Post the Seventy-third (in which our heroine wonders if her luck is changing)

Your heroine has oft-wondered if she was, perhaps, born under a bad sign.  To quote that great sage and philosopher, Homer Simpson, if it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all.  My family stopped sharing tips on horses with me years ago, so legendary is my rotten luck.  You could have Arkle in a fixed race with seven pregnant mares and a lame gelding, and if I backed him, he'd fall.  I once missed out on my dream job due to a series of tiny-but-cumulative events that led to me arriving at the interview half an hour late, with an unreadable CV, to a hiring manager who thought I didn't know how to send an email.  I generally don't bother entering competitions cause the last thing I won was a pink plastic money box in the shape of a bear dressed as a policeman when I was in senior infants.

I'd like to think there's a glimmer of change on the horizon, though.  Last Friday, I randomly texted into a radio station I don't even normally listen to register for a competition.  Within ten minutes, they'd called me asking if I wanted to play.  "Sure!" says I, understandably reluctant to admit to them that I had no idea what it was I was actually going to be playing.  Anyway, the upshot is, I won €140, which will make a handy dent in the Paris trip.  Ok, so I could have won 5 grand if I'd known Barack Obama's middle name (it's Hussein) and which Aussie golfer won the Open last year (Adam Scott), but still, it's a start, right?  Then, yesterday evening, my sisters and I won €50 on a scratchcard.  We're not exactly going to be retiring on it, but it's the price of a few drinks and you wouldn't step over it if you saw it lying in the street, like.

So, I've taken these two very small windfalls as veritable proof that Good Things Are Going to Happen to Me.  End of.  Being an unrelenting cynic and skeptic hasn't exactly availed me of much, so I'm trying on positivity for a while.  It feels a bit weird and doesn't necessarily fit very well, but I'll soldier on regardless.  Might as well get myself some crow's feet to go with the frown lines I already have, eh?

Anyway, on with the food.  Small windfalls notwithstanding, your heroine is still pretty much perma-broke, so the economic recipes shall continue for the foreseeable.  This dish is cheap-as-chips to make and is one of those great ones that you can make a massive pot of and eat for a couple of days, as the flavour just keeps on improving.  The quinoa also makes a great work lunch, with a spinach salad on the side.

Moroccan Chicken Stew - serves 4

4 chicken fillets, cut into strips                            2 onions, diced
4 cloves garlic, crushed                                        1 red & 1 yellow pepper, sliced
1 sweet potato, peeled & cut into 1" chunks        Tin of chickpeas
Tin of tomatoes                                                     1 tbsp Ras el Hanout*
Tsp each cumin, paprika & harissa paste              1/2 tsp each cinnamon & turmeric
Handful of cashew nuts

1. Heat a splash of oil in a large pot and saute the garlic and onion until just beginning to colour.  Add the chicken, sweet potato, peppers and all the spices except the harissa paste. Give everything agood stir and cook for five minutes.

2. Add the tomatoes and harissa, turn down the heat and allow everything to simmer away for a good hour, stirring every so often.  This should be quite a thick stew, but if it looks like it's getting a bit too dry, throw in a bit of chicken stock.

3. After an hour, add the chickpeas & cashew nuts, and taste to see if it needs more of any of the spices.  Simmer for another ten minutes, then season and serve with the quinoa below.


Chilli-lime Quinoa - serves 4

160g quinoa                                      300ml chicken stock
1 red chilli, finely diced                    2 fat cloves garlic, crushed
Zest & juice of 1 lime                       Knob of butter

1. Give your quinoa a really aggressive rinse in loads of cold water, then strain in a sieve.

2. Melt the butter in a large-ish pot, add the chilli, garlic, lime juice & zest.  Bring to a high simmer and allow to reduce to an almost paste-like consistency.

3. Add the quinoa to the paste, stir well and toast for three minutes.  Add the stock, cover and lower the heat to a bare bubble, and cook until the quinoa has absorbed all the stock.  This can take anywhere between ten and twenty minutes.  Don't stir the quinoa while it's cooking.  When the stock has absorbed, remove from the heat but allow to rest with the lid still on for another ten minutes, then fluff with a fork, and serve.

*What the frig is Ras el Hanout?
It's a Moroccan spice blend that literally translates as "Top of the Shop", as different spicemongers all had their own recipes for it, and basically the more fancy ingredients there were in it, the flasher you were.  You can buy it in good delis, but it's ridiculously easy to make, and it's dead handy to have in the press as it can be added to loads of dishes.  You can totally make this stew without it, but it won't have quite the same depth of flavour.  There are as many "recipes" for Ras el Hanout as there are spices that can go in it, but if you fancy having a bash at making your own, here's the combo I came up with:

4 tsp coriander seeds                          3 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds                               1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp cardamom seeds                        2 tsp turmeric
2 tsp ground cinnamon                       1 tsp paprika
1 tsp cayenne pepper                          Pinch salt

1. Stick all the seeds and the peppercorns into a dry pan and toast over a high heat until they're just beginning to "pop".  This will happen incredibly fast, so don't even attempt to leave the room or you'll burn the arse out of your pan and all your lovely spices.

2.  Tip into a pestle & mortar and grind to powder.  Add the powdered spices and the salt and mix well.  Store in a clean glass jar in a cool, dry place, and it'll keep for a good three months before it starts to lose its potency.

Post the Seventieth (in which our heroine goes to work sans foundation)

And no-one drops dead of shock.  Or asks if I'm sick.  Or even seems to notice at all.  See, I was standing in the bathroom on Monday morning about to put my foundation on and I really looked at my skin for a moment or two and went "Your skin is in great nick, why are you bothering?"  So I took a giant leap and forewent the foundation.  And have done so every day since.  I'm rocking a bit of bronzer, mascara, lip gloss, and, of course, my eyebrows.  I can't go out without my eyebrows or I look like Luann van Houten when Kirk hustled her out of the house before she was quite ready.  Years of over-zealous plucking in my teens and early twenties have left me with two tiny inverted commas over my eyes.  Which is ironic, really, considering I looked like Eugene Levy until I was about 13.

Anyway, the ditching of the foundation is not some kind of grand feminist gesture.  Nor is it borne out of some half-formed idea that my skin needs to "breathe".  I've always found it amusing the way some women (usually the ones who don't really wear make-up) think that foundation is some kind of impermeable mask that nothing can penetrate.  Nope, it's half laziness and half out of a desire to save money.  Obviously, not wearing foundation on a daily basis will make a bottle last that much longer.  It's a sad fact, dear readers, that more than two years after the inception of this blog, I'm still perpetually broke.  Obviously, this cavalier attitude to make-up will last only until I get my next whopper spot, but for the time being, I'm enjoying it.

