#WineWednesday
I’m Just Here For Boooozy Hallowe’en Cocktails
Any of these would work as a shot or a full cocktail. They would also make excellent jelly shooters, but I have zero patience, so straight down the trap they went. I wasn’t expecting much but all were delicious!
Bat Bite
1 part white rum
1 part cranberry juice
Ghostbusters
1 part vodka
1 part Midori
1 part pineapple juice
1 part orange juice
Green Demon
1 part vodka
1 part white rum
1 part Midori
1 part lemonade
Freddy Kreuger
I didn’t have these ingredients in the gaff but a festive alternative option for hardcore Jager and Sambuca lovers…
1 part Sambuca
1 part Jagermeister
1 part vodka
And because I will never tire of this….
Cheers!
An Ode To Elpida The Ledgebag’s Moussaka
Given my ingrained response to clamp on to anyone and anything involving food it’s perhaps not surprising that I’m particularly drawn to charming gentlemen proffering food through one of my favourite things-the TV.
Even though my Mam recently dumped her longtime TV boyfriend Jamie Oliver for Donal Skehan, Rick Stein will forever be my true love (Shirley Valentine fling with Raymond Blanc pending).
Along with the fab addition of Mykonos Taverna to Dame Street, the memories of five weeks spent in the Greek Islands when I was a young ‘un, it was an episode of Rick’s series From Venice to Istanbul that pushed me off the couch and into the kitchen to try Moussaka for the first time.
Rick visits one of his heroes, Patrick Leigh Fermor’s home in Kardamyli, a village in south Peloponnese. The story of this Moussaka comes from Leigh Fermor telling his housekeeper, Elpida, to not make Moussaka as he didn’t like it. She made it anyway and didn’t tell him (I like the cut of her jib). Of course, afterwards this was lauded as the best Moussaka ever. Like a lot of these types of dishes, everyone makes it a different way so it’s all subjective. Before watching this episode I would’ve sided with Patrick on the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ feeling for what seems a pretty unexciting lasagna type dish. On my travels around Crete, Sardinia and Naxos, I’ve had very pleasant versions but nothing more than a bit of good stodge with mild flavour. But if this is THE BEST ONE EVUUUURR, why not give it a bash?
I re-watched the episode before attempting it and it seems Elpida’s recipe was modified on Rick’s website but you can watch it on the BBC iPlayer and decide for yourself what you want to do. I modified the amounts but stayed pretty on course with the ingredients. The quantities given below is enough to work for the size dish I had and easily feeds six hungry heads.
If you’re going to follow the original recipe, make sure you have a good deep dish for this. I ended up throwing out some of the béchamel sauce and not doing a third layer because my dish (height about 12cm/ 5in) was too shallow. The other proportions were fine, 24 x 35cm. Not a huge waste as there was plenty of sauce on top, but if you want to be exact, a deeper dish is better. I feel you’d still need a second aubergine than given in the original recipe also to make the extra layer.
Ingredients:
Salt
1 aubergine, sliced lengthways
3 courgettes, sliced lengthways
About 400ml olive oil, have more ready as I lost track of how much I used in the end
2 large potatoes, peeled and sliced lengthways
2 small onions, chopped
10g/2 cloves garlic, chopped (I used 3 tsp minced garlic)
500g minced beef
2 x 400ml carton chopped tomatoes
1 cinnamon stick
1 bay leaf
12 turns black peppermill
For the Béchamel
75ml butter
75g plain flour
500ml full-fat milk
3eggs
¼ tsp grated nutmeg
150g Gruyère, freshly grated
Begin by slicing the salting the aubergine and courgette slices and leaving them for about 30 minutes.
Slice the potatoes and fry off. In a deep ovenproof dish, about 24cm x 35cm, arrange the potatoes in a layer.
Fry off the aubergine and courgette in plenty of the olive oil over a medium heat until lightly browned and starting to soften, then drain on kitchen paper and set aside.
In a separate pan, heat 70ml of the olive oil and fry the onions and garlic for 5 minutes until softened. Add the minced beef and brown it before adding the tomatoes, cinnamon stick, bay leaf, ₁½ teaspoons salt and the pepper. Simmer for 30–40 minutes. When done, remove the cinnamon and bay leaf.
Top with half of the beef, then the aubergine and courgette followed by the rest of the beef.
