Our little grey home in the west!

This is where we'll be spending our Christmas - our very own little corner of God's country (!), a place called Doogra (originating from 'black garden' apparently) in the bogs in the west of Ireland.
On the food front it may be a challenge as facilities are limited but it'll be great!
My favourite butcher Ciaran has required I call him to remind him that I want 'jaws,' as he says,
for the Christmas dinner - otherwise known as 'Ox Cheeks' - a firm favourite in our house!
The recipe is based on one from Yannick of Le Petit Bourg..

Ox cheek –joues de bœuf

For 20 people :
4 kilos meat
700g onions
4 carrots
2 sticks celery
½ bulb of garlic, sliced
Thyme
2/3 bay leaves
10g pepper, ground
1 kilo tomatoes (tinned will do!)
½ pot Blackberry jelly
3/4litres decent wine (not plonk)
2 litres veal stock**
Marinate the meat for 2 days with everything except the jelly.
Separate meat form veg and strain, keeping the liquid marinate. Heat this slowly and skim anything that comes to the surface very carefully.
In a large pan heat a little olive oil and add meat to seal the flavors.  Add the veal stock and the wine.  Reheat and cover well.  Place in oven (150°C) for 4 - 6 hours or in a slow cooker.
Serve with seasonal mash......

Veal stock
2 kilos veal bones
4 litre water
½ kg veg – onions,carrot, celery, leek
12 peppercorns
Roast bones, place in stock pot, add water and boil. Skim, and simmer gently.  Add washed vegetables, bouquet garni and peppercorns. Simmer for 6 – 8 hours uncovered. Skim and strain.

Freezes beautifully!

Christmas Morning in Doogra - note the blue skies !!

Drinks for the festive season!

It's that time of year again when we start to think about entertaining and what better way to make one's loved ones feel welcome than wiht a homemade beverage?
Here are some ideas to impress your guests...


Apéritif Maison (Le Petit Bourg)

1 litre/4 cups red wine – Merlot is perfect
12cl/1/4 cup Calvados (apple brandy though any brandy would do I'd imagine)
150g/6 ozs. sugar
2 tablsp. Chicory
1 vanilla pod
1 cinnamon stick
Juice of 3 oranges


Mix all together and leave for a couple of days. Strain into holy water bottle.....
and enjoy!


Cocktail for 30 people….

2 bottles gin
1 bottle vodka
1 bottle crème de cassis
7 litres orange juice

Mix all together and serve chilled with little bits of fruit (optional)

Mulled Wine


1 Bottle of Bordeaux red wine
½ bottle Port
Same quantity of water
Freshly ground nutmeg
Cinnamon stick
Sugar

Heat up all together and add sugar to taste

Kir Royale
Put a drop of Crème de Cassis in the bottom of a champagne glass and top up with sparkling white wine/cider/perry



Quarante quatre: (forty four)
Bit late for this one - mine has been waiting for dégustation since August, but here goes...
Simplicity at it’s best and a great ‘digestif’.  Impress your neighbours and/or friends by offering them an after-dinner Calvados homemade liquor.

Alternatively, you may like to serve a little 44 with white wine as an apéritif!

You will need:
1 litre of  Calvados
1 orange
44 sugar lumps
44 cloves or
44 coffee grains

and 44 days of patience!

Pour the Calvados into a large Kilner jar with  44 sugar lumps and 44 coffee grains or ...... if you’ve opted for cloves....
Stick the 44 cloves into an orange and add to jar.
Wait at least 44 days before tasting.
( Quarante quatre will, however, keep for centuries in the Kilner jar)

Beef on the bone for the Wildes of Turloughmore !

Definitely one our favourites when in the west of Ireland. Ciaran, our butcher, (who swears that we knew eachother in a previous life!)has the best beef I've ever tasted and has these steaks off to a fine art. Usually in Ireland this is the traditional Sunday roast - boned, rolled and tied and roasted (usually for ages! )
So ask you butcher not to bother boning and rolling -  a great alternative Christmas dinner.
 (Also called Châteaubriand)

So good that Ciaran, my brother, when tasting these babies said ' Oh man, if you told me this was human I'd still have to eat it Sinéad'....wow, what a compliment!

You'll need:

•  1 ribeye steak - fairly thick - one does 4 French people - 3 Irish!! **
•  Coarse unrefined sea salt. Place some salt all over the meat and leave (out of fridge) for   about an hour before cooking over very hot coals - rhis ensures that the meat cooks evenly throughout.