In other news, Leinster made it out of the pool stages of the Heineken Cup, and have Toulon away in our quarter final on the weekend of April 5th.  The fixture is yet to be confirmed, but given that Toulon are the reigning champions, I'd be amazed if we didn't get the plum Saturday evening slot.  And even though they are the current cup-holders, I'm quietly confident that we can beat them.  They're a big, heavy-hitting team whose entire game plan rests on bludgeoning their opponents into the ground and getting as many penalties as possible for Johnny Wilkinson to convert.  If we can break their gainline and keep our discipline, particularly in the first half, I think our superior fitness will be the key difference in the second.  Unfortunately, I won't be there.  I'm going to Paris for the Six Nations in March, so unless an unexpected windfall comes my way, I won't have the money to do both.  The good news is, if we win in the Mayol, we have a home semi final, so at least there's no away trip to worry about there.  Cardiff I'll worry about if and when the time comes...

Jeez, make-up and rugby in the same post.  I wouldn't think there's too many blogs out there mixing the two.

Anyway, apologies for the extremely drawn out nature of the "Feed Your Family for Fifty Quid" series.  I've been in assignment hell since the 6th of Jan and, unfortunately, that tends to eat into my free time significantly, as I'm sure you can imagine.  Today's recipe is by far my favourite of the entire collection, and I've made it loads of times since I first discovered the booklet.  Just please, please, please don't be tempted to use chicken fillets instead of the thighs - they'll be dry and boring and just meh.  Irish people are remarkably weird about using "other" parts of the chicken, I'm not sure why.  Thighs are by far my favourite piece of chicken; they're about eleventy million times tastier than fillets, they never really dry out no matter how long you cook them for and they're cheap as chips.  I suspect a lot of peoples' aversion to them stems from the fact that many folk (my mother being a prime example) don't like meat that actually looks like it was once an animal, so anything with skin or bones is an automatic no-go.  Well, I have news for you people - if you can't hack the fact that your meat used to be a living, breathing, sentient animal, complete with a face and eyes and everything, then you've no business eating meat at all.  It's as simple as that.  If you're going to be a carnivore, the least you can do is accept and respect the fact that something died in order for you to eat it.

Okay, less rant, more recipe:

Chicken & Sweet Potato Traybake - serves 4

8 chicken thighs                                1 large sweet potato
3 red onions                                      1 red pepper
1 bulb garlic                                      2cm piece of ginger
1 tbsp curry powder                          Olive oil

1. Scrub your sweet spud, but leave the skin on.  Slice down the middle lengthways, then chop into 2cm chunks.  Peel & quarter your onions, deseed your pepper & cut into 8, and peel your ginger and cut into matchstick-sized pieces.  Separate the garlic cloves, but leave the paper on.  If there's a lot of excess skin on your chicken thighs, then trim them a bit.

2. Lob everything into a large metal baking tray, drizzle over about a tablespoon of oil, then sprinkle over your curry powder (you can use a bit more than a tablespoon if you want).  Season with salt & pepper, then get right into everything with your hands to make sure it's all really evenly coated, especially the chicken.  Don't be tempted to add too much oil, as the chicken skins will render quite a good bit more during cooking.  Make sure the chicken thighs are skin-side-down on the bottom of the tray, then pop into an oven pre-heated to 180C for 15 minutes.

3. After the 15 minutes, turn the chicken over and toss the veg around a bit, then return to the oven for another 25 minutes until everything is golden and sticky and gorgeous, and serve immediately.

This is fine served on its own, but as you can see, I love it with a massive pile of baby spinach and some crumbled feta.  Also fab to drizzle over is natural yoghurt loosened with a little water and seasoned with a pinch each of cumin and cayenne pepper, and a tiny grind of salt.  Just writing this post has made me very glad I'm having this for dinner again tonight!

Post the Sixtieth (in which our heroine contracts bubonic plague)

Or possibly something worse than bubonic plague.  Captain Trips, maybe.  Or perhaps the worst affliction known to modern medicine - Manflu.  I've been absolutely floored with a dose since Tuesday (it's now Sunday), something which is very unlike me.  Normally three days, max, and I'm bright-eyed and bushy-tailed again.  Instead, we're on day seven of this dose and I would quite happily donate myself to the glue factory, if I could only leave the house.

It seems to be strep throat on top of a chest infection.  Which is great, cause it means I'm barking like a dog while barely being able to swallow.  Imagine someone has implanted a fish-hook in your throat, then given you a really chesty cough.  And every time you cough, they give the hook a good tug.  That's kind of what it feels like.  And the great news is that I get to share the wealth around the office cause I don't get paid for sick days and can't afford not to go in, yay!

So, most people are at least lucky enough to lose their appetite when they get sick.  Not the case here.  I could literally be at death's door and I'd still be wondering what to have for my next meal.  This dates back to when I got my tonsils out when I was 11.  Before that, I couldn't *look* at food when I was sick, just like any normal person.  But when they took the tonsils out, they apparently indavertently implanted the appetite of a 17-stone, MMA-practising rugby player who's in training for a pentathlon.  My dad has joked over the years that it would have been cheaper in the long run to have my tonsils put back in, cause I've been eating them out of house and home ever since.  At least, I think he was joking...

Anyway, the unwritten rule about foodstuffs for sick people seems to be that soup is yer only man.  I'm not entirely sure why this is, but far be it from me to fly in the face of convention.  Now, soupy soups do little or nothing for me - sore throat be damned, I still like texture and something to chew on in a soup.  And, come on, it wouldn't be me if I didn't lace my food with chillies...  So this soup is absolutely perfect for when you're feeling a bit poorly - it's pure comfort in a bowl, and the chillies will make you forget all about your cold/cough/bubonic plague for a good ten or fifteen minutes.

Chicken Noodle Soup - serves 4-6

1.5 litres good quality chicken stock*                       3 chicken fillets, cut into strips
100g egg noodles                                                    2 red chillies, thinly sliced                                              6 spring onions, sliced                                             1 large red pepper, julienned                                       2" piece of ginger, peeled                                        2 fat garlic cloves, very thinly sliced                               4 tbs light soy sauce                                                Bunch fresh coriander, chopped

1. Bring your chicken stock to a high simmer in a large pot.  Add your chicken strips and cook for 5 minutes.

2. Prick your ginger all over with a fork, cut in half and add to the stock with the garlic.  Add the noodles, chilli & pepper and simmer for another 5 minutes.

3. Add the spring onion and soy sauce and simmer for 3 minutes.  Just before serving, stir in the coriander, taste and adjust the seasoning if needs be - see my note on stock below for my feelings on salting this soup.

