Easter eggs - Home made

Hmmmmmm so as ever it's been a while :), that sounds like a Staind song. This weekend I made my  girlfriend Joanne her very own customised Easter egg, I felt it would be something different to the normal shop bought eggs. I decided upon making her a kinder egg styled egg, with milk chocolate on the outside and white chocolate on the inside , filling it with her favourite sweets dolly mixtures.

For making your own eggs you will need some equipment , you ideally need the following:

1 cooking thermometer
Bowl
Rubber spatula
Easter Egg moulds
A basket for egg to sit in
Cellafane ( I got some nice stuff in a florist on Wicklow Street Dublin)

Ingredients: It's all about the chocolate, so I picked up 600g of Callebaut milk chocolate in Leonidas. I also purchased 400g of Callebaut white chocolate in Kitchen Complements , Chatham Street.

My Recipe:

1) You need to make sure to polish your moulds firstly so they are clean and free from dirt or dust.
2) Place a bowl over a pan of simmering water on a cooker top.
3) When making Easter eggs you will need to layer the moulds, so per layer you will use 200g of chocolate.
4) For the first layer melt 150g of choc and reserve 50g.
5) Slowly melt the chocolate in the bowl over simmering water
6) When melted, stir in the remaining 50g, this is called tempering.
7) Keep stirring with a spatula , stick in thermometer, when gauge reads 32-33 degrees Celsius, the chocolate will be sufficiently tempered. The purpose of this is to give the chocolate a glossy finish and it's characteristic snap.
8) Pour equal amounts in to the moulds making sure to coat the whole of the mould , ensuring to drain excess chocolate out as it will pool at the bottom other wise.
9) Place both moulds in fridge for 30 mins.
10) For next 2 layers repeat step 4-9.
11) For the white chocolate follow the steps 4-9 also.

12) Allow to refrigerate for 3 hours after the last layers are applied.
13) Remove from moulds by gently tapping them, and they will easily enough pop out.
14) To join the shells together, melt some chocolate and paint edges of shells, and stick together, place back in the fridge allowing to harden.
15) Remove and decorate as you so wish.

Dutch Cuisine

As part of my trip to the motherland I was determined to eat all of my favourite Dutch food as you can see below. It was also my goal to have Joanne try as much Dutch food as possible.

1) Rookworst sandwich, chips and Chocomel

The minute I got off the plane I was heading for the Hema food stall over in the Amsterdam Airport train station. Its my treat when I arrive in Schiphol, rookworst is a smoked Dutch sausage, its so flipping good and tasty. I like to wash it down with my favourite chocolate milk drink.


2) Pancakes on the Kalverstraat

MMMMM this pancake was beautiful, covered in thinly sliced streaky bacon and drenched in stroop syrup, HEAVEN!


3) Ertwensoep - Dutch split pea soup

With the extreme cold two weeks ago this soup was great for warming the body up. Its a thick split pea soup that has a smokey flavour from the rookworst from above chopped inside the soup. Its also served with gorgeous smoked ham on dark rye bread.

4) Stroopwafel

Joanne tucking into a large stroop wafel at the Leiden Saturday market. These treats are gorgeous, they are two thin waffles with a creamy toffee/caramel in the middle like below.

5) Appelgebak - Dutch apple tart

Dutch apple tart is so nice and tastes cinnamon-y :)  I must attempt making this again

6) Uitsmijter - A bouncer sandwich of two fried eggs, cheese and bacon.

The uitsmijter translates to bouncer to represent what was served in cafes at the end of night out before the bouncer in a club or disco kicks you.

7) Kip Sate - Chicken Satay

Dutch Sate is a little different to satay you may have had before, its two kebabs of chicken served in a thick peanut sauce made from a sweet soy sauce called Ketjap Manis, peanut butter and some Indonesian chilli sauce called Sambal Oelek. This peanut sauce is served commonly on chips like mayonnaise or ketchup.

8) Hutspot with Meatballs and Gravy

As ever Hutspot is so yummy , proper comfort food and one of Joannes favourites. See Kay from Kayotic's Kitchen on how to make this.

