Post the Fifty-seventh (in which our heroine indulges in a bout of melancholy)

You know the kind.  You fetch lots of deep sighs.  You find yourself thinking "Woe is me" rather more than is strictly necessary.  You can kind of see the appeal of just turning your face to the wall and dying, in the style of a melodramatic Victorian heroine.  You don't want to go out.  You don't want to stay in.  You don't want to get out of bed in the mornings, but you can't sleep at night either.  The "Slow" or "Sad" playlists on your iPod are on constant rotation.

Melancholy.  It happens to us all every so often.  My most recent bout snuck up on me several weeks ago, while I was out with a lovely guy from my online dating site.  Those two facts are unrelated, by the way, I'm just setting the scene a bit.  I'm not going to lie, it kind of took me by surprise.  I'd been doing really well, or so I thought.  But little by little, I realised I was listening to more James Vincent McMorrow than was strictly necessary.  And that I'd been looking at old photos on Facebook quite a lot.  I went to bed that night and bawled my eyes out.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the pants side of marital breakdown.  (Not that there's a particularly good side to it either, but anyway.)  You can be doing great for months at a time, then completely out of the blue, the pain train hits you again and you're back at what feels like square one.  But it's not actually square one, thank Jebus.  You spend a lot less time leaking from the eyes, for one thing.  There's also a lot less alcohol and time off work involved ( you can decide for yourself whether or not that's a good thing).  I take all this to mean that each subsequent relapse will be slightly less horrific until eventually, I will be "cured".

In the meantime, I have found that the best short-term cure for the dreaded melancholia is to play Pink's "So What" at ear-splitting volume and lep around the bedroom like a child with ADHD who's been drinking speed-laced Coke for three days.  I apologise to both Sinead and Mrs. Keane next door for being subjected to this on myriad occasions over the past few weeks.

Anyway, my other go-to cure for feeling a bit down in the dumps in general is any food containing chillies.   I don't care if it's a placebo effect, it works for me and that's all that matters, right?  So, dear readers, I give you:

Moroccan-spiced Lamb Burgers with Minted Chickpeas & Harissa Yoghurt - serves 4

500g lamb mince                                1 red onion
1 red chilli                                           1 fat clove garlic
Bunch fresh coriander                         2 cream crackers
Pinch each cumin & paprika               Jar of harissa paste
Salt & pepper                                      Tin of chickpeas, drained & rinsed
2 large white onions, sliced                 Tbs mint sauce
250ml natural yoghurt

1. Roughly chop your red onion, chilli and garlic.  Lob them into a food processor with the coriander and the cream cracker (broken up into a few pieces).  Whizz til finely minced, then pop into a large bowl with the lamb, cumin, paprika and a teaspoon of the harissa.  Add a little salt and pepper and mix well til everything's really well combined.  Shape into four burgers, then pop on a plate and stick them in the fridge to firm up for at least half an hour.

2. While your burgers are firming (oo-er, matron!), heat a little olive oil in a large pan and sweat the white onions until soft, but not coloured.  Add the chickpeas and mint sauce and warm through.  Season to taste with salt & pepper, and keep warm.

3. Preheat your grill to its highest setting.  Make a little indent in each burger with your thumb.  Don't ask me how this works, but it does stop them swelling up in the middle as they cook.  Grill until nice and golden-brown, turning over halfway through.

4. Swirl another tablespoon of the harissa into the natural yoghurt.  Serve the burgers in round pitta breads with a big dollop of yoghurt and the chickpeas on the side.  I also like to add a spinch & coriander salad to this.