4.  Enjoy!

*A Note On Stock
I've posted before on chicken stock and how, obviously, it's best to make your own.  We all know that that's not always possible, though, so I'm not going to judge anyone for buying stock.  What I will say, however, is that the quality of the stock you use does make a huge difference to the end result of this soup.  I was recently introduced to Pure Brazen stocks and they're pretty much the closest thing you're going to get to making your own.  If you can't get your hands on  PB, then spend an extra euro or so on an organic stock cube or bouillon.  Going back to whether or not you should salt this soup, it really depends on what stock you've used and also how salty your soy sauce is.  Obviously, if you've used a homemade stock, you'll know exactly how much salt was in it in the first place.  Pure Brazen don't add any salt to their stocks, so you may well need to add a little salt (or more soy sauce) to the soup before serving.  Cheapy stock cubes, on the other hand, are notoriously salty, and you may well need to actually add a little water to the soup if you've used one of them in conjunction with a very salty soy sauce.  Use your cop-on, obviously, and taste, taste, taste.  It's the only way you'll perfect your seasoning.

Post the Fifty-eighth (in which our heroine is feeling rather autumnal)

So, it's that time of year again.  The evenings are drawing in, the mercury is dropping and, depending on whereabouts you live, the bangers are already going off, even though it's still weeks to Halloween.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, winter is nearly upon us.  I've noticed a slightly crazed aspect to several of my aquaintances at the thought of facing into almost four months of rubbish weather and minimal daylight, but I have to be honest, I absolutely love winter.  The crunch of fallen leaves underfoot, the smell of wood or turf fires burning, the absolute crispness of the air on a frosty morning.  Plus, you get to wrap up in layers and layers of snuggly clothing and light candles at 6pm.  And then there's the food.  Soups, stews, casseroles, bourgignons - what's not to love?

The only issue I really have with the transition from autumn to winter is bloody Daylight Savings Time.  Someone is definitely having a giant laugh at our expense there.  It's already been getting darker in the mornings for weeks now; you're just getting used to the bloody fact, and then they go and put the clocks back so it's bright again when you're getting up, but only for about three or four weeks - just enough time to get used to bright mornings again, before winter proper hits and it's still pitch black at 8am and your circadian rhythms are officially all over the place.  No wonder so many Irish people suffer from SAD, our body clocks are all going "Ah jaysis, will you just make your feckin' mind up already?"

So, before we get into the winter cooking repertoire of comfort food, here's what will more than likely be the last of my more summery dishes.  Like my last recipe, this has a lot of Moroccan-inspired flavours - I was obviously feeling under a Moorish influence recently.  Actually, Moroccan/North African flavours can be a great warming choice for winter - I just tend not to want to eat as many salads and the like as accompaniments once the weather turns that bit cooler.

Harissa Chicken Flatbreads with Coriander-Lemon CousCous - serves 4

4 chicken fillets                             2 tbs harissa
Juice & zest of 1 lemon                 2 tbs olive oil
400g couscous                               Bunch fresh coriander, chopped
4 flour tortillas                               Salt & pepper

1. In a non-metallic bowl whisk together your harissa, lemon juice and olive oil.  Butterfly your chicken fillets and add them to the marinade, tossing to coat thoroughly.  Cover and pop into the fridge for at least an hour, but the longer the better.  Turn them every so often to make sure they're marinating evenly.

2. Heat a heavy pan (or better again, a griddle) and cook your fillets on a high heat for 5 minutes on each side so that you get a nice, blackened crust.  Turn the heat down and cook through, turning once more.  Cut or shred each fillet into four or five rough pieces and rest on a warm plate.

3. While the chicken is cooking, prepare the couscous - pour boiling water over the couscous in a large bowl to cover by a depth of about an inch.  Cover with clingfilm and leave aside for the water to absorb.  After about 5 minutes, fluff up with a fork.  If there's still a bit of water in it, recover and give it another few minutes.  Once all the water is absorbed, fluff again, stir in the lemon zest and coriander and season to taste with salt and black pepper.

4. Heat your tortillas and scatter over the chicken.  As you can see, I've added spinach & onions and the cottage cheese dressing from my steak recipe here.  It would also work very well with feta cheese or even just yoghurt.

5. Serve with the couscous, extra salad and maybe some extra lemon wedges for squeezing.

Post the Forty-eighth (in which our heroine continues her thrifty ways)

So, you made the pot-roasted chicken for dinner last night.  Amazing, wasn't it? And now we're going to make the second dinner from our chicken, and bask in the warm glow of our recessionist ways.  Ok, so it necessitates eating chicken two nights in a row, but for most people I know, this won't be a problem.

So, take your chicken out of the fridge and strip the bird of as much meat as you possibly can.  You'll be amazed how much there is on it.  Don't be afraid of the dark meat; it's the tastiest kind.  Put all the meat onto a large chopping board and go over it with a big knife a couple of times to dice it up a bit, then set aside.  You can chuck the skin out (or give it to your dogs, if you have any), but hang on to the bones and carcass to make stock - stick them into a sandwich bag and bung into the freezer until you have two or three chickens' worth.

Anyway, tonight's dinner is a complete change taste-wise to last night's.  You could also, of course, make the chicken & spinach lasagna from a few weeks back with the leftover chicken.  But do give this dish a try at some stage too, because it's a bit of an oul taste sensation.

Buffalo Chicken Casserole - serves 4

1 onion, diced                              Approx. 500g leftover, cooked chicken, roughly diced
1 red chili, finely diced                  3 cloves garlic, crushed
500ml natural yoghurt                   250ml creme fraiche or sour cream
Bunch coriander, chopped            100ml Frank's Red Hot Sauce
2 large flour tortillas                      100g mature cheddar cheese, grated

1. Heat a little oil in a pan and saute the onion, chili & garlic until softened, but not coloured.  Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix the yoghurt, sour cream/creme fraiche and Frank's Red Hot Sauce.

2.  Add the chicken, coriander and fried onions to the sauce and mix well. Spread a third of this mixture on the bottom of an ovenproof dish.  Top with one of the tortillas, tearing it to fit the dish if needs be.  Repeat with another third of the chicken, the other tortilla, then finish with the last of the chicken mix.  Top with the grated cheese, then bake in an oven preheated to 200C until golden and bubbling.  Serve with a spinach, lime & coriander salad.

Btw, if you fancy making this and don't happen to have a leftover roast chicken knocking around, just poach two large chicken fillets, chop them and carry on as above.  Or, you could use turkey mince and fry it off with the onions & garlic.