** 2 Australien as one guest pointed out :)

• 10 mins.each side for medium rare, 
• 15 for medium and so on

Leave to 'rest' wrapped in foil for at least 10 mins. before removing bone and slicing.
Serve with Garlic butter and Gratin Dauphinois (garlic potatoes) aswell as a few greens.
Our girls love Yorkshire Puddings with this too.

  Garlic butter (beurre d’escargot)

•  2 large cloves garlic, crushed
•  100g/4 ozs. unsalted butter, at room temp. 
• 25g/ 1 oz. chopped parsley
•  Black pepper
•  A little lemon juice 

 Crush the garlic cloves on a board under the blade of a large kitchen knife. Add a pinch of salt and work into a smooth paste. Scrape the paste into a bowl and add the butter, lemon juice, parsley and black pepper. Mix together well and then spoon onto a sheet of cling film and shape into a log about 3cm thick. Wrap in more cling film and chill or freeze until needed.

  GRATIN DAUPHINOIS

•  1 kg/2 ½ lbs potatoes (150-200g/5 – 7 ozs. per person approx.)
•  3 cloves of garlic, crushed 300ml/1
•  ¼ cups double cream/crème fraîche
•  300ml/1 ¼ cups milk s/p nutmeg (optional) 

Preheat the oven to 150°C/300°F Gas 2 Butter a large gratin dish. Peel and finely slice the potatoes. Rinse in cold water to wash off the starch. Dry with kitchen paper. Arrange the potatoes in the gratin dish with the garlic, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Mix the cream and milk together and pour over the potatoes. Bake in the oven for a little over an hour.

On Friday night we went to my favourite local, Le Petit Bourg, for dinner. Yannick, my favourite chef, was in a particularly good humour and invited me along to a cookery class on Saturday afternoon. I had a ball! It was all about foie gras - how to choose and what to look for, how much to pay for a decent piece etc. but most importantly we had a liver each to play with. Like play dough really, we softened the liver with our thumbs before finding the vein which we later removed (buy deveined if you can) and prepared our terrines. However as nothing goes to waste in Yannick's kitchen - the sign of a true chef, he tells us, is not what he creates with his ingredients, but what he does with the leftovers - food for thought you'll aagree? So with the scraps and a little more we made the ultimate in amuse bouche (nibbles) a crème brulée de Foie Gras..

Crème Brulée de Foie Gras For 50 Verrines (served as an amuse bouche) 12 egg yolks 375ml pouring cream 300ml full fat milk 375g foie gras Salt, pepper, cardamon and foie gras spices A little truffle/fig oil (optional) Serving : Chutney – Fig for example though many others would do - I have a Christmas one here. Gingerbread Duck confit ( in tiny pieces) Heat together the cream, milk and seasonings. In a blender, blend the egg yolks and foie gras. Add the milk mixture and blend. Sieve. Add a drop of truffle oil if using. In the bottom of a ‘verrine’ (small glass) place a little fig chutney, then some duck confit. Pour some of the foie gras crème brulée on top and bake in a bain marie @ 95°C for 40 minutes. Allow to cool for up to 6 hours in fridge before sprinkling with a little brown sugar. Using a chef torch ‘burn ‘ the sugar. A little sliver of gingerbread can be placed on top.

Well hello again!

It's been a while but we're back for more recipes with the odd anecdote thrown in for good measure .. This month, November with its long winter evenings, is perfect for a decent soup. For a great winter warmer try out this one....

    Cream of Lentil Soup

•  500g/1 lb lentils 
• 2 carrots 
• 1 bouquet garni 
• 1 onion 
• 60g/2 ½ ozs smoked lardons
•  5 shallots, finely chopped
•  4 cloves garlic 
• 2 litres/3 pints chicken stock
•  0.5litre/3/4 pint cream 125g/6 ozs. butter
•  Bay leaves and thyme

 Blanche the lentils (just bring to boil in water and stop then place in freezing water) Cook them in chicken stock with the aromatic garnish (carrots, bouquet garni, onion) Once cooked (about 20 mins) drain them, keeping the cooking liquid. Sweat (don’t brown) the shallots with the garlic, smoked lardons, bay leaves and thyme. Add the cooking liquid, reduce by half, add the cream and reduce again by half. Strain, pushing out the flavors. Then add 150g/6ozs. lentils , strain and blend, strain again. Season. And for that special occasion ;)

  Fois Gras with cream of lentil soup

• Mini lardons, chopped chives and chopped shallots. Fry the lardons and drain well. Fry the shallots in butter. Mix together and drain well.
•  Fry foie gras until browned on both sides. Place in a preheated oven for a few mins. Place the lardon/shallot mix on top. Mix the reheated lentil cream to a mousse with a hand mixer. Place a spoon full in a soup bowl. Arrange the foie gras on top garnished with some chopped chives.

