Archive for 'Cooking'

Think your killer recipe would sell in a supermarket?

Posted on August 31, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Entertainment, Food.

Aisling from RTE in Cork contacted a bunch of Irish bloggers about a new show they are doing. I’m thrilled she did, considering it’s exactly what I recommended only a few weeks ago in the context of my “Heat” review.

The idea is simple, it’s a 6 part competition show called Recipe for Success that will see 15 home cooks battle it out to have their own gastronomic creations stocked on the shelves of SuperValu. Viewers of the series will see the whole development process of the product.

I honestly think this is the smartest idea for a food programme that RTE has had since they spotted the potential of Darina Allen all those years ago. I can’t wait to see how you take a home-cooked meal and turn it into a shelf-ready product.

If you have a dish you know people love and which has the potential to be packaged, why not give this a go? SuperValu already stocks the wonderful Cully & Sully range so the precedent for high-end ready-meals is there.

The question is, would my Sophie Grigson derived (but still unique) meatballs make the cut or would potential customers just lump it into the same category as the dreaded B***s E*e Spag Bol in a bag (which I ate many times in college)? Sadly my Chicken Tikka, whilst amazing, is just a straight lift from a book.

All details are on the RTE site. G’wan, you know you want to.

4 Comments

Fun Food in Arthurstown

Posted on August 11, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Entertainment, Food, Gardening, Reviews.

3 Comments

Review of Guerrilla Gourmet (Ep 02)

Posted on January 29, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon, Cooking, Entertainment.

After the first travesty of an episode I swore I’d never watch another but the lure of Denis Cotter in Bandon was too much. This is Gimmicky Garbage TV with a half decent programme buried somewhere far far underneath.

In the first episode they send Kevin Dundon to cook a gourmet meal in a boxing club in poor area of Waterford. If you thought that was crass, in this one Denis Cotter set up a vegetarian restaurant in the middle of cattle pens in Bandon Mart!

What drives me insane about the programme is that Denis is interesting, his food is interesting, his walkabout with a botanist eating wild greens was interesting (albeit very Hugh FW) and getting average people to try vegetarian food is interesting. Setting it in a cattle mart is retarded. Whatever “right-on” TV exec came up with this whiz-bang idea should have a pile of cow scutter dumped on his desk because that’s what this whole series is.

Take all those great chefs, get them to cook from the heart, find out what motivates them, explain their influences and where they trained and you could have a legendary TV series instead of this steaming pile of crap.

Next week Kevin Thornton cooks pork in a Mosque. Or something.

7 Comments

Rashers

Posted on March 27, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon, Cooking, Food.

At what point in the 1980’s/1990’s did back bacon take over from streaky bacon? I assume it was all the low-fat food nazis who caused it to happen. Go to Tesco Wilton now and in an entire row of bacon, you may see one crappy pack of “pale streaky rashers” on special offer. Oh and pancetta of course, which is tooooooootally different.

I always look forward to bacon in US hotels when I travel because they still understand the art of the streaky rasher. Ultra thin and cooked till crisp. At the other extreme here we have these monster thick slices of bland minimal-fat back rashers which do nothing for me and are like chewing through a piece of rope.

Catherine grabbed a few packs of streaky in Martin Carey’s on Saturday. Only €2.50 for a big pack. I put em in a large pan with oil on Sunday morning and cooked them slow for over half an hour. What we were left with was fabulous crunchy bacon that made the ultimate BLT. Throughout the day, as we passed the cooker, each of us would grab a rasher or two. Perfect snack food.

Anyone with me to start a campaign to “Bring Streaky Back!”?

35 Comments

De Cecco doesn’t have to worry

Posted on February 1, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Food, Kids.

My sister Orla bought me a pasta machine for Christmas and I finally got around to trying it out on Saturday.

Myself and Sibéal decided to make a mix of tagliatelle and spaghetti. Neither of us had made it before and her excuse is that she is only 3.

I had the usual recipe problem of not knowing which one to use. Jamie Oliver’s Italy book said 6 eggs and 600g of flour and that’s it. Another no-name one also added oil and water and salt. I went with Jamie but the dough was far too dry, so I added a bit of oil and that seemed to do the trick.

