Preserved limes, hot red chillies and Stonewell’s low alcohol Tobairin craft cider

I’ve always had a certain love for leftovers. Cold pizza is a favourite, for breakfast preferably, when the texture of the previously melted and now regrouped cheese offers a very particular if slightly peculiar comfort.

This weekend I discovered another surprisingly moreish leftover breakfast dish, when we wrapped some juicy, just-cooked Superquinn sausages into reheated roti bread, cushioned them into place with some cold dahl and moistened the lot with raita. Not bloody bad! Of course, the hangover was probably a crucial ingredient, perhaps even more so than with cold pizza (which I would eat almost any morning).

But on Monday night I did even better work on the leftovers from Saturday’s currytastic dinner party. As well as little tasters of lamb rogan josh and pork vindaloo (the latter from this Madhur Jaffrey recipe, and highly recommended) I had a generous portion left of my take on Rick Stein’s Madras fish curry. The original recipe can be found here, but below is my version. I can’t say whether it’s better than Ricks or not, as this is the version I ended up making, mostly by default. But I can tell you that it was really tasty, and even more so on the Monday, partly due to flavours marrying and partly due to some extra additions.

Aside from replacing unavailable ingredients (I used local red gurnard instead of imported red snapper and replaced two teaspoons of Kashmiri chilli powder with one each of cayenne pepper and paprika), I also skipped a crucial instruction by mistake and ended up having to improvise a little. Having gotten distracted and tipped the tomatoes into the softened onions too early (pre-spices), I fried the curry leaves and spices and added them to the tomatoes once they had released their aromas. It added such a nice smokiness that tonight I repeated it tonight, adding more fried spices into the reheated leftovers, this time including some garam marsala, black mustard seeds,  whole coriander seeds, more curry leaves and a few lightly bashed small red chillies to crank up the heat.

I also added a couple of dried limes before reheating. I’ve never used them before but my fella bought them in his favourite ethnic shop on Thomas Street, and I think they may be about to become my new culinary obsession, being amazingly tangy and intense.

I washed the lot down with my new favourite low-alcohol drink: Stonewell’s Tobairín Cider, which is just 1.5% ABV but full of tangy Stonewell character thanks to fermented Elstar eating apples blended with fresh Jonagored juicy. It’s properly tasty and highly recommended as perfect pairing for a Monday night curry leftover – all the flavour with none of the guilt!

So here’s the final recipe, a mix of what Rick does and what I did and what I would do next time. Enjoy!

A sour fish curry of gurnard, tamarind and preserved limes (aprés Rick Stein)

2–3 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 tablespoon yellow mustard seeds

1/2 tablespoon black mustard seeds

1/2 tablespoon whole coriander seeds

1 large onion, finely chopped

3 garlic cloves, finely crushed

400g/14oz can chopped tomatoes

2–3 preserved limes, halved

100ml/3½fl oz tamarind liquid

40 fresh curry leaves

2 teaspoons ground coriander

2 teaspoons ground turmeric

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon garam marsala

2 green chillies, each sliced lengthways into 6 pieces, with seeds

1 teaspoon salt

700g/1lb 9oz snapper fillets, cut into biggish chunks

boiled basmati rice, to serve

Serves 4–6 

In a heavy-based saucepan, heat a tablespoon or two of oil over a medium heat and add the mustard seeds to the hot oil. Fry for 30 seconds or until they begin to release their aromas. Stir in the onion and garlic and fry gently for 10 minutes, or until softened and lightly golden-brown. Add the tomatoes, preserved limes and tamarind liquid, and allow to simmer.

In a separate pan, heat another tablespoon of oil and once hot, add the curry leaves, cayenne powder, paprika, coriander and turmeric and stir-fry for a minute or two until they release their aromas but before the curry leaves burn. Add to the tomatoes along with green chillies and salt and simmer for another five or six minutes, or until rich and reduced. At this point, you could allow to cool and set aside until ready to serve.

Once ready to serve, heat the tangy tomato base through. Add the fish, cook for a further five minutes or until just cooked through, and serve with plain rice.

Can you smell that picture?

