Asparagus

Asparagus is justly called the king of vegetables; it seems to stand regally apart from its neighbours at the vegetable stall with a haughty look.

Asparagus is always expensive; it is difficult to grow, offers poor yields, and each spear is individually harvested.

The Belgians and Dutch deprive it of light to produce white asparagus but I prefer the rich green version.

While imported asparagus is available all year round, the very best is locally grown and available in just May and June.

Asparagus deteriorates within hours so is at its best bought direct from a farmer. Udo and Penny Lange of Ballinroan farm in Wicklow are one of the very few (possibly the only) commercial organic growers of asparagus in the country.

The Langes can be found at Brighton Square in Terenure on a Thursday or on Saturdays at St. Andrews Centre on Pearse St., and the Co-Op at Newmarket, off Cork Street.

To prepare asparagus snap or cut off the woody ends and peel each spear from below the tip down to the end. The spears are steamed or boiled, or you can cook them on a griddle pan. Whichever method you use, be very careful not to overcook them – 6-8 minutes should be plenty depending on thickness.

Once cooked you can wrap the spears in ham, or prosciutto; drizzle with olive oil and grate on some goat’s cheese or Parmesan and warm in the oven; or simply dip the spears in melted butter or hollandaise and eat with your fingers.

Asparagus With Mornay Sauce (serves 4)
Cook two bunches of asparagus as described above and plunge in cold water.


Heat 250ml of full fat milk on the cooker. Meanwhile melt 40g butter in a pan, add 40g of flour and stir until it comes together, frying for 60 secs.to cook the flour. Add the hot milk, salt and pepper and whisk vigorously until smooth. Add 100g of grated Mossfield Organic cheese (or Gruyère) and stir until melted.

Place the cooked asparagus in a baking dish, and barely cover with the sauce. Grate on some Parmesan cheese and heat at 200oC for 10 minutes.

New Potatoes

Too much choice, that’s what’s wrong with the modern world.

Women with packed wardrobes insist they have nothing to wear, men flick through 500 TV channels and insist there is nothing to watch, and we wander through the vegetable aisle of the supermarket unable to decide what to buy for dinner because there is too much choice.

It is for this reason that I try to remember to eat by the seasons. This is much easier said than done given that our supermarkets ignore seasons and offer us choices such as watery Peruvian asparagus for Halloween and Spanish strawberries for Christmas dinner.

March and April are difficult months for the seasonal cook but in May it starts getting interesting as the first Irish grown new potatoes begin to arrive, as precious and worthy of praise as any vintage wine.

Home Guard is the first early to appear and is delicious – smooth creamy flesh with a hint of flouriness that will increase as the season progresses.

Specialist vegetable shops such as Get Fresh on Marian Road in Rathfarnham are the place to go – the supermarkets lag long behind and will try to fob you off with Cypriot or Israeli new potatoes; do not succumb.

Early potatoes are not cheap but at a mere €5 per kilo at the time of writing, the value per mouthful of butter drizzled pleasure is enormous.

Steaming is recommended over boiling as this allows the potatoes to retain their vitamin C content and prevents them from breaking up.

Mint, Parsley, Marjoram and Oregano are my favourite herbs for new potatoes but anything green seems to work – even frozen peas.

Rocket leaves, with their slightly spiky texture and peppery flavours, match well, and for a real feast you need some pan fried wild salmon if you can find it (or know a fisherman you can mug); then you really will be eating the food of the Gods.

Onion Tart

You can’t say that you know your onions until you have cooked a sweet onion tart.

Onions have been cultivated for more than 5000 years and are by far the most commonly used flavouring vegetable, as crucial in Indian and Chinese food as they are in French and other European cuisines.

Virtually all savoury recipes are improved by the addition of onions and I believe it is simply impossible to have too many in a dish.

Cooking onions slowly in a little oil and butter will release their sugars gives you an unexpected sweet savoury flavour. Cook them for longer with a dash of wine or Balsamic vinegar and you get Onion Jam for spreading on sandwiches or for eating with cheese.

If you hate peeling onions placing them in the freezer for ten minutes will allow you to chop without tears.

This classic dish from Alsace works particularly well with a glass of Alsace Riesling Gewurztraminer or Pinot Gris from a good producer such as Trimbach.

Alsace Onion Tart (Zewelewai)

Peel and thinly slice 500g of onions and fry gently in 20g of butter for about 40 minutes, stirring occasionally, until they are very soft and sweet but not browned.

