The Rise of the Mini Food Snob

The huge shift in recent years towards locally produced, fresh food and our ever-broadening desire for more exotic and exciting meals is, of course, to be welcomed. However, it has had one very unfortunate side effect, bringing with it the arrival of a new and insufferable breed of food snob feigning horror at the very thought of a ready meal.

It genuinely scares me how much rubbish food I ate when I was young. Despite my mother's best efforts to feed us as well as she could afford to and, like many other 80s babies, mine was a childhood dominated by Findus Crispy Pancakes and Stinger Bars. An apple was a punishment not a snack and vegetables, if present at all, were generally just a token spoonful overcooked almost to the point of collapse.*'IN MY DAY RANT ALERT* But whatever we ate, there was no choice involved and we (generally) ate what we were given.

Society's renewed focus on eating well and return, particularly in the past 10 years, to the more wholesome values of a pre-convenience food era is great and something I embrace but something I overheard in Superquinn recently has made me think that perhaps we have gone too far the other way.



Me, aged 4 and probably full of Penguin Bars

It was a little girl who couldn't have been more than six or seven who asked her mother to
put back the tub of green olives she was holding as " mom you know I only eat Kalamata". They were immediately swapped. If adult food snobs are an annoyance mini ones are incredibly so and this was just the latest in a catalogue of incidents I have observed that make me think we are in danger of ending up with a generation of pretentious food brats.

In fact, many parents bizzarely appear to wear their little darlings 'refined' palates as something of a badge of honour. Yes, little Cliona eats spoonfuls of horseradish sauce right from the jar and insists that you leave the head on her fish.... we get it. Strange that it's never bacon and cabbage they love, or a nice plate of stew?!

Like many of you I'm sure, thinking about my next meal takes up far too much of my day and I now spend a disgraceful amount of money on 'proper' food. However, though I hope that my adult love of vegetables is helping to compensate for my former Banshee Bone habit, for me, 'rubbish' most certainly still has its place.I defy anyone to find a better cure for booze induced starvation than half of a Pizza Hut Hot Dog Stuffed Crust pizza and nothing cures a hangover like a bag of Spar own brand Bacon Fries. Anyone who says otherwise is lying(or has never had a proper hangover).

It's fantastic that we are increasingly aware of the importance of healthy eating and that children these days are being exposed to a range of foods those just a generation or two back could only have dreamed of but I can't help feeling that the rise of a particular strain of 'foodie' and the associated snobbery is somehow facitating the growth of a generation of pampered, spoiled brats and that think they can have whatever the hell they like and not just in terms of what they eat.

In Training For My First Wedding Cake

I have always loved cake. As a child at family weddings, I was always eager to run ahead for a look at them (though the frilly 80s wasn't the most exciting time in cake-history) and I looked forward excitedly to see what mam had chosen for my birthday each year (invariably a plain cream sponge but I lived in hope that she might get me one of the lurid, fondant-iced Bart Simpson head cakes from the window of The Upper Crust on Main Street. Alas it was never to be *cue violins). Cake means good times, happiness, celebration. What's not to like?

A three tiered fake cake with gumpaste peonies, orchid and rose I decorated in a recent class (dent down to Mr Taxi Driver).

Cakes and Sugarcraft are something I keep coming back to. I completed a pretty basic City and Guilds online course a few years back and have recently completed the PME Professional Diploma in Sugarcraft.  It is like an itch I have to scratch . And that is what I have decided to do over the next few months -  the time has come to see how well I can improve and where, if anywhere, it takes me.

A carrot cake from the PME Diploma, covering some basic techniques

I haven't been baking as much as I would like recently. That is mainly down to the issue of waste and my hatred of it. Keith isn't a big cake eater and I will and have ended up polishing off wedges of cake to save it going in the bin which is all noble enough until your jeans start to feel tight!

A cake I made for a colleague 

But I now have something very exciting to work towards. My good friend Anne is getting married on New Year's Eve and has decided to set me loose on her wedding cake.Cheers Annie! In preparation, I have decided to try to bake and decorate a cake for any occasion I can up to then.

30th Cake

A cake should taste as good as it looks. I (and I'm sure you) have sampled enough dry tasteless sponges over the years to know that. It also has to be quite solid to give the cake structure/take a bit of abuse. An am still very much in the process of finding the perfect recipes. For example, the (chocolate) ones above and below were yummy but very soft. So the search goes on.

Hen Party Cake

I am hoping to document my ongoing experiments here. I am sure some will be better than others but hopefully there will be an overall improvement and I will learn more and more techniques as the months progress. (no doubt spending a small fortune on tools in the process). Hopefully I will then be at least ready for my first wedding cake. Will it be my last? who knows!?

Because sugarcraft is basically playdough for adults -  And whats not to love about that?!

I'm back (with Soft White Bread Rolls)

I've been a very bad blogger, having not posted here in almost a month!(*slap on wrist). This I will blame on the time I have been spending completing my PME Professional Diploma in sugarpaste and the beautiful weather we have been having (during which the call of the beer garden has proven too hard to resist.)

I promise to do better from now on.