Post the Fifty-sixth (in which our heroine embarks on her first online dates)

So, your heroine took the plunge into the online dating world, she spent hours separating the online wheat from the online chaff, she spent quite some time scratching her head at some of the more esoteric messages she received.  Like those from Naked Jogging Guy.  Naked Jogging Guy (or NJG, as he shall henceforth be known) must be famous on my particular site by now.  His first message to me was extremely polite - he had "specific tastes" that he was looking for someone to indulge.  Being a bit of a nosy creature, I replied asking for more details.  Turns out he was looking for someone to come and watch him jogging around a field in the nip.  That was it - no "funny stuff" (his words) - just the naked jogging.  Your correspondent regretfully declined.  Then, maybe two months later, I got another very similar message.  Assuming it to be the same person (no photos on the profile, funnily enough) I replied with "Is this the naked jogging guy?  Sorry, I've no interest."  I received a midly irate response more or less saying "Gawd no, naked jogging???  That's just weird!  Nah, I'm looking for someone to watch me pleasure myself on Skype."

Oh, well in that case...

Anyway, on to the actual dates.  My first one was with a guy who seemed perfectly nice and normal.  We'd been messaging on the site for a few days, then moved onto emails, and when he asked me out for the following Friday, I said yes.  I'm not going to lie, I was absolutely terrified, but hey, it had to be done, right?  So off I toddled to a bar on Pembroke St. to meet him.

5' 11".  That was the height on his profile.  Now, your correspondent is about 5' 7" in her bare feet and loves her hee-highlers.  Height, as shallow as it sounds, is a factor for me in choosing potential dates.  But 5' 11" ?  Grand.  We'd be about the same height with me in heels.  No problem there.  So I'm standing at the bar in Matt the Threshers and in walks my company for the evening.  My heart starts to sink.  I'm desperately clinging to a "these cows are small, those cows are far away" maybe-it's-just-the-perspective mantra in my mind, but I know it's futile.  Matt the Threshers isn't that bloody big.  Up he saunters, says hello, kisses my cheek.  I'm towering over him.  He buys me a drink.  I'm already mentally sending the "Peanuts!" message to my friend A, which is our code word for "get me the flock out of here".  Not the best way to start a date.  He had no-one to blame but himself, though.  I mean, seriously, did he actually think I wasn't going to notice that he had blatantly lied about his height?  Or did he just think I'd be so dazzled by his personality that I wouldn't notice he was approximately the same size as Michael D. Higgins?  Needless to say, he didn't get a second date.  And I now mentally knock at least two inches off everyone's height on my site.  Which is a bit worrying when people have themselves listed at 5' 5" in the first place...

Then there are the people who use photos of themselves that are, shall we say, of the vintage variety.  Apparently women are the worst cuplrits for this, but I got caught out by one of the male perpetrators on my third date from the site.  I met this guy on a Sunday afternoon when I was in town anyway.  He drove in specifically to meet me, and rang me when he arrived.  "Where will I meet you?" says I.  "Ah sure just jump in the car and we'll go for a spin," says he.  "I think not, I don't know you from Adam," says I, wondering if there are actually women out there who are stupid enough to get into a car for a drive with a complete stranger.  So we agree to go to the Old Stand for a drink.  I arrive.  My heart once again sinks.  He is at least 3 stone scrawnier than his profile picture.  He has a massive scar running from his left ear to his mouth that was also conspicuously absent from his said picture.  He bears an uncanny resemblance to Roland the Rat.  He has also, through the magic of online communication, managed to disguise the fact that he's a total knackbag.  "Jaaaaaayziz, dis place is veddy fancy, wha?" was his opinion of the Old Stand.  I repeat, the Old Stand.  I learned two valuable lessons from this particular bloke:

1. Never trust a profile that only has one photo on it.  Everyone has one photo where the planets all aligned and the fates conspired to make them look good.  If you come across a profile with only one photo up, it's that one.

2. Always, always, always speak to your prospective date on the phone before you meet them.  I could have saved myself a whole hour of my life if I'd spoken to this guy before arranging the date.

I could not get out of there fast enough.  Necked my beer, checked my watch and was like "Oh, look at the time, must run, work in the morning and all that..."  He insisted on walking me out, then tried to give me a lift home.  I was like "Oh no it's fine, look, there's a taxi right there.  Taxi?  TAXI!!!???" all while he's trying to give me a goodnight kiss and I'm practically bent over backwards at the waist trying to avoid it.