The 'F' Word

Here in France, animals and some humans (Kate ;D) are 'à la lettre'That means that all dogs born in 2010 have names beginning with 'F'
Following the birth of Enya's puppies (that's another story!) we launched an appeal for name suggestions on Facebook and came up with Frenchie (makes sense!)Fado, Filomene and Freckles. A couple of months on and lots of kitchen paper, mopping up etc. we're delighted that all have gone to nice homes - Fado is gone to friends down the road, Freckles off to Paris for 'la vie parisienne', Filomene down to a great home on the beach and Frenchie has gone to a recently widowed man where he's being spoilt rotten. Enya is back to digging holes in a desperate, however unsuccessful,search for rabbits in the field, that is when she's not stuck to the Rayburn or trying to get into Kate's bed!
Happy days!

Macarons....those delightful, delicate, almond-based meringues, filled with delicious ganache, fruit, jam or jelly have been the subject of great amusement in our house for quite a while!
The girls would kill for them, the other half hasn't to date expressed any great opinion on them, but enjoyed telling all in sundry of my culinary disasters, which only encouraged the determined side of my character to come out and succeed.
To be honest I, personally, could take them or leave them..but where there's a macaron there's a challenge....and yeees, I've enfin managed to make the finicky, french delicacies - 'the little black dress of french pâtisserie' as Raymond Blanc calls them!
Cooking to me is not generally about quantities - 'au pif' is an expression I use regularly - Pif a slang word for nose - so basically, just throw it in if the fancy takes you....but NOT where these babies are concerned...there are lots of basic rules....Right now I feel a little like Julie in Julie and Julia after days of expeimenting in the kitchen in a quest to make the perfect macaron!

Macarons
Ingredients
For the pâte à macaron
• 185g/6½oz icing sugar, sifted
• 185g/6½oz ground almonds
• 2 medium free-range egg whites
For the Italian meringue
• 2 medium free-range egg whites(at room temp.)

• 185g/6½oz caster sugar
• 3 tbsp water
For the ganache filling
• 100ml/4fl oz whipping cream
• 100g/4oz dark chocolate, or white chocolate if you wish
• Or lemon curd .....or raspberry jam....or whatever!
Preparation method
1. Heat the oven to 160C/300F
. In a food processor with a knife blade, mix the icing sugar, ground almonds then sieve them to remove any impurities (takes yonks!)
3. In a large bowl mix egg whites, icing sugar and ground almonds to form a paste. Don't overmix!

4. For the Italian meringue, whisk the egg whites on a medium speed until stiff (i.e turn the bowl upsidedown - the mix shouldn't fall out!) Add colouring.
5. Meanwhile, place the sugar and water in a small pan and cook over a high heat until it has reached 117C/242F.
6. Reduce the speed on the mixer to its lowest setting and pour the sugar syrup onto the firmly whipped egg whites.
7. Increase the speed to high and continue to whisk for 2-3 minutes.
8. Using a spatula,fold the Italian meringue mixture into the pâte à macaron until it reaches the ribbon stage. Do not over-mix or the macaroon will crack when cooked.
9. Place the mixture in a piping bag fitted with a 8mm/¼in nozzle.

10. Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper and pipe on 3cm/1in discs, at least 2cm/¾in apart.
11. Leave to ‘rest’ for about 10 minutes.
12. Bake in the middle of the oven for 8 - 10 minutes and then leave on a tray until completely cold.
13. Place on cooling tray.

14. Pipe about one teaspoon of ganache/lemon curd/jam onto the flat side of a cooled macaroon and top with another macaroon to make a sandwich.
15. Repeat with the remaining ganache and macaroons and store in a single layer in an airtight container in the fridge.

Note: Macarons are best eaten a day after baking. They freeze very well (ungarnished) Remove from the fridge for at least 15 mins. before tasting.