I have had quite limited success with bread making to date which I blame in part on our rubbish climate preventing the yeast working properly. But today, with the sun high in the sky in D6, there were no excuses in that area and so I thought I'd give it another go with these soft white rolls.

After wrapping the bowl up very well in clingfilm to keep out the garden nasties, I felt suitably wholesome and old fashioned as I plonked the dough on the windowsill to prove in the hot sun. They are pictured above after their second prove (their flatness is down to me wrapping them too tightly).

A glaze of beaten egg gave them a pleasing golden gloss and I must say I was more than a little bit chuffed as they came out of the oven. I made sandwiches today but think they would also make a really good burger bun.

Summer means salad but my heart used to sink when my mam gave us that for our dinner, The plate always looked full but it was generally made up of little more than a couple of huge lettuce leaves,  some strategically placed scallions , a tomato, halved and perhaps a slice or two of ham laid flat across the plate (sorry mam)....all in all not nearly enough for a little porker like me. But it was always improved tenfold by being stuffed into a couple of rolls with a slick of salad cream - and that was just what I did this evening.

This is a lovely recipe, one I've had in an old binder for so long I don't remember where it came from. And the rolls were so nice I think my up to now substandard bread-making skills are yet another thing we can definitely blame on the Irish weather!

Soft Bread Rolls (yields 4 large rolls or 6 normal-sized)
Ingredients 
240g strong flour
1tbs olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbs sugar
7g sachet yeast
170g warm water

Instructions
Mix water with sugar and yeast.Leave aside to develop until a thick foam forms on top.

Add the flour, salt and olive oil, mixing well until bound together. Add a little more flour if necessary.

Knead for 5-6 minutes until a finger print bounces back.

Place in a bowl and oil lightly before covering with clingfilm. Leave to prove in a warm place (In the absence of a warm summer windowsill, a very low oven should suffice) until doubled in size.

Knock back down and knead slightly. Divide into required number of rolls and place on baking tray. Oil lightly and cover very loosely with clingfilm until doubled in size again.

Bake for approximately 20-25 in an oven preheated to 180 degrees celsius.

Enjoy (80s salad optional).

Taste of Dublin 15.06.13

I had never been to Taste of Dublin before but was tempted to visit earlier today in what is now the festival's eighth year. It takes place each year in the really pretty Iveagh Gardens off Harcourt Street, a nice 15 minute stroll for me.

It's not a cheap day out with standard tickets on the gate costing €28.50 and VIP tickets a massive €52.50, the only advantages of which appear to be access to the VIP tent (including canapes), a free glass of fizz and a cocktail. 

I wasn't naive enough to think there would be freely available food but I was genuinely surprised how little was included in the ticket price. I saw some cubes of Dubliner Cheese, one tray of Pink Lady Apple slices and some Kehoe's crisps. That was it. Everything else had to be purchased with 'florians', the Taste currency (cash is not accepted). 

And, though the very nice lad on the gate told us that "most things" were about a fiver, in fact almost all the starter sized tasting plates were seven florians (or euros). From the Dylan Restaurant we tried this little lamb cutlet with approximately 1tablespoon of buttermilk mash which was fine.

We were much happier with our subsequent choices. This steak, chips and bernaise sauce from the Chophouse was beautiful and the portion size very decent. 

From Jaipur's stall I ordered this Goan Prawn Curry from who I assumed was the owner, one of the most unpleasant individuals I have encountered in a long time. The curry itself was faultless. I really must try to make it soon.

We spent our final few florians on some Movenpick ice-cream - Pannacotta and Pistachio for me and Chocolate and Vanilla for him. 

We left after an hour, well fed but strangely deflated.

The Curry Chronicles: Part 2 - Easy Punjabi Chicken Curry

And so my adventures in curry continue (though they are not documented here as much as they should be, *slap on wrist). I adore Indian food and, earlier in the year, set myself the challenge of, if not mastering it, certainly improving my skills in that area. Since the beginning of the year,  Dan Toombes aka The Curry Guy has come to be my curry guru and I have achieved excellent results from his restaurant style curry recipes namely his Saag, Bhuna and Dhansak and Monkfish curries which are all made from a pre-prepared base curry sauce.

Having been quite disappointed with most of the traditional curries I had tried previous to finding Dan's site, I had stuck to these until now but recently decided to branch out.  This Easy Punjabi Chicken Curry seemed to be the perfect 'bridge' dish, described as a traditional curry but not a million miles from restaurant style. The recipe begins with Garam Masala which I was able to whip up in seconds thanks to my little Lloytron Spice Grinder which cost just €21 from www.electricshopping.ie.

I, like more and more shoppers get my spices from the Asia Market on Drury Street in Dublin and never lose the sense of satisfaction of paying less than a third of supermarket prices for what I have no doubt is much fresher produce. 

The key with this curry is to cook the onions and tomatos which form the basis of the sauce down slowly without browning them. However, mine may have been chopped a little too chunky and so, after frying for the required time and having nothing resembling a broken down sauce, I gave half the mixture a quick whizz in the food processor.

Alas I had no time on this occasion to make Dan's spectacular stove top Naan Bread which is easily my most made and favourite recipe of the year so far giving perfect restaurant quality results every time - a revelation.

