Lily's Blog

I liked the descriptions with this recipe:

Guinness is almost a national institution in Ireland: wholesome, healthy and rich. This stew is an Irish take on a traditional beef stew …

and

‘The beef in Guinness stew is as inky-black as a pint of the black stuff; sheer heaven. Together with a baked potato it makes a feast of a lunch …’

Plus I thought it was a suitable dish to have one night last week when the first emigrant had returned. The other mouse hadn’t yet arrived.

It was very easy to prepare. Beef was browned in oil followed by onions (separately) and then flour added and cooked for two minutes. The Guinness was mixed in along with sliced carrot, thyme, bay leaf, (both frozen from the garden, with the weather last week), garlic, red currant jelly (I used cranberry sauce as had just made it for Christmas), stock and tomato purée. It was cooked in the oven for an hour and a half.

We like Beef stew.
We, (well those of us who have tasted it), like Guinness.
We don’t like Beef and Guinness stew.

We all gave it the thumbs down.

‘We’, included the emigrant who had been admiring the pictures of niiiiice (as he says) food on the blog for the last few months.

That’s Murphy’s Law for you now!

Another good Irish tradition

So I count out the twelve days of Christmas and look up the lyrics to make sure I’ve got today’s correct.

Today is ‘Four colly birds’.

I always (badly) sang ‘four calling birds’.

So then I go to look up what a colly bird actually is. Seems I’m okay singing ‘calling bird’, because that’s what it’s also known as. In truth what it really is, is a plain old blackbird.

Colly bird sounds better though.

I’m not sure what one would do with four blackbirds today but then none of the presents in that song were particularly useful.

‘My true love’ is much more sensible.

Anyway this post was where I was going to tumble in my Christmas reflections not debate the merits/demerits of the presents for the twelve days of Christmas.

Blogging has been scarce over the past few days owing to plenty of family (and extended), friends and food. A lot of cooking of food for the previous two. A lot done and more to do.

It really has been a great few days and there’s still more to come. Eldest and middle mice are here until Friday so Christmas festivities will certainly continue until then.

I feel Christmas is such a mixture of extremes, really good for some people but not so good for others. One never can afford an ounce of smugness if Christmas is good, because one never knows what the next year will bring. I’m thinking of a number of people I know, who have had the death of a spouse to deal with. I’m thinking of a close friend who has just had major surgery in the week leading up to Christmas. She is putting up a great fight. Her husband is keeping an online diary updated which allows us to get daily updates. I’m thinking of an online friend who got bad news on Christmas day. That family’s turkey remained uncooked in the fridge on Christmas day.

So when Christmas is good, I think one should really appreciate it … as well as enjoy it.

Our house is going twenty four hours these days. The elder lemons are keeping reasonable hours but eldest and middle mouse are still on US time. No need to lock any doors – there’s always someone up.

I’m celebrating my first blogging anniversary at this time. My first post was here.

Now a year later, I’m getting afraid of myself again. Over the last year, I’ve got interested in learning to program. In fact Patrick’s present is to teach me for a full day this week. I know me. Once I start something …

Maybe after all, four colly birds would have been a better present.

to all …

Star anise left over after a certain salads experiment!

The description in the book for this recipe was:

This is a full rich, rounded dish, the spices lending a refreshing tang to the meat. If the list of ingredients looks long, do not despair; the method is surprisingly short, and you’ll have your feet up in no time. Soon enough to enjoy a glass of wine while the house fills with the enticing aromas of the East.

This description fits the dish perfectly and I was perfectly obedient. I included drinking the glass of wine as it cooked.

Well the book told me to

This is where I love this experiment. I wouldn’t normally cook such a dish.

Lamb was tossed in seasoned flour and cooked in small batches. The recipe specified leg, I had bought lamb leg steaks, 50% reduced in Superquinn, so this was a very economical dish as well as very nice. Onions were sauteed, then garlic, finely chopped ginger, ground almonds, ground cumin, bruised cardamon pods, nigella seeds (hey I got to use them again!), green chillies, (I used a mixture of red and yellow), black pepper and chilli powder were added and cooked for five minutes. The meat was then returned to the pan and coconut milk and stock added and brought to the boil. I then transferred it to the oven and cooked it for an hour. At the end I was supposed to stir in chopped coriander leaves and stalks but I fell at this hurdle. I didn’t have any.

The result was delicious, straight into the ‘definitely repeat’ category. Middle mouse became middle guinea pig yesterday. It’s wonderful having him home. Eldest mouse comes on Christmas eve.

