Chocolate molten lava cakes..

by Cake in the country

Yes. You heard me. See for yourself…

Yes. These are seriously good. I’m a firm believer in dessert before/instead of dinner, especially since it was the #romancecooking cookalong, so I’m posting this before my beloved dinner recipe (Think Lady and the tramp, love it!). And this dessert embodies romantic food… Make it for any special occasion and you shall be in the good books for at least weeks if not months..

I was going between some kind of brownie, some kind of fudgy chocolate cake, and was discussing with some of the girls in the tutorial room when everyone seemed to simultaneously coming up with lava cakes, or melty yummy chocolate thingys if one were to go by my original thought. And would you know it, Nigella had a recipe for them and I had the recipe in my grasp! I may have added a wee biteen more sugar, which I think stood to it. I’ve had these in some restaurants and it’s just not actually sweet enough, so I didn’t take that chance.

The chocolate: I used a mixture of a 60% and also a 73.5% gorgeous claudio corallo chocolate that I’ve been meaning to use for ages. It has cocoa nibs in it and is just delicious.

Without further ado – GO AND GET (this makes 6. Maybe double the recipe):

  • 12 oz chocolate – see above!
  • 70g butter
  • 180g caster sugar
  • 4 eggs, beaten
  • Wee pinch of salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 50g four
  • 6 custard/pudding tins – the wee ones. I also used some ramekins but the custard tins worked better!
  • Baking non stick paper

What to do

  1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees, and put in a plain tray
  2. Trace and cut out little circles for the bottom of the tins. Butter them, pop in the parchment, and butter a wee bit more! You don’t want these little gems to stick
  3. Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over simmering water and set aside.
  4. Cream the butter and sugar
  5. Gradually beat in the eggs bit by bit along with the salt and vanilla
  6. Add the flour and combine until it’s all mixed in
  7. Add in the cooled (ish) chocolate and beat it until its a nice smooth batter
  8. Divide evenly between the 6 tins –
  9. Take your heated tray out of the oven and pop the tins onto it.
  10. Put into oven for 10-12 minutes.
  11. When done, gently remove, turn upside down onto your plate and gently tap the top. It should slide out pretty easily.

Give it a dusting of icing sugar and watch this happen…

The Cafe tour: The Pepper Pot

by Cake in the country

Hi there. So myself and my cousin have a yet to be honoured agreement that we’re going to check out cafes every 2 weeks or at least every month while we catch up and babble away for an hour or two. Today I was hanging around waiting for an appointment and wasn’t in the mood to face the big bad library for an hour, so I decided to ask twitter for a nice cafe recommendation. Somewhere I could sit, read my notes and chill out for a while. Well the replies absolutely flew back to me (I think mostly thanks to Mr. Mulley and his RTing), and out of the first few ‘The Pepper Pot‘ in Powerscourt townhouse came up a bit.

So off I ambled, having a wee look at loverly items in the shop next door first (‘Article’ – have a number of items added to wishlist naturally). I popped up to the counter and was greeted promptly with a smile. I ordered a tea in my true to Irish self, and lovely staff lady told me to go ahead and sit down and she’d bring it down to me. And so she did as fast as… something that’s quite fast, and it came with the most lovely china cup that I really liked. Look at this, the tablecloth too:

Look at that. I just find that whole presentation charming! And a decent sized jug of milk may I add. I have no idea why they send those thimbleful sized jugs of milk out- it irks me. Anywho, lovely tea and was sitting there getting stuck in and really liked it. Nice music playing, although I’m happy without, but not so loud that it bothered me. Admittedly I was twittering more than studying :S. Well I sat there for a sold 30 minutes sipping tea and enjoying an illusion of a life not quite as hectic as usual, and I heard a lady behind me order food. And it just looked so nice as it came out. Then my tummy started hinting at me to remind me that it needed nourishment, or it would promptly shut off all brain function. I hadn’t taken a good look at the menu but I caught nice staff lady’s eye and she came over and responded in the affirmative to my casual query as to the availability of a smoked salmon bagel (my favourite). It was in front of me in no time and very nice it looked too, er.. even after I butchered it by cutting it in half, it looked nicer when it came out. Post butcherising:

 

Now I am fussy about my bagels (hear that bagel place upstairs in Jervis, hear that?!), and I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Nice bagel, nice tasting salmon and plenty of it and enough cream cheese! I was thoroughly impressed and pleasantly full after. I paid with a smile and was on my way!