Heat the oven to 220°C/gas 7.
To make the béchamel sauce: melt the butter in a saucepan over a gentle heat, stir in the flour and cook for 2 minutes so it loses its raw taste. Slowly incorporate the milk, and continue stirring until the sauce thickens. Remove from the heat and whisk in the eggs, nutmeg and 100g of the grated cheese. Elpida uses an electric whisk but a bit of elbow grease works fine for this quantity if you’re too lazy to dig it out!
Spread the béchamel over the layered meat and vegetables and top with a further 50g grated cheese. Bake for 30 minutes, then take out and leave to cool. Serve warm.
HAPPY HE-MAN FRIDAY!
Since I’m getting my train tracks on today, I will be numbing myself with codeine and booze for the weekend. Cheers, filthbags!
Debbie Does Happy Friday
(via Failbook)
Happy Friday!
Happy Easter!
The annual prohibition of Good Friday (with exceptions for those flying, sailing or in a hotel having a meal and the other lushy loopholes) is here. BOOOOO!!
I presume most of us stockpiled booze last night and promptly binge drank a good chunk of it? Since I can’t go more than a half bottle of wine these days without going into a chloroform soaked rag slumber, I didn’t do too badly. I still bought extra, and then extra-extra just in case. FOMO, wha’.
So, our boozy options tonight are party in the gaff or loitering dangerously in fields with dolly mixtures. Because what else would we do? Hush now and let me top up your glass.
Saturday is usually a write off. As follows where Jesus led, we will start to decompose over the rest of the weekend in a cool dark place. But don’t be too hard on yourselves, sure. 
On the third day, comes the slightly more functioning day of Easter Sunday which is spent spooning chocolate bunnies and hollow eggs.
A few hours of digestion later, we rise once again for what is traditionally bonus drinking night. What, with party time missed on Saturday and all.
And then, Easter Monday, to come blinking out into the daylight for what is known as ‘Bright Monday’ ….probably to have ‘just the one’…
Save me, Jebus!
(pics: shirtshovel.com, 9gag.com, nottamebutgood.wordpress.com)
An Evening In Cooks Academy With Tefal and Derry Clarke
I had abandoned cooking new stuff for a while as I was content with the old favourites on regular rotation, so when I joined an evening of with prime Irish beef Derry Clarke and Tefal in Cooks Academy I was all set to open my mind and food hole to some tasty inspiration.
(pic: irishbeef.co.uk …of course it is)
Using the Tefal OptiGrill, Actifry Express XL and the Ingenio cookware set, Derry demonstrated how to make smoked haddock risotto, steak and chips and rhubarb and ginger crumble….
…All while we chowed on juicy prawns made in the Actifry Express, and teriayki salmon kebabs and mini lamb burgers grilled to perfection on the Optigrill.
…learn…chomp…learn…chomp…learn…chomp….
Let loose in groups, we set off to recreate the dishes.
As the other three in my group started in on the steak, fries and crumble, the risotto was all mine.
Having never eaten risotto before (please send help to Poola C, No. 1 Under A Rock, Frozen Pizza Box Way) and never bothered to attempt cooking it due to everyone making such a drama out of it, I was a tad nervous about ballsing it up. It turns out however, risotto (or at least this one) is a piece of p…cake!
Smoked Haddock, Spinach & Pea Risotto with Aged Parmesan
Ingredients
50g butter
1 small onion peeled & diced
300g Arborio rice
1l vegetable stock
300g diced smoked haddock
100g spinach leaves
100g aged Parmesan
Method
Melt the butter in a Tefal Ingenio pot and cook the onion gently for 5 minutes. Do not brown the onion. Add rice and season.
Heat stock and add to rice, ladle by ladle, letting the rice absorb the liquid slowly. Ladle wine liberally into yourself. This will take about 15 minutes.
Add the smoked haddock, peas, spinach and cheese (leaving a little cheese to sprinkle before serving)
Top the dish with crisp salad leaves dressed with a little olive oil and balsamic. Sprinkle with the remaining Parmesan cheese.
Seriously easy. Why complicate things? It’s perfect, and so tasty.
Using the Ingenio detachable handle, I moved the dish from the hob to the table, detached the handle and served right there. Saves time and cleaning!