By the way, if you've never had Frank's Red Hot Sauce before, get the hell out to the shop NOW and buy some.  It is, quite frankly (pun 100% intended) the best thing in the whole wide world. Ever.  This is what they use to make the chicken wings in Tribeca and the Elephant and Castle, for those of you who didn't already know that.  Just make sure you get the Original version, not the Wings one.

And if anyone reading has a Musrgaves card and would like to have me indebted to them forever, you can get a 3 litre bottle of Frank's there for €19.  Christmas is a-coming, folks!

Post the Forty-seventh (in which our heroine vows to be more savvy with leftovers)

We don't really have a leftover culture in Ireland.  I'm not sure why this is, considering we were, as a nation, dirt poor for a long time, but it's just not something we're particularly good at. Maybe, in my family, it was to do with the fact that there was seven of us, so there didn't tend to be a whole lot left at the end of a given meal.  But since we've all moved away and there's only two of us here chez moi and three people chez maman, we don't seem to have improved a whole lot.  Oh, our intentions are good, let there be no doubt about that.  But intent seems to be all we have.  Intent, and a motley collection of mismatched tupperware in the fridge at any given time, all containing bits of food of unknown provenance and varying age.  This is particularly the case in my mother's house.  It's like she has to allow food to sojourn in the fridge for a week or two before she can throw it out guilt-free.

In my house, the food rarely makes it as far as the fridge in the first place.  It goes directly to the dogs as soon as we've finished eating.  A few weeks back, after Emmet and I had eaten the best bits off a roast chicken for dinner, I was stripping the rest of the bird and giving it to the dogs, and it was mostly gone before I realised how wasteful I was being.  Buying a whole chicken and getting one dinner for two people out of it?  Frickin' ridiculous!  So, today and tomorrow's posts will show you how to get two meals out of one chicken  Now, obviously how much meat is left on your chicken after day one will depend on how big it was in the first place, and how many people it served.  For comparison, I used a 1.4kg free-range bird, which fed Emmet and I the first night (and he wasn't sparing with his portions, as usual) and made four servings of the second-night recipe.  So, if you plan to feed four people both nights, obviously get a bigger chicken and maybe make a bit more of the veg sauce.  Or, just add a side dish or two - green beans and cauliflower cheese, maybe.

This is by far my favourite ever way of eating roast chicken.  I can quite honestly say that I will never bother "dry" roasting one again.  You will need either a cast-iron casserole or a deep metal roasting tin to do this in, as you start it on the hob and then transfer the whole lot to the oven.

Pot Roasted Chicken - serves 2

1.4kg chicken                                    2 sticks celery, diced
1 large leek, cleaned & sliced             1 large onion, diced
150g bacon lardons                            3 cloves garlic, diced
150ml white wine                               500ml chicken stock
2 potatoes, peeled & quartered          Loaf of ciabatta, sliced
Salt & pepper                                    Olive oil & a knob of butter
Sprig each of rosemary, thyme & parsley

1. Melt the butter and a splash of olive oil in your casserole or roasting tin.  Fry the chicken on all sides until evenly golden, then remove to a plate and season all over with salt & pepper.  Stuff the herb sprigs into the cavity & wash your hands.

2. Add the onion, garlic & bacon to the dish and fry briskly for 5 minutes.  Preheat your oven to 150C at this stage.  Add the leek & celery and fry for another 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Deglaze the dish with the white wine, making sure you stir any lovely sticky bits off the bottom of the pan.  Allow the alcohol to cook off - about five minutes.

3. Return the chicken to the dish, snuggling it down into the veg a bit.  Tuck your potato quarters in around it, then pour the chicken stock over the whole lot.  Cover with a tight-fitting lid or with a double-layer of tinfoil, pop into the oven and roast for 80 minutes.  (That's perfect for a 1.4kg bird.  Obviously increase the time for a heavier chicken.)

4. Take the dish out of the oven and put back on the hob.  Carefully remove the chicken and potatoes from the dish and leave to rest on a clean, warm plate.  (By the way, allowing it to rest upside-down will result in a lovely, juicy breast.)  Bring the veg & stock mix to a rapid boil and allow to reduce by a fifth.

5. While this is happening, toast your ciabatta slices very lightly under the grill.  You don't really want to colour them at all, just crisp them up enough so they don't fall to soggy pieces in the sauce.  Take your roasting tin/casserole off the hob, place the ciabatta slices on top and bring the whole thing to the table along with the chicken on its plate. Assign one person to carve the chicken.

6. Give everyone a warmed plate and allow them to serve themselves -  a big dollop of the veg sauce on top of the ciabatta is HEAVEN!

When you're done eating, cover the remains of the chicken with foil, allow to cool to room temperature, then stick in the fridge until tomorrow.

Post the Thirty-third (in which our heroine takes stock)

Beef and chicken stock, to be exact.  Soup-season is practically upon us, and it should go without saying that the key to a good soup is a good stock.  Most shop-bought stock cubes are packed with salt and can taste really, really synthetic.  You can buy much better quality concentrated stocks or bouillons, but they tend to be mad money.  So, the obvious solution is to make your own.  Buy a huge pot, set aside a day to make it, then freeze in 500ml portions and you're set for weeks, if not months at a time.

Now, seeing as the whole point of making your own stock (apart from it tasting lovely) is to try and save a few bob, there's not much point in going out and buying a sackful of ingredients specifically for it.  Instead, use yer noggin and make it when you know you're going to have pretty much everything on-hand anyway - after a roast dinner, say.  I'm talking specifically for chicken here, by the way.  It's not so much of an issue for beef stock, as your butcher will give you the bones for free anyway.  If you only use a whole chicken once in a blue-moon and couldn't be bothered making a third or a half quantity of the stock, just freeze your chicken carcasses until you do have enough to make it worthwhile.

This chicken stock recipe is from the doyenne of Irish cookery, Darina Allen, and it really is excellent.

Chicken Stock - makes about 3.5 litres

2 or 3 cooked chicken carcasses                   1 onion, sliced
1 leek, split in two                                          1 celery stick, quartered
1 carrot, roughly chopped                              Sprig of thyme
6 peppercorns                                               1 small bay leaf

1. Chop up your carcasses a bit.  Stick all the ingredients into a large stock pot, cover with 3.5 litres of cold water and bring to the boil.  Skim any fat off the top with a spoon.  Lower the heat and simmer for 2 or 3 hours.  Strain, allow to cool, skim off any remaining fat, then freeze in 500ml portions (I just use sandwich bags).

By the way, Darina prefers not to use bay leaf in her stock as she finds the flavour overpowering, but I don't know what kind of bionic bay leaves she has, because I find it adds only the tiniest hint of flavour.  'Tis up to you, though.