He texted me later that evening saying what a great time he had.  Clearly his people-reading skills are as rusty as the Stanley blade that gave him that scar.  (He claimed it was an airbag in a car accident.  Yeah right.)  I didn't respond, thinking I'd deal with it in the morning.  I was never given that chance.  I was woken up the following morning by not one, not two, not three, not four but FIVE unsolicited (and extremely unwelcome) pictures of his todger.  Well, I stopped opening them after the second one but seeing as they were all MMSs, it was probably a safe assumption to make.  Doubleyou.  Tee. Eff???  Needless to say, he went to Ignoresville after that.  He did, however, message me online again about a week or so later wondering what he'd done wrong.  I kid you not.  So, being the kindly soul that I am, I replied and said I just didn't think we had much in common.  His response? "Ah yer prolly righ'.  I tink you need help though, luv.  Not wanting kids?  That's just weird."

Yep, ladies and gentleman.  This man thinks it's acceptable to carpet-bomb a woman he's met once with willy pictures, and I'm the one who needs help.

Howeyeh, luv!

No recipe today, this post was long enough without one!

Post the Fifty-fifth (in which our heroine muses on the bizarre world of online dating)

So, it was going to happen at some stage.  Eventually your correspondent was going to want to return to the world of the opposite sex.  This was ever going to be a daunting prospect, given that your correspondent had been off the market for almost 7 years, but your correspondent is a woman and women have needs, and there came a time when your correspondent decided she could do with a bit of a snog.

Not having the first clue of how to go about scoring anymore, your correspondent was pointed in the direction of online dating.  "It's great!" said her friend, who shall remain unnamed.  "Even if you don't end up meeting anyone, it's a great ego boost.  Go for it."  So for it I went, on a site that shall also remain unnamed.  I will admit to having a few drinks on board when I created my profile, but seeing as I had about 14 messages before I even finished adding my photos, I decided to leave it as-is when I had another look the next day.  It weeds out (some of) the idiots I'd have nothing in common with.

Anyway, online dating has been an experience, to say the least.  The men who frequent my site fall into a few broad categories; there are the hook-up artists who are only after one thing.  I seem to attract a lot of these. They don't really bother me, as long as they're up-front about it, at least I know not to waste my time.  Then there are the ugly-but-needy brigade.  They think being self-deprecating to an extreme will engender enough pity in you to respond to them.  It doesn't.  There's also the poor craytures who are hanging onto the rules they learned in "The Game" in the mistaken belief that PUA works.  This lot inevitably send you a really insulting first message.  Presumably the idea is that you'll write back to have a go at them, and they can suck you into a conversation that way.  These also go straight into the recycle bin.

And then we have, unfortunately, what appears to be the largest contingent on my site, anyway - the time wasters.  These are people who have absolutely no intention of ever actually going on a date with someone, but who will happily string you along for weeks, if not months, pretending that they're going to meet you.  Online Dating ingenues will inevitably fall for at least three of these idiots, lose all faith in the process, delete their profiles in frustration, then return several weeks later, older, wiser and a lot more cynical.  I know I did. One particular time-waster who was nothing if not entertaining fed me so much crap that he clearly couldn't remember at any given moment what he'd already told me.  Your correspondent, on the other hand, has a nigh-on eidetic memory and took great pleasure in calling him out on stuff.  At the time of going to press, this dude had lived in Kinsale, Cork, Clare and Limerick at varying stages in the process.

So, having done the online dating thing for a couple of months now, I feel well-placed to make the following observations:

1. No-one on my site drinks more than socially, smokes or does drugs.

2. Everyone is good-looking in a baseball cap/sunglasses.

3. People can hide a whole world of crazy behind a keyboard.

4. Some people have no shame.

Now, that's not to say there aren't some genuine people out there too.  I've been on a good few dates at this stage and met some lovely people.  But where's the fun in writing about that?  Part two of my online dating odyssey continues tomorrow with the dates themselves.  Until then, content yourself making this easy-peasy midweek dinner:

Pasta with Smoked Ham & Balsamic-roasted Tomatoes - serves 4


400g pasta shapes                                         250g smoked ham, cubed
750g tomatoes, roughly chopped                   6 tbs balsamic vinegar
6 tbs olive oil                                                 4 cloves garlic, peeled & sliced
Couple sprigs fresh thyme                              Salt & pepper
Shaved parmesan, to serve

1. Place your tomatoes, garlic, thyme, olive oil & vinegar in a large ovenproof dish and mix everything really well.  Season generously and roast at 220C for about 40 minutes.