But of course there’s more to beer than fizzy lager, as we are discovering now more than ever with the recent revolution of Irish craft beers. And there’s more to Indian food than  famously hot vindaloo from southern Goa or roganjosh from Kashmir which straddles India, Pakistan and China and from where much of what defined ‘Indian’ cooking in British culture originates.

Last weekend I went to the unlikely location of Ardee, Co Louth to learn more about the kind of cooking you might find on the streets and in the homes of Bangladesh. (Read on for details of this Thursday’s Bangladeshi street food and Irish craft beer night – or this autumn’s Bangladeshi cookery classes which will keep off in September.)

Comeragh Challenger

In case you don’t know (I didn’t), Bangladesh is poised at the northernmost coast of the Bay of Bengal, with India’s Calcutta to its west, Nepal to its northwest and Burma to its southeast. It is hemmed in by mountains and coast, so as you can imagine, the Bangladeshi are fond of their seafood. So much so that this is what Sarajit Chanda was marinating for dinner that night for him and his Donegal-born wife Sarah Nic Lochlainn (who he met in a restaurant in Sydney while both were on their travels):

Clogherhead octopus marinating in Asian spices

The couple moved to Ardee in 2005 to set up Fushcia House, and have garnered a loyal following in that time, including local curry aficiandos who come every Friday for the thali (a traditional tasting of many dishes, sort of like a curry version of a bento box) and food critics such as Tom Doorley who helped put Fushcia House on the map. Sarajit and Sarah may not be brave enough to feature Clogherhead octopus on their varied menu, but you will find the likes of red snapper alongside crowd-pleasers like Ma Chanda’s Chicken Curry (which you can also make at home, now that the couple have launched their range of Aruna sauces).

The makings of Ma Chanda's chicken curry

I joined a group of food bloggers to get a preview of some of the dishes that will be served at this Thursday’s Bangladeshi street food and Irish craft beer night (Thursday 12th July, 7pm, €50 per head). The evening will be hosted by Tom Doorley and will feature treats from many of the new breed of Irish brewers including Trouble Brewing, Stonewell Cider and Dungarvan Brewing Company (that’s one of their seasonal brews above, the Comeragh Challenger).

Sarajit loves to demystify Asian cooking, translating familiar names into direct culinary terms. I learnt that ‘roganjosh’ means “boiled in its own oil” and that ‘bhuna’ is a highly reduced sauce (and the preference of the Muslim palate, while the Hindi palate prefers a saucy sauce). I learnt that ‘tarka dhal’ denotes a lentil dish in which the spices have been fried separately and then mixed in with the simmered lentils. And I learnt that that ‘bhaji’ and ‘pakora’ are essentially the same thing with different names, and that at its most basic ‘bhaji’ means fried, so that making aubergine bhajis can be as simple as rubbing them in spices and frying them in hot oil.

Incredibly tasty and simple to make aubergine bhajis

(For those who like a little more direction: Cut 1 aubergine into finger-width rings; rub with a paste made up of 1/2 teaspoon turmeric, a pinch of salt and 50ml water; fry in a few tablespoons of rapeseed oil until golden; and drain on kitchen paper.)

Sarajit was full of interesting tips too. Anyone who is serious about cooking Asian food knows that the key is in cooking the spices properly – undercook them and they won’t release their fine flavours; overcook them and they will burn. New to me though was the trick of soaking your dry ground spices such as turmeric, cumin, coriander and chilli powders in a little water for up to an hour beforehand (or even just a few minutes) and adding as a paste to the hot pan. This is what Sarajit does for his famous Ma Chanda’s Chicken Curry, an aromatic combination of whole spices such as ginger, garlic, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and bay leaves together with the dry spices listed above.

Bengali-spiced spinach with prawns, whipped up in minutes

Sarajit insists that authentic Asian dishes can be super-simple to make even when they are full of complex flavours. Indeed his lamb roganjosh was one of the simplest one-pot dishes I’ve ever seen demonstrated, involving lashing all the ingredients together in a big heavy pot, setting aside to marinade if you’ve time, and then stirring over a medium-to-high heat for 20 minutes.

(The ingredients? 700g cubed lamb, 200ml yoghurt, 2 chopped tomatoes, 1 chopped onion, 1.5 tablespoon garlic-ginger paste, 6 bay leaves & 6 cardamom pods, 1 tablespoon ground coriander, 1 teaspoon each chilli powder, turmeric & salt, 1 cinnamon stick and 2 tablespoons rapeseed oil.)

