Very up and down weekend

 So the plan for the weekend just gone was to go into town, stay in a reasonable hotel, cheaper than taxi in and out, eat again in the fantastic Richmond  in Portobello and breakfast on Sunday in Alma.  However back in strict lockdown, restaurants only open if outdoors, so that's gone and next month's trip up to Belfast looks gone as well, as the whole UK is back in chaos.

For the recipe below I did want Aleppo chilli (pul bibir) and was hoping to find some in town, as neither Indian shop in Swords has it.

So I had to cook, saw a decent looking recipe cooked by Sabrina Ghayour on the BBC for Tepsi Kebab, simple kind of lamb meatloaf.  I'm going to look at her books, maybe Feast

Did it with za'atar roasted cauliflower, tabbula, mint yoghurt, hummus, broad bean, feta carrot and red onion salad with flatbreads.  Very happy with it.

Had the rest in shop bought flat breads with some salad last night, bread was shite, way too thin, fell apart (Dunnes, as bad a Lidl)

Banetons

 



Finally bought a banneton from Kells, they had round rectangular ones out of stock for months and got square ones in this week, so got one of each size, first loaf, not bad.  Had some with lovely mermelade sent by Gabriel from Tapas de Cervantes.

Continuing on a Spanish theme, a bean and chorizo dish, with really disappoinlty rubbish hake, which I love, but won't buy from a supermarket again

Biryani, cauliflower curry and raita with roasted chicken

Off to Shouk tonight, looking forward to it, except driving, as it's an excellent BYOB, but Covid means no buses for us :(

Couple of good meals out and a bit more in the kitchen

Went to  Kin Khao in Athlone and Rasam in Dun Laoghaire, both great, while it's not great, not going for a pint before a meal out, both places did COVID really well, very welcoming and food was fantastic.

 

Spring rolls and beer from Kin Khao above 

As the kids were here I made chicken nuggets and chips:

Went down a treat and adults were happy as well.

Going to Osteria Lucio tomorrow, looking forward to it, I've not been, she's been once and liked it, I used to cycle past it every night, when I was last working in town , so it's been on my lst for a long time.

The (small) benefit of lockdown

While little good has come from COVID, apart from people being nicer and probably never going back to the office full time, I've found having the time at home and doing a lot of sourdough work, it has improved all of my cooking, in a few ways.

I'm naturally clumsy and heavy handed, having the time and taking it has really increased my attention to detail, I'm doing things slower, double checking things, making careful notes and re-reading things.

I made some yeast bread for someone a couple of weeks ago, I've not made any for a least a year and it was as good as I've ever done.  I made fresh pasta and then tortellini, usually I make raviolo and there's always one or two splits.

I'm also being more choosy with ingredients, it comes partly from being restricted in the first few weeks and having to shop at more expensive farm shops or online and really appreciating the quality.

A bit like shopping in the market in Malaga or Sevilla, I appreciate good tinned tomatoes, olive oil, eggs, meat and am willing and can afford to pay for them - I realise this isn't possible for everyone and you can make great food with the cheapest ingredients.  

After boiling some ham, I cut the boiled fat off, dried it and made lovely pork scratchings

I did a good mushroom risotto as well

 

More sourdough fun

Tried a sun-dried tomato and fennel seed sourdough, turned out very well.  I used the Lidl semi-dried tomatoes rather than from a jar in oil, as I wasn't sure how the oil would affect the dough.

Tastes great, I used a slightly different kneading method.  40 minutes autolysis, then once an hour, 20-25 folds, while rotating the bowel for 6 hours, then overnight in fridge, then baked it until a bowel for 25 mins on full gas 8, then 20 minutes uncovered at gas mark 6.

sourdough pizza and a bit of Spanish

We got a delivery from one of favourite restaurants in Malaga Tapeo de Cervantes with wine, olive oil, cheeses and meats:

While not cheap, absolutely fantastic quality and really tasted of great Spanish tapas.

As my sourdough bread is doing well I decided to try both a sourdough pizza and the frying pan / grill method of cooking, done it twice now and have to say they have been the best pizzas I've made.  I followed Patrick Ryan's recipe, I made the sauce from ingredients from the Italian Ripasso delivery and got the mozzarella from our local cafe in Swords, Cafe Tara. 

