Celery

Celery
Celery is the classic diet food, particularly given the rumour that we burn more calories to digest celery than are actually contained in the vegetable.

This seems to be largely true, but the dozen or so calories you burn are unlikely to make much difference to your waistline.

Rarely taken on its own merits, celery is very useful for flavouring soups, sauces and stews, not to mention stirring bloody marys.

Italians almost always include a stalk or two as a base for their stews and tomato based pasta sauces and speaking of Italy, celery and Gorgonzola are a match made in heaven.

Most books recommend that you blanch celery in boiling salted water but I find it better to braise it for ten minutes on low heat in a little oil or butter.

Once you have braised the celery you can add a béchamel sauce and bake in the oven topped with parmesan or add a few skinned tomatoes (fresh or tinned) plus some garlic, fresh herbs and salt and pepper and cook for a further 15 minutes.


Waldorf Salad
Fans of Fawlty Towers will remember that this simple salad is made with equal parts apple and celery mixed with walnuts, grapes and mayonnaise. The grapes are optional and no Waldorfs are required.

Celery and Blue Cheese Soup (serves 4)
1 head of green Celery, 2 medium onions, 1 medium potato, 50g Butter, 50g Flour, 1ltr Stock (preferably Chicken), 80g Strong Blue Cheese – Crozier, Gorgonzola, St. Agur.

Chop the celery, onions and the peeled potato as finely as you can and reserve a few celery leaves. Melt the butter in a large saucepan and add the vegetables. Cook the veg. with the lid on at low heat for 15 minutes until very soft. Add the flour and stir in, followed by the stock. Allow to cook for 50-60 minutes on low heat.

I recommend buzzing the soup with a stick blender to thicken it a little but this is not essential. Crumble or chop the blue cheese and remove the soup from the heat. Gradually add the cheese, whisking the soup after each batch.

As you fill each bowl, add a small mound of cheese to the centre plus some finely chopped celery leaf.

Bellagio, Terenure, Truffle Menu...

Bellagio is at first glance your typical local Italian restaurant
serving bruschetta, pizza and pasta. Neighbourhood restaurants need
to be sure they can attract the conservative as well as the
adventurous diner so yes there are (excellent) takeaway pizzas for under a tenner and you will find words like Carbonara and Bolognese on the menu but this is not the whole story.

Watch out for special dishes and events and you will find a lot more. From their Truffle festival (likely to be annual thanks to the huge success of its first outing in the Autumn of 2009) to the fantastic quality of their espresso and the fact that the pasta will always be cooked to perfection and the less conventional sauces such as Linguine with scallops and artichokes or Pappardelle with beef fillet and porcini.

The Autumn 09 Truffle evening I attended on Tuesday was extraordinary in the quality of the dishes offered. I simply didn't know that thisrestaurant could do this kind of food.

Beef Carpaccio with Baby Leaves, Shaved Black Truffle and Fontina Cheese Breadcrumbs was thick cut delicious beef with solid flavours from carpaccio deressing and the truffles and the Fontina. the Fresh Sea Scallops with Langoustine Bisque, Cream of Beans and Crispy Green
Cabbage (the small bit I was allowed to steal!) were perfectly cooked. Sweet and perfectly caramelised on the outside, barely cooked through on the inside. the creamy cabbage was perfect and the bisque added extra light fishy flavours but all was accented but not overwhelmed by
the truffle.

The black truffle tagliatelli was rich and perhaps a little too
filling but that was my greediness for eating it all. the Fillet of beef was cooked rare as requested and came with just dots of potatoes and veg. (a good thing given the food already in my belly). this is the classic Italian style - you want meat, they give you meat. ask for potatoes if you want them.

the brown trout had one slightly overcooked piece and one delicious perfectly cooked piece - I suspect it was the lights on the pass did the damage to the top piece. creamy spinach was rich and tasty with hints of truffle.

Finally 5 years aged red cow parmigiano, truffle pecorino, fontina and creamy dolce gorgonzola. The crema on the coffee seemed about a half-centimetre thick, underneath was refreshing strong strong espresso with no hint of bitter almonds.