Lamb roganjosh in the mixing

That’s the complicated bit. After that, just loosen it with about 300ml of water, cover and reduce heat to a low simmer. Fifteen more minutes and you’ve got yourself a dinner.

And if you’re worried about making the rice, don’t be. Sarajit’s trick is to boil fast in loads of water (7:1 parts water to rice) and drain once cooked. You do have to rinse basmati rice at least three or four times first to get rid of the starch, but that’s the bulk of the work. And you need to bring it to the boil from cold water (adding rice to hot water will cause it to clump), but to speed things up you could bring the rice to the boil in half the water and then top up with the other half of the water straight from a just-boiled kettle. Drain the rice as soon as it is al dente so that it doesn’t overcook and get claggy in the colander.

Lamb roganjosh, two simple steps later

If you’d like to meet Sarajit and Sarah and taste their curries, get yourself to Fuchsia House Restaurant, Ardee, Co Louth this Thursday 12th July for 7pm (call Sarah on 041 685 8432 to let her know to expect you, or email sarah@fuchsiahouse.ie). You can ask her for details of September’s cookery classes too.

Or if you’d like a taste of Sarajit’s home in the comfort of yours, you can pick up one of the ranges of Aruna sauces now widely available in the chilled cabinets of many foodstores around the country – and named after Sarajit’s formidable looking mammy, Aruna Chanda, in honour of the woman whose home-cooking remains the holy grail for her Louth-based son.

See www.aruna.ie and fuchsiahouse.ie for more details.

which I picked up in my local food market, the lovely Dublin Food Co-op in Newmarket Square, along with a bunch of beautiful flowers from the Sonairte stall for just €5…

…just cos they always make me happy and remind me that it actually is summertime, sunshine or no sunshine.

Back at home, while snacking on a bit of Oisin Farmhouse goats’ cheese on seeded rye bread (also both from the Coop), I had a browse through three of my favourite cookbooks: Yotam Ottonlenghi’s Plenty, Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian & Sally Butcher’s Veggiestan for some ideas. (That’s Sally with her book…)

Sally Butcher with her Veggiestan cookbook

Then I put those aside and cooked.

I softened some shallots in a bit of butter and rapeseed oil, added some grated ginger, sliced garlic and red chilli and various spices from the Patel gift set a friend gave me. Together with a booklet of (mostly meat-based) recipes, the set includes various ground and whole spices and several spice blends or ‘masala’. I wanted something tangy so went for a generous pinch each of ground cumin and coriander  and twice that of their tandoori masala blend. I cooked those gently for a couple of minutes until it was smelling really good and then I tipped in the guts of a tin of chopped tomatoes, spooning out the flesh and leaving behind some of the excess juice.

While this cooked away, I roasted slices of the aubergine drizzled in a little rapeseed oil, grated half a cucumber into a colander set above a bowl to drain and cooked off some quinoa (I could have gone for rice but quinoa ticks the box as both a grain-like accompaniment and a source of protein). Once the tomatoes had lost their rawness, I added a little more grated ginger, to be sure to have an upfront ginger heat as well as the background flavours. (This is something Irish chef Paul Flynn recently said he often does for one-pot dishes to ensure layers of flavour, adding the likes of garlic as a base and a final seasoning.)

Finally I finely chopped some fresh mint and mixed this with the drained cucumber and some natural yoghurt, seasoning well with salt and pepper. Then I built myself a little bowl of nutty quinoa, tangy sauce, roast aubergine and minty raita, and tucked in. (I was too hungry to take a photo, sorry!) Warming, cheering and wholesome, it was just what I had been wanting.

And what of my leftover cucumber water?

With the sun dancing in and out just enough for it to feel like a sort of summer again, I mixed myself up a salad of kiwi and galia melon and dressed it with the cucumber juice, a small squeeze of lime and a swirl of Highbank Original Irish Orchard Syrup. This apple-based syrup that is one of my favourite condiments going, being an Irish-made sweetener made from indigenous produce that brings extra flavour while it sweetens. The dressing worked really nicely, the cucumber giving a lovely fresh lift to the melon. I reckon it’ll taste even better tomorrow.