All in all

  • Service: 10/10 Couldn’t fault it, lovely staff, very attentive and polite.
  • Food: 10/10 My bagel was lovely, exactly what I wanted. I see no reason to knock off marks. Haven’t tried other food!
  • Drink: Tea – 9/10 They gave me loads and it was grand. Meant to ask for low fat milk but didn’t in the end, not their fault.
  • Cost: 6/10 Hefty enough- 10 euro for bagel and tea. I suppose I was sitting down and it was a treat but I couldn’t afford this often.
  • Overall: 8.5/10. Lovely place, would have preferred as a study place to have slightly cosier/less open, but as a place to chat I think it’s good. Music was nice, not too bleh. Location is good, handy to get to and warm! Absolutely love the style – the china cups, lovely tablecloths and great service! Shall re-visit for another treat. Perhaps post exams 🙂

 

PS I have now a list of cafes I shall be trying, but in the meantime if you think there’s any that are worth a visit or you’d like to hear a non biased review then feel free to leave me a comment with a suggestion.

Cooking on a budget – Chicken Casserole Love

by Cake in the country

SO recently we had a cheap and cheerful cookalong.. I wasn’t cooking on the day because.. well.. I have a giant cast on and my arm was rather painful, but I have done much budget cooking. This medicine thing does not come cheap so I am budgeting to my eyeballs! So when I had my sister and two of her friends here a few weeks ago, we had some budget cooking triumphs. One of them was a solid ‘throw everything in and see how it turns out’. Well it turned out pretty damn well! I’ve made it since a few times and its bleedin’ lovely! And cheap and wholesome too, so it’s good all round. Make it, beee-aaaaa-you-tiful.

You will need

  • About 8-10 or so chicken thighs (Free range if you please, better meat, better care of the animals and worth the extra few pennies)
  • A tablespoon of butter
  • A tablespoon of olive oil
  • 6 tablespoons of flour
  • Sea salt & pepper
  • 1 large onion
  • 3 cloves of garlic
  • About 200mls white wine (You can replace with stock if you want)
  • One carton of tomato passatta
  • 400 mls chicken stock
  • 1/2 tsp dried thyme (I have no fresh!)
  • Wholewheat pasta

What to do

  1. Preheat your oven to 160 degrees C.
  2. Dice your onion and leave aside. Finely chop your garlic.
  3. Dry your chicken with some paper towels. Mix the salt, pepper and flour in a  big ziplock bag. or on a plate. Put the chicken in and toss it around til lightly coated. Shake off any excess
  4. Heat up your oil and butter over a medium heat in an ovenproof/hobproof dish. I used my le creuset 😀
  5. Add your chicken a few pieces at a time and brown lightly.
  6. When all the chicken is done, take your onion and garlic, pop it in the same pan and cook until soft.
  7. Pour in your white wine in and let it reduce til it’s down to about half.
  8. Add back in your chicken and toss around.
  9. Add your passatta and give it a stir. Add your thyme here too
  10. Add in enough stock to cover the chicken. Bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer.
  11. At this point give it a good stir and get your lid.
  12. Cover and pop in the oven and turn the heat down to 150.
  13. Check it after an hour to make sure it hasn’t begun to burn. Again I’m having apartment oven issues so Im cooking at a ridiculously low setting but pretty sure its off by about 50 degrees! It may be done at this point, check and see how well the chicken comes off the bone, but mine took another 30 mins. When it’s cooked take it out of the oven
  14. Put your pasta on to cook in a pot of salted lightly boiling water.
  15. While this is cooking take a tongs and remove your pieces of chicken. Put on a nice serving plate.
  16. If your sauce is still a bit thin/watery, pop your pot with the sauce still in it back onto a medium heat and reduce it down so that its reasonably thick and doesn’t trickle about too easily.
  17. Take off your pasta, put it on a serving plate, arrange your chicken over it and spoon some of the tomato sauce on top
  18. Serve with a salad and enjoy your lovely dinner. Did I mention its good for the old washing up? Only 2 pots!