Also by the way, if you don't have a stock pot or only have a small freezer, it's perfectly fine to make a 1/3 quantity of this stock with one chicken carcass.  Just use smaller onions, leeks etc., rather than trying to cut exactly a third off of each...

So, now to the beef.  Beef stock is a slightly more involved process but it really is so, so worth it.  And it's not like you've to spend the entire time standing over it; you can blithely ignore it for large swathes of the day, which is exactly the kind of "recipe" that appeals to me.

When you're asking your butcher for the bones, tell him it's for stock - if he rocks, like my butcher, he'll make sure you get plenty of meat on them, and he'll more than likely cut them up for you too.  Give him an oul watery wink, if you think that might help.

Beef Stock - makes about 2.5 litres

2.5kg beef bones                            3 onions, peeled & halved
5 cloves garlic, peeled but whole     Few large sprigs of thyme & sage
2 leeks, halved                                2 large carrots, cut into rough chunks
1 stalk celery, roughly chopped       1 tbsp peppercorns

1. Preheat your oven to 200C.  Pop the bones, onions, carrots & garlic onto a large baking tray, drizzle with olive oil and give everything a bit of a toss to coat.  Bung the tray into the oven and roast for an hour, until everything is nice and browned.  Marvel at the awesomeness of the smell of the bones as they roast.

2. Remove the veg & bones from the tray and put them into your stock pot with all the remaining ingredients.  Deglaze the roasting pan with a little bit of boiling water to get all the lovely burnt-y bits off the bottom.  Add this liquid to the stock pot, then top up with 4.5 litres of cold water.  Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat, cover and allow to simmer for 4-6 hours.

3. Strain the stock, then return it to the pot, turn the heat back up and reduce by half - this will take around an hour, so be patient.  Allow to cool, skim off any fat from the top, then freeze in 500ml portions.

A note on salting your stock:  I don't tend to salt my chicken stock, but if you want to add some, do it at the end of the cooking and taste very carefully.  Same applies to the beef stock, but only add the salt after you've reduced the stock.

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 Twenty-eighth (in which our heroine has that Friday feeling)

First week in the new job over, a woohoo!  Friday has ever been my favourite day of the week, and I'm feeling particularly content today, seeing as I have a week of a real job behind me.  I know it's early days, but I'm very happy with the move.  The company is great, the people are lovely and there's just a really nice vibe about the place.  It's like a different planet to my last job.

There were a fair few sore heads going around the office today, yesterday being Cynical Marketing Ploy Arthur's Day.  For my non-Irish readers, this is an annual celebration of all things Guinness.  You can buy tickets for a venue or just go to your local and raise a toast to Arthur at a minute to six (1759 being the year Guinness was founded).  And in fairness, while it might be a marketer's dream, Diageo donate all the proceeds from the ticket sales to the Arthur Guinness fund, and this year they were donating an additional €5 for everyone who checked-in to Arthur's Day on Facebook.  Plus, y'know, it's an excuse to go to the pub.

I may have celebrated a bit too enthusiastically, however.  I spent the day with my eyelids at half-mast and a second pulse in my temple that was probably disturbing the person in the next office.  I had also drunk a litre and a half of water by 11am, and I haven't been to the bathroom yet.  I may very well give my bed a little kiss when I get into it tonight.

And now for the world's clumsiest segue, where I just bring the food in apropos of nothing.  Needless to say, I cooked nowt last night, as I was too busy laying the foundations for my hangover.  So this is Wednesday's dinner.  I had rehearsals for a cabaret-thing I'm doing next month on Wednesday night, so I didn't want anything too heavy - nothing worse than having to dance with a big sticky-outy belly flopping around in front of you.  So I decided to try and replicate the chicken & chickpea salad from Le Bon Crubeen, which my sister Clo mentioned on the low-carb post from a week or two ago.  It's actually nothing like that salad, though.  I marinated my chicken overnight in yoghurt, garlic & lemon zest, cause I vaguely remembered something about lemon & yoghurt from the menu the one time I was in Le Bon Crubeen.  Turns out their chicken is actually lemon & thyme, and they dress the salad with spiced yoghurt.  Ah well.  It was still delicious, and worth sharing, imo.

Lemon-yoghurt Chicken & Chickpea Salad - serves 2

2 chicken fillets, cut into strips                          Couple of tablespoons natural yoghurt
2 cloves garlic, crushed                                    Zest of a lemon
Bag of baby spinach                                         Tin of chickpeas, drained & rinsed
Medium onion, sliced                                        1 red pepper, thinly sliced

1. The night before, mix your chicken with enough yoghurt to coat, add the zest & garlic and a bit of salt & pepper.  Mix well, cover and stick in the fridge til tomorrow.

2. Preheat your grill to full whack, or get a griddle pan nice and hot.  Cook the chicken for a couple of minutes each side, being careful not to overdo it.  While the chicken is cooking, plate up your spinach leaves, chickpeas, peppers and onions.  Arrange the chicken on top, and commence nomming.  I squeezed the zested lemon and dressed my salad with that, but you could also mix the juice with half as much olive oil and use that.  I just don't like oily salad dressings.

Post the Twenty-fifth (in which everyone feels like Ireland have already won the World Cup)

Well, what a turnaround from last week.  We've gone from feeling like we lost last week, to feeling like we've already won the Web Ellis cup, all thanks to an epic performance against Australia yesterday.  Tri-Nations champions and a lot of people's real pick to win the world cup, and they were completely dominated by us.  Worra day!  Even personality-free-zone O'Gara was practically in tears afterwards.  Onwards and upwards now - Russia and Italy still to go and if we top the group, we're looking at a much easier proposition in the quarter-finals than if we qualified second.  Things are looking up.

It was a bit of an upsy-downy day for sport, though.  Yesterday afternoon we took ourselves off to the RDS for Leinster V Glasgow Warriors, buoyed up by our win.  Unfortunately, the wheels kind of came off the wagon and we were beaten 23 - 19 in the end.  Not exactly a routing, though, and it's early days in the season yet.

Anyway, today's recipe is total comfort food - perfect for this time of year when the evenings are getting that bit shorter.

Buttermilk Fried Chicken - serves 4

4 large chicken fillets                         350ml buttermilk
1 stick celery, roughly chopped         1 small onion, quartered                 
1 large red chili, quartered                2 cloves garlic, quartered              
Tablespoon fresh thyme leaves          2 tsp paprika
2 tsp cayenne pepper                       Salt & pepper
150g flour                               

1. In a large bowl, mix the buttermilk, celery, onion, garlic, chili, a teaspoon each of the paprika & cayenne and plenty of salt & pepper.  Add the chicken, toss to coat, then cover and leave to marinate in the fridge for as long as you have - overnight if possible.