I now realise that my store cupboard is improving as a direct result of this experiment. I looked up the book to see if any recipe was suitable for the lamb I had bought, discovered this one and found that despite it having seventeen ingredients, I had them all except the fresh coriander.

One quibble with the recipe, it stated, ‘1 tablespoon cardamon pods, bruised’. I was in doubt but I obeyed since I heaven’t used cardamon a lot before. (My obedience gets the better of me sometimes!) The pods of cardamon are inedible.

Later I looked up various recipes including a Waitrose recipe which stated, ‘Remove the black seeds from inside the cardamom pods and lightly crush them in a pestle and mortar. Discard the pods.’

I don’t think this recipe gave sufficiently clear instructions for cardamon. What do the cooks out there think?

Another quibble with the recipe is the quantity. The recipe called for 1.6kg (3.5lb) lamb – 14oz lean lamb per person which seemed enormous to me, so I halved the recipe. We had loads and a good bit left over. I decided to test our dogs who eat everything to see how they liked spicy food. They loved it. Who says we have plain dogs.

But they’re too good at ‘wolfing down everything’ to be discerning recipe testers though!

Final quibble would be that had I followed the recipe exactly, using 2 tins of coconut milk with 3.5lb of lamb for the 4 people, the calorie count per portion for just those two ingredients alone would have been 1,326 calories per portion, (938cals for 14oz lamb and 388cals for 200ml coconut milk).

Interestingly the can of coconut milk states under ‘Nutrition Information’ Servings per pack 8, Serving size 50ml. Interestingly the manufacturer suggests using much less than Avoca.

I feel like an undercover detective. In this experiment, I have discovered that Avoca savory food can be quite calorie laden. We all know that many desserts can be fattening but they mightn’t be the biggest offender in the meal!

Despite all the above, I will definitely repeat the amended recipe.

Middle mouse sent an email yesterday with a photograph of campus covered in snow. As I read it, gmail had a sponsored link for college applications down the side.

That brought back memories of him spending last Christmas filling out college applications.

In fact for the last six years, Christmas has been spent under paper mountains. Mice doing Young Scientist projects. Mice applying to colleges.

Six Christmases of paper mountains.

Six white Christmases.

I have had a very responsible job then – I was Chief photocopier, Chief envelope filler, Chief putter onner of stamps, Chief tea/coffee Maker, Chief mouse PA. I’m an authority now as to which US college doesn’t want one to staple anything, which college needs everything in individual envelopes with their own special labels. Where in Limerick one can print and laminate A1 posters for the Young Scientist …

One of my earliest blog posts was on this said subject.

What do you know, this year will be no different.

Mouse number three has another Young Scientist project. A mountain of returned, completed questionnaires is forming in his room. Nearly 2,000 and counting.

Photo owned by myuibe (cc)

So this year we will be having another white Christmas.

This is my simple letter to Santa.

Dear Santa

Love Lily

I wrote this post last night, but now it seems it will be a white Christmas this year, in more ways than one.

Limerick early this morning …

Later on and after Barack and Charlie had done some test rums!

Next date with Avoca Cafe Cookbook was with Normandy pork.

This was a dish very much along the principles of the recent Lakeshore pork. A very suitable dish for the very cold and frosty morning outside as I was cooking it!

Horses (from a neighbour’s field), keeping me company when no one’s about.

Plenty of frost, but later the sun breaks through

A shining example of primula!

Anyway back to the Normandy Pork.

I diced fillet of pork, tossed it in seasoned flour, sautéed until golden brown, and then transferred it to a casserole dish. Diced onions and chopped cooking apples were then sautéed

and added to the meat. Apple juice and chicken stock were added,

covered, into the oven for an hour.

Cream was added before serving.

Verdict straight into the ‘Definitely repeat’ category. I made this early in the morning and it was perfect that night and next day.

I intend using this recipe (and/or maybe Lakeshore Pork) over Christmas as both very easy and great for preparing ahead.

“Don’t just think about your meals as a succession of one-night stands. You’re in it for life. You’re here today and tomorrow, and all of next week, so you might as well get your head around basic planning.”

I’m quoting from an interview with Allegra McEvedy by Louise East in last Saturday’s Times.

That’s a new way of thinking about planning what to cook for the family. Family cooking planning!

Anyway back to the cooking! Chicken marinated in …

The packet contained four chicken breasts so I did the recipe in the title for two of the chicken breasts and a suggested variations for the other two.