Without the kiwi and lime the same salad would probably make a great accompaniment to Parma ham, or diced very small along with a tart green apple could work really well with some smoked mackerel too. I’ll be trying it again as the mood takes me.

p.s. for those of you who really prefer to cook with recipes, here’s what you need to make the above:

for the roast aubergine with gingered tomatoes

1 aubergine

1 tin chopped tomatoes

3 shallots, finely chopped

2–3 garlic cloves, sliced

1 red chilli, sliced

1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and grated

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon Patel’s tandoori masala

for the minty raita

1/2 cucumber, grated and drained

2 handfuls mint, finely chopped

2–3 generous tablespoons natural yoghurt

for the melon and kiwi salad with cucumber, lime and apple syrup dressing

1 small galia melon

2 kiwi

3–4 tablespoons liquid drained from grated cucumber

1 very small wedge of lime, or to taste (go easy)

Highbank Orchard syrup, to taste (about half a teaspoon)

And store-cupboards are made for days like these. Look what I found in mine.

Traditionally used as a dip for bread and olive oil, za’atar is a tangy herb mix (oregano, thyme, sumac and sesame seeds). It made a really tasty addition to my mushroom risotto, made with the ends of a couple of packets of dried porcini and shiitake mushrooms rescued from the back of the cupboard. I added the za’atar once the onions had started to soften and sweeten nicely, and before I added the soaked mushrooms followed by the carnaroli rice.

Once the rice was nicely toasted I threw in a generous splash of white wine and cooked that off while I transferred the mushroom soaking water to a saucepan (leaving the gritty bits at the bottom of the original bowl). I topped it up with boiling water and threw in a spoonful of Marigold Swiss vegetable bouillon powder to round it out a little, and then added the resulting mushroom stock ladle by ladle.

I finished it off with a slick of Palestinian olive oil, a pile of grated Parmesan, a handful of chopped tarragon, a load of black pepper and a seasoning of herb-infused salt picked up from a singing butcher in Panzano on my holiers.

Not bad for nothing but an onion. I like days like these.

Tomato, fennel, pink peppercorn soup with Highbank Orchard Syrup

Isn’t there something they say about necessity? and mothers?

Well if you’re like me, you probably aren’t a big fan of recipes. I mean they have their place and all. I like to read them, just not necessarily while I’m in the kitchen. And I like to get ideas from them, but then prefer to do it my own way. I think it’s part of why I made such a bad dance partner when I went to Cuba – my head wanted to follow my dance partner but my feet wanted to do their own thing to the music.

But the truth is that half the fun of cooking is making it up as you go along. And some of the best discoveries are made by accident. Take today. I book-ended my day with two fine home-made meals (well, mini-meals really), both featuring crushed pink peppercorns because I had run out of black peppercorns. Both mini-meals also featured treats picked up from a super stylish showcase thrown by Odaios Foods in Fitzwilliam Square yesterday.

For anyone not involved in restaurants / delis and who don’t know Odaios, they are suppliers of some very fine foods indeed. Think Kettyle beef and Burren smoked salmon, Arbutus bread and Coopershill smoked venison, Belvoir cordials and Cornish Sea Salt, Valrhona chocolate and Rude Health Organic foods.

I went. I ate. I spoke to lots of fantastic people about lots of fantastic products. It was, in short, heaven – compounded by the fact that:

• (a) the sun was shining,
• (b) there was gourmet pizza from a charming man in a van with a wood-burning oven inside it*,
• (c) it was at the end of a long long day,
• (d) it all took place in tipis, and involved juggling glasses of champagne and tasters of hot chocolate,
• (e) I was able to justify all this swanning around as ‘work’, and
• (f) it was around the corner from my gaff so that when one of the organisers insisted I take home some of the fresh food they’d have to chuck otherwise, I was able to stroll home with a box of goodies.

Said box included:

• a round crusty loaf of Arbutus bread;
• a little plastic kilner jarful of hot-smoked Burren salmon (both of which featured with my first mini-meal of pink-peppercorned scrambled egg);
• fresh pasta from The Fresh Pasta Company, some stuffed with artichoke, some asparagus;
• ready-to-heat dark hot chocolate from Benoit’s Chocolate Factory (look out for them in a cafe / deli near you featuring various flavours including chilli, and caramel – all based on Valrhona chocolate) and a slab of their cinnamon chocolate;
• a large handful worth of baby carrots, another of baby fennel and a veritable family of tomatoes: big ones, little ones, round ones, long ones, even yellow ones.

