Lily’s Blog

Today I read an article by Paul Flynn from the Tannery restaurant and cookery school (and lately The Tannery Blog) in the Irish Times magazine. He opened his piece with ‘I have had enough of this air of depression for one year, thank you very much. It got to the stage where I stopped watching the TV in case I saw the news and stopped listening to the radio in the morning. It was all too dispiriting …’

I couldn’t agree more with the man. For the exact same reason, I too have stopped watching The News and Prime Time on TV. Morning Ireland has also been shafted. If it’s important enough I’ll get to hear about it.

Being less dispirited means that I’m in a far better place to contribute positively to my work.

Anyway my reading of yesterday’s Times got in the way of writing this blogpost.

Last night I cooked dinner for ten friends and the three of us guinea-pigs. I set a teddy-bear at the table, thirteen seemed too unlucky a number!

I was busy at work all week and away Thursday and Friday so my choice of recipes had to be heavily based on ease of preparation. Thus I only got to test two dishes from the Avoca Cafe Cookbook; Lakeshore pork and Carrot and courgette salad.

Carrot and courgette salad

Basically just grated carrot, courgettes, fresh coriander, french dressing, seeds, orange juice and orange zest. Easy out.

As long as you have someone good with a grater, adds my husband!

In all the chat last night, I didn’t get the votes. So today we ate the leftovers. I always cook too much food but the up-shot is I had an easy day cooking today. Denis and I voted it 4/5. Straight into the ‘Cook again’ department!

Lakeshore pork

One thing I am doing in this experiment is if I’m suspicious of a recipe, I’ll adapt it, (mentioning here that I did), rather than slavishly following the book. I have cooked this recipe before.

When I was flying to the States to see the lads, I had my laptop out and was writing. (I write blogposts when and where I get a chance). The plane was far from full so I had a few seats to myself. I had the Avoca salads book beside me. The air hostess picked up the book and commented that she had the Avoca Cafe Cookbook. She said she had cooked Lakeshore pork from it but it had been a disaster. ‘Much too much lakeshore mustard in it’, she said.

Armed with knowledge from:

a) Having myself cooked this recipe before and thinking it was wrong
b) That comment from the air hostess, and
c) My realising that ‘Even Homer nods’ having cooked my way through the Avoca salads book,

I adapted this recipe.

The recipe for four people calls for 1.3kg diced pork, (I used fillet), seasoned flour, olive oil, 600ml apple juice, 300ml chicken stock, 300g Lakeshore mustard or other wholegrain mustard and 300ml cream. I was doubling the recipe but was also cooking fish as a main course for non-pork lovers. (I hated pork as a child!)

The error in this recipe, in my opinion, is the amount of wholegrain mustard, 300g for four people. I was using Maille wholegrain mustard. The jar below contains 210g. The recipe calls for approximately one and a half such jars for four people!

In doubling the recipe I used only two tablespoons of mustard and there was plenty of mustard flavour. The guests and guinea pigs all enjoyed this dish. Some who chose the fish even had some pork to taste afterwards.

Us guinea pigs rated the dish 4, 4 and 4.5 out of 5. This adapted recipe will also definitely go into the ‘Cook again’ department. Next time I will add slightly more mustard but nothing near what the recipe suggests.

As the Meatloaf song doesn’t go, two out of two ain’t bad!