Post the Thirty-sixth (in which our heroine returns to education)

So, you know it is.  You're 16, you're filling out your college application forms and you don't really have a clue what you want to do with your life cause, y'know, you're 16.  So you apply for a B.Sc. in Biotechnology, thinking it sounds kind of cool, picturing Professor Weeto types teaching the course.  You go to college.  You correct the lecturer's spelling of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in your very first lecture.  You fail your first maths test miserably.  You realise you have absolutely no interest whatsoever in Biotechnology.  You drop out.  You decide to work for a year while you figure out what you *do* want to do in college.  Twelve years later, you're still working.

Or is that just me?

Anyway, the plan was always to go back to college eventually.  The problem was that, having bought houses and cars and whatnot in the intervening years, giving up work to go back full-time wasn't really an option.  And the kind of courses that are available in the evenings never appealed to me - all business-related.  Our heroine was despairing.  And then, lo!  Along came the Oscail programme at DCU - a distance-learning initiative that allows you to do your degree from home.  And lo!  They actually had a few Humanities degrees on it.  So our heroine now finds herself embarking on a B.A. in English and History and realising that she won't be able to coast through this on recall alone as she did with the Leaving Cert.  I'm actually going to have to - gasp! - study.  Something I have never done in my life.  Two hours a night, on weeknights, until my first two assignments are submitted.  It's all very alien to me, I have to admit.

Anyway, as my evening pottering-around-the-kitchen time is now severely curtailed, I'm tending to make big pots of stuff that will look after dinner for two or three nights in a row.  I'm sensing a lot of soup, stew and chili in my short to medium-term future.

Which brings us to the first (I think) soup recipe of the blog.  It's a Jamie Oliver one - English (as opposed to French) Onion Soup.  It's a really hearty, filling soup which, with a few sausage rolls on the side, makes a meal in itself.


English Onion Soup - makes 8 bowls

5 red onions, sliced                         3 large white onions, sliced
2 leeks, washed & sliced                3 shallots, diced
6 cloves garlic, crushed                   Large bunch fresh sage, chopped
2 litres beef stock                           8 slices crusty bread
200g grated cheddar                      Worcestershire sauce
Glug of olive oil                               Generous knob of butter
Salt & pepper

1)  You need a fairly massive pot for this, be warned.  Heat the olive oil & butter over a low heat.  Add the sage & garlic and allow the butter to melt.  Add the onions, leeks & shallots, season with salt & pepper, give everything a good stir to coat and then sweat gently with the lid on for 50 minutes.  Remove the lid for the last 20 minutes.  Stir occassionally to make sure nothing's sticking to the bottom.

2)  When your onions are lovely and silky and slightly golden, add the stock.  Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and allow to simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.

3) Preheat your grill to full whack and toast the bread on both sides.  Taste the soup and correct the seasoning if needs be.  Ladle into 8 deep bowls and bung a slice of toast on top of each - tear it up to make it fit, if you have to, and feel free to dunk it into the soup a bit.  Top the bread with some grated cheese and a few splashes of Worcestershire sauce.  Place the bowls on a baking tray and flash them under the grill until the cheese is golden and bubbling.  Very carefully remove the tray and bring to the table, remembering to warn your guests that the bowls are absolutely hopping!  Serve with warm sausage rolls - see below.

 Ok, so these are more home-assembled than home made, but they're still excellent.  And, in my defence, I did make proper home-made ones last week, and these were actually nicer (not to mention a hell of a lot easier), so I'm sticking with them in future.  By the way, I'm aware that the quantities in this recipe are a bit vague, mostly because I'm terribly disorganised and never bothered to write down the weights on any of the packaging, but for what it's worth, the sausages and the puff pastry I use for these are both from Aldi.

Home "made" Sausage Rolls - makes about 30

Packet of good-quality cocktail sausages               Packet of puff pastry
50ml olive oil                                                        50ml Worcestershire sauce

1)  Place your puff-pastry sheet on a large chopping board.  I use the Aldi one, which is a bit thick, so I generally go over it with the rolling pin once or twice to flatten it out a bit.  The other advantage of this is that you get more sausage rolls out of one sheet :-)

2) Pour the oil & worcestershire sauce into a small bowl and give it a good whisk.  Brush the sheet of pastry with a good layer of this.