9) Hachee served with boiled potatoes and red cabbage

I love Hachee, its a Dutch Stew of diced meat and onions, so simple and is very similar to the dish I made last week called Carbonnade.

They are just a few of typical Dutch dishes, I love the food so much in Holland, loads of sweet goodness and warm comforting food which was perfect for the cold weather.

Thank you for reading as ever

Willem

Pancake Day @ Fallon & Byrne

Yummy pancakes at Fallon & Byrne today, 4 for 1.70 euro.

Belgian Beef Carbonnade / Vlaamse Stoverij

This week Joanne happened to say to me that she fancied a big warm and comforting stew for dinner. Naturally I obliged with something a little different, I decided upon making a Belgian Beef Carbonnade. A carbonnade is an onion, beef and dark beer based stew. Unlike the traditional recipe below I decided to serve the carbonnade with some nice fluffy Maris Piper potato mash.

From wiki:


A carbonade flamande (or à la flamande) (in Dutch Stoverij or Stoofvlees), is a traditional Belgian sweet-sour beef and onion stew made with beer, and seasoned with thyme and bay. Mushrooms or spiced bread can also be added. The type of beer used is important, and traditionally an Oud bruin, Brune Abbey beer or Flanders red is the beer of choice with a somewhat bitter-sour flavor. In addition to this and to enhance the sweet-sour flavor, just before serving, it has a small amount of cider or wine vinegar and either brown sugar or red currant jelly stirred in.

It is often accompanied by french fries or boiled potatoes.

The term carbonade may also refer to a dish of grilled pork loin and certain beef stews cooked with red wine such as beef bourguignon in the south ofFrance, but is more commonly associated with the Belgian dish.

I adapted my recipe below from Tracey's Culinary Adventures:

Ingredients :

600g of Steak cut in to 1 inch pieces
Olive Oil
400g onions halved and sliced about 1/4-inch-thick
1 tablespoon tomato paste 
2 cloves garlic, minced (about 2 teaspoons) 
1.5 tablespoons all-purpose flour 
120ml beef stock 
180ml brown belgium beer
2 sprigs fresh thyme leaves, tied with kitchen twine 
1 bay leaves 
0.5 tablespoon cider vinegar 

Method:

1. Preheat slow cooker / crock pot.
2. Pat the beef dry with paper towels, season on all sides with salt and pepper. 
3. Heat 2 teaspoons of olive oil in frying pan oven over medium-high heat until very hot.
4. Add about 1/3 of the beef to the pan - don't crowd the meat, you want it to have space to brown properly. 
5. Brown for about 3 minutes on the first side, then turn the meat over and cook until the second side is well browned, about another 3 minutes.  Transfer the beef to a bowl.
6. Continue browning the rest of the meat in batches, adding 2 teaspoons of oil for each new batch of meat.     
7. Once all the meat has been browned, reduce the heat to medium and add 1 tablespoon of olive oil to the pan. 
8. Add the onions, 1/2 teaspoon salt and the tomato paste.  Cook, stirring occasionally and scraping the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon to loosen the browned bits, until the onions are lightly browned, about 15 minutes.  
9. Add the garlic and cook just until fragrant, about 30 seconds.  Add the flour and stir to coat the onions.  Cook until the flour is lightly browned, about 2 minutes. 
10. Stir in the beef broth, scraping the bottom of the pan again to loosen any remaining browned bits.  Add the beer, thyme, bay leaves, vinegar and beef (along with its accumulated juices) to the pot.  
11. Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Raise the heat and bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally.  When the stew reaches a simmer, cover the pot partially, then transfer to the slow cooker.  
12. Cook for 8 hours on low heat until meat is tender breaks easily..
13. Remove the thyme bundle and the bay leaves.  Adjust seasonings to taste before serving.
14. The stew can be made ahead and refrigerated in an airtight container for 4 days. 
15. Serve on mash potatoes
16. HEAVEN!

Thanks so much to Tracy, it was excellent both me and Joanne loved it so much.