Hope ye like it, it sure tickled my tastebuds!

Cost wise chicken thighs come in at about 3 euro for 4-5. So I spent about 10.50 without the wine (which you can leave out since it’s a budget cookalong but you know you have the option) and it fed 4 people twice. Or 8 people once. Works out at less than 2 euro a head. Noms!

Update on the fabulous Temple Bar Market

by Cake in the country

So lovely ladies and gentleman, I heard on the… well actually its not on the down low at all, but here’s the deal. The temple bar market is moving for a wee while. The details are below but now you know when you make a regular visit. If you don’t make a regular visit, whyever not? Lookatit!

Temple Bar Food Market On The Move

Temple Bar will be a vision of mouth-watering colour as the Temple Bar Food Market (TBFM) is moving from its Meeting House Square home to three new locations around Temple Bar. The TBFM Take Over will be temporarily held in the new locations from Saturday 29th January, to facilitate the construction of the new retractable canopy over Meeting House Square. This will consist of four large umbrellas which provide year-round cover for the outdoor movies programme, festivals, music, dance performances and markets which fill this city centre public space every year.

 

The Temple Bar Food Market’s new locations are ‘Up-Town’ Old City, ‘Mid-Town’ East Essex Street and ‘Down-Town’ Curved Street. The move will create a tempting gastronomic trail which foodies can meander through and enjoy the best of Irish produce alongside a host of cultural treats around the Temple Bar area. A map will be provided to the public on the street and at www.templebar.ie to lead them through Dublin’s Cultural Quarter to the TBFM’s new homes.

 

Commenting on the move, Dermot McLaughlin, CEO Temple Bar Cultural Trust said “Our first Temple Bar Food Market was held in May 1997 and has become a Dublin institution increasing in popularity each year. The range of foods is unparalleled elsewhere in the city and we hope moving to these temporary locations around the area will entice people to explore areas of Temple Bar they may not have seen before..  We are extremely excited about the possibilities our new retractable canopy for Meeting House Square will bring and want to thank everyone for their patience during the installation period.”

 

‘Up-Town’ will offer a diverse range of fresh fruit and vegetables,
‘Mid-Town’ will be filled with stalls offering fresh hot food and
‘Down-Town’ will offer a range of stalls trading fresh Irish meats and freshly baked breads.

 

People can pick up fresh vegetables from Denis Healy who runs his own organic farm or the best apples in the city from Llewellyn’s Orchard Produce. Noirin’s Bakehouse and The French Bread Stall make mouths water with the smell of freshly baked goods which can be washed down with coffee from the Ariosa Coffee Roasting Coffee. Or try the best in Oriental street food at The Sushi Hut or a French treat from The Gallic Kitchen.

 

There will be a total of 28 traders relocating their stalls to the various locations until June where they will return to the newly covered Meeting House Square. To see a list of traders and their produce, visit www.templebar.ie .

 

For the latest news, you can follow the food market on Twitter at http://twitter.com/templebarmarket and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TempleBarFoodMarke

 

Eat Magazine

by Cake in the country

Hey followers and foodies and random people looking through my blog (welcome, leave a comment :))

 

I must go off to sleep soon, but wanted to let ye know about a new and FREE (hello student faces perking up) magazine that is circulating around the web and also has some local stockists in Dublin. It’s called Eat Magazine, and it looks like it will be receiving contributions from lots of bloggers and others. I think it’s a great idea, so keep an eye out for it or take a gander here: http://issuu.com/phonic_magazine/docs/eatmagazine1. It’s currently being stocked here: http://www.ilove2eat.ie/?page_id=3096

Have a read and keep an eye out for it around Dublin!