3)  Snip your sausages into singles and place a row of them across the top of the pastry, leaving a gap of about 5mm between each one.  Cut the pastry into strips lengthways, so you have several long strips of pastry with a sausage at the top of each.  (I really should have taken some photos of this process...)

4) Roll the pastry over the top of your sausage so that it's fully covered, but only just.  Cut the pastry, then repeat this process until you run out of either pastry or sausages.  To form each roll, press & pinch the edges of the pastry together to seal.  Don't worry about the gaps at the sides; when the pastry puffs up during cooking, these will close.

5)  Place the sausage rolls on a baking tray and brush again with the oil/worcestershire sauce mix.  Bake in the oven at 210C until lovely and golden-brown.  Allow to cool on wire rack for 5 minutes, then serve.  Try not to eat the entire batch in one sitting.

You can also freeze these before cooking - put them on the baking tray, brush with the oil mix, then put the whole tray into the freezer - this will stop them sticking together as they freeze.  Once they're frozen you can chuck 'em into a freezer bag to store.  Cook straight from frozen, but at 200C and for approx. 25 minutes.  Again, they're done once they've puffed up and turned golden-brown.  Enjoy!

Post the Thirty-second (in which our heroine once more rhapsodises about Mexican Food)

So, we've discussed my love-affair with chilies already on this blog.  They really are conical little bundles of joy.  Big ones, small ones, pointy ones, round ones, green, orange, reds so purple they're almost black - I love them all.  I even got a very phallic-looking one recently.  That one's hanging up to dry at the moment, and it makes me giggle every time I see it.  And, of course, you run the gamut between sweet and innocent to Scotch Bonnets so hot they make you sneeze.  I have a very scientific way of testing the heat of chilies that aren't readily identifiable - I chop the top off and give the cut side a big lick.  This has led to me executing some very amusing dance moves around the kitchen.  There is also the extremely happy news that eating chilies has been scientifically proven to raise your metabolism, as anyone who has ever had a particularly hot one can testify (I'm thinking specifically of some unfortunate dinner guests of my sister, to whom she once served raw habaneros in a salad, thinking they were just baby peppers.)

Of course, there's more to Mexican food than just chilies, and it's a common misconception that it's all blow-your-head-off hot.  There's limes, coriander, cumin, chocolate, avocado - so many amazing, gorgeous flavours.  Unfortunately, in Ireland it can be a bit tricky sourcing the more esoteric ingredients - tomatilloes, cactus, etc., but you can still do a fair bit of experimenting with what we do have.

The single easiest place to start is with fajitas.  Everyone loves them, and they're a lovely, communal way to eat - bung everything into big dishes in the middle of the table, and allow everyone to help themselves.  Now, most people only ever make fajitas out of those powdery packet things, but it's ridiculously easy to make your own fajita mix from scratch, and it's waaaaaay nicer than the packet stuff.  Perfect Friday night grub, if you ask me.

Chicken Fajitas - makes enough to fill 4 large tortillas

2 large chicken fillets, diced                  2 heaped tsp paprika
1 heaped tsp smoked paprika               2 tsp chili powder
Half tsp ground ginger                           Half tsp ground coriander
Half tsp ground cumin                           Half tsp sugar
Juice & zest of 1 lime                           2 fat cloves garlic, crushed
1 medium chili, finely diced                   Bunch fresh coriander, chopped
Salt & pepper                                      Sunflower oil
1 large onion, sliced                             1 red & 1 green pepper, sliced

1. In a non-metallic bowl, mix all your dry spices with the lime juice - you'll have a very thick paste.  Add enough oil to loosen the mix so it will coat the chicken, and stir in your chili, garlic, fresh coriander and lime zest.  Season with the salt & pepper, stir in the chicken pieces, cover and leave to marinate in the fridge for at least 5 hours.