Owner Fabio Capelli sheds a small tear sometimes when he sees three more spaghetti bolognese and a lasagne leaving the kitchen but the regular Irish customers expect certain things from their local pizza pasta places and he is happy to provide it, knowing as he does that he can occasionally offer truffle infused pecorino or the freshest
scallops and baby clams to those who understand a little more about the joys of La Cucina Italiana.

more info at http://www.bellagiorestaurant.ie/

Bellagio Restaurant, 92 Terenure Road North, Dublin 6w. Tel: 01-492 7625

Beef on the Bone

Roast Rib of Beef on the bone, is one of those perfect dishes that can be served to prince or pauper and be enjoyed with equal relish.

Most butchers will remove the bones so you may need to order ahead. Meat on the bone seems to taste better and shrink less. If you forget to order in advance you will just have to visit Ennis Butchers in Rialto where Derek Bolger slowly dry-ages all his beef until it is tender and juicy and sells all his joints on the bone.

Dry-aging removes water but increases the juice content. Once tasted, this is the meat you will want to eat for your final meal.

Cooking times are meaningless if the beef is straight from the fridge so allow it to come to room temperature. For perfect rare beef, season with salt, pepper and dry mustard and brown in a hot pan. Roast in the oven at 200o C for 20 minutes per 500g plus 20 minutes over. Remove and rest for 20 minutes to allow the juices to redistribute. Add some butter and wine (red or white) to the pan juices to make gravy.

Yorkshire Pudding
After many experiments this is the recipe I have settled on. It produces perfectly risen, light as a feather puddings. The recipe is adapted from a mix of chefs but the extra eggs and the vinegar are from Brian Turner.

Ingredients: 1 large mug of Eggs, 1 large mug of Flour, pinch of Salt, 1 large mug of Milk and Water (half and half), 1tbs Malt Vinegar, 60g fat (dripping, duck fat or oil).

Set the oven to 200°C/Gas 6. Break eggs into the mug until it is almost full and add to a bowl with half the milk/water. Beat well, sift in the flour and whisk again until all the lumps have disappeared.

Add the rest of the liquid and the malt vinegar and (if you have time) allow to rest for 20 minutes.

Add a half-teaspoon of fat to each compartment in a muffin tin and place in the oven for ten minutes until hot. Pour the batter into each section of the tin and roast for 25-30 minutes.

Use up any remaining batter in a baking tin – heating the oil first as described above.

Apples in Season

The best of the summer fruit and veg. are coming near the end of their season, but don’t despair as one of our fantastic native fruits, the humble apple is now at its very best.

By apples I don’t mean the shiny watery ones in the supermarkets, but the old native varieties like the ones being saved by Irish Seed Savers www.irishseedsavers.ie or the ones you find on the organic farmers stalls at markets all over the country – Denis and Duncan Healy’s stands throughout Dublin are particularly recommended.

You often don’t even need to spend any money to enjoy this autumn gift. You are bound to have an elderly neighbour or relative that would love you to come and pick their apples in exchange for a tart or two.

Apples also grow in some of our public parks and hang over onto laneways from back gardens throughout the city. Technically, picking up windfalls that drop onto public property is clearing litter not stealing (or so I believe).

Many of Dublin’s leafy suburbs are lined with crab apple trees which can be substituted for cooking apples when making apple jelly and even apple sauce.

I don’t want to compete with reader’s mums and grannies, so ask them for the recipe for apple tart that you remember from childhood.

Don’t forget that apples are not just for dessert but work with meat dishes such as pork and fowl. Cubes of apples fried in butter are a delicious garnish for free range chicken or guinea fowl.

My favourite match for apple is probably with black pudding. A regular lunch in my house is some crusty bread, slices of fried black pudding and slices of whatever apples I have to hand.

If you want to get fancy fry some black pudding and slices of apple and layer them one on top of the other and serve with a green salad which also includes some apple matchsticks.

Bramley Apple Sauce
Perfect match for Roast Pork and poultry such as duck or goose. Also delicious as a starter served with Clonakilty Black Pudding (or your local butcher’s version).

For every 200g of peeled and chopped Bramley apple add 20-30g of sugar and a splash of water. Cook in a non stick pot over a brisk heat for 10-15 minutes.

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