PS There’s also an iPad/iPhone app launching soon (yippeeeee)

Now to sleep! This rotation is wearing me down. Exhausted altogether! Presentation coming up, and lots of quizzes and uploads to do! Toodles for now. Banana bread recipe upcoming this weekend. Also a review (FINALLY) of Catherines Italian Kitchen. Plus one week until cast comes off thank goodness. It’s all ahead of  me 🙂

Mushroom risotto – The food of Sunday studying.

by Cake in the country

So on Sundays I generally try and catch up on the colossal amount of study I should have done all weekend and didn’t (as always).. You think I’d learn but nope, never..

Anywho so I try and make a decent starchy comfort food to get me through Sunday and Monday and hopefully Tuesday (may not always last til then). Since my visit to Salon des Saveurs (food of Gods my friends, food of Gods..) I have had quite a craving for risotto of some sort. But somehow I haven’t quite gotten round to it. However, I did some shopping on Friday and picked up 2 packs of mushrooms – mixed oyster and shiitake (I always always read that as shit-ake), and so mushroom risotto was popping up in my head. It had to be done! I find risotto really comforting to make actually, it’s therapeutic in a way.

Now I’m simultaneously eating, watching How I met your mother, and typing this! Study breaks are really productive… See?

It’s yum. It’s really yummy. Make it.

Mushroom Risotto

  • 500-700g mushrooms, any you prefer
  • 1 onion
  • 3 cloves of garlic
  • A chunk of lovely butter and a smidgen of olive oil
  • 250g arborio risotto rice
  • 1 cup of white wine
  • 700mls of stock (I used a really nice veg stock, but whatever you have will work nicely!)
  • 1/3 cup grated parmesan
  1. Prepare prepare prepare – for this you’ll be largely standing over the pot so have it all prepared:
    1. Finely chop your onions and garlic
    2. Wash, dry and chop your mushrooms
    3. Grate your parmesan and have it ready
    4. Make up your stock – you want to keep it warm too so you might want to do it in a saucepan
  2. Ok, heat up your butter and olive oil in a saucepan. Add your onion and garlic and cook gently until soft.
  3. Add in your mushrooms and cook for about 2-3 minutes depending how small you’ve cut up the mushrooms. You want them to be just almost done.
  4. Add in your rice and stir over a medium heat for about 2 minutes
  6. Add your white wine. Stir until its pretty much all absorbed. Enjoy the yummy smell. This is optional but it does give it a lovely flavour. I tend to freeze wine in ice cube bags so I have some at hand. Buy during sales and its great!
  7. Now begin adding your stock – I add about 3/4 of a cup at a time, and stir it. Don’t add the next bit until its absorbed.
  8. Keep doing this. I know it’s tedious, but it will be worth it, trust me.
  9. When you have about 2 cups left, you need to start tasting it and testing the texture. Nobody wants really stodgy mushy risotto- the best has a wee bit of a bite to it
  10. When you think you’re adding in the last cup (or half cup, keep it small), you can also stir in your cheese. Lovely lovely cheese!
  11. Taste, season, smell, get some plates ready
  12. Dish, serve, eat, enjoy!

2010 in review

by Cake in the country

Huh, would ya look at that..

 

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 3 fully loaded ships.

 

In 2010, there were 102 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 51 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 40mb. That’s about 4 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was June 7th with 272 views. The most popular post that day was A day at the GAA.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were beaut.ie, twitter.com, facebook.com, digg.com, and likemamusedtobake.blogspot.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for musings of a med student, roasted tomato salad, cool sounding medical terms, risotto carbonara, and cake in the country.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

A day at the GAA June 2010
3 comments

2

About moi… March 2010
5 comments

3

Theeee best chocolate biscuit cake October 2010
4 comments

4

Recipe Archive April 2010
1 comment

5

Healthiness and all that April 2010
8 comments

March cookalong suggestions, bring them on..

by Cake in the country

So as mentioned in the cookalong explanation, I want to get everyone’s input for what they’d like the cookalong to be. So in the comments section pop in what you think it should be. Just to let you know we’re thinking of a Chocolate cookalong for April, so that’s taken care of! After a week I’ll put up the suggestions in a poll and we shall vote.