2. In a large, shallow dish, mix the flour with the rest of the paprika & cayenne and more salt & pepper.  Remove the chicken from the milk with a tongs, shake off any excess liquid and dredge through the seasoned flour until completely covered - give it a good shove with the tongs to make sure you get into all the nooks & crannies.

3.  Heat a couple of inches of sunflower oil (don't use olive, it's too strong and with too low a smoke-point) in a large, deep pan until piping hot.  Fry the chicken two pieces at a time, allowing about 6 minutes per side.  Handle very carefully when removing from the pan so that you don't knock off all your lovely, crispy coating.  Leave to rest on a warmed platter lined with kitchen towels while you're cooking the other two pieces.

 This chicken is absolutely perfect served with:

Spiced-Up Mac & Cheese - serves 4

250g pasta                                  300g grated strong cheese
30g flour                                     30g butter
700ml milk                                  3 tbs Frank's Red Hot Sauce
1 tsp cayenne pepper                  1 tsp chili powder
0.5 tsp garlic granules                  Salt & pepper

1. Cook the pasta until just slightly underdone & drain.  In the same pot, make a roux by melting the butter, then adding the flour and cooking for a good 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

2. In  a jug or bowl, mix the milk, cayenne, chili powder, hot sauce, garlic granules and salt & pepper.  Whisk into the roux a little at a time, then bring to the boil, stirring constantly, until the sauce thickens.  Remove from the heat and stir in the cheese.

3. Stir the pasta back into the sauce (add a little of the cooking water if your sauce is too thick), pour into a shallow dish & bake in an oven preheated to 200C until golden & bubbling.  Serve with the chicken and a leafy green salad.

I know we've discussed my addiction to spicy food already, so if you're afraid that this is going to be too hot for you, feel free to reduce the quantities of hot sauce, chili & cayenne.  You could even omit them altogether, but where's the fun in that?

Post the Twenty-third (in which our heroine meets a Stephen King book she doesn't like)

Emmet would have said it wasn't possible.  And, to be honest, so would I.  There isn't really any handy way to describe just how much I love Stephen King's work.  He's often dismissed as a hack (generally by people who haven't read him, I find) and horror as an entire genre tends to be written off by the literary types, but by God, that man has a gift for words and a subtler turn of phrase than he's ever given credit for.

However...

I bought his new "short story" collection yesterday - they're actually more novellas than short stories.  It's called "Full Dark, No Stars" and if anything excites me more than a new King novel, it's a new anthology.  I actually feel like I'm somehow being unfaithful to him even by writing this, but, amazingly, FD,NS didn't live up to expectations.  The subject material was very un-King-like, and, at times, I felt like I could have been reading a toned-down Richard Laymon.  This, readers, is not a favourable comparison - Laymon wrote, to quote a memorable critic, "Stomach-churning porno-violence".  In this particular tome, three out of four stories have extreme violence against women at their heart, and two out of those three have rape as a recurring theme.  I am far from a prudish reader, but this is so unlike King (who has actually been accused countless times of pedestalising his female subjects) that I found it very hard to read.  Indeed, I think the reason it was so hard to read is because it felt so contrived - it was so, so obviously not a style that he was comfortable writing in, and that discomfort practically leapt off the page.  I just wonder what made him try it at all.

Anyway, yesterday I attempted to harvest the remainder of my spinach.  This was easier said than done, because spinach is amazingly prolific and even when you think it's going to seed, when you cut the bigger leaves, you find yet another crop of younger ones underneath.  For anyone wanting to start growing their own veg, this is the way to go.  And, in fact, I found myself specifically looking for spinach recipes, so that I could use this batch.  I also had chicken fillets fresh from the butcher, and reckoned a chicken & spinach lasagna might be just the way to go.  Unfortunately, none of the recipes I found quite lit my fire, so I combined the best bits from all of them, and this is what I came up with.

Chicken & Spinach Lasagna - serves 4-6

4 large chicken fillets                              8 double- handfuls of adult spinach
2 onions, diced                                      4 cloves garlic, crushed
2 knobs butter                                       Glass white wine
25g butter                                             25g flour
350ml milk                                            Half a nutmeg, grated
100g grated parmesan                           350ml natural yoghurt
1 egg                                                    6 sheets of lasagna, par-boiled
Salt & pepper

1.  Poach your chicken fillets* in simmering water until just cooked.  I usually add pepper, garlic granules and a bay leaf to the poaching liquid.  Drain, chop roughly and set aside.

2.  While the chicken is cooking, melt a knob of butter with a glug of oil in a large pan.  Add the onions & garlic and sauté gently until just beginning to soften.  Add the glass of wine and turn off the heat.

3.  Melt the other knob of butter over a low heat.  Rinse your spinach and remove any thick stalks.  Add the spinach to the butter and cook, turning constantly, until you can fit it all in the pot and it's completely wilted.  Add the spinach and the chicken to the white wine/onion mix and toss to combine.  Season with plenty of salt & pepper.

4.  In another pot, melt the 25g of butter.  Stir in the flour and cook, stirring frequently, for about ten minutes.  Add the milk, stirring constantly, a little at a time, until you achieve a thick, but pourable consistency.  Add the parmesan & the nutmeg and stir until smooth.  Bechamel is very much an instinctive type of sauce, so if it looks to thick, add more milk, if it's too thin, increase the heat until it thickens a bit.  Use your common sense.

5. Stir the spinach & chicken mix into the bechamel.  In a small bowl, beat the egg into the yoghurt and thin with a little water.

6. Lay a third of the chicken mix into an ovenproof dish.  Lay over three of the lasagna sheets (btw, par-boiling them stops them soaking up all of your sauce, making for a nice, floppy, sloppy lasagna), then repeat with another layer of chicken, the other three pasta sheets, and another layer of chicken.  Finish with the yoghurt "sauce".

7. Bake at 200C until the top is browned & bubbly.  Enjoy, and, if at all possible, get someone else to do the washing up because, alas, this recipe generates a lot of dishes.

*This would actually be the perfect dish to make with the strippings of a roast chicken in place of the fillets.  Unfortunately, with three dogs about, leftovers are a bit of an alien concept in our house.

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.

Post the Fifteenth (in which our heroine dies a death)

Today was not one of my better days.  I had a hangover of Dionysian proportions, compounded by the fact that I only got five hours sleep.  And the cause of this delicate state?  Was I carousing in some city hotspot with the beautiful people?  Was I engaged in an imbibing session in one of the country's many salubrious drinking establishments?  No.  I was at a family day in my parents' house.  There was a bouncy castle.  And I still managed to get myself into such a state that I had to leave work early.  To be honest, I think that's quite impressive.