I clamped the machine to the worktop and ran into the first big problem, I don’t have three hands. Oh for that extra 1970’s ad washing-up hand to appear. You have to feed the dough in, feed it out on the other side and crank the handle. The first run through was not impressive:

This was mainly because i was attempting to fix a 2 inch think lump of dough through a millimetre wide gap.

Two more attempts went a lot better and we ended up with something which looked vaguely like a long sheet of lasagne. I then ran it through the wider cutters and got my tagliatelle.

Sibéal took over for the narrower cutters and ended up with far better looking spaghetti.

Fatal flaw was then discovered - we hadn’t floured the dough so all the strands stuck together again. I valiantly tugged them apart for twenty minutes, dumped the lot in boiling water and ended up with something that looked and vaguely tasted like pasta. None of the kids would touch it and they were right as the tagliatelle was undercooked and the spaghetti overcooked. Bin.

I’m unfazed and will go at spaghetti again. Or maybe lasagne if I lose my nerve. Any top tips for the next time? Except maybe looking at PodChef Neal’s pasta videos before we start? Should we rest the dough even when using a machine? Was the cheap book right when it said you only need minimal kneading if you are using the machine since it does it for you?

Technorati Tags: pasta, pasta+maker, Jamie+Oliver

15 Comments

Traffic Lights on Food - give me patience.

Posted on January 25, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Commentary, Cooking, Food, Politics.

It appears the opposition parties have started their campaign to lose the next general election with their latest himbo/bimbo scheme which they picked up from the UK. They want traffic lights on food to indicate the levels of salt, sugar and fat. Not only are the stuck in the 1980’s with the fat obsession, but they show such a basic mis-understanding of human nature that the scheme was obviously devised by a marxist.

If I want to buy fat-laden, carb-laden, salt-laden Tayto, I bloody will and they chances of me looking at some insulting graphics are zero. When I smoked, you could have put pictures of sliced open cancerous lungs on the box and I’d happily have puffed away.

Information is only useful to those seeking it. If we want nutrition information then we’ll use the amazing human ability to read to find out what is in the box. “oh but people don’t know what a safe level of salt is, so our traffic light system will enable them to figure this out without actually ever having to think”. “Next year, we’ll be bringing in a system which does an instant analysis of your blood and won’t let you buy anything with too much salt or sugar”.

I was pleasantly surprised that FF told the opposition to get a clue and that they would not be bringing in such a scheme.

The first political party which starts a campaign to destroy the ever growing nanny state gets my vote.

You want people to eat properly? Then make Home Economics, Social & Scientific, Cooking compulsory in schools for both boys and girls starting around age 7. Hell, you could do a double whammy and teach it through Irish.

Technorati Tags: Traffic+Lights, Food, Labour, Fine+Gael, Marxism, Nanny+State, Nutrition, Intelligence, Cop+On, Information, Knowledge, Cooking, Tayto

11 Comments

Heston Blumenthal - tickling multiple bones

Posted on November 7, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Entertainment, Food, Restaurants.

I saw the first episode of Heston’s cookery series on TV this evening. He simultaneously tickled my foodie and engineering fancies with some of the things he showed. He deconstructed the classic Black Forest Gateau, found out what the real essence of it was and then rebuilt it using some awesome techniques.

Watching him aerate chocolate using a Tupperware container, a vacuum-bag for storing clothes and a vacuum cleaner was a 2006 TV highlight for me.

Before I die I want to eat once in The Fat Duck and once in elBulli. This new business had better work out or that’ll remain a dream! 

 

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Conor’s ultra secret Chicken Tikka Masala recipe

Posted on October 13, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking.

Handed down through generations of sufi mystics and carried by the Priory of Sion to Bandon where it remained undiscovered in a secret vault until excavations found the ancient stone etchings, I can now reveal the best chicken tikka masala recipe on the planet.

More accurately, I was given a stocking-filler cookbook by my sister years ago which came with packets of spices. It did lay undiscovered for over five years until I finally used it to make a tikka paste and then used their recipe for chicken tikka. And it really is awesome. Up there with Mumrez Khan’s lamb and spinach karahi from “Rick Stein’s Food Heroes“.