And so it was that on the day after passing in through the gates of heaven, and back out again, I cooked up the second mini-meal, a tomato and fennel soup seasoned with pink peppercorn and finished with Highbank Orchard Syrup.

I’m not going to give you a recipe to follow, in the sense of spelling it out for you, because where would be the fun in that?

But I will go so far as to tell you that it did involve sweating an onion and several baby fennel very slowly in some olive oil and salt, seasoning with crushed peppercorns, adding in some peeled chopped tomotoes, including some yellow ones, adding some ice-cubes of veg stock and topping up with boiling water to cover the lot before cooking down until soft and sweet and finally blitzing with a hand blender.

When I tasted it, the tomatoes tasted like they were still pining for summer to kick in properly, so it needed a bit of a sweetener to round it out as well as some salt to draw out the flavours. I added a good spoonful of Demerara sugar dissolved in a little hot water and that helped, but then I finished it with a dose of Highbank Orchard Syrup (made in Kilkenny from local apples) which was so lovely that tomorrow I might try adding a little pureed apple to the soup. The syrup also looked pretty swirled onto the bowlful of soup, and I garnished it with some shaved fennel and chopped frond.

The resulting soup ain’t necessarily what everyone would describe as the mother of all soups. But then each to their own invention. I was rather happy with mine.

*you’ll find that pizza van in Greystones, Wed–Sun, 5pm–late(ish)…

Lemon sole with herbed green rice

I was chatting to Amy Caviston and Shane Willis of A Caviston, Greystones yesterday (Amy is going to be joining me at the For Food’s Sake event at Inishfood next weekend, as per previous post, where she’ll explain why they insist on selling Irish fish where possible), and they mentioned in passing that lemon sole takes just a couple of minutes in the oven.

It occurred to me that lemon sole is one of those fish I tend to overlook, maybe cos the fillets can be very small and are often overcooked and bland. I popped by my nearest fish counter on the way home and picked up three fillets for €1.60. When I got home I wrapped them in foil with some of the gnarlier bits of a fennel bulb, a few wedges of lemon, lots of black pepper and a little olive oil, and preheated the oven to about 200C.

The plan had been to use the rest of the fennel bulb in a risotto, so I sweat it until nice and soft with a chopped shallot and heated up some vegetable stock which I had prepared the other day from bit and bobs gathered in my ice-box for the job (off-cuts of onions and leeks, leftovers from bunches of herbs, etc). I was about to throw in my risotto rice for toasting when I realised I was all out of arborio, so I tried the same approach with basmati rice to see how it would work out. I didn’t rinse the starch off like you normally would with basmati, just threw a couple of handfuls in, toasted for a minute or two and stirred in the hot stock ladle by ladle. Meanwhile I wilted some spinach in the simmering stock until nice and soft, and removed to add in at the very end with lots of chopped tarragon.

It took about ten minutes to cook to al dente, at which point I popped the sole in the oven. Three or four minutes later, rice and fish were both ready. I seasoned the rice with the juice from the roast lemon, lots of pepper and a little salt, and tucked into a delicious dinner that had cost me about €4 and took me about 20 minutes. Not bad, and a great example of how fish really can be cheap as chips, if we’re willing to look for the bargains out there.

It’s not that I have anything against celebrating what you have, should you have it. One of my favourite animals is the seahorse. Apart from being so pretty, and the fact that the male steps up to the role of chief childminder, I love that seahorse couples rebuild their monogamous bond with a daily ritual of a little dance. It might take a few minutes, or it might go on for some time. But they do it every day.

Rituals are important to bind us to the people we love, whether that’s the extended family ritual of coming together for a Christmas dinner or the courting couples ritual of going out on dinner dates. And I quite like that there’s a day in our communal calenders to remind us of the importance of taking the time out to share a meal or something else intimate.

But having worked in restaurants for years, I know that Valentines ain’t necessarily the most romantic time to rebuild those bonds. I remember one particular restaurateur insisting on seating three separate couples on the one six-top table. That’s a new take on a threesome I suppose.

Anyway, personally I think it’s much more romantic to cook something – even something easy – and concentrate on providing sparkling company. If you haven’t thought of a dinner for tonight yet, there’s still time. Keep it fairly light – you don’t want to rule out other activities by being knocked out by a rich meal. I’d suggest an aromatic, lightly spicy beef noodle soup, followed by something simple but stylish like an affogato (espresso poured over vanilla ice-cream, with or without chocolate sauce).

And if you’ve no-one to cook it for, I’d suggest you cook it for yourself. Who said love has to be shared?

Beef noodle soup

(Serves 2)

• 1 litres stock (beef if possible, or chicken)
• 1 thumbnail-sized piece of fresh root ginger, peeled and grated
• 1 star anise (optional)
• 1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds (optional)
• 1/2 cinnamon stick
• 125g boneless beef (sirloin or fillet)
• 125g dried flat rice noodles
• 1–2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
• Pinch of white pepper or a generous grind of black pepper
• 50g fresh bean sprouts, rinsed and drained
• 2 spring onions, trimmed and finely chopped
• 2 chillies, thinly sliced
• Handful each of fresh coriander, basil and mint leaves, roughly chopped
• Lime wedges, to garnish

Bring the stock to the boil together with the flavourings (ginger, star anise, coriander seeds and cinnamon), reduce to a simmer and infuse for 15 minutes.

Cut the beef into very thin slices and set aside. Cook the noodles according to instructions on the packet and set aside. Warm some serving bowls.

Strain the stock, discard the flavourings and return the liquid to the heat. Once simmering, season with fish sauce and pepper.

Divide the noodles between the serving bowls and top each with a handful of beansprouts. Lay out the remaining ingredients in little bowls on the table.

Add the sliced beef to the hot broth, stir briefly, and spoon the broth and beef over each bowl of noodles where the meat will continue to cook.

Serve and help yourselves to the spring onions, herbs and sliced chillies – but don’t forget a squeeze of lime to bring it all together.

And there you have it, hot and spicy, delicious and a bit of fun. Happy Valentine’s!

Last night I was out having stir-fried chilli beef and braised seabass in M&L Szechuan on Dublin’s Cathedral Street, washed down with pints in The Palace. Tuesday it was ebi gyoza (prawn dumplings), tako sunomono (octopus and seaweed salad) and sushi in Musashi on Capel Street, followed by the most random and enjoyable pub quiz in Nealons, with a real coal fire at our side. (I now know that Japan is home to the world’s largest whisky still, amongst other important facts.) And Monday I was busy up in Sandyford’s China Sichuan helping celebrate the start of the auspicious Year of the Dragon, a year last night’s waiter explained is associated with luck granted or received from external sources.

It was some party, kicking off at 7pm and the wine still flowing well after 10.30pm when I made use of my return Luas ticket back into town. A highlight was some inspiring Shaolin dragon dancing from the Dublin-based Lung Ying Academy. There was a surreal moment involving the glittering dragon spitting iceberg lettuce all over my ex-boss, herself a famous Dragon.

Despite the usual communal anxiety at parties featuring finger food (that you will be overcome with booze-fuelled hunger) we all left exceedingly well fed, thanks to the generosity of our host Kevin Hui. If you don’t know the restaurant, I’d recommend making an acquaintance. And not least because, after generations of business down in their original Stillorgan location and a trickily-timed move to Sandyford, the restaurant went under in 2010. As in closed, kaput, game over. In some miracle of perseverance – perhaps a willingness to believe in life after death and endings being beginnings – China Sichuan reopened about a year ago, and went on to be awarded Best Ethnic Restaurant at the FOOD&WINE Magazine Restaurant of the Year Awards 2011 last August.

At the end of the summer, myself and the gang from For Food’s Sake approached Kevin to do a movie night with us in The Sugar Club. We wanted to show Eat Drink Man Woman (itself a movie about finding new life at the end of an old one) and to serve up authentic Chinese food to film-watching punters. Kevin originally was reluctant to commit, for good reason. On the night in question, he was going to be about halfway between Paris and Nice on a 700km charity cycle, something he had promised himself he would do if his restaurant made it through the rebirthing process. Though he was understandably reluctant to undertake a pop-up presence without being there to oversee it, Kevin eventually capitulated and loaned us his chefs for the night.

(The deal we finally struck was that we donate half of the money made that night to the Paris2Nice charity to raise money for Special Olympics and Cerebal Palsy Sport Ireland; the other half went back into the For Food’s Sake kitty to fund future events – more of which anon.)

His chefs cooked up a storm for our movie goers, starting with ‘Bon Bon Chicken’ spicy lettuce parcels, which is what last Monday night’s feast also kicked off with (see below for recipe). Further festive New Year’s bites included deep-flavoured vegetable spring rolls, butterflied sesame prawns, crunchy prawn toast and my highlight: moreish Chinese turnip cakes.

All of which reminded me that China Sichuan is a restaurant worth getting on the Luas for, especially if we want it to be a Dublin dining option for another 20 odd years.

To encourage you to go visit, I asked for a recipe for that Chicken Bon Bon. And generous as ever, Kevin gave it up. Fair play. And may that generosity bring him much good luck from many external sources. Some of them may even come via the Luas. Happy New Year!

RECIPE: Bang-bang ji (Bang-bang chicken, or Bon Bon chicken)

This is a fairly quick and simple starter to make and is meant to be served cold.

3x 200g fresh skinless chicken breasts

For the sauce

• 4 tablespoons light soya sauce
• 2 tablespoons Sichuan vinegar (Chinese black vinegar is fine)
• 15g granulated sugar
• 15g sesame paste
• 5g sesame seeds, roasted and crushed
• 1 teaspoon chilli oil
• ½ teaspoon ground roasted Sichuan peppercorns
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil

To serve

• 20g iceberg lettuce, chopped
• 5g scallions, chopped
• 1–2 red chillies, seeded and sliced (optional)

1. Boil the chicken breasts for 30-35 minutes until they are cooked through. Tear or
cut the chicken into shreds approximately 3-4cm in length. (The traditional method would be to hit the chicken a few times with a wooden stick until the meat starts loosening up and then to tear it into little strips, using your hands.)

2. To make the sauce, thoroughly mix all the ingredients together.

3. To serve, place a small mound of lettuce in the centre of each of the serving plates. Arrange some chicken shreds on top and pour the sauce over it. Finally, scatter the scallions over the dish, and some chillies if you want to pick up the heat (as they did at the New Year’s party).

• Pre-Christmas Sunday lunch in Camden Kitchen with gang of mates kicking off with amazing smoked haddock croquettes with chorizo vinaigrette and finishing with a Christmas song sung to us by one of the lovely waiters.
• Dunnes Stores minced pies, surprisingly good when oven-heated and served with creme fraiche and a pot of Barry’s Tea.
• Christmas Eve breakfast of scrambled eggs and Burren Smoked Salmon with the mammy and sister in the ever-lovely Pepper Pot Cafe.
• Christmas Eve toasties in Grogans washed down with one of the best pints going (actually, that was the white-out Christmas Eve 2010, but the fact that they were willing to serve their seminal toasties when most city centre pubs were shutting up shop and turfing people out to the burbs still warms my heart a year on).
• Christmas Eve dinner of Yawl Bay Seafood’s luscious crab toes atop a lemony fennel and radicchio risotto served with a glass (or two) of Chateau Minuty rosé.
• Christmas Day fry of Jane Russell’s sausages and Gubbeen Smokehouse rashers served with Maguire’s Irish Mustard (a seasonal special of Mulled Wine Mustard from Troy Maguire, he of l’Gueuleton–Locks–Coppinger Row fame, which promises exciting things from him in 2012).
• Christmas dinner starter of smoked oyster pate on toasted bacon and onion bread served with apple-smoked oysters and a salad of diced apple, fennel and tarragon-pickled beetroot (featuring oysters from Stephen Kavanagh’s oyster stall at Meeting House Square’s Saturday food market in Temple Bar).
• Christmas dinner of whole roast fillet of beef rolled in juicy porcini and wrapped in prosciutto, a la Jamie Oliver, served with my mammy’s amazing Vermouth braised fennel finished with Parmesan and my sister’s balsamic-roast baby beets.
• Christmas pudding from Country Choice served with brandy butter from Jenny McNally’s market stall in Saturday’s market in Meeting House Square.
• Cheeseboard featuring Bellingham Blue, Cratloe Hills and Glebe Brethan amongst other star Irish farmhouse cheeses.
• Post-Christmas meal in M&L Szechuan of braised hot and spicy seabass and fried green beans with dried chillies.
• The Winding Stair’s platters of smoked fish and charcuterie, including James McGeough’s amazing range of air-dried lamb, pork and beef, and Fingal Ferguson’s venison salami and chorizo.
• Last night’s Zaytoon special of Barg kebab featuring saffron-marinated beef and red cabbage in freshly baked, airy flatbread straight from their ovens: worth every penny spent on the rake of pints leading up to it. Though these kebabs are so good I’d eat em sober too.
• Tonight’s hangover cure of patata maneas, Spanish mashed potatoes with garlic, olive oil and Pimenton de la Vera usually topped with crispy chorizo but in my case topped with some jamon Iberico de belotta I’ve been saving for months for the right occasion, with a glass of aged Amontillado from Byas Gonzalez (makers of Tio Pepe). Magic. Seriously. Give it a go…

RECIPE: Patatas Meneas

[Serves one for supper, or increase quantities for more]

2 large potatoes, peeled

2 bay leaves

1 cloves garlic, sliced

1 tablespoon olive oil

3/4 teaspoons sweet pimenton de la Vera (or regular paprika)

1/4 teaspoon hot pimenton de la Vera (optional)

Salt, to taste

150g pancetta, diced; or chorizo, sliced into chunks; or jamon Iberico, at room temperature

1. Chop the potatoes into large chunks and bring to the boil in salted water. Add bay leaves, reduce to a rolling simmer and cook until tender. Drain, reserving some of the cooking water, and remove the bay leaves.
2. Mash the potatoes roughly but leaving rustic chunks, and moisten the mash with a little cooking water, about 3–4 tablespoons.
3. Heat the olive oil and garlic together in a frying pan over a low heat, and fry very gently until golden, taking care not to burn it.
4. Remove from the heat and add the pimenton to the garlic and oil. Stir for 10–15 seconds to release the pimenton aromas before adding in the potato mix. Season with salt to taste.
5. If using pancetta or chorizo, fry in a hot pan until crispy.
6. Serve the potatoes garnished with the crispy pancetta or chorizo. Alternatively do as I did tonight and just drape it with moist slices of nutty, oily, room-temperature jamon Iberico.

One big sweet potato became the base for a soup, peeled and roughly chopped, and added into a base (or mirepoix if you’re feeling fancy) of onion, garlic, fennel and carrot, all of which had been sweated down in a little Donegal Rapeseed Oil. In with the sweet potatoes went some stock (Marigold do a good unsalted veggie one), some bay leaves, sage leaves and thyme from the balcony (the latter being the only edible growing thing on said balcony which has survived my lack of tending).

While that was all cooking, I made up an equally cheerful salad. It went like this.

1. Combine:

• a couple of slices of Oisin farmhouse goats/sheeps chevre, diced
• a couple of slices of roasted red pepper, diced
• half an Irish red apple, diced
• a couple of handfuls of pumpkin seeds, toasted
• a drizzle of good olive oil
• salt and pepper

2. Eat with some toasted brown soda bread and a big bowl of bright orange soup, which I had blitzed after removing whatever herbage hadn’t dispersed and dusted with a little sweet pimenton powder that was winking at me from the shelf.

If you haven’t tried Oisin farmhouse cheese, their full range is available from Penny and Udo Lange’s stall at the Dublin Food Co-op in Newmarket Square, Dublin 2. And Christy’s stall has had lovely Irish apples lately too (harder to find than you’d expect).

A cheerful lunch for a bright Irish day – so much so that it spurred me to write a second posting of the day! Some days deserve celebrating.

p.s. I’ve gotten into the habit of roasting off some red peppers and keeping them in the fridge for such occasions. It’s been working out very well! They’re also great blitzed into a dressing, as I did recently under instructions at a friend’s dinner party. We drizzled it over a salad of cos lettuce (couldn’t find chicory), walnuts, grilled haloumi, avocado and orange slices. And very nice it was too.