 

Note- the February cookalong is ‘Food for Romance’ 🙂

The Irish foodies cookalongs shenanigans:

by Cake in the country

So the Irish foodies cookalongs are now up and running, regular amd much looked forward to. What are these magical mysterious cookalongs, you may ask? Why I shall tell you good sirs!

Once upon a time, there was an internet land far far too good at wasting my time called ‘Twitter‘. One blustery day coming into summer (raining of course), many of the twitter friends and I got into a discussion about home made pizza, and how lovely and simple it was, and how much better it tasted than the horrid wicked old store bought pizza of convenience store land. Thus we decided to have a pizza party! However being spread out all over the emerald isle, we decided that we should all cook the pizzas in our respective homes, and post menus/updates/pictures of the process on twitter and perhaps even facebook. Then a wonderful wizardly food pic posting italian foodie piped in and mentioned she could give out a wee prize to the best pizza! How excited all the Irish foodies were. Well the day was had and pizzas galore were made. People flocked from all around the internet to take part in the cookalongs, and we all had ever so much fun and adventure!

Ahem. Story telling mode is getting old.

It worked out so well that we decided to be rather naughty and do a cookie party next month, and then it was a tradition so we have one every month! Kristin and Sarah (me) took over the organisation of the whole cookalong process. Kristin had the genius idea of a facebook page and we eventually got ourselves a twitter account @irecookalongs. Each month we found/find an ever so generous judge who is always happy to look through everyones delicious posts and picks (and it is a darn hard task let me tell you) out the winner in their opinion. Ill give you a breakdown of the themes and winners below, but first:

What do you/I do to take part?

The idea is that anyone and everyone is welcome to participate in our informal cookalongs, which take place on the first Friday of every month. Every month we pick a different theme, and a judge/sponsor picks their favourite entry and donates a small prize to make it a little more fun. All you have to do is cook up a storm, tweet/facebook update or comment on a post I’ll start on the day about what you’re cooking, and hopefully post your blogged recipe links on the Facebook page or email them to me at irecookalongs(at)gmail.com

1. Pizza party June 2010

Winner:  Gluttony for beginners as picked by Italian foodie (La Cucina)#

2. Cookie party July 2010

Winner: Likemamusetobake as picked by Theresa from The green apron

3. Seafood August 2010

Winner: Smorgasblog as picked by Goatsbridge

4. Vegetarian Sept 2010

Winner: Heypesto as picked by Mary from Cafe Fresh

5. Autumn fruits Oct 2010

Winner:  Babaduckbabbles as picked by David Llewellyn from Llewellyn’s Orchard Produce!

6. Winter warmers Nov 2010

Winner: Babaduckbabbles as picked by Cully&Sully (On a roll she is!)

7. CHRISTMAS Dec 2010 (Sorry I loved that one!)

Winner: To be picked by Easy food magazine (Great judges aren’t they! People are truly great)

8. Budget/Leftovers kicking off Jan 2011

Winner: To be chosen by Donal Skehan

9. Food for romance (forgive me :))

Take a look at some of the beautiful photos uploaded to our facebook page here

So now that that’s all explained to ye, how about a new challenge. Head over to this post where we’re asking you to choose the next theme for the cookalongs by leaving a comment. In a weeks time we’ll put suggestions in a poll where we can vote for our favourites and that will be the theme for March. Woohoo! Just thought I’d throw that in there. Well off I go for now, in early in the morning and have a fierce amount of work to do!

The updates are slow again

by Cake in the country

This would be why. When it stops being headwrecking I shall start posting again 😦

Cast for 6 weeks though.. Bit of a pain! Oh well, luckily no surgery needed so yay for that! 🙂

Happy Christmas and New years to everyone by the way. I hope Santa has been good 🙂