Dutch Coffee ( Yup the next few posts are all being preceded by the word Dutch )

First off I think coffee really has taken over my life, its all my fathers fault. That man has been feeding me coffee since I was a child. The man is nuts when it comes to coffee , he drinks copious amounts of the stuff and has passed on his love of the black stuff to me as you can see with my coffee mission etc over the past 2 months. This post is more or less a narrative on diffrent coffees I had whilst on holiday last week. I tried not to drink too much but when I did I took some pics of the coffee I am deemed to be good.

Before I begin here is some information on the history of coffee in the Netherlands sourced from Wiki:

The race among Europeans to make off with some live coffee trees or beans was eventually won by the Dutch in 1616. Pieter van der Broecke, a Dutch merchant, obtained some of the closely guarded coffee bushes from Mocha, Yemen in 1616. He took them back to Amsterdam and found a home for them in the Botanical gardens, where they began to thrive. This apparently minor event received little publicity, but was to have a major impact on the history of coffee.

The beans that van der Broecke stole from Mocha forty years earlier adjusted well to conditions in the greenhouses at the Amsterdam Botanical Garden and produced numerous healthy coffee bushes named Coffea Arabica. In 1658 the Dutch first used them to begin coffee cultivation in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and later in southern India. They abandoned the cultivation to focus on their Javanese plantations because they didn't want to oversupply the market and drop the price.

Within a few years the Dutch colonies (Java in Asia, Suriname in the Americas) had become the main suppliers of coffee to Europe.



Koffie ( Dutch Spelling ) at a Pancake House in Amsterdam :

As you can see its served in a nice traditional cup, has a good crema on the top, thats a good start in my books. I love when coffee or tea for that matter are served in a nice cup or mug it makes what you are drinking all the better in my opinion. Anyhow the coffee tastes beautiful, I naturally added my Koffie Melk which makes Dutch coffee all the better. Having just arrived in Amsterdam this was the perfect pick me up to get started for the day of sightseeing.


My breakfast koffie or Kawwwwfie as the New York woman in my hotel pronounced it:

Both me and Joanne stayed at the Hotel Brouwer whilst we were in Amsterdam which I will blog about separately over the coming week. However each day with my breakfast came some good coffee in a French Press. I am generally not a fan of coffee using this method but each morning it was always good and woke me up for my days filled with shopping and touristy stuff.



Koffie at the Heffer

The Heffer is a bar at the start of the Red Light District and like the Hotel Brouwer I will be blogging on this separately, however they served amazing coffee here, served in a nice glass which is what inspired me to have Joanne :) buy me a gorgeous glass mug in Simon Levelt in Leiden. Again beautiful coffee and it looks so good served in that glass with a thick crema on the top.


Kaldi Koffie Wassenaar

 

The coffee here at Kaldi in Wassenaar is always good, I have been going here for the past 2 years anytime I am in Wassenaar( is a village where my grandmother lives just outside the Hague). Kaldi is a cafe/store, they sell food and crockery. I love coming here just to relax and drink coffee out of their cool Bodum coffee bowls. Its also run by a friendly chap too who is always so welcoming.

Well there you have it 4 of the best coffees from my trip to the Netherlands, to be honest I am still wired from the coffee but thats probably because of the coffee I have been making using my Chemex since returning.

Thanks for reading

Will

Oudt Leyden - Dutch Pancakes

This is my first post based on my trip to the motherland with Joanne. We were on holiday last week in the Netherlands, naturally it was always going to entail a visit to a Pannekoeken Huis (Pancake House) what with my obsession for pancakes. On Saturday of last weekend we took a train to the town of Leiden in the South of Holland, we were there to go shopping and browse around the Saturday market.

To be honest and I didnt tell Joanne this, I was there for one reason and one reason only it was to pay a visit to my favourite pancake place ever. Its called the Oudt Leyden, I was first here two years ago with my brother Steven and his girlfirend Sarah (my fellow pancake fiend). Its an old yet very elegant old style Dutch pancake house, who serve all manner of Dutch food but their USP is their amazing pancakes.