And the curry? Definitely one I will make again. A good, flavoursome all rounder which has proven to be a great introduction for me to traditional Indian cooking. In case you haven't guessed, I am a huge fan of The Curry Guy and am really enjoying my adventures in Indian with him. Cheers Dan!

Chocolate Cupcakes with Nutella Buttercream

Ah Nutella.  Many's the over-heaped spoonful of your intense chocolatey goodness I stole and sucked on whilst watching Ray D'Arcy and the lads on The Den back in the early 90's. I still really like Nutella but don't buy it now for fear of being tempted to recreate my gluttonous post-primary school behaviour so when a jar found its way into the kitchen recently, I decided I'd better get rid of it. Fast.  

So these Chocolate Cupcakes with Nutella Buttercream were my attempt to get my Nutella-hit in a more socially acceptable way and try something new at the same time. (While we're on the subject I am very amused at the efforts made in recent times to market Nutella as a health-food with boasts of "just two whole hazelnuts, some cocoa and some milk in each serving"?! ...(and no mention of the trolley-load of fat and sugar it also contains) -  a pretty wild claim if there ever was one!)

My go-to chocolate cake batter recipe used to be this one by Dan Lepard which yields a good, chocolately result but is a slight palaver to make involving the cooking of the 'custard' batter base on the hob first. This time,  I used my new favourite recipe, for Hershey's 'Black Magic' cake which is super simple to throw together and produces a darkly-coloured and intensely chocolatey cake (or in this case, cupcakes).

However, I think that this particular recipe might not stand up as well in cake form (especially if a heavy layer of fondant is to be added for a celebration cake). Being an oil-based cake, it is feather- light but also very soft and crumbly.  I do love the flavour though so might try it next time with cooled melted butter instead which should set when cooled and make for a sturdier cake.The mixture also contains coffee which ups the darkness factor a lot. This, like this great vanilla cupcake recipe I have featured here before is a really liquid batter and it rises A LOT so don't fill the cases more than halfway to avoid an oven-explosion.

The Hersheys recipe, being American, uses cup measurements which gave me the welcome chance to use my new toys. I ordered these online for just over five pounds sterling from www.cakekraft.co.uk with several other items(some of them bulky) and they arrived here in Dublin within three days and neatly packaged for a p&p charge of just ten pounds. I know we 'should' buy Irish, keep it local. etc but many companies here tend to make that very difficult and exploit the very small market. Comparable sets to that above are on sale in Dublin for over €20 so, until sugarcraft and bakeware shops here offer us Irish customers some better value, I will continue to shop for some of my equipment 'across the water'!

Nutella Buttercream
Makes enough to generously ice 20 good sized cupcakes.

Ingredients
200g Nutella at Room temperature
200g very soft butter
500g icing sugar
75g cocoa powder

Method: 
1) Mix butter and Nutella until combined (the butter really must be super soft. I usually leave mine beside the hob when doing a good long spell of cooking as 'room temperature' here in Dublin is generally still pretty hard!)

2) Gradually add sieved icing sugar and cocoa powder, mixing well between each addition

3) Pipe or spread onto your fully cooled cakes and enjoy !

Something Lighter - Thai Lettuce Wraps

For a long time, I found it genuinely difficult not to have a meal without carbs. I used to think this was the West of Ireland in me......... 'a dinner's not a dinner without a spud' and all that ........but as my lunchtime soup also seemed naked without a fat roll on the side and I couldn't contemplate enjoying a casserole without a line of thick doughy dumplings weighing it down,  I now realise it was more to do with my greed than my roots.

And carbs are great....comforting, filling, soothing....but rarely, I've come to realise, constituting the real essence of a dish. I still have them (more than often too many of them) but they are no longer compulsory . I  can now enjoy an omelette without the two once-customary slabs of toast on the side and have even been known to eat my curries with a side of greens instead of rice (brussels sprouts being a particular source of horror to my boyfriend). For me, it's really less about weight management than getting a much needed vitamin injection when I feel its required.

                                             I adore these lazy ginger and garlic jars

These Thai lettuce wraps I made on Monday are incredibly tasty and surprisingly filling. The lettuce here isn't a compromise, however. When you taste them, you'll realise that nothing else would do.

I feel healthier just looking at it

Thai Lettuce Wraps

Ingredients

for the filling:

400g lean minced pork

1-2 tbs oil

2 tbs fish sauce

2 red chillis, finely chopped

1tsp each of 'lazy' garlic and ginger(from a jar, shock horror!)

2tbs light brown sugar

handful mangetout

To serve

a pile of iceberg lettuce leaves.

2tbs salted roasted peanuts

2 spring onions, chopped

lots of finely chopped mint and coriander

lime segments

Directions:

Heat the oil in a pan until quite hot and fry the ginger and garlic pastes and chilli for one minute.

Add the pork mince and mangetout and fry until the meat is cooked through (about 5-7 minutes).

Add the sugar and fish sauce (I like lots, you might like to add a bit less) and cook for approx 1 minute.

Serve alongside with all the other bits and bobs and get wrapping.