2. While the tomatoes are roasting, fry off your ham (I use the Aldi bacon offcuts - €1.99 for a kilo, they're amazing value) and cook and drain your pasta.

3. When the tomatoes are done, remove the thyme sprigs,  then add the tomatoes and ham to the pasta and give everything a good toss.  Check your seasoning, correct if necessary, then serve on warm plates with shaved parmesan and good crusty bread.

Apologies for the atrocious photo, by the way; I was absolutely famished and actually couldn't wait five seconds to compose the shot properly...

Anyway, this is possibly the easiest recipe on this blog.  It tastes divine and you can easily leave out the ham for any vegetarians you might be catering for.  Go on, give it a try.

Post the Fifty-fourth (in which our heroine waxes lyrical about Buffalo sauce)

It all started fairly innocuously.  The odd chicken wing in Tribeca if I was there with a group and we ordered a basket for a starter.  Little did I know I was on a slippery slope to a torrid love affair with all things Buffalo.  I can trace this descent back to one defining moment - the day I found out exactly what they use in those chicken wings that makes them so dangerously addictive.  It's Frank's Red Hot Sauce.  I've already posted a recipe using it.  If you've made it, I'm sure you'll agree with me on the crack-like addictive qualities of this wondrous stuff.  Their tagline is "I Put that Sh*t On Everything" and I do.  I really, really do.  It truly is the king of condiments.  This recipe came about as an attempt to recreate a starter I had in the Cheesecake Factory in Orlando.  Truth be told, it probably bears absolutely no relation to that dish whatsoever, but it's still really, really good.  Not something you'd want to be eating on too regular a basis, granted, but perfect for some hungover night in with a DVD and the need for major soakage.

Buffalo Blasts - makes about 8

500g turkey mince                          1 pack filo pastry, defrosted
150ml Frank's                                 4tbs butter or dairy spread
1 tbs white wine vinegar                 Pinch garlic granules
1 egg, beaten                                   Good handful very sharp cheddar, grated
Black pepper                                   Oil for frying

1. Heat up your deep fat frier or if, like me, you don't have one, heat a couple of inches of oil in a wok (don't use olive, it has too low a smoke point and has far too strong a taste anyway).

2. Fry your turkey mince over a medium high heat until cooked through. You'll need to really work it well with a fork, because it clumps like a muthafucka. Add garlic granules and black pepper to taste, then set aside.

3. Combine the Frank's and butter or dairy spread (this is one of the few cases where you can genuinely use the low-fat crap without it affecting the end result) in a small pot over a low heat, stirring until it's nice and silky.  Add a splash of white wine vinegar (you can use red if it's all you have) and stir in the turkey mince.

4. Cut the filo into rectangles. Place a small spoonful of filling on the bottom left corner of the rectangle with a sprinkle of cheese and a grind of black pepper, leaving a small border. Fold the pastry over from the right to create a triangle shape. Continue to fold over from side to side till you have a triangular package. Brush the end of the pastry with the beaten egg and seal.

(Google videos on how to fold a samosa if you genuinely have no clue what I'm talking about here.)

5. Cook the blasts in the oil in batches until the pastry is golden brown. Drain on kitchen towels and serve with blue cheese dip or sour cream.

Blue Cheese Dip

120ml buttermilk                         60ml sour cream
115g blue cheese, crumbled        Black pepper to taste

1. Very complicated this - bung the whole lot into a blender and whizz til smooth.

Erm, I didn't really think a ramekin of blue cheese dip warranted a photo, sorry!