We arrived weary ( well I was after all the shopping) around 1pm, we both ordered the same pancake being Naturaal( powder sugar with lemon wedges on the side). I also ordered a coffee as I am obsessed with the Dutch Coffee, its so bloody good and not to go off on a tangent but its always strong and for some reason Koffie Melk makes it all the better. Koffie melk is a UHT cream everyone puts in their coffee over there.




Anyhow back on topic, the Pancakes arrived!!!! Damn they looked good as ever, they are about 16 inches in diameter and are served on a gorgeous Blue Delft plate. I drizzled my pancake as you can see from below in something called Stroop, which is a type of molasses the Dutch put on all manner of sweet desserts. The pancakes are light , thin and taste absolutely amazing. Even prompting Joanne to exclaim they are the best pancakes she has ever had.

I dunno what it is but the powder sugar just works so much better than granulated, it even prompted my brothers girlfriend Sarah to bring some home when she was last on holiday. I know if we were staying closer to Leiden I would have been here more than once on holiday.

Thanks for reading and if you are going to Holland definately check both Leiden and this fabolous restaurant out.

Will

Coffee mission takes a break

For the past few weeks I have been reviewing cafes in Dublin with the exception of the Brass Rail in London. I am taking a break for a while with reviewing cafes as I am about to embark on something more special. For so long I have tried to find a cheap yet great homemade coffee solutions, I love my dads coffee machine (which is this just for reference ) but I dont want my own as I dont drink coffee at home, I drink all my coffee at work so I have tried endless amounts of French Presses, and also the Aero Press which I never liked at all. However.... I think I found what I have been searching so long for whilst on holiday in the Netherlands recently( in a store called Simon Levelt ), its called a Chemex, here is some information:

From Wiki :

The Chemex Coffeemaker is a coffee-making device. It was introduced and continues to be manufactured by the Chemex Corporation. Pittsfield, Mass. It was invented in 1941 byPeter Schlumbohm.

The device consists of an hourglass-shaped glass flask resembling an Erlenmeyer flask with a conical rather than cylindrical neck. It uses proprietary filters, which the company also manufactures and distributes, that are thicker than a standard drip coffee filter. Coffee is made by placing the filter and grounds in the neck of the flask, boiling water in a separate vessel, "blooming" the grounds by adding a small amount of water to moisten them, and finally pouring the desired quantity boiling water over the grounds.

The New York Times in its obituary of Schlumbohm called the device "one of 100 best modern devices."^[1][2][3],

In Ian Fleming's From Russia, with Love we learn that James Bond uses an American Chemex with coffee from De Bry's in New Oxford Street for his breakfast coffee when stationed inLondon.^[4]

I absolutely love this apparatus, it makes insanely good coffee. I got back from holiday Sunday night and was dying to test this out when I woke up Monday morning. I searched high and low for how best to use the Chemex, when I stumbled across this video as my basis on how to make the coffee. I loved Aaron's demonstration, it was so helpful and the man truly knows his stuff.

My word! it was perfect coffee, the rich smell that filled the house was amazing. It works perfectly like no other portable coffee device I have used before. So my new mission is purchasing coffee from the likes of Hasbean and making my own stuff, hopefully it will save me a few euro also. I need to get a coffee grinder too and one of these babies click here . The coffee I am drinking at the moment is Espresso Corleone I got at Simon Levelt in Leiden, its so strong, deep and rich, I like my coffee strong as possible.

Oh and I thought I would throw this in, its my yummy breakfast from Monday morning, I brought back some Gouda cheese, rye bread, and salami from my travels to the Netherlands. Also pictured is my coffee served in my gorgeous new glass mug Joanne bought me on holiday.