To make the tart base use frozen shortcrust pastry or whiz 200g plain flour with 100g of chilled butter in a food processor for 15 seconds. Add a medium egg and blend until the pastry has formed a ball. Remove, wrap in cling film and leave to rest for at least 30 minutes in the fridge.

Pre heat the oven to Gas 6, 200C. Line a greased 8-10 inch tart tin with the pastry, prick all over with a fork, cover with tinfoil and weight down with old beans or rice. If you have time chill the base for a further 30 minutes. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, remove the tinfoil and beans/rice and replace in the oven for a further 5 minutes to allow the pastry to dry. Allow to cool until lukewarm.

Line the pie casing with the cooked onions and season with salt and pepper. Beat 300g of crème fraîche with two eggs and pour over the onions. Bake at 200C for 40 minutes.

Serve hot or warm with a green salad.

Cous Cous

Couscous is so good they named it twice.

Couscous refers to the dish of broth and meat served with the grain as well as the tiny balls of semolina rolled from ground durum wheat.

The wheat is moistened and rubbed into small balls which are then coated in flour so they can be steamed and retain their texture without dissolving into porridge.

Traditionally raw couscous is steamed over a stew of lamb with vegetables, and sometimes chickpeas. The name is said to derive from the Berber word Kesksou which (onomatopoeically) describes the sound of steam forcing its way through the grain as it cooks.

Sadly I have yet to find raw couscous for sale, even in France, but the instant couscous we get here works well and doesn’t need to be steamed for a long period over a stew.

For more info on couscous look to Clauda Roden’s book Arabesque or her Book of Middle Eastern Food.

Couscous with Roast Vegetables and Merguez Sausages
Chop a large peeled onion into chunks and place in a roasting dish followed by some similarly sized chunks of green pepper (or red or yellow), courgette and perhaps an aubergine or squash. Add a couple of chopped garlic cloves, sprinkle with salt and pepper, coat the veg. with lots of olive oil and roast at 190oC. for 60 minutes.

Chopped preserved lemons add greatly to the character of this dish and are available in North African shops or easily prepared at home by jamming cut lemons and lots of salt into a jar which is left for a month or two.

Pour 500g of couscous into a dish and pour on 600ml of hot water containing ½ - 1 teaspoon of salt. Stir the couscous vigorously so that the water is absorbed evenly and leave it to swell for ten minutes. Add a dash of olive oil and rub the couscous between your fingers to break up any lumps and to ensure it is light and fluffy. This last step is the most important so spend a few minutes lifting and separating the grains with your fingertips.

Grill some merguez or lamb sausages (available in halal and fancier butchers) and add to the couscous with the roasted veg. Add some more olive oil (if you wish), mix it all together and place in the oven to steam for about 20 minutes.

Beating It

A good beating really can make a difference.

In Ireland we tend to be shy about beating meat into submission but it is a habit worth forming.

Feel free to wallop a piece of tough rump steak to tenderise it before you slice it against the grain and marinate it for stir frying

For Chicken Cordon Bleu beat some chicken breasts thin, roll them with a slice of ham and Gruyère and secure with a tooth pick. Sprinkle on breadcrumbs, dot with butter and bake in the oven.

Veal is the traditional meat for escalopes but you can also use pork fillet or turkey breast.

The French like to make a creamy sauce to pour over thinly beaten meat to make up for the lost juices. Fry some mushrooms in butter, add some white wine and boil it down, then add some Dijon mustard and some cream and cook until thickened.

The Austrians exalt their Wiener Schnitzel (thin escalope slices of veal fried in breadcrumbs) but they probably robbed the idea from the Italians.

Pork Escalopes à la Milanaise
Mix 200g breadcrumbs with 50g of finely grated parmesan cheese and the finely grated rind of a lemon (feel free to use a food processor to make the crumbs extra fine). In a separate bowl mix two eggs with a splash of milk and add a good pinch of salt and pepper. Trim a pork steak fillet of all fat and sinews and cut into 2 inch slices.

Lay a piece of cling film on a chopping board and beat each piece of pork with a meat mallet or a rolling pin until it flattens to a 3-5mm thick escalope. Sprinkle the escalope with some salt and immerse in the egg wash, then press both sides into the parmesan breadcrumbs.

Drizzle a small amount of oil on a frying pan followed by a knob of butter. Once the butter is sizzling, fry as many escallopes as will fit in the pan for. 2 minutes per side until golden brown. Place in the oven at 120oC to keep warm while you cook the rest. Add fresh oil and butter to the pan before you cook each batch.