The book is called “Great Curries” by Manisha Kanani and was published in 1997. I’d be surprised if you can still get it. Actually I just checked Amazon and someone is trying to sell it for £48! Original RRP was £9.95.

First the tikka paste. I normally make 3x these amounts and put it in a sterilised Tupperware and keep it in the fridge. Easily lasts a month, might even last longer but I always use it up before the month is out. Our regular Friday curry sees to that. I get (or actually Catherine gets) most of our spices in Mr Bells in the English Market. Great value in the big bags. Grinding cumin and coriander seeds is a pain in the ass with a pestle and mortar and doesn’t work with the multiquick type blenders so I usually use a coffee grinder and forget to clean it. Mmmmm, cumin coffee.

• 2 tbsp coriander seeds
• 2 tbsp cumin seeds
• 1.5 tbsp garlic powder
• 2 tbsp paprika
• 1 tbsp garam masala
• 1 tbsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp chilli powder
• .5 tsp turmeric
• 1 tbsp dried mint
• .25 tsp salt
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• drops of red and yellow food colouring (I know, I know but it gives you that “authentic” UK-style curry colour)
• 150 ml white wine vinegar
• 150 ml vegetable oil (I use sunflower, I don’t recommend olive, I guess nut oil works too)

Put the oil in a frying pan and put on a medium heat. Grind up what needs to be ground (or buy pre-ground) and mix all the dry ingredients together. Then add the liquids plus some water if needed to have a thin paste. Pour into oil and let it bubble gently for 10 mins or so. Let it cool before putting in tupperware. Warning - it does stain.

For the Chicken Tikka Masala itself, I usually do 6 chicken breasts for 3.5 people (us, Fiona, Ois/Shibs nibbling). Yeah, we’re hungry savages.

• 6 chicken breasts cut into thick strips
• a thumb of fresh ginger peeled and roughly chopped
• 3 or 4 cloves garlic roughly chopped (or to taste)
• 1 chilli roughly chooped (or 1 tbsp of harissa or jarred chillis)
• 8 tbsp of the paste
• 1 pot natural yoghurt
• 2 medium onions roughly chopped
• 2 tbsp tomato puree
• 4 tbsp ground almonds
• 300-400 ml water
• 150-200 ml cream
• half a lemon
• vegetable oil

Mix 3 tbsp of the paste with the yoghurt, cover the chicken all over with it and leave to marinade for as long as you have. To be honest this is rarely more than an hour for me.

Onions, garlic, ginger, chilli and some oil into big pot and sweat em down for 5 or 6 mins

Add the rest of the paste and cook for a minute. Add the puree and cook for a further few mins. Ditto the almonds which are a really surprising addition but you really miss them if they are not there.

Add enough water so it won’t stick and cook it gently for about 20 mins.

Grill the chicken for a 5-7 mins on each side (the book also coats them with butter but I don’t bother).

Put on your rice.

Zuzz this sauce using a multiquick or food processor or liquidiser and return to the pot. Squeeze the half lemon in and add cream until it is the consistency you want. Put the chicken in the sauce. Bring it back to bubbling and check for seasoning. The book adds fresh coriander but we’re not fans so I leave it out.

Naans under the grill for a minute or two each side.

Drain the rice, plate up, crack open a few tinnies and that’s Friday all nicely sorted.

Technorati Tags: curry, chicken+tikka+masala, tikka+masala, Manisha+Kanani, Mumrez+Khan

29 Comments

I love it when a lashed-together meal just works

Posted on September 20, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Food.

Pork chops in the fridge and no plan. What to do that we’ll all eat? Check the press - a Lloyd Grossman Puttanesca sauce looks out at me. Hell, I’ll make my own.