2. Heat a wok or large pan over a medium-high heat - don't add any oil, there's enough in your fajita mix.  Plonk the chicken into the pan, making sure you get all the lovely, tasty oil-paste in.  Fry the chicken until sealed, then add the peppers & onion and cook briskly for another 5 to 8 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through.

As I said, I like to serve everything in the middle of the table.  So, have a dish nice and hot for your fajita mix, and heat a plate to hold your warmed tortillas (cover them with a clean tea-towel) and a plate for each person.  I also serve with a big bowl of salad leaves, grated cheese, sour cream, sliced jalapenos and these:

Lime-pickled Onions - makes 1 medium bowl (which you can just spy in the pic above)

1 large onion, finely sliced               Juice of 1 lime
Pinch of sugar                                Salt & pepper

1. This is really complicated - toss all the ingredients together in a non-metallic bowl and leave in the fridge for a few hours for the flavours to develop, stirring every so often.

2. Eat.

A Treatise on How to Build the Perfect Tortilla:

*First and foremost*  You need a decent-sized tortilla - no point using those stupid saucer-sized ones they insist on giving you in restaurants.  I use the Aldi garlic & herb ones.

Step 1: Spread a good dollop of sour cream on the bottom of your tortilla.  Place a handful of salad leaves and some of the lime-pickled onions on top.

Step 2: Top with a couple of spoonfuls of the chicken & veg mix.  Do NOT overload, or you haven't a hope of rolling it up.

Step 3: Scatter with plenty of grated cheese and a few sliced jalapenos.

Step 4: Roll up the bottom of the fajita, then roll in the two sides.  Leaving the bottom open, as they do in the ads, will simply result in the carefully-contructed contents of your fajita falling out onto your plate as soon as you take a bite.

Step 5: Commence nomming.  One fajita of this size does me, with extra salad and maybe a bit of garlic bread.  Emmet, on the other hand, usually eats three.  The one time in my life that I ate three, I had to be put to bed afterwards.  The moral of this story is not to try and compete with a fit and hungry man in the fajita-eating stakes.

I'm very happy to announce that I'm submitting this post to the Groupon.ie blogging competition, so wish me luck, and get yourself over to www.groupon.ie to see if you can save yourself a few shekels in these extremely straitened times.

Post the Twentieth(in which our heroine has a restless night)

I'm bleedin' shattered, so I am.  Was awake pretty much the whole night, and the few scraps of sleep I did manage to snatch were those horrible, feverish ones where you're not actually sure if you're asleep or awake anyway.  It was also really, really warm last night, and even with the window open I spent the whole night sweating like a pig.  Not cool.  I finally gave up the ghost and got up at 6.30, knowing full-well that I'd be wrecked later, but at least it got me out of bed in time for France V Japan.

I was actually whistling dixie when I got up at 6.30, went back to bed at about 12 for an hour or two, and woke up with a hangover.  What's that about?

So, dinner last night was one of those ones that you think is going to take about an hour and a half, but ends up taking about twice that.  I blame one specific component - the baked onions.  A) I had never made them before and B) they're a Jamie Oliver recipe and as much as I love his food, he tends to, well, lie, about how much effort goes into some of his recipes.  Sorry Jamie.  In the case of the onions, he neglected to mention that the feckers are slippier than wet bars of soap coated in castor oil once they've been boiled, and chopping them without losing several of your fingers takes friggin' FOREVER.  It is also clear that Jamie is not a man who has had to clean his own kitchen in quite some time.  I've been caught out by him in this regard before, on the memorable occasion when I decided to make pasta from scratch.  This was right back at the start of my cooking "career" and I didn't know to dispense with some of Jamie's arsier foibles - to wit, not putting the flour in a bowl, but making a big "volcano" directly in the middle of the counter and just cracking the eggs into it.  You can imagine how that went.  It took me about an hour with a wallpaper scraper to restore the counter-top to its former glory.

Having said all that, don't be put off trying this recipe.  If I'd started the onions at the same time as the chicken went in the oven, I'd have been laughing, but I foolishly went and chillaxed on the couch with a glass of wine and generally dilly-dallied far more than was advisable.

Anyway, dinner consisted of three dishes - Chicken in Milk, Baked Onions and Roasted Garlic Mash.