Thanks for reading as always

Will

Peter Ward Thank You

This morning I was at the Milk Market in Limerick as ever after breakfast with a friend of mine. We both invariably always visit Peter Ward's Country Choice Delicatessen. My friend always buys Peter's sandwiches, he swears by them and always gets two of them for each Saturday. Its always a sausage & black pudding bread roll with barbecue sauce and ham/cheese bread roll. Peters food is always so good, he sells all manners of cheese, meats, salads, wines, Italian foods and desserts. Its also where I first bought this black pudding which is absolutely gorgeous, click here. I also get a selection of nuts and cranberries here each week I am down in Limerick. I love cranberries and hazelnuts they are so more-ish and the young lad who is in charge of the nuts section is also so enthusiastic, without the guy's enthusiasm I would have never tried the nuts and berries combo.

I also need to give a special mention to the cheese Peter introduced me to. We tasted some very good Comte cheese which is absolutely beautiful. We also tasted another cheese which was gorgeous being Mossfield's Organic Farm cheese, it was nutty, sweet and left a tang in your mouth at the end. If I only had more money this weekend I would have bought a piece, I will however be back to Limerick in two weeks whereby I will be purchasing some of this excellent cheese.

I hope you visit Peter and his team a visit at the Milk Market as they are true food heroes.

Check out their site http://www.countrychoice.ie/photogallery.php.

Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Country-Choice/348720983259

Thanks for reading

Will

Coffee & Scone @ The Brass Rail - Selfridges

On Thursday last week I had the pleasure of paying a visit to the Brass Rail restaurant in the food hall of Selfridges on Oxford St. London. I was over in London for a conference with work and I had an hour to waste beforehand so I stopped in to Selfrigdes. I had been here once before maybe 4 years ago but didnt get the chance to browse around properly. I love the food hall in Selfridges, its excellent so much good food to choose from, I only wish I had some money to spend as I would have bought loads. Anyhow as I was dying for a coffee and small bite to eat for breakfast, I decided upon the Brass Rail at the side entrance of Selfridges food hall.

Their speciality, and god I wish I had got it, Salt Beef with pickles, it looks phenomenally good , see pics below. I decided as it was my breakfast though to get a coffee and scone. The coffee was beautifully strong and the scone was gorgeous. My mum is English and it tasted just like her scones that she used to make when I was younger ( sourced from her Marguerite Patten book), I always found they tasted different to scones you get here in Ireland maybe less sugar or something. I really enjoyed my visit to the Brass Rail to kick back for a few mins to enjoy my coffee and scone. I also did some celebrity spotting and spied Lorraine Pascal star of BBC 2's "Home Cooking Made Easy" having a coffee and chat with a friend a few seats away from me.

Thanks again for reading,

Will

Lorraine Pascal :

Salt Beef :

Few interior pics from the Brass Rail:

My Bramley Sponge Pudding

This weekend in an effort to create something of my own and not follow a recipe this is what I came up with ( because I had all the ingredients to hand in my parents house ). Being honest it produced a really fluffy and moist sponge, its certainly something I will be making again. The only thing it was missing was some cream or custard. However I added some vanilla extract which gave the sponge a custardy flavor that works incredibly well with the apples. Anyway I hope you make this , it was really nice even if I say so myself.

Ingredients:

225g Flour
225g Sugar
225g Butter
4 Eggs
1/2 Teaspoon of Vanilla Extract
4 Bramley cooking apples
Juice of 2 lemons

Method:

1) Preheat your oven to 180c/160c Fan/Gas 4.
2) Grease and flour a 30cm x 10 cm dish.
3) Beat the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.
4) Slowly beat in one egg at time mixing well, adding the vanilla extract once all eggs are added.
5) Sieve the flour into the batter whilst beating.
6) Quarter the apples and slice thinly length ways. As you are slicing the apples , place in a bowl of lemon juice to prevent them turning brown.
7) Neatly arrange 1 layer of apples along the bottom of the dish.
8) Now add the batter making sure its evenly distributed over the apples.
9) Arrange the remaining apples on top of the batter.
10) Bake for 55mins, however keep an eye on the apples on top of the sponge around the 30 minute mark, if they going brown cover the sponge lightly with some greaseproof paper to prevent them burning.
11) Remove from the oven, allowing to cool before serving.
12) Serve with custard or cream.

Enjoy :)

Will