First Batch: margherita, neapolitan, ham

Second batch: margherita, chilli beef, tuna, peppers and red onion and ham / salami

Then I made some apple and pecan muffins this morning :)

Themed dinners

In an effort to break the boredom, we're trying to eat at the dinning table at weekends, as we would do with guests, but rarely on our own.  In memory of our many Spanish trips we had tapas yesterday:

Olives, jamon, fuet, manchengo and bread followed by Russian Salad, alitas, gambas al pil-pil and albondigas

We went for a walk this morning to Ushers Lake, it had huge amounts of wild garlic / ramsons as well as a pretty little bridge and weir:

I'll be using some of the wild garlic in today's risotto, I also made some chicken goujons this week, Panéd in homemade breadcrumbs, but didn't photo them, they were a real success and I made chips and chunky coleslaw with them, very pub-like.

Hopefully risotto will turn out well and I'll post it up 

Lockdown

While this whole Covid lockdown thing has been very challenging and in some cases deadly for many people across the world, I guess we are very lucky and very well placed for this sort of thing.

I can work for home, as well as anywhere, so it makes little difference and my work is no more or less busy and the company I work for has been excellent both in support and flexibility.

We have plenty of storage, although a bigger freezer would help, it's not a huge issue.  We've always shopped with lists and always bought in bulk things we like, so if long lasting things, i.e. olive oil, pasta, rice, toilet paper are ever cheap we buy loads.  We cook most things from scratch, use a lot of dried / canned goods and ignore Best Before and Sell by dates.  I also buy a lot of very long lasting hams and chorizos on our frequent trips to Spain, similar things when we go to Italy.

I counted up what we had, before this happened.  I had nine types of pasta, five types of rice, canned and dried beans, chickpeas, lentils, couscous, polenta, bulgar wheat, fuets, chorizoes, jamons, morcilla....
I also had six different flours and another 4 bags of strong, although most of that has gone now and flour is the one thing, especially strong and 00 that is still in short supply
The freezer is either meat, cheese, cooked portions or green veg.  These are all well packed, not extra packaging  / air as in pre-made meals and I know what's in the freezer, I know a spreadsheet is anal, but it works, especially for shopping.

A shopping list App (AnyList - excellent) and a meal planner both also help in buying what we need and no more, we are both passionate about minimising  food waste and nearly have a wake if we have to throw out anything

Even did a bit of foraging for the laff this week, picked some wild garlic (ramsom) leaves in the Castle's park and made pesto

As I'm home a lot, I've tried choux pastry and made some eclairs, plenty of granola bars, brownies, as well as lots of sourdough,
I've had beer delivered by craftcentral.ie and wine from winelab.ie, I will be ordering some veg for delivery this week

While it terribly tough for many people, certainly people in Ireland, seem to be being responsible and listening ot the HSE and government and hopefully some good, positive habits will come from this

2019-2020 Sourdough

about I year ago I decided to try making sourdough, definitely been a long hard trial, not a good baker at the best of times, but eventually got there.  Several problems, mostly my oven was not hot enough, got that fixed the week before the Lockdown!  Also big difference between non- and organic flour in the starter I've found, but while it's been mostly not great, flavour has been theree and I've enjoyed the process, however frustrating.

Some pictures of progress:

 

 

Lots of very flat loaves, not many worth photographing, last photo is by far the best loaf, I did another the day before , but left it in for about 5 minutes too long, so a bit burned on top, but apart from that good.

Like most baking, it's all about process and repeatability and am enjoying it, although flour has been hard to come by in the Lockdown

The best article I found was this:
https://www.ilovecooking.ie/features/sourdough-bread-masterclass-with-patrick-ryan/

As I live in Ireland, the kitchen is never really warm enough in winter, spring, autumn for good rising and the hot press / airing cupboard is a bit too warm, so I've struggled to get a consistent starter, I switched between organic plain, strong and buckwheat flours for feeding it, especially now when flour is hard to come by

Update 18APR20
Best yet:

 

Mixed flour, as I'm running short 25% strong brown, 75% strong white, only enough strong flour for a couple more, then I'll be mixing plain / cream with brown and odds and sods of strong, organic, buckwheat, garam flours.
But I think my technique is there now and one day there will be enough strong flour back in the shops or I'll have died of the virus, so it won't matter

Update June20:

Bought a 16kg bag of excellent bread flour from  Kells Wholemeal, I will buy flour from them from now on, got yeast as well and will be buy prooving baskets from them, when they are back in stock, latest loaf: