IT’S NOT EVERY weekend that I haul myself out of bed before 9am to go running in the cold, but that’s how this morning started which means at this stage I’m raring to go in the kitchen. I’m thinking some kind of piri-piri chicken dish myself but if you’re stuck for ideas on what to cook in the kitchen this weekend, here’s ten recipes garnered from food bloggers and papers this past week including some easy mains, sides and desserts.
Toying with the idea of cooking up a storm in the kitchen this weekend? If you are, here’s 10 recipes that might get you thinking, from main courses to desserts and treats, all collected from the web this past week. I’ve been enjoying a good start to year in the kitchen so far this year with something cooked every day. If I can keep it up, well, that’s another thing, but the recipes definitely help.
A HOUSE FULL of cook books and I still trawl the web day in, day out, on the lookout for recipes. As the bookmark list grows on the phone, through emailed recipes and more, I thought I’d start sharing some of the recipes I’ve come across week-to-week in a new blog series I like to call The Weekend Chef. While Sunday Brunch is a time for reading and catching up, Saturday is really the best day I’ve got for spending plenty of time in the kitchen and, as such, a lot of the big meals and new receipes tend to get a trial on a Saturday. So to kick things off, and keeping things in line with Sunday Brunch, here’s ten recipes I’ve bookmarked this past week, let me know if you try any of them out.
The above recipes have been selected from food blogs that I’ve read during the week and of the bunch, I’m gunning for the winter vegetable soup. Granted, there’s a good helping of desserts in there but the detox is on, have to be good, you know…
SABA: The Cookbook is a collection of Thai and Vietnamese recipes from Dublin restaurant, SABA. Having won a handful of prestigious awards since its release last year, SABA: The Cookbook will go on to represent Ireland at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in Paris in February 2013.
The book is loaded with Thai recipes, ranging from tasty appetisers to wok dishes and sides, from soups to curries and everything in between. It also invites you through the doors and into the kitchen and the heart of Saba, Dublin’s award-winning Thai and Vietnamese eatery.
Written by Proprietor Paul Cadden and Executive Chef Taweesak Trakoolwattana, this is the story of Saba’s first five years. Authenticity is the key, and the food in Saba remains true to the origins of Thai and Vietnamese cuisine. It is beautifully illustrated throughout, and all the recipes have been tested in a domestic kitchen, with great success!
All proceeds from sales of this book will go to The Bone Marrow Transplant Unit in Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin and to The Thai Red Cross Society.
Published by SABA, SABA: The Cookbook is available from all good bookshops for €30 and is also available on www.sabadublin.com.
Saba is open from 12pm for lunch till late, seven days a week and is located on 26-28 Clarendon Street, Dublin 2. For bookings Tel: 01-6792000 or log onto www.sabadublin.com for more details.
So recently the latest Rachel Allen Recip-e-book launched in assocation with Kerrygold, combining six exclusive recipes from Rachel Allen, along with a collection of Kerrygold fan’s best-loved recipes. The Kerrygold Community Recip-e-book featuring the winners recipes that were chosen for the book and Rachel Allens’s exclusive recipes will be available for free download from the Kerrygold Facebook page. Entrants from across the country and in the UK had been asked to submit their favourite recipes involving Kerrygold, online, for possible inclusion in the ebook.
It’s a case of “ask and ye shall receive” and with the weekend upon us, and two recipes that have been sent to me for the blog, if you’re looking for something to cook for your breakfast this Saturday or Sunday why not try one of the following?
The premise is simple – you sign up, make a nominal donation (which goes to charity) and you receive three food bloggers names and addresses. Next, you go make some cookies, send a dozen to each of the names you get and in return you get three dozen back in the post.
The registration / donation fee is only US$4.00 and goes to Cookies For Kids’s Cancer, with OXO matching donations dollar-for-dollar up to $100k.
Finally, you need to post your cookie recipe to your blog and submit a photo of your cookies as well. Signups opened earlier this week and close at midnight Eastern Time on 5 November. You’ll get your names and addresses by November 12th, get yours in the post by December 5th and post your recipe on December 12th.
Where recipes are concerned, the recipe must be new to you (so you can’t have posted it before) and while the competition is US-based, Irish bloggers are welcome. There has to be a minimum of four from the country and you’re only matched with bloggers from your own country.
So what do you reckon – up for a cookie swap between Irish food bloggers? Check out fbcookieswap.com for the full details but if anyone’s game, I’m up for trying my hand at a few cookies (or at least asking Mrs. Any Given Food-to-be to prep a few). Cheeky.
Yvonne Carty of Hey Pesto! hosts a series of cookery classes at Hugh Lynch's, Tullamore, this coming January.
Christmas is a busy time in the office, voiceovers, posters, ads, last minute website upgrades flying out the door before people close their office doors on 2012. One of the poster for a long-time client of mine happened to catch my eye moreso as I knew the person he was advertising about, and so I came to learn about Yvonne Carty’s Easy Entertaining cookery classes in Tullamore starting in January.
Yvonne, who I’ve met at several foodie events in the past 12 months and most recently at the Tipperary Food Producers evening in Clonmel last week, is the brains of the operation that is Hey Pesto! and come January she’ll be running a series of evening cookery classes under the heading of ‘Easy Entertaining’. The classes will take place in the upstairs function room at Hugh Lynch’s on Kilbride Street, Tullamore, Co. Offaly.
When Are The On?
Thursday January 12th
Thursday January 19th
Thursday January 26th
Each of the classes runs approximately 2 hours from 7.30pm to 9.30pm on the night in question.
What Do I Get?
For €20 a class or €50 for all three classes you will learn a different starter, main course and dessert each night as well as picking up some great tips and maybe a few canapés along the way. The cost also includes menus on each night and tastings.
How Do I Book?
To book, phone Hugh Lynch’s in Tullamore on 087 2505422 or go online at HughLynchs.com. You can also find Hey Pesto on Facebook for further details.
Got a cookery course you’re running or anything you want to share on the blog? Let me know by dropping an email to ken@anygivenfood.com or contacting me here.
If you’re looking for a chance to bag some top prizes, cook for some great chefs and get a night out at a glitzy awards bash, then the EasyFood Home Cook Hero Awards might be just for you. But, you’ll need to act quick as the deadline for submission to this year’s awards is August 31st.
The competition itself launched back in June and will ultimately see up to 33 finalists, three for each of the 11 categories available, take plart in a cook-off at Cooks Academy in Dublin on November 18th, ahead of the black-tie awards that night at The Shelbourne Hotel.
Categories for the awards include Tasty Pastry, One Pot Wonder, Take 5 (best recipe using only 5 ingredients), Catch Of The Day (best fish recipe), Special Diets and Tiny Tastes (best kid-friendly recipe) among others.
Open to all ages, Easy Food is looking for Supergrandparents to Superkids or anyone who is just super in the kitchen! If you have a recipe that everyone you know loves, then this is the competition for you. With eleven categories for Supercooks to enter into, there is something for every type of cook. The appetizing recipes entered should be quick and easy to prepare as the shortlist entrants will have to cook it for the judges.
The eleven winners will each win €1,500 worth of kitchen products plus the opportunity to be showcased in The Easy Food Awards Cookbook. A high caliber of judges have come on board for the Home Cook Hero Awards and include; TV Chefs Catherine Fulvio, Catherine Leyden and Andrew Rudd as well as Vanessa Greenwood of Cooks’ Academy and Gina Miltiadou, Publisher of Easy Food Magazine AND Co-Founder of Zahra Publishing. The judges will be looking for delicious food that is quick and easy to make.
There will be three Supercooks shortlisted from each of the eleven categories, who will be invited to cook their recipe for the judges on November 18th at the state of the art kitchens in Cooks’ Academy with the winning recipes announced at a black tie gala event that evening at the Shelbourne Hotel.
The rules are simple – you must have a passion for food and cooking and your recipe must incorporate at least one of the award sponsors’ products, must be quick & easy (i.e. take between 30 and 80 minutes to prep and cook, depending on the category that you enter) and must be accompanied by 50 words about what the recipe means to you.
If you fancy yourself as a home-cook hero, grab an application form in the current edition of Easy Food magazine or visit EasyFood.ie.
If there’s one thing I love reading during the week and keeping an eye on for the Foodie Roundup at the weekend, it’s recipes. If there’s one thing thing that I don’t do on the blog here myself, is publish recipes from my own kitchen. At least not yet anyway, mainly due to time or sheer forgetfulness when it comes to getting around to writing them up. Also, if there’s one thing that I’ve been meaning to do, is try other Irish food bloggers recipes.
The recent Kitchen Hero Online Dinner Party was the first cookalong I’ve taken part in, but also the first real go I’ve given at cooking up another blogger’s recipes. So, having enjoyed it so much, I figured that once a week I could look at cooking up another blogger’s recipes and to kick things off I’ve chosen the Roast Chicken Quesadillas from Nessa’s Family Kitchen.
Prepping On The Pan
Prep and cooking time for this is no more than ten minutes. A good hot pan, the ingredients as listed here or above and away you go. In my instance I used the breast of a cooked chicken (evening time in Super Valu is a good time to get a few euro off a whole cooked chicken), half the spring onions in one batch last night and the other half in a batch this morning for lunch.
Roast Chicken Quesadillas
It’s a quick, tasty and after feeding myself last night and the Devious Theatre office crew this morning it has five sets of thumbs up from here. Whether as a lunch snack on its own (one slice that is, I cut the whole serving into six pieces) or served with a light salad as part of a larger meal, the quesadillas are definitely one to go for again.
THE CRAIC was had in the kitchen at Chez McGuire on Thursday evening. For the most part, I was by myself, but everything was happening online with Donal Skehan’s Kitchen Hero Online Dinner Party to mark the launch of the book and the pending arrival of the Kitchen Hero TV series kicking off on May 16th. You can go back over the #KHODP hashtag here.
The objective was simple – grab the shopping list, grab the recipes and get stuck in by yourself or with guests from 7pm. For all the Irish Foodies Cookalongs that have been held on the first Friday of every month, I’ve missed them all (much like the Vegetarian No Meat And Greet in Kilkenny on the first Sunday, bad weekend for me), so with a self-imposed evening off, I decided to get stuck in.
The Menu
The menu was certainly a tasty one. I’m a big fan of Asian / Thai cuisine so the starter and main that Donal had nominated for the night didn’t disappoint, with Asian Pork Lettuce Cups (starter) and a Thai Beef & Mango Salad heading for the table before dessert. Ah dessert. Another thing altogether. I only read the instructions on the dessert that morning and realised that for a Blueberry and White Chocolate Cheesecake you need 2-3 hours for it to sit in the fridge, plus god knew how long to actually make the cake itself (though having watched Edward Hayden whip one together in about 15-20 minutes on Saturday, the fear is well gone at this stage). Needless to say, I had never made a cheesecake before.
Preparing the Asian Pork
The Asian Pork Lettuce Cups (recipe here) as a starter were a real tasty treat. Described as “sizzling aromatic pork mince served in little baby gem lettuce leaves with a little sweet chilli sauce”, the dish was just that. The pork hit the pan, complete with garlic, chilli, spring onion, fish sauce, soy sauce, some caster sugar and more besides. The result?
Asian Pork Lettuce Cups
My Asian Pork Lettuce Cups, complete with a Thai sweet chilli sauce I picked up at Christmas. Just before dinner was due to kick off, I managed to rope my brother and his girlfriend in for eats – nice to cook them something at home before they jet to Canada for two years. As much as I like doing a starter and main course in separate eating sessions, I decided to bring everything to the table at the same time. This meant keeping the pork on a low heat in the oven while the Thai Beef & Mango Salad was getting set up. A bit of tin foil to cover the dish of pork and an extra half lime (juice) over the pork when it was finally ready to serve had everything on track.
Thai Beef & Mango Salad
The Thai Beef & Mango Salad (above) got a real thumbs up. Two of the three of us for dinner were certainly salad fans, my brother falling out of that category, but the beef got the thumbs up all round for the flavours and texture. Mango is somewhat of a stranger to my kitchen at home but it added a totally fresh dimension to the salad, a great blend of the hot and cold. The original recipe calls for 150g of bean sprouts, usually found in my fridge, but for love nor money I could not get my hands on a bag on Thursday afternoon so I swapped out for a thinly sliced green pepper, red pepper some extra spring onion and a touch more of garlic.
White Chocolate & Blueberry Cheesecake
Then came dessert. Ah the cheesecake. Well, the top part of it was lovely, and a slice each was devoured by myself and the other pair. The biscuit base, unfortunately, not so much. I skipped the part in the recipe that said I was to use 200g digestives and instead I lumped in the whole packet, which turned out to be a bit bigger than 200g thanks to a recent Devious Theatre cash and carry run. The result made for a very crumbly base, but the cheese part of the cake hit the spot in all manner of ways.
It was my first attempt at a cheesecake and despite the base, I was very pleased with the result. The white chocolate is a real nice touch and the addition of the whole blueberries sets the cheesecake off on a different level. It turned out a lot firmer than your traditional cheesecake and while it was extremely tasty and made for a great dessert option, I reckon the calorie count might be a bit high to go tackling that one again so soon!
Here’s my (upside down) cheesecake… wound up spooning some of the biscuit on top to get a blend.
White Chocolate & Blueberry Cheesecake
It’s All Learning
So did I learn anything?
Meat aside (something I’m certainly used to cooking in the kitchen), the cheesecake was the standout for me here. I’ve loved cheesecake for as long as I can remember, so to cook one was a challenge, largely in not wanting to be disappointed by it. I’ll hold my hands up and admit I made a balls of the base and against better judgement at the time, I didn’t add more butter when I should have. Aoife has since pointed at that a 2:1 ratio is the perfect ratio for biscuit to butter where the base is concerned. I dropped the ball by adding the entire packet of digestives, as opposed to the 200g serving suggestions. Her rhubarb and lemon cheesecake is next on my hitlist.
The afternoon spent in the kitchen also improved my base on Asian cooking, particularly when it comes to sauces, dressings and marinades. With an iMac on one side, a laptop on the other and a copy of Kitchen Hero on the counter, a lot of time (getting distracted to be honest) was spent browsing and reading, and it’s good to get the time to do that every now and then, as opposed to tearing into the kitchen and trying to fling something together in ten minutes.
That said, I also learned that you could produce something like the Asian Pork Lettuce Cups in about ten minutes if you’ve your kit laid out in advance. Both starter and main are quite simple to produce and no doubt will make a return to the table at Chez McGuire in the not-too-distant future.
Finally, there’s also some craic to be had in online cookalongs, particularly where everyone is cooking from the same menu so you get to see the variations in styles, presentations and ingredients. Will I take part in something like that again? For sure.
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Ken McGuire
I'm usually so careful too, but as James sugg
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