• Chops into a ziplock with garlic, thyme, lemon juice and olive oil
• Saucepan on with oil, garlic and 2 anchovies
• Two cans of Aldi’s finest generic no-specific-country plum tomatoes
• Cook it down
• Add some chopped olives from the Gubbeen gastrowagon at the Skibbereen market
• Add some chopped capers.
• Salt, pepper, hint of sugar.
• Boiling water on with a packet of Orecchiette Paesani (little ears), also from Aldi. Bloody hell, I have never seen this pasta in any shop or deli in Ireland. This is the stuff the old dears were making in that Jamie Oliver series in Italy with their thumbs. And now Aldi sells it. I’m pleasantly stunned.
• Chops onto the frying pan.
• Sizzle sizzle.
• Serve
• Eat

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Margherita Madness

Posted on July 22, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Family.

Inspired by Red Mum’s recent pizza making post, the awesome DiFara Pizza story and my experiences in The Good Things Cafe recently, I decided to make some pizza-pies with the two middle childer yesterday. We made one each. Classic Margherita with simple garlic/oregano/basil/passata sauce and buffalo mozzarella.

Sibéal, aged 2:

Oisín, aged 4:

Conor, aged 38:

Which was the nicest? Yup, the 2 year old’s. After the horror of watching them “knead” the dough and drop it on the floor several times, the two little gits ended up with far superior results because [a] they were not swimming in sauce and [b] the were wafer thin cos I only gave them a small bit of dough each. Mine was more like a soup on a bap. All tasted fantastic tho.

technorati tags:pizza, The+Good+Things+Cafe, DiFara, Margherita, Red+Mum

Blogged with Flock

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Conor’s Christmas Cookbook Collection

Posted on July 9, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Entertainment, Food.

UPDATE 1: Normally when I do reviews I use the Structured Blogging plug-in. Its biggest flaw is that you can only do one review per post and the “reviews” below do not warrent separate posts. An alternative is to use the simple hReview creator over at microformats.org and then just cut n past a bunch of reviews into one post. So I have restructured and republished this review in that format (after seeing Tantek do the same).

So that’s a picture I took back on Jan 31st of the big stack of cookbooks I had to get through in 2006. Most of em I got for Christmas. One, “Les Halles”, I got the previous Christmas. “Salt” I bought for myself and “Bridges” has nothing to do with food but I did get it for Christmas.

Here we are on July 2nd and what is the state of play?

So seven months in and I have finished the sum total of one book. I blame Martha Stewart and Alan Sugar.

[tags]Darina Allen, Nigel Slater, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Neale Whittaker, Jamie Oliver, Rachel Allen, Salt, Les Halles, Anthony Bourdain, Charcuterie, Michael Ruhlman, Gary Rhodes, Bridges, David Brown[/tags]

32 Comments

The Good Things Cafe - The 2 Day Kitchen Miracle Programme

Posted on May 25, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Cork.

I spent last weekend on a fabulous 2-day cookery course down in deep West Cork in The Good Things Cafe in Durrus. I honestly won’t be able to come up with enough superlatives to describe the fantastic programme that Carmel Somers put together. It is now Tuesday and I’m still buzzed and still full.

It’s not too bad a drive from Bandon - about an hour on the crappy but scenic Dunmanway Road. Durrus seems to have attracted a cluster of foodies to live there and the wonderful views may explain why. The Cafe is about a mile out of the village on the Akahista road.

I arrived to discover that I was the only bloke along with five women. They were a great bunch and consisted of Eileen from Thurles and her two daughters Mary and Catriona who were giving Eileen a birthday treat, Mairead from Cork and Lucy from Bantry (by way of Zimbabwe). Carmel was assisted by Rebecca from Spain and Helen. They were verrrrrryy patient with us as we stumbled over everything in a commercial kitchen.

The two days consisted of Carmel giving some demonstrations and then us trying to replicate her food or even do things from scratch using her recipes. Some of it was solo but mainly we did it in pairs which was much better fun and we permanently got in each others way. Apologies to Mary for eating all the smoked salmon.

Carmel seems to know everyone involved in food in Ireland (and good chunks of England too) and had a story behind every ingredient that she used. There was not a dull or quiet moment in the two days and her patience was endless.

Our first recipe was a pork chop with thyme and garlic. It turns out that, like us, she uses Martin Carey in Bandon for her meat and his thick chops were awesome. This was a simple simple recipe but [a] I forgot how to hold a knife I was so intimidated by a commercial kitchen and [b] when I finally managed to cook it, it was bloody gorgeous. We also did a spud thing whose name fails me (and whose recipe I managed to lose). We sliced spuds in a mandolin and then layered them up in a tiny frying pan, cooked it, flipped it and drizzled some butter on it. Kinda like a sliced version of rosti.