Anyway, as I said, these are perfick Friday-night-in-with-a-DVD-and-a-few-beers fare.  And, shamefully, they're just as good cold, a few hours later when you just can't help yourself wandering into the kitchen to pick.  Do it in your dressing gown and pretend you're Nigella Lawson.

Post the Fifty-third (in which our heroine is happy with the Heineken Cup draw)

Ah, you have to love rugby.  No sooner is the season over and you're wondering how you're going to last until September, when the ERC step in with the draw for the next year's Heineken Cup pools, keeping you going for, ooh, at least a week while you try to decide which away trip you'd like to go on and waste countless hours in work looking at flights, which you can't actually book because they haven't published the match dates yet.  Leinster got a pretty nice draw this year - we're in Pool 5 with Scarlets, Exeter and Clermont.  ASM are the only potential spanner in the works there, as they are determined to win the HEC soon, and they're quite unhappy with us at the moment, having been beaten by us in the semi final this year.

Pool 2, on the other hand, is horrible.  El Grupo del Muerte.  Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.  Toulouse, Ospreys, Leicester Tigers and, erm, Benetton Treviso.  Poor Treviso.

I'm just going to gloss over the fact that the national team are still on tour in New Zealand.  I've decided to pretend we don't have a national team for the remainder of Declan Kidney's tenure.  It's just better for my mental health.

Anyway, moving swiftly on to the grub...  I'm just back from a few days in Kinsale, where I ate approximately my own bodyweight in seafood and brown bread.  I also ate my entire week's salary in seafood and brown bread (and possibly also one or two sociable drinks), so it's going to be a lean couple of days chez moi in both senses of the word.  A slightly less depressing option than beans on toast on constant rotation when your bank balance is less than rotund is homemade hummous.  Tins of chickpeas are ridiculously inexpensive (about 35c in Aldi) and there's also the added bonus of them being low in fat, low GI and generally all-round good for you.  And you should have practically everything else you need to make this already lying around the kitchen.

Chilli Hummous

1x 400g tin chickpeas, drained & rinsed                          1 red chilli, roughly chopped
2 fat cloves garlic, peeled & quartered                             Juice of 1 lemon or lime
Small bunch fresh coriander                                             Dash of olive oil
Salt & pepper to taste

1. Tip the chickpeas, chilli, garlic & coriander into a food processor and blitz til you get a crumbly mix.  Add the lemon/lime juice and pulse again, scraping down the sides between goes if you need to.  Then, with the motor running, drizzle in about a tablespoon of olive oil. Stop the motor (obviously), season with the salt & pepper, taste and season again if needed.

2. If the texture still isn't quite right (I like mine quite stiff), you can continue to thin the hummous out with a little extra olive oil, or even water if you're trying to undo the damage of four days in Kinsale.  Just keep checking the seasoning after every addition of liquid.

This will keep for a good five days in the fridge in an airtight container, but to be honest, it rarely lives that long - it's incredibly moreish with griddled flatbreads or even (dare I say it), carrot or cucumber sticks.

Post the Fifty-second (in which our heroine returns to the kitchen)

So, your sometime correspondent returned to the kitchen last night.  I genuinely can't remember the last time I cooked a meal, to my shame.  There was much jubilation in the Coffey household.  I even invited a special guest in the form of my friend A.  (But it was really only cause I knew she'd bring Prosecco...)  Your correspondent pondered muchly on just what she should cook.  In the end, she plumped for Mexican, which should surprise no-one who has been a regular peruser of this blog.  Ok, I lie; strictly speaking the recipe is from Arizona, or at least it's in the "Arizona" section of the Jamie Oliver cookbook from whence it came, but sue me, I'm listing it under Mexican as, quite frankly, I can't see myself having enough Arizonan (Arizonian?) recipes on this blog to make it worth my while creating a whole new set of tags. 