While I was having a very zen time ladling stock into rice as thirsty as Robin Thicke at a meet and greet, the three others were tearing up the workspace prepping the steak and chips and the crumble bits and bobs.
Warm Rhubarb & Ginger Nutty Crumble
Ingredients
20 Sticks Rhubarb
1 tablespoon fresh chopped ginger
200g white flour
100g butter
100g white sugar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon peanuts, chopped
1 tablespoon pecans, chopped
1 tablespoon hazelnuts, chopped
2 tablespoons oats
Method
Clean and chop rhubarb, place in Tefal Ingenio pot with the white sugar, ginger and water. Taste and add more sugar if required. Drain off some water if it looks a bit liquidy after a bit of cooking.
Place rhubarb in tart tin
Mix flour, brown sugar and butter until you have a crumble mixture (not too fine)
Sprinkle over rhubarb mixture and bake in oven for 15 minutes at 180 deg C
Remove from oven and sprinkle on mixed nuts and return to the oven for five minutes.
Grilled Rib Eye Steak with Beetroot, Bacon & Black Pudding Dressing and Horseradish Cream
Served with Actifry French Fries
Ingredients
2 x 300g Rib Eye Steaks
200ml red wine
1 tablespoon brown sugar
50ml cabernet vinegar/ red wine vinegar
50ml olive oil
100g diced dry cured bacon
100g diced black pudding
1 beetroot cooked and diced
1 tablespoon horseradish
2 tablespoons creme fraiche
Watercress for garnish
1kg potatoes
Method
Peel and slice potatoes into French fries. Cook for 25 minutes in the Tefal Actifry Express XL as per instructions. The Actifry turns the chips as it cooks. ‘Tis hard to look away. Hypnofries, man!
Heat the Tefal OptiGrill and season steaks with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper on both sides. Place on Tefal OptiGrill and cook to preference; rare, medium or well done.
In an Ingenio pot, reduce the red wine vinegar and sugar by half over a low heat. Add vinegar and reduce in a separate pan. Sauté the bacon and pudding. Add the beetroot, place mixture in reduction. Add olive oil.
Place cooked steaks into the sauté pan, spoon over the bacon vinaigrette.
Mix the horseradish and creme fraiche. Top the bacon dressing and garnish with a little watercress.
We served the steaks in the Ingenio pan on top of the Actifry chips.
With the detachable handle, the Ingenio set can be moved from counter to hob/ oven and then served directly on the table. Being able to remove the handle frees up space on the hob and table, and adds the safety aspect of keeping the little ones away from knocking it over.
Knowing plenty of folk whose emotional attachment to ‘proper’ chips is as deep as their fryers, the Actifry is a revolution. If my plus one for the evening, a staunch Deep Fry Fah Lyfe advocate is anything to go by, the Actifry is the way forward. Just a small spoonful of oil in the Actifry gives the same result as a the traditional big pan fry up of taters, but a ton healthier.
Get yourselves an ACTIFRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
(pic: Instagram/Oprah)
As my fave quote in Maeve Binchy’s Tara Road about the Irish mentions, “We didn’t invent the potato, we just perfected it”, the French have certainly improved the fry-y goody perfection with the Actifry.
The new Tefal Actifry Express XL (RRP €229.99), the latest addition to the Actifry family, is healthier, convenient and versatile; up to 30% faster than the original model and can cook and brown 1 kg of fries in less than 30 minutes using just one spoon of oil. Not just for fries, the ActiFry Express XL will also revolutionise dinner menus and can make curries, stir frys, casseroles and much more.
The OptiGrill (RRP €169.99) is like having a professional grill chef at home cooking meat to personal preference each time, whether rare, medium or well-done – removing any worries about over or under-cooking. It is the first electric grill that cooks food automatically by measuring the thickness and temperature of its ingredient, making it perfect for people who lose confidence when cooking certain types of food for other people.
The Ingenio (RRP €7.95 – €304.99) Cookware concept is built around patented detachable handles that attach and detach with one click, allowing home chefs to transfer cooking from the hob to the oven and then direct to the table – all in the same dish; a revolutionary concept that brings a whole new take on versatility.
Tefal products are available from electrical retail stores nationwide.
One Of Your Five-A-Day Or Something…
(Pic: 9gag, gif: imgur)
popandglug.com 