I like making work for myself …

Main recipe was chicken marinated in honey, wholegrain mustard, lemon juice and olive oil, then baked in the oven in the marinade. Then the chicken was removed from the roasting tin and the sauce reduced over heat.

The second marinade was chopped fresh rosemary, garlic, shallot, lemon juice and olive oil.

Denis and I have come up with a new simpler rating system. There’s just three categories:

Exceptional
Definitely repeat
Forget about

The chicken marinated in honey and mustard went straight into the ‘Exceptional’ category

The chicken marinated in rosemary, garlic etc went into the ‘Definitely repeat’ category. This is shown in the photograph.

I served it with creamed potatoes and purple carrots – I hadn’t seen these before.

A simple yet win meal.

A Teresa

I love Christmas
I love baking
But I don’t do any Christmas baking.

Why, you might ask?

Well for the last about twenty years, Teresa does all my Christmas baking.

Teresa, great friend, married to a relative of Denis’ (to be precise, a step first cousin once removed!), ‘adopted’ grandmother to our three boys

Teresa lived beside us when we lived in Nenagh. When a child got sick she was the person I called on. When we went to America for six weeks for Tommy’s surgery in 2004, Teresa moved into our house to take care of Patrick and John.

Teresa is gifted at baking, scones, sponges, brown bread. You name it, Teresa can bake it. I learned a lot of my baking from Teresa.

The whole tradition of Christmas baking started when Teresa used to call in when I was doing Christmas baking. She would sit and drink tea and watch a much less able, a much less experienced person …

In the intervening twenty years we’ve evolved. The expert now does the baking. I do all the sitting and the tea drinking. We still both love this annual Christmas baking day, bakeathon.

Saturday was this year’s day.

My work for the baking day is to have all the shopping done and the mincemeat made in advance.

Teresa doing Christmas baking is now far more special though.

Two years ago I noticed that Teresa had to sit down a lot while we were doing the baking. I helped her much more than usual that day as she was feeling tired. Very shortly afterwards, she was diagnosed with bowel cancer. She had chemotherapy and radiotherapy and then surgery to remove the tumour. She went in for surgery in July last year but unfortunately didn’t come out of hospital for seventeen weeks. I visited her almost every single day. Patrick was in the US at the time and I remember him keeping in regular contact as to how she was. Teresa suffered complication after complication post surgery. For two of those seventeen weeks we kept vigil in intensive care. She battled but won this hard-fought battle.

You can imagine how special it was when she insisted on ’supervising’ me doing the baking last Christmas.

You can imagine how special it is when she insisted she was back ‘doing the baking’ this Christmas.

Photos from bakeathon 2009!

The line of mince pies getting long

Longer

Nine dozen long

We like our mince pies!

Now only 107 left for Christmas!

The plum pudding mixture

I did help with the heavy work of stirring the mixture!

Teresa filling the pudding bowls

The finished Christmas Cake which she had baked earlier (like in any good cookery show).

Yes, I recommend that every home should have a Teresa!

This post is somewhat related to a previous post I wrote here about an unusual restaurant in San Francisco.

Atilla, one of our Hungarian friends is very interested in music. He introduced me to the song ‘Freedom Cry’ on the album ‘Boheme’ by Deep Forest.

Deep Forest consists of two French musicians, Michel Sanchez and Eric Mouquet. The song ‘Freedom Cry’ was sung by Károly “Huttyán” Rostás who was a Hungarian prisoner and the song was recorded in a Hungarian jail. Deep Forest’s website states: ‘A song from a man singing in a jail, which (sic) would liked to be free again. You can hear him sobbing while singing.’

The album became Deep Forest’s most successful album, selling over 4 million copies and receiving a number of Diamond, Platinum and Gold awards in 15 countries.

However the story doesn’t have a happy ending. According to wikipedia, though Deep Forest made money from this album, Károly never received any money from the song, and neither did his family after he died in 1986.

Here is the song

The words of the song are here on Deep Forest’s website.

John came back from an exchange in Spain some years ago raving about this dish.

I have never cooked a proper Spanish Omelette before. The ingredients were simplicity itself; diced (un-cooked) potato, onion and eggs.

It was lovely but next time I’d add slightly less potato. (I did weigh the potatoes for this recipe. Probably a first!) Next time I’d probably add some of the suggested variations – smoked salmon, cream cheese and dill; cherry tomato, rosemary and goat’s cheese or my suggestion – some bacon or my recently discovered pancetta!

We voted it between 3.5/5 and 4/5. I will definitely cook this again.

A great dish when you’re in a hurry.