Now look, you're going to read the recipe for the chicken and go "Eeeeuuuwwww!", but believe me, it's really, really, really good.  Live a little and give it a try.

Also, I know times are tight and everyone's watching the pennies, but I implore you to always buy free-range chicken.  Yes, it's more expensive, but believe me, it's worth it from an animal-welfare point of view.  How battery farming hasn't been outlawed is beyond me.  And if you can stretch a bit further, go organic.  But I'll be happy with free-range.  Same goes for eggs, obviously.

Chicken in Milk - serves 4

1.4kg fresh chicken                  Pint of milk
Zest of two lemons                   Handful of chopped, fresh sage
10 garlic cloves, skin on            Oil & butter, salt & pepper

1. In a casserole or roasting dish, heat a glug of olive oil and a knob of butter.  Season your chicken all over with salt & black pepper, and brown on all sides.  Remove & set aside.  Pour the frying liquid away, but don't clean the dish.  (I keep the oil to go over my dogs' dry food, they love it.)

2. Put all the other ingredients into the dish, and give it a good stir to scrape up all the lovely sticky bits from the bottom.  Pop the chicken back in, baste with the milk, cover and stick in the oven at 190C for an hour.  After the hour is up, remove the lid, baste again, and continue to cook, uncovered, for another half an hour.

3. When the chicken is done, remove to a warmed platter to rest for ten minutes.  With a slotted spoon, fish out the garlic cloves and squeeze the pulp out of the skins.  Reserve a few for your mash.  You'll see that the lemon zest has caused the milk to split, but that's all part of the charm.

In the meantime, you can be getting on with your...

Baked Onions - makes 4 (although I only did 3 last night, cause I knew Emmet would only eat one)

4 tennis-ball sized onions, peeled                     2 fat cloves garlic, finely chopped
8 tbsp cream                                                   40g parmesan, grated
4 slices streaky bacon                                     4 springs rosemary, lower leaves picked & chopped

1. Boil the onions for 15 minutes until just tender.  Drain and allow to cool enough so you can handle them.

2. Trim the stalk end of the onion enough so it will sit flat on a baking tray.  Cut the top inch off the root end and discard.

3.  This is where it gets tricky - you want to take most of the centre out of the onions, while leaving the "walls" intact.  I found that the easiest way to do this was to pinch the outer two layers together (depending on the thickness) and push the remaining centre bits out from the stalk end.

4. The even trickier part - chop the centre portions of the onion as finely as you can.  This is easier said than done, as the membrane between each layer (the bit everyone had to mount on a slide and examine under a microscope in first year science) is unbelievably frickin slippy and slimy.  I found that the pieces of onion kept shooting out from under my fingers, like particularly aromatic tiddlywinks.  Once you get them roughly chopped, just keep going over them with your biggest knife until they're chopped nice and fine.

5.  Wrap a baking tray in tinfoil (cause they leak all over the place).  Wrap each onion in a slice of bacon and, if your rosemary is "woody" enough, secure by skewering with the rosemary stalk.  If not, use a cocktail stick and push the rosemary down in between the layers of the onion.

6.  Heat a little oil in the same pot you boiled the onions in (I'm allllllll about keeping the washing-up to a minimum).  Add your onions, garlic & rosemary and sauté for about 7 minutes, until nice and soft.  I lashed in a bit of white wine too, just cause I felt like it.  Add the cream, then remove from the heat and stir in the parmesan.  Season with plenty of black pepper, but very little salt, as the cheese is quite salty already.

7.  Fill each onion with the cheese mixture, and bake for approx. 25 minutes, until the cheese is golden & bubbling.  Serve on a warmed plate.

I'm not going to tell you how to make mash, cause, you know, it's fairly obvious.  However, for this mash, when you've drained the potatoes, put them back into the pot with a few tablespoons of the milk from the chicken and the reserved garlic cloves and mash the whole lot together.  Check the seasoning and serve the whole lot in the middle of the table, allowing everyone to help themselves.

Today's Top Tip: Office workers - avoid distraction from your important paperwork by making "blinkers" out of two Post-It notes, one stuck to each temple.