Caitriona's Stew

Cold wintry weather has descended on us in the last two weeks so it’s time to bring out the stew pot.

Everyone needs to know how to make a good stew and the secret is to keep it simple.

Irish stew should be simply layers of trimmed neck of lamb and potatoes interspersed with onions, chopped herbs and salt and pepper and topped up with water and cooked for a few hours. Using a mix of floury and firm potatoes will thicken the stew and if you want carrots serve them on the side.

The main recipe this week is not my own. I have made dozens of different stews over the years, usually adding wine and other fancy ingredients but I have come to the conclusion that simple is best, and the rest of my family and friends agree that my wife’s stew cannot be beaten.

Caitríona’s Old Fashioned Stew
Ingredients: 1.5 kg Rib Steak (or Round Steak), 2 tbs Flour, 1 tsp Salt, Black Pepper, 2tbs Sunflower Oil, 5 medium Onions, 3 large Carrots, 3 large Parsnips, 10 medium Potatoes

Carefully trim as much fat from the meat as possible and cut into 1 inch cubes. Add the meat to a plastic bag followed by the flour, salt and pepper. Shake the bag well so that the meat is fully coated in the seasoned flour.

Heat the oil in a large casserole dish and once you see a hint of smoke, add the flour-coated meat and brown quickly, stirring occasionally to prevent the meat from sticking.

Peel the onions, chop into chunks and stir and brown in the casserole. Add water until the meat and onions are covered. Bring the water to a simmer, cover and leave to stew on very low heat for 1.5 hours.

Peel and top and tail the carrots and parsnips. Chop into chunks or strips of similar size and add to the dish. Wash and peel the potatoes, cut into large chunks and add to the dish. Add boiling water until the meat and veg. are fully covered. Simmer for a further 1.5 hours until the meat is tender and the veg are cooked. Check the seasoning after one hour and add more salt and pepper if necessary.

Serve in bowl with lots of juice and home made soda bread.

Healthy Snacks

Healthy Snacks are two buzz words you will see in every women’s magazine but kids need more than a few apple slices when they get home from school.

Almost all children are fussy eaters and there is very little parents can do except find things they like to eat that are relatively good for them (or at least not bad for them).

Processed foods kids love such as potato waffles and fish fingers will never be as good for them (or us) as real food prepared from scratch.

The recipes below are unlikely to appear in a dietician’s cookbook given that they are cooked in fat and contain salt, but the important thing is they are way better than any processed food, taste great and kids will eat them.

Feel free to scale up all the recipes below.

Chicken Nuggets
These are so tasty and easy you will never have to buy chicken nuggets again.

Blend 100g of cornflakes in a food processor with a good pinch of salt. Cut a chicken breast into nugget sized pieces and push each nugget into the cornflake crumbs. Both cornflakes and chicken breast are sticky so there is no need for egg. Shallow fry in a little oil and butter until firm and golden.


Fish Fingers / Fish Goujons
Whether you call these goujons or fish fingers depends on whether you cook them for adults or kids.

Cut 250g of white fish such as Cod, Haddock or Whiting into 2cm strips 10 cm long and 1cm thick. Rub the fish in plain flour and lightly coat each piece of fish. Process 3-4 slices of white bread into fine breadcrumbs. Beat a large egg with some salt and add a splash of milk. Dip the fish in the milk, followed by the breadcrumbs and shallow fry in sizzling butter mixed with a little sunflower oil until golden.


French Toast
Use any bread but this is best with slices of French stick or thick slices of crusty bread.

Beat 2 eggs with 200ml milk and add a pinch of salt. Dip thick slices of bread in the milk/egg mix and shallow fry in a little butter and oil until golden. Serve with maple syrup or a sprinkle of caster sugar.

Colcannon

With the wholesale adoption of Halloween by America we sometimes forget that it originated in Ireland and was brought to the US by Irish immigrants.

Pumpkins are much easier to carve than turnips so it is not all bad. Bobbing for apples is a tradition worth keeping and don’t forget to hang the apple from the door frame (or a doughnut) and don’t forget to add some money to the apple tart and colcannon.

Colcannon is one tradition that has not been commercialised, probably because it has far too much butter and full fat cream and milk to be of interest to America.

Feel free to adjust this recipe to your liking. If you prefer cabbage feel free to use it instead of kale. Do use full fat milk but feel free to omit the cream and reduce the butter. Some cooks (e.g. Theodora Fitzgibbon) suggest using equal weight of Kale to Potato, but I feel a proportion somewhere between a third and a half works best.

Don’t forget to include at least one coin.

Colcannon
700-800g Potatoes, 250g Curly Kale (or Cabbage), 1 Leek, 200ml Whole Milk or Cream (100ml of each), 100g butter, Salt and pepper. Coins well wrapped in grease proof paper.