So now I'm sitting here suspiciously eyeing the glass of wine that my sister swears blind will cure me.  I'm not entirely sure I believe her.  I think possibly the only thing for it is to order pizza, eat too much of it, then go to bed and settle in for the inevitable DTs, night-sweats and mad dreams.

Anyway, I was did things a bit arseways yesterday and gave you the recipes for the pesto and baguettes that I brought along to the Fambly Day yesterday.  By the way, if you ever decide to host a party, you could do worse than adopt the Ken Coffey way of doing things:

1. Announce to your family at large that you're "organising" a family day as a last hurrah for the kids before they go back to school.  Go a bit mad and tell them you're getting a bouncy castle.

2.  Inform everyone that they have to bring at least one dish with them for the food.

3.  When people ask you what kind of food everyone else is bringing, inform them that your youngest daughter is co-ordinating the food.

4. Neglect to inform said daughter of this fact until after she's already fielded several phone calls from siblings wondering whether anyone has already baggsed doing pasta salad.

5.  Forget to tell your eldest daughter about the family day until after she's already bought tickets to a show for that morning.

6.  Get your long-suffering youngest daughter to find the cheapest bouncy castle in Dublin.

7. Sit back and enjoy the party in which you've had little to no part in actually organising.

8.  Bask in all the thanks for setting it up while your youngest daughter drinks herself into an epic state.

Anyway, tonight you're getting the recipe for Saturday night's dinner.  It sounds a bit weird, but it's really, really good.  If you like spice, that is.  If you're nursing an ulcer, a blistery mouth or have a senstive, erm, bum, then maybe you'd best give it a miss...

Chicken Tequila Fettucine - serves 4

4 chicken fillets, diced            Large handful coriander, chopped
Half a jar of sliced jalapenos, finely diced, or 3 fresh ones, finely diced
3 cloves garlic, diced              2 tbsps butter
450ml chicken stock              100ml tequila or rum
Juice of 1 lime                        1 onion, diced
1 red & one yellow pepper, diced
250ml cream                          250g pasta (use any shape you like, it doesn't have to be fettucine.  Which is just Yank-speak for tagliatelle anyway).

(I'm aware that that looks like a lemon, but it's a lime, believe me)

1. In a small saucepan, sauté the jalapenos, coriander & garlic in two tablespoons of the butter for 5 minutes. Doesn't it smell freakin' AWESOME?  Add the tequila, lime juice and 3/4s of the stock and boil like a madwoman (or man) until it's reduced to a paste-like consistency.  Set aside.

2.  In a separate large pan or wok, sauté the onion & bell peppers for until the peppers have wilted a bit.  Add the chicken, the jalapeno-tequila paste and the cream, mix well, bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until the chicken is cooked and the sauce is nice and thick.  Add the reserved stock if it looks like it's reducing too much before the chicken is cooked.

3. Meanwhile, cook & drain your pasta.  Taste your sauce and if it's not hot enough (I have a shameful chili addiction), add a few dried chili flakes.  Season, toss with the pasta, garnish with a little extra coriander and serve.  Laugh at the big red faces on your guests if you've served it to people who aren't quite as addicted to chilies as you are.

Post the Twelfth (in which our heroine muses about her Bucket List)

So.  Ye olde Bucket List.  What's on yours?  Mine is very short.  I'm a woman of simple needs and more importantly, I'm ridiculously lazy.  No point in having a yard-long list of things I know I'll never actually getting around to doing.  My one big, huge thing, though, is to swim in the Devil's Pool at Victoria Falls.  Google it there.  Doesn't it just look like the most friggin deadly thing ever?  I should probably get the finger out, though.  It requires a four-hour trek through to jungle to reach it, so probably the kind of thing you'd want to do while still relatively young.  The logistics are a bit of a mare too - you can get there from Zambia or Zimbabwe, and I don't think Zimbabwe is currently on the Department of Foreign Affairs list of Great Places for White Europeans to Go on Holidays.

I also want to do the Ice Hotel in Sweden and see the Aurora Borealis.  Eh, that's pretty much it.  How boring am I?  Oh, and I'd also like to do the Man V Food tour of America, but only if I've been diagnosed with a terminal illness and dying of a fried-stuff-with-cheese induced heart attack seems like the better option.

Anyway, speaking of food, I really, really need to try and behave myself a bit, because I've decided to break out the oul Slave Leia costume this Halloween and I would prefer not to look like Jabba the Hut raided her wardrobe while wearing it.  In that vein, today's recipe is quite virtuous - Cheat's Coq au Vin.  In the interest of saving calories I've made it with chicken fillets, but it really would be much better with thighs.  Try both and see which you prefer.

Cheat's Coq au Vin - serves 4

4 chicken fillets, cut in 3 pieces each, or 12 thighs, left whole
6 shallots, peeled & diced                       Handful fresh thyme, leaves picked
100g diced lean bacon                            425ml chicken stock                            
150ml dry white wine                              Worcestershire sauce  
100g mushrooms of your choice (not that I ever get to put them in, as Emmet is a total fungus-phobe)

1) Dry-fry the chicken & bacon in a large pan for a few minutes until just beginning to colour.  Add the shallots & mushrooms (you can use mixed peppers instead, if you prefer) with a few tablespoons of the stock and cook until most of the stock is gone.  Add the rest of the stock, the wine, the thyme leaves and a good dash of Worcestershire sauce.  Season with pepper, but no salt - the bacon is salty enough, believe me.  Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes if using fillets or 25 if using thighs.

2)  Taste & adjust seasoning if needed.  Serve with green beans and mashed potatoes.

          
I've also decided to add a Viz Top Tip to the blog every day, just for fun.

Today's Top Tip:  Cyclists - if stopped by the police for cycling at night with no light on your bike, ask them how the fuck they saw you, then.

Til tomorrow, peeps.          

Post the Ninth (in which our heroine has a moan about the weather)

Have a look out your window there.  Go on, a good long one.  If you are staring at an unbroken vista of slate-grey cloud, then you are obviously one of my Irish readers.  According to my stats, I have a reader in the Maldives.  I kind of hate that person a little bit.  Here we are in August, supposed to be the apogee of Irish summer (even though it's technically Autumn) and all we have is rainy wind and windy rain.  Which we also had in July, June and May.  There was a nice week or two at the end of April, but that was pretty much it.  I, for one, would love to know what the Irish as a people have done to offend the weather gods so much.  It must have been heinous.  I will admit to having dropped history like a hot snot after the Junior Cert., but even still, I'm pretty sure there aren't any genocides or rape-of-the-Sabine-women type episodes in our past that would merit such a punishment.  It's enough to make you wish for winter again.  But only if it's another brilliant winter like last year - bring on the snow!

