‘Best Restaurant in Co Kildare’, Review

Herb Crusted Irish Venison

The French restaurant Vie de Chateau is the 2012 winner of the ‘Best restaurant in Co Kildare’ by the restaurants association of Ireland. With that in mind, it’s Saturday night and we are lucky to grab a last minute reservation, we can’t be seated untill 9:15 because of the high demand which can only be a good thing.

We arrived promptly at 9:15 and were seated immediately, the restaurant was packed, the atmosphere was jovial, full of punters enjoying their Saturday night. Service was slow because the restaurant was so busy but we were eventually served baskets of crusty raisin bread which was delicious and hit the spot.

My starter was an incredibly tasty French fish soup with side dishes of grated gruyère, a rouille mayonnaise and small toasts. There was drama in the eating with picking and assembling from the various dishes to concoct the perfect bite. The taste was rich with a deep fish flavour - mayonnaise in soup you say? Apparently its a French thing, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, its great! Other starters in the group included a confit duck tarte tatin that was dark with caramelised red onions and the crisp pastry brought another texture into play which enhanced the taste.

Mains were also French classics (obviously!) with 3 of our party opting for the Irish venison which was herb crusted and cooked rare. It was accompanied by a polenta cake and seasonal vegetables, the meat was tender and our whole party agreed it melted in your mouth. I had the pan fried fillet of sea bream with a leek fondue. The leeks were creamy and buttery no doubt lashed with the French magic trick to make food taste amazing: butter! The fish was well cooked and tasty.  Other mains included a slow cooked Moroccan lamb and steak frites both of which were faultless. The food is actually quite reasonably priced for such a high class restaurant but I do have a problem with the price of the wines, they offer a carafe of 50cl for €20 which is only two thirds of a bottle, some better value on the wines would be agreeable.

The chocolate fondant was the star of the desserts, intense chocolate flavour accompanied by home made caramel ice cream which complemented it beautifully. Mixed seasonal fruit crumble and a cheese plate were also satisfying. Overall it was a very positive experience and I will be back, dinner for 6 people including service charge was €314. 

French fish soup

Chocolate Fondant

Pan Fried Sea Bream

Confit Duck Tarte Tatin

Giant Vegetables! Salmon with Grilled Courgette

So a little update on my garden, it has gone really well all summer even if I did neglect just a teeny bit. Put it this way; since it practically rained every day this summer, I rarely had to go up to the garden to water it which kind of lead me to forget about it some of the time! I’m not proud and it’s not cool.  This neglect let to astonishment when I did visit the garden at the size and quantity of my vegetables! It seems that since I had put in a lot of work at the start, the vegetables kind of looked after themselves; I have enjoyed beetroot, fennel, radish and the best of all…any amount of courgette! Anyone who is familiar with growing vegetable will know the rate that these things grow at, in what seems like a few days they turn into monsters.  At the moment I am inundated with huge courgettes that I cannot cook at a quick enough!  I have made soup, tried to stuff them, pawned them off to friends and family…and they just keep sprouting up! I harvested a particularly big whopper on Thursday, what to do what to do?

Friday’s dinner came around and I had no one to cook for but myself, there was a piece of salmon in the fridge and I was waiting for inspiration to hit me. Then I remembered my friend Orla telling me what she did with the courgette I gave her, she griddled it and had it with a salad, aha! Griddle I’ll try that.  I brushed slices of the courgette with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper, placed them on a hot griddle pan and cooked for about 3-4 mins on each side, now my courgette was particularly big, if you have a regular courgette I’d recommend cutting it vertically and not cooking for so long.  While I had the pan on I also griddled some slices of pepper.  My grandmother is a much better gardener than me and I also had some of her yellow and red cherry tomatoes which I threw on the pan for a minute. I put all the veg in a bowl with some chunks of feta cheese, sliced basil, lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil that I had brought home from Spain, the really good stuff, mixed and served the salmon on top.  The result was delicious and has been replicated twice..Only problem is I still have half the bloody thing left! Suggestions anyone? 

Salmon with Grilled Vegetables and Feta

Serves 1

Salmon Fillet

Courgette, 4 slices

Red Pepper, 2 slices

Yellow Pepper, 2 slices

About 6-8 Cherry tomatoes

50g feta cheese, cubed

Basil leaves

Extra virgin Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Season the salmon and grill until cooked.

Brush the courgette and pepper with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Place on a hot grill and cook until tender

Add the tomatoes to the grill and cook for 1 minute

Place all the vegetables in a bowl with 2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil, the juice of ½ a lemon, sliced basil leaves and some more salt and pepper, mix gently and place on plate, serve salmon on top. 