We made a bunch of soups, all of which were fab and also got on to one thing I have always founds “challenging” - bread making. As I explained to her, all of my previous attempts would break windows. After I came back from a few months in Silicon Valley in 1996, I spent weeks growing a sourdough starter in the hot-press. The first loaf I made could have been used to start a garden rockery.

So to say I approached this task with trepidation is putting it mildly. Carmel explained that she can nearly always tell which loaves have been made by the men because we knead it like we are trying to kill it. It wasn’t the first time she had to tell me to relax over the weekend (I also attempted to beat some eggs into a parallel universe). And ye know, it is far less stressful if you knead the thing gently. We left the dough to rise, split it in two, re-kneaded and then put them in the oven. And they all turned out perfectly!

Carmel then did some dough, rolled it out really thinkly, covered it in swiss chard and durrus cheese and popped it in the oven. For lunch we had that as the best pizza I have had in years, the pork chop, the spuds, some salad and some wine. Yum!

Then on to the recipes for dinner. Myself and Mary did a spiced lamb and aubergine stew which I made nice n spicy with some extra cayenne. I’ve become addicted to Frank’s Red Hot Sauce and add heat whenever I can. We also did a roast chicken with some tarragon butter under the skin. The way Carmel does roast chicken is so smart I will never do it any other way. The others another chicken and also a pot roast one.

We also did some desserts - banana in a stock syrup and lime juice, raspberries in syrup and rhubarb with ginger. I’m salivating writing about them. We also did a raw rhubarb, cucumber and mint salad which turned out to be really tasty.

All of the above made up the evening meal to which all of us could bring guests. Carmel was an absolute star and offered to let me bring a bunch of the food home to share with Catherine, so I headed off with food in car just as the meal began. Everything was totally eat-a-licious, nothing was left!

We had arranged to meet at the Schull Farmer’s Market at 10am on Sunday. I awoke to torrential rain. The one extra I got on my car when I bought it 5 years ago was ESP. It stops you spinning when you drive like a cretin on slippy roads. Anyhoo, the ESP light flashed all the way to Schull as I hit sheet after sheet of surface water. I genuinely expected neither vendors nor buyers to turn up. I drove past the market to discover a few brave souls setting up stalls and a few minutes later, the other students arrived, as did Carmel with kids in tow.

We sheltered in under the Gubbeen stall and the women interrogated Fingal and we all bought a ton of stuff off him: rashers of every sort, sausages, chorizo, you name it. A really friendly guy, hugely knowledgeable but in a very infectious and enthusiastic way. He also gave us big discounts for turning up in the brutal weather so I’m now his biggest fan. Mimi was selling some awsome looking cooked burgers but I was stuffed from brekkie. One guy was setting up sushi and a wok too. Looked interesting! I bought some herbs and carrots from the lovely German woman from Peppermint Farm. She had a very unusual set of herb plants, many of them medicinal. We all then booted it back to Durrus.

Carmel kicked off with a fish stock and then got us all to make a banana and chocolate cake. Mairead and her then started on the seafood risotto. I challenged them to make it in the advertised 20 mins as I have never made one in less than 35. The wenches did it in 19.5 mins. I still don’t know how. The rest of us prepped a pile of tiny squid. As father of four pooh factories, I was not as grossed out as some of the younger students. We all then had a go at the Alioli which was energetic to put it mildly. It was from a different world than Hellmann’s and I’ll be making it again (but using a machine!). We cooked up the squid with just parsley, garlic and lemon. Gorgeous. And all of the above made up our lunch along with some pan fried hake. We sat for ages and sipped wine and then coffee. I could not physically move.

It all wrapped up about 4pm and we all bought various bits n pieces from the shop and headed off on our separate ways, full to the brim and full of confidence.

As I said at the start, this is a fabulous course by a great lady. And you’ll be shocked to hear the price. €300! A steal. Think of the food and drink alone! Run to the phone and book a course. +353-27-61426, info@thegoodthingscafe.com.

And finally, I hope Carmel does not mind, but here is a short video of her in action jointing a chicken.

[tags]The Good Things Cafe, Durrus, Carmel Somers[/tags]

4 Comments

Barbecue is a noun

Posted on May 24, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Entertainment.

I could be a cynical smartass and say that the people in this movie look a little too close to Christopher Guest’s character in “Best in Show” but it really looks like a wonderful movie about people who are passionate about Barbeque/Barbecue.

The horror that we perform in Ireland is what they call grilling (or more accurately “incineration”). What these guys do takes hours and hours and hours. I’ve eaten the result in Texas - they should have Michelin stars. Some day I’ll try the Carolinas version.

Check out some of the video clips.

[tags]Barbecue is a noun, BBQ, Barbeque, Barbecue, Best in Show[/tags]

3 Comments

Sushi Saturday

Posted on April 22, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Food.

8 years after I first bought a tube of wasabi to make sushi, I finally managed to get everything in one place and made my first ever batch. I followed the instructions in “Rachel’s Favourite Food for Friends“. It turned out damned tasty but not exactly pretty. I’m sure sushi experts would cry over my efforts. Some pictures below. In case you are wondering, the kids medicine syringe was to measure out 30ml of rice vinegar. I wasn’t in the scouts for most of my youth for nothing!

One question - why does the seaweed smell of fish?

[tags]Sushi[/tags]

2 Comments

Buffalo Wings, mmm tasty but not so hot

Posted on March 31, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Entertainment, Food.

I’ve made a few half-hearted attempts at doing chicken wings over the years. Usually in the oven and usually burnt beyond all recognition. I now realise that you add the sauce afterwards as anything with sugar will burn.

Recently I spotted a bunch of blog postings about buffalo wings (mainly related to the Superbowl I think) and decided I wanted to try and do them properly. I’ve always found people raving about Elephant & Castle chicken wings to be a bit weird. I’ve had them, they’re fine but they are chicken offcuts in hot sauce, get a grip.

The simple recipe given on Slashfood seemed to fit the bill. I found a great site in the UK called Chilli World who stock Frank’s Red Hot Sauce. This is the “original” hot sauce used for Buffalo wings. I ordered a few bottles of that plus some other Caribbean hot sauces and some spices. They arrived within the week.

So on Monday, after buying 30 chicken wings in the English market for €2.10 (no, I don’t want to know where they came from), I made my first real batch of buffalo wings. I fried them in about an inch of oil in a pan (rather than going the full deep-fat frying route) and then coated them thoroughly in the mix of butter, Frank’s Red Hot Sauce and cider vinegar as quoted by Slashfood.

Well Frank’s sauce may be tasty and red but it ain’t hot. I ended up dousing each wing in the sauce from the bottle to get any sort of kick. Hell, I could put the sauce straight on to my tongue and it did not burn. I also question the butter. is it just to make the sauce adhere more? I dunno. What I do know is that they were damned tasty and I had 10 for lunch.

Next time I’ll try one of those Caribbean scotch bonnet pepper sauces and see if that works better/hotter.

Can someone do a margin analysis on buffalo wings for me? What are we talking? 1000%? Whoever came up with them has one sharp business mind.

For fans of “My Name is Earl”, the exchange between the main characters on chicken wings this week was comedy perfection. Dammit these guys can write:

Randy: You takin’ Pops’ hot dogs outta Camden County is like taking chicken out of Syracuse.
Earl: It’s Buffalo, Randy.
Randy: No, I’m pretty sure it’s chicken, Earl.
Joy: Yeah, it’s chicken. Hot chicken!

[tags]Buffalo Wings, My Name is Earl, Franks Red Hot Sauce, Chilli World[/tags]

21 Comments

Tips for Father’s Day

Posted on March 27, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon, Cooking, Family, Food.

The traditional Mother’s Day treat in our house is to get a nice simple poached eggs on toast breakfast in bed which the kids can easily help with. This year, as wifey is up the pole, soft eggs were a no-no and hard poached eggs are pooh, so we needed an alternative.