We've discussed in depth my love of Mexican flavours previously on this blog.  This recipe has pretty much all of them - chillies, lime, coriander.  But it's quite different too - the addition of mint and sage give it a zing and freshness that make it really dance on your tastebuds.  Plus, it's ridiculously easy to make, which is a plus in anyone's book, right?  Perfick Friday night grub with a few cold beers.  I'd imagine that, like most chillies, it would be even better the next day, but to be honest, I've made it twice now and on neither occasions have any leftovers made it through the night in order to test that theory.

Btw, your correspondent is also on the blocks next week in the Boards.ie Cooking Club and this is the recipe I'll be using, with the addition of Navajo Flatbreads, so if you'd like to know how to make them, have a shufti over there next Friday.

Jamie Oliver's Green Chilli - serves 4

800g lean pork mince                                            1 tsp dried sage
2 large onions, diced                                             2 green peppers, seeded & diced
6 small green chillies, roughly chopped                4 cloves garlic, crushed
4 large, ripe tomatoes, deseeded & chopped         Bunch coriander, chopped
Small bunch fresh mint, chopped                          Juice of 1 lime
1 Romaine lettuce                                                  Bunch spring onions                                            
Yoghurt & tortillas to serve

1. Heat a little oil in a large pan or pot and brown your mince until no pink remains.  Make sure you give it a good going over with a fork to really break it up.

2. Add your sage (use twice the amount of dried oregano if you can't get sage), onions, peppers, chillie and garlic and cook on a high heat for about 10 minutes, or until any water from the pork/veg has been driven off.

3. Stir in your tomaters and half a glass of water.  Season well with plenty of salt and fresh black pepper, turn the heat down slightly and let everything simmer away nicely for another ten minutes or so - this chilli is supposed to be quite dry, so again you want to let most of the moistsure cook off.

4. When the chilli is almost ready to serve, stir in the lime juice and the chopped coriander and mint.  Taste and adjust the seasoning if needed (it will likely need more salt), then turn the heat off but leave the pot on the warm ring.

5. Wash and dry your lettuce and spring onions, then roughly chop them.  heat a flour tortilla per person, fold it into quarters and pop it into a bowl.  Ladle over your chilli, then scatter over some chopped lettuce & spring onions.  Serve with yoghurt or sour cream on the side for the wimps at the table.

                                        

Post the Fifty-first (in which our heroine returns to the blogosphere)

Well, folks, it's been a while.  Six months, actually.  I find that quite alarming, to be honest with you.  A) because I never intended to abandon the blog for that long and B) because it feels more like six weeks.  The time, how she flies, eh?

Anyway, I feel a bit of an explanation is probably required.  Bear with me here; t's not going to be easy.  There may be snots and tears.  You may end up feeling quite uncomfortable.  But I've always been an extremely low-bullshit kind of person and I feel that it would be disingenuous of me to just kind of gloss over the fact that I disappeared for six months and pretend it never happened.  A lot of you know me personally and will already know the story anyway.  But, for those of you who don't; my marriage ended.  I'm not going to go into the nitty gritty of how and why and whatnot, but suffice it to say that it was not the most pleasant experience of my life to date.  And, perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the major side effects to marital breakdown is loss of appetite.  Not really conducive to a food blog, as you might imagine.  So, I went to ground for a while.  I moved home.  I drank far too much.  I stayed in far too much, and then I went out far too much.  I lost a stone.  I call it the "Ditched Diet".  It's very effective, but I couldn't in good conscience recommend it.

And then, little by little, I started to feel a bit better.  Don't get me wrong, I still have my moments where I go "How the hell did this happen?", but gradually I started to feel human again.  I had counselling.  I realised that I didn't want to come out of this experience a worse person than when I went in.  I still have no idea where I'm going or what I'm doing long-term, but I know that blogging was something that gave me a lot of pleasure, and I've had a lot of lovely comments from people over the past six months saying that they missed the blog and hoped I'd come back to it, so here I am.  And if nothing else, it'll force me to cook again, thus appeasing my family somewhat, as they've been woefully disappointed at the lack of kitchen action since I moved home, God love them.

Just as long as I don't put that stone back on...

Recipes, sarcasm and stream-of-consciousness musings will all resume from tomorrow.  Thanks for reading, folks.