Serve immediately with slices of lemon and some creamy pasta or a salad

Sephardic Chicken and Rice Croquettes

From the Evening Herald - 30th April 2009

Jewish Passover celebrations last week sent me back to Claudia Roden’s Book of Jewish Food, as much a cultural history as a cookbook.

When most of us think of Jewish food we think of Woody Allen films and New York Jewish jokes about chopped liver, matzo balls and gefilte fish.

Roden’s book does indeed have many recipes from the Ashkenazi (European) world but the book is most interesting when it explores the cooking of Sephardic Jews.

Sephardic originally meant those Jews that had lived in Spain under the Moors but now signifies the Jewish diaspora with roots in the Mediterranean, Middle East, India and Africa.

Jewish dietary laws apply to both cuisines but Ashkenazi food is standardised while Sephardic food varies from country to country and even family to family, depending on their origins.

The main differences are based on climate and ingredients. The Ashkenazi world with its cold damp winters used lots of animal fats, meat, salted fish, potatoes and onions.

The Sephardic world is hot, and their cooking is lighter using olive oil, rice, aubergines, peppers and spices.

Roden’s recipe below is from the Baghdadi community in India, so called because most are of Iraqi descent and mix Indian flavours to the Iraqi and Syrian dishes they brought with them when they settled in India in the 19th century.

Risotto rice works best for this dish but you could also use pudding rice.

Baghdadi Chicken and Rice Croquettes
125g round rice (e.g. Arborio), 250g Chicken Fillets, 1 garlic clove, 1 inch piece of peeled fresh ginger, ½ tsp garam masala (or curry powder), ½ tsp turmeric, 4 tbs chopped parsley. Oil for deep frying.

Boil the rice in salted water for 15 minutes only, then drain. Mince the chicken to a paste in a food processor and then add the other ingredients, including the cooked rice, and blend until fully mixed.

Oil your hands as the mix is sticky. Take walnut-sized lumps and roll into fingers 5-6cm long. Deep fry in hot oil for c.5 minutes until golden.

Serve with salad, dips and relishes such as Mango Chutney and Raita (natural yoghurt mixed with chopped fresh mint, grated cucumber and lemon juice).

Easter Chocolate

My helpers for this Article are pictured above: Catherine, Grellan and Belle.

Easter means chocolate, too much chocolate. (From Today's Evening Herald - 16/4/09)

In our house Easter eggs and various chocolate bars hang around for weeks after Easter (guzzling) Sunday.

Melting the chocolate with whatever else is left over is a good way to rid the house of this waist stretcher and get the kids interested in cooking.

Cover marshmallows or plain biscuits with chocolate, dip strawberries or grapes, make rice crispie cakes, spread on pancakes, pour on ice cream, or simply use your finger to dip and lick..

Melting cheap milk chocolate as found in the average Easter egg is more difficult due to the lower (or non-existent) cocoa solids so proceed slowly.

Break the chocolate into a small bowl with a couple of spoons of fresh cream (or milk) and place over a saucepan of hot water on low heat. Make sure the bowl is not touching the water (less important for dark chocolate) and that the chocolate melts slowly. Gradually add more chocolate and stir all the time.

Short bursts in a microwave set to medium (fifteen seconds, remove and stir, repeat and repeat) can also work.

Most chocolate bars such as mars and toblerone melt well, a bashed up crunchie or twix will add texture, and smarties or m&ms add colour.

If the chocolate splits and goes grainy you can rescue it by gradually adding the grainy mix to a small amount of hot milk on a very low heat and stirring vigourously.

Biscuits (for dipping or coating)

Ingredients: 350g plain flour, 140g caster sugar, 170g unsalted butter (chilled and chopped), 1 egg, 1 tsp. vanilla extract, pinch of salt.

Sift the flour into a bowl or food processor, add the caster sugar and butter and mix well until it looks like breadcrumbs. Add the egg, vanilla and salt to a cup, whisk with a fork and add to the biscuit mix. Work the dough lightly until firm; add a teaspoon of water if the mixture is too dry. Roll into a ball, cover in cling film and refrigerate for 30 min.

Roll out the mix on a floured board until the dough is 2-4mm thick, cut into shapes, transfer to a baking tray and bake at 140C/gas 3 for 15 minutes. Allow to cool on a rack and then decorate with melted chocolate and smarties.