On Saturday, in a flash of inspiration I checked out “Easy Entertaining” by Darina Allen. My lovely parents got this for me at Christmas. The “Darina” bit would make it instantly interesting to me, but the “Entertaining” bit would put me off. The only entertaining we do is giving people a laugh with our uncontrollable demon children in SuperValu when we go shopping. But this is a great book. Tons of very manageable recipes ranging from 5-minuters to multi-hour slow-cookingers. What I had remembered was her particularly good brunch chapter.

I found “Buttermilk pancakes with crispy bacon and maple syrup”. Wife looked very happy when I suggested it.

I did a bit of shopping with the two eldest for basics in SuperValu. I got the special bits in Urru (sadly lacking in Mother’s day specific treats for some reason) and we were all set.

The pancakes were a doddle to make and I’m completely incompetent at baking (yes, pancakes are baking in my world). These were paired with Gubbeen streaky bacon which has a very distinctive and enticing aroma (is it the juniper?). Canadian Maple Syrup finished it off. Wife rated it as the best Mother’s Day breakfast ever. Result.

Dinner was our old reliable spaghetti n meatballs as we wanted us all eating at the same time. All plates were demolished. I then rolled out my secret weapon - Murphy’s Chocolate Ice Cream with Glenilen Raspberry Mousse. Catherine argued with me that they did not go together. As far as she was concerned I was ruining a perfect chocolate moment with fruit. I disagreed and insisted she try the combo. Success, she loved it! They are effing fabulous together. I’m not even that big a fan of chocolate ice-cream but with the fluffy mousse it was awesome.

One downside was that both Oisín and Oscar tried some of the ice-cream. They both adored it - Ois licked his bowl, Osc licked the carton clean. There goes our cost base - they won’t accept HB Neapolitan from us any more.

I know what I want for Father’s Day.

[tags]Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Murphys Icecream, Glenilen, Urru, Gubbeen, Darina Allen[/tags]

No Comments

What if I suggest a structured recipe format and you critique it?

Posted on March 21, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Cooking, StructuredBlogging.

Between this blog and my posting on eGullet regarding the sort of structure people would like to see on recipes in blogs, I received the sum total of zero/null/nada/nialas replies. The world was about as vocal as that time I asked “so do I look good in these speedos?”

In retrospect I should have suggested an initial idea and then asked you all to improve on it. So read on and start entering comments. Critical is good, bitchy is good, offensive is good. Silence is badddddd.

Here are my initial thoughts for “fields” that might be useful in a structured recipe on a blog. My starting point is the RecipeML spec plus fields from Gourmet Recipe Manager and anything else that popped into my head.

From The RecipeML Spec (renamed for clarity):
Title
Measurement System (U.S., Imperial etc)
Creator (Person)
Source (Book Title etc)
Date (Of Creation or Publication)
Rights (Copyright or other)
Summary Description (one liner)
Preparation Time (overall time)
Yield Quantity and Unit (4 pancakes or 5 servings)
Meal Category (Starter etc)
Main Ingredients Category (Pasta etc)
Cuisine Category (Italian etc)
Ingredients (each one a separate “item” rather than block text with count/amount/range/unit broken out too)
Description/Instructions (as free form block text)

Other possibilities:

Picture(s) (either on the blog/site or externally hosted)
Rating (how much you like it yourself!)
Difficulty Level/Experience Required
Notes (e.g. warnings)
Dietary Information (e.g. gluten-free)

Ones from the RecipeML spec which may be overkill:

Equipment
Variations
Recipe broken into parts (pastry vs filling etc)
Subtitle
Version
Breakdown of Preptime into phases
Nutritional Information
[tags]Recipes, RecipeML, Structured Recipes, StructuredBlogging.org[/tags]

7 Comments

Request for Feedback - Structured Recipes

Posted on March 19, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Cooking, StructuredBlogging.

If you’ve seen the various posts I’ve done over the past few weeks on structured blogging and it has all been a bit beyond you, please keep reading, this won’t be.

A discussion had started on the structured blogging mailing list about creating a format for structured recipes. The idea here is that all those people who publish recipes on their blogs would hopefully move to using a common format which provides structure where appropriate but still allows for each person to do things their own way. This provides benefits to both recipe writers and those of us who read and use them.