Peel the potatoes and steam them until tender. Use a floury variety such as Kerr’s Pinks if you can, but Roosters will suffice.

Strip the leaves of the kale from their stalks, chop finely, and wash in lots of cold water. Place the still dripping leaves in a saucepan with a knob of butter and cook on medium heat in a closed pan for approx. 7 minutes. .

Simmer the cleaned and finely sliced leek in the milk or cream until tender.

Once the potatoes are cooked, mash them thoroughly or push through a potato ricer, add half the butter and beat with a wooden spoon until you have a smooth consistency.

Add the leek and hot milk/cream to the mash, mix in the kale, and beat well with a wooden spoon to spread the leek and kale through the potatoes.

Scrape into a large bowl or plate and push in the coins wrapped in paper. You can cover the dish at this point and heat it up later in the oven or microwave. Just before you bring it to the table make a well in the centre and add the remaining butter.

Venison

Bord Bia are doing a lot of good work to encourage us to eat in season and a quick look at their site www.bestinseason.ie will tell exactly what to look for in your local market.

For example Green beans are nearing the end of their season and Celeriac is just beginning, both go perfectly with the first of the autumn game.

Many of us forget that meat also has a season and autumn is Game season. It is illegal to shoot game during the spring and summer months (to allow the animals to breed and to keep their numbers up), but summer is long gone now so Grouse, Mallard and Venison are beginning to appear in specialist butchers such as Downeys in Terenure.

Venison is also a farmed meat so is available all year but the wild version seems to me to have a little more flavour, if not the consistency of texture of the farmed version.

Recipes for Venison often ask for the meat to be marinated in wine, vinegar and juniper berries for 2-3 days to tenderise and add moisture and flavour. Marinating works but is really only necessary for old tough animals, not like the young bucks most likely found in the butchers.

I treat venison haunches and legs much as I would a piece of beef; rub olive oil into the flesh with some salt and pepper, brown it in a hot pan and roast in a hot oven at 20 minutes per 500g plus an additional 25 minutes. Allow the meat to rest and it will be as tender as any roast of beef.

Similarly cook Venison steaks exactly as you would sirloin.

Venison is very low in fat and needs a good gravy to add moisture. The following is adapted from a recipe of the 19th century chef Antonin Carême.

Venison Sauce
Ingredients: 200ml of Pinot Noir (or any light red wine), 2 tbs of Red Wine Vinegar, the flesh of half a skinned Lemon (skin removed), 3 tbs of Redcurrant Jelly, 50ml Stock.

Bring all the ingredients except the stock to a boil and cook rapidly until the sauce has reduced by two thirds. Add the Stock (any brown stock) and reduce the sauce for another 2-3 minutes. Adjust the seasoning with some salt and pepper.

Autumn Roasts

Autumn is the beginning of the comfort food season. Slow roasting meat and veg. makes for no-fuss cooking and tasty, warming food to brighten the dark evenings..

The golden colours of Autumn are reflected in the recipes below – Lamb and Autumn vegetables roasted until they are the colour of the Autumn leaves - rich yellows and browns with flashes of red (if you add a red pepper!).

Roast Shoulder of Lamb with Apple and Parsnips
Ingredients: 1 Shoulder of Lamb, 2-3 Dessert Apples, 2 medium Parsnips, 1 medium Onion, Wine (white or rosé), Salt and Pepper.

Ask your butcher for a shoulder of lamb with the bone still intact but the blade removed. Core and roughly chop the apples and lay in the bottom of a roasting pan or dish. Peel and chop the parsnips and onion and mix with the apples.

Lay the shoulder on top of the veg. and add 2 full glasses of wine plus 500ml water. Cover loosely with foil and slow roast in the oven at 160o C for approximately 4 hours.

Check the liquid levels every hour or so and baste the meat. You will probably need to add a little water to the dish to keep the liquid levels at 1-2cm deep.

The slow roasting allows most of the fat to render out and should give you a nice blend of crispy skin and moist interior. Serve a small pile of the apple/parsnip/onion with each portion.


Roast Autumn Vegetables
Ingredients: Pumpkin, Acorn Squash, Parsnips, Carrots, Onion, Courgettes, Aubergines, Red Peppers, Garlic, Fresh Herbs such as Rosemary and Bay, Olive Oil

Proportions for this dish are very flexible. Feel free to use all the veg mentioned or just a few - pumpkin, parsnip and onion work well for example.

It is best to use more pumpkin, squash and carrots (up to two thirds) and less of the softer veg such as courgettes and onions.

Peel the root veg. and de-seed and scrape the squashes and chop all into roughly equal pieces. Garlic can be left whole or peeled. Rosemary works best but any fresh herbs will add flavour.

Mix all the chopped veg with a generous splash of olive oil, add a good sprinkle of salt and pepper and roast for two hours at 160o C.