The shite weather is causing a phenomenon called the Curryolis Effect in our house.  This is a little-known natural occurrence whereby you crave the sweaty armpits, red face and runny eyes that should really be supplied by hot weather, but which you have to generate artificially with hot food because summer has apparently abandoned us for all time.  I'm only a week into this blog and I'm about to post my second curry recipe.  How depressing.

Chicken & Chickpea Curry - serves 4

2 onions, quartered                       4 fat garlic cloves
3cm ginger, peeled                        1 large red chili, roughly chopped (seeds & membrane left in)
Bunch fresh coriander                    2 tbsp hot curry powder
Half tsp turmeric                            2 tsp paprika
1 tsp salt                                        1 chicken stock cube
500ml boiling water                        4 or 5 chicken fillets, cubed
Tin of chickpeas, drained

1) Stick the onions, garlic, chili, spices, salt, curry powder and half the coriander into a food processor and blend to a puree.  Tip the mixture into a large pot and cook over a low heat for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

2) Crumble in the stock cube, add the boiling water and bring to the boil.  Add the chicken, stir, then lower the heat and simmer for 20 minutes, until the chicken is tender.

3) Chop the remaining coriander and stir into the curry along with the chickpeas.  If, like me, you love chickpeas and if, like me, you've already eaten half the first tin out of the colander, feel free to add another tin.   Heat through and divide between four bowls, swirl over some natural yogurt and serve with rice and poori breads.

Poori - makes 10 (WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!  Highly addictive little bastards, these)

175g self-raising flour                      1 tsp salt
1 tbsp vegetable oil                         1 tbsp natural yoghurt
3-4 tbsp water                                Oil for frying

1) In a large bowl, combine the flour, oil, yoghurt and salt.  Mix well and add enough water to make a soft dough.  Cover with a tea-towel and leave to rest for 15 minutes.

2) Turn onto a lightly floured board and knead well for 3-4 minutes or until smooth.  Divide into 10 balls and roll each into a very thin disc around 8cm in diameter.  Like-a dis:

3)  Heat about an inch of oil in a deep frying pan til it browns a cube of bread in 30 seconds.  Or, just guess when it's hot enough, like I do.  Carefully slide a poori into the pan.  When it puffs up (isn't that cool!) turn it over and fry for another minute.  Drain on kitchen towel and keep warm til they're all done.  They should be lovely and soft, not crispy at all.  Serve immediately.

You can thank/curse me later, when you're spreadeagled on the couch wondering whether it was really necessary to eat four of the damn things...

Post the Second (in which our heroine contemplates a return to the workforce)

So, a bit more background - I was working in a soul-sucking, going-nowhere job that involved a 160km round-trip every day, for shit money and no respect.  So, I had the bright idea to pack it in - in the middle of a recession - with nothing else lined up.  What could possibly go wrong?  I ended up taking another job, 5 minutes from home, with a German discounter who shall remain unnamed.  Unfortunately, it turned out to be even more soul-sucking and respectless than the old job, so I lasted, ooh, around a month, before I packed it in.  Believe me, I'm not workshy, but this place was like a cross between an industrial school and a gulag.  Not for me, thanks.

So, my lovely recruitment agency lady came back from her holliers yesterday and rang me about a temp admin. job in Tallaght that's available for an initial three months.  The money is absolutely pants - 15c an hour more than I was getting at the National Socialist Discount Store, which would be more than subsumed by the fuel costs of commuting to Dublin again - but €12 an hour is better than nothing, right?  I told her to submit me anyway, but in the meantime, I can remain hopeful that a vacancy as G.R.R. Martin's proof-reader or as a professional first-class airline service reviewer lands on her desk.

In other news, dinner last night was raw-ver tasty.  You simply take these:

And turn them into this:

Ok, so I added the carrots after the first photo was taken, and I'm not exactly the Mario Testino of food photography, so sue me.

Creamy Dill Chicken with Dressed Potatoes & Braised Carrots - serves 2 (Thanks to my friend C for the potato recipe!)

2 chicken fillets                                        125ml chicken stock
125ml white wine                                    1 tbsp flour
125ml cream                                           Salt & pepper
2 knobs of butter                                     4 tbsp olive oil
Large bunch fresh dill, chopped               Enough new potatoes for 2 (depending on how greedy you are!)
Bunch of scallions, chopped                    3 tbsp capers, chopped
Juice of 1 lemon                                      1 garlic clove, crushed
2 tbsp olive oil                                        4 carrots, julienned
Dash of white wine

Note: It'll be come increasingly (and often frustratingly) clear over the course of this blog that I don't really "do" quantities.  I'm really, really going to try, but don't go writing me any stinky emails about exactly how much is in a bunch or a glug, cause I won't answer 'em.

1)  Melt 2 tbsps of olive oil and one knob of butter in a pan over a medium-high heat.  Season both sides of the chicken fillets with salt & lots of pepper, and fry for 5 minutes on each side, until golden brown.  Reduce heat, add the stock & white wine, then cover and simmer gently for 10-12 minutes, until cooked through.  Remove & keep warm in a low oven.

2) Increase the heat and allow your cooking liquid to reduce by half.  Meanwhile, combine the cream, flour and 2 tsp of your chopped dill in a small bowl, til smooth.  Add to the reduced stock, and cook, stirring constantly, til smooth & creamy.  If it's too thick, add a bit of milk and whisk like mad til you get a nice sauce consistency.  Turn off the ring.

3) Somewhere in the middle of all this, get a pot of salted water boiling for your spuds.  Halve your new potatoes (if needed), chuck 'em in the water, and boil until just tender.  While they're boiling, combine the rest of the chopped dill, the scallions, capers, lemon juice, crushed garlic, more salt and the remaining two tbsp of olive in some manner of container with a lid, and shake the bejaysus out of it.

4) Get about 300ml of water up to a gentle simmer, add the other knob of butter and a glug of white wine.  Add your julienned carrots (that's just a fancy way of saying carrot sticks) and simmer for about 10 minutes, until just tender.  Drain and plate.  Warmed plates, it should go without saying.

5)  Drain your potatoes - hopefully you haven't forgotten about them and turned them to mush.  Return them to the pot, add the dill/scallion dressing, stick the lid back on, and give the whole lot a good rattle.  Plate up beside the carrots.

6) Plop a chicken fillet onto the plate, and spoon over a ladleful of your lovely (hopefully) cream sauce.  Eat.  Enjoy.  Go to bed and think about what you're going to have for dinner tomorrow.