There are two reasons for this. One is that you end up with a nice simple form to fill out when typing up your recipe which will help ensure that you don’t leave out anything critical. But more importantly it will enable a new breed of search tool or recipe web-site which can trawl all of the blogs out there and provide recipes to end-users which are a much closer match to what they want than typing “chicken recipes” on Google.

With any approach which applies structure where there was none previously, the critical success factor is finding the right balance between structured information and free-form information. Add too much structure and it inhibits you, add too little and it provides no gain.

So I am throwing this question out to everyone. It doesn’t matter if you have written your own cookbook or have only ever read how to cook spaghetti from the back of the packet. What information do you think would be useful to have structured in a recipe on a blog or web-site?

To aid the thinking process, I have done some screenshots from a very nice Recipe Management Tool called Gourmet Recipe Manager. Even if you have no interest in this post, I recommend you check the tool out. The screenshots are of the windows it displays to enable you to enter a new recipe. So have a good look at those and let me know which fields you think are important to be kept “separate” from the main recipe description.

One way of thinking about it would be to imagine what you would search for if you were on a recipe search site. Is it “main ingredient” or “overall time” or “ethnicity” or “main vs sweet” or “ballpark cost” or “skill required”. There are a ton of possibilities but the idea is to find the really critical ones and work from there.

So all you lurkers who read this blog (including the 300 who suddenly appeared from the BBC2 web-site last Thursday - and I’m still trying to figure out why), de-lurk and post your opinions. This is one of those cases where no-one is wrong and all opinions are equally valuable.

There are some techie aspects to this which I will only mention in passing. Skip this paragraph if you are not technically inclined: An XML format was developed in 2002 called RecipeML to allow different software packages to swap recipes. Unfortunately, it looks like it never took off but that should not detract from the technical quality of the idea. It may form a strong basis for the under-the-hood aspects of this discussion. Having said that, Troy Hakala (one of the original authors of the format) pooh-poohed the idea of trying to do anything with recipes scattered across millions of blogs back in 2003! He does this as a comment to a post on the OxDECAFBAD Blog. it is worth reading that original post and his reply to see how much things have changed in the blog world since November 2003. Back then, Troy effectively came up with the same idea as Edgeio (but thought it made no sense).

Anyway, techies and non-techies, foodies and non-foodies, have a look at these, have a think and post a comment.

[tags]Structured Blogging, StructuredBlogging.org, RecipeML, Recipes, Microformats, Gourmet Recipe Manager[/tags]

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The important science of Potato Thermodynamics

Posted on March 7, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Humour.

A phrase I have used many times in the past: “Only in Japan”.

Check out this story over on Lifehacker on how to peel a potato with you hands. Yet another piece of must-see pop culture from YouTube. I think I’m getting addicted to that site.

I have my doubts if it’d work with a good old fashioned Irish floury spud. But I’m going to try!

[tags]Potato, Thermodynamics, Japan, YouTube, Spud[/tags]

1 Comment

Mr Krabbs goes to Bandon

Posted on February 19, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Cork, Food.

Only two months later I get around to blogging our Spider Crab adventure from a few weeks before Christmas. We got a massive one for a few euro in Antcar in Union Hall. At this stage Oisín is totally cool with crustaceans, poor Sibéal was a bit shocked when I arrived back to the car with it.

He stayed in the cooler whilst we did the Skibbereen Winter Wonderland. It wasn’t _quite_ Disney but the kids had a howl.

Sophie Grigson laments the lack of interest in spider crab meat in the British Isles and recommends it highly. However she describes the preparation of it as “approaching tedious”. To quote Bill: “Baby, you ain’t kiddin”. Over an hour with pliers and a hammer (yes, from my tool box, yes, washed of all WD-40) to extract a tiny mound of meat.

I did a lovely crab salad and a pseudo dressed crab thingy. Both of them were lip-smackingly good and the meat was really tasty. But I am never, ever prepping one again.

[tags] Antcar, Union Hall, Skibbereen, Winter Wonderland, Spider Crab, Spongebob, Sophie Grigson[/tags]

2 Comments

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