the pan. Very scientific, this.

4. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes, or until the vegetables look cooked through. Remove from the oven and let the veg cool enough to handle.

5. Cook the pasta, according to manufacturer's instructions.

6. In the meantime, chop the cooled fennel into pieces about 2cm big.

7. Drain the cooked pasta and return to the saucepan. Add the ricotta and parmesan - stir to melt the cheese (no need to use the the stove top for this, the heat from the pasta is enough.)

8. Add the chopped fennel, the rest of the roasted veg mixture and the olives. Stir through and season if neccesary.

9. Serve.

Here comes the sun...

OK, I don’t usually claim to have god-like qualities or wizardly talents (although reading the last Harry Potter book gave me some funny dreams) but I think I may have summoned the sunshine by baking these lovely orange and blueberry muffins.

I made them on Sunday when the world was grey, dull and a bit chilly – real pull-the-duvet-back-over-your-head-and-forget-about-it weather. However, by the time I pulled these zesty treats out of the oven, everything had changed for the better and stayed sparkly the whole day long. And what do you know – it’s sunny today as well.

I think you’ll agree that the evidence presented is highly credible, cause and effect has been clearly established and the link is undeniable.

Unfortunately, my new-found powers didn’t stop most of the blueberries sinking to the bottom of the muffins. Ah – I guess every gift has its dark side.

Orange and blueberry muffins from Baking – From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

Makes 12 muffins

You’ll need:

Grated zest and juice of 1 orange

About ¾ cup buttermilk

2 large eggs

3 tablespoons of honey

110g/ 1 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1/3 cup of sugar

2 cups plain flour

2½ teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Pinch of salt

1 cup of blueberries

1. Place a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 200C/gas mark 6. Butter/spray your muffin pan and place on a baking sheet.

2. Put the orange juice into a measuring cup and add enough buttermilk to make up 1 cup. (See cook’s notes below.) Then put this mixture into a bowl with the eggs, honey and melted butter. Whisk together.

3. In another bowl, rub the sugar and orange zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and the fragrance of orange is strong.

4. Whisk in the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt.

5. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and work quickly to blend (but be careful not to overblend or the resulting muffins will be tough).

6. Gently stir in the blueberries and divide the batter evenly between the muffin cups.

7. Bake for 22 to 25 minutes. When fully baked, the tops of the muffins will be golden and springy to touch – and a thin knife inserted in the centre of the muffins will come out clean.

8. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and cool for five minutes before removing the muffins from the tin.

Cook’s notes

My orange yielded about ¾ cup of juice, which was clearly going to make for a soggy muffin. So I just chucked in ¼ cup with the ¾ cup of buttermilk specified and drank the rest of the juice. Waste not, want not and all that.

And yes, I could have rolled the blueberries in flour to stop them sinking in the muffin batter but this particular omnipotent being is grumpy/forgetful in the mornings and was concentrating on summoning back the good weather rather than fruity aesthetics. It’s supposed to be a bad sign when you start talking about yourself in the third person, isn’t it? Oh dear.

Life beyond sandwiches (?)

I am the sandwich queen. Oh yes. Given half a chance (not even that, if I'm being honest), I would feast on this most perfect of food forms morning, noon and night. Mmmmm, sandwiches...

Not good for someone who likes to cook, is it?

But – and I can’t believe I’m going to say this – sometimes, just sometimes, I get a teensy bit tired of two bits of bread with something slapped between them. And then I start thinking about salads. I dream about beautiful, ripe tomatoes bursting with the taste of summer, soft, buttery lettuce and spiky rocket, peppery radishes, the refreshing aniseed flavour of fennel… and oooh, anything else that can be chopped, diced, sliced and chucked into a bowl with some kind of interesting dressing. Mmmmm, salad…

This recipe comes from Tossed, which I optimistically brought along in the car when we moved over, so I could make delicious salads for hazy, hot summer days. Well, the current weather situation has well and truly scotched that little day dream. Never mind.

I wanted something quite substantial to munch on, a main course kind of salad for lunch, so I plumped for what is really tabbouleh but with some salty feta crumbled on top. Very easy to put together, it's one of those dishes that tastes disproportionately wonderful in relation to the small amount of time you need to put it together. In fact, I had it for breakfast the day after I made it because I couldn't wait until lunchtime, which either means that it's delicious or I'm greedy - or perhaps both.

Bulgar, feta and parsley salad from Tossed

Makes enough for two servings.

You'll need:

90g/1/2 cup of bulgar wheat
2 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 tbsp chopped mint
4 spring onions, finely chopped (I didn't have enough so I threw in some radishes too)
2 firm ripe tomatoes, halved, seeded and diced
1 Lebanese cucumber, halved, seeded and diced
100g feta, crumbled
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp olive oil

1. Put the bulgar wheat in a large bowl and add enough hot water to cover. Leave to soak for 15 to 20 minutes, or until tender. Drain well, then thoroughly squeeze out all the excess liquid.
2. Gently toss the bulgar in a bowl with all the remaining ingredients.
3. Season with salt and pepper, and mix together well. Leave for about an hour to let the flavours mingle.

Riveting report from the DIY frontline II

Wheeeeeeeee! We're properly interweb connected - broadband and everything. Very fancy pants. Although apparently everyone has it these days and I'm just behind the times...

Anyway, it means I don't have to put my pics on to the computer to transfer them to the USB to take them down to the locak internet place to load them up on to the blog.

No - I can just click a couple of buttons from the comfort of our kitchen and... voila!

And, with another click of the magic button, I can reveal... the kitchen sink!

The kitchen units aren't really blue - that's just the protective film - they're really white. And if you're wondering why some of the doors haven't been added yet... Well, that's a combination of laziness, bad door-hanging skills and a couple of missing pieces. But we'll get there. At least we've got enough bits and bobs sorted out to function and, more importantly, cook delicious things.

So that means all the excuses for not posting about what I'm cooking have disappeared. Darn.