Pizza on the Barbecue

So I think it’s pretty clear to most that I love to barbecue, mostly for the pure handiness of it; no pots to wash, quick cooking time but mostly because I get a kick from cooking outside.  Maybe a throwback to my caveman ancestors.  But really how natural does it feel outside cooking something over a hot grill, granted this is Ireland so it will probably be raining but I don’t care!  The other day I came home to find my Dad outside during a torrential downpour with a brolly in his hand barbecuing steaks, now that’s devotion!

Anything that I can possibly try to cook on the grill I will, on Sunday I cooked an entire (well ok apart from the eggs but it is possible) fried breakfast on the bbq including mushrooms and tomatoes, it was so easy and the rashers just look and taste so much better with the tell-tale charred lines of the barbecue.  With this in mind, I was flicking through a great cookbook I have called ‘Grill Master; The ultimate arsenal of back to basics recipes for the grill’ by Fred Thompson it’s a great book that covers every aspect of barbecue cooking…..INCLUDING pizza on the barbecue! Pizza I hear you, say? On the bbq? Really? YES! And it’s really easy.  Also because the crust is cooked on both sides it makes for a crispier base.  Try this and you will make it again and again.  And for those of you who think that making your own pizza dough is too much like hard work or too difficult, it’s really not and the little work is worth it, I promise you will never want a frozen or takeaway pizza again, there is just no comparison.

For me when it comes to pizza toppings, I adopt the motto ‘less is more’, believe me this is one of the rare instances in life when I adopt this term, it’s usually more is more and then a little more for good measure!  But with pizza toppings it works, the Italians our forefathers of pizza practice this idea and if its good enough for the Italians it’s good enough for me... you don’t want your pizza loaded down with toppings to the point of where it gets soggy as the mountain of stuff on top wont be cooked by the time the base is done.   Of course the boyfriend wouldn’t listen to me and LOADED his pizza with everything he could find in the fridge but hey ya can’t win em all.

The trick to the bbq pizza is that the base is cooked on one side, then you flip it, put the toppings on the cooked side and put the lid back down, while the base is cooking so are the toppings, the whole process takes literally 5-6 minutes.  I’m giving you Fred Thompson’s recipe for the dough with some additions from myself and my own pizza sauce recipe.  The toppings are up to you, on this pizza I used caramelized red onion, Parma ham, mushroom and mozzarella but feel free to experiment thats the fun of it!

Fool proof Pizza Dough

160ml warm water

1 package dry active yeast

½ teaspoon sugar

10oz/315g 00 pizza flour

2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Handful fresh thyme, chopped finely

Pizza Sauce

3 cloves garlic, minced

Splash of olive oil

I tin of tomatoes

½ tsp. sugar

Salt & fresh ground black pepper

1 tsp. dried oregano

Handful of fresh basil leaves

Serves 4 and 4 small pizzas or 2 hungry people as 2 large pizzas

To make the pizza dough, a bowl, whisk together the water, yeast and sugar.  Let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes.  Add the flour, oil, salt, pepper and thyme.  Stir until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.  Pull the dough out onto a floured work surface and knead a few times then form into a ball.  Oil a second bowl, put the ball in the bowl and turn it to coat with oil.  Cover the bowl with cling film and place in a warm area for 1 hour or until the dough has doubled in size.

To make the pizza sauce, sauté the garlic in the olive oil on a medium heat for 1-2 minutes, add the tomatoes, oregano, salt and pepper and sugar, allow to simmer for 15 minutes until it has reduced slightly.  Add the basil and take off the heat and allow to cool.

Light or turn on the barbecue to a high heat and allow to come up to temperature.  Oil the grill grate.

Dump the dough onto a floured work surface, then either divide in half or in quarters depending on the side of pizza you are making.  Roll out the dough with a floured rolling pin to the size you want your pizza to be, for the large ones, about 10-12 inches.

Slide the dough onto a sheet of baking paper dusted with semolina (it keeps it from sticking) and carefully slide the dough from the sheet onto the grill.  Cook until underside is well marked, about 2 minutes.

 Using the baking sheet, transfer the crusts, grilled side up back to the work surface.Top the crust with the sauce and whatever toppings you are using, drizzle a little olive oil over the top and using the baking sheet, return the crust to the grill, put the lid down and cook until the crust is crisp and the cheese is melted.

Serve at once.

Dough on the grill before its turned

Adding the toppings to the grilled side

Watermelon Mojitos

I’ve invented a new family tradition.  When I say invented I use this term loosely, ok so I haven’t invented cocktail hour but I have introduced it to my family so let’s just go with that. Yes. Cocktail Hour. It’s wonderful.  The inspiration behind this new tradition is of course, Ina Garten; she loves her booze and always includes a drink recipe in her shows and I love her.  The Americans are big on cocktail hour; I experienced this first hand when I worked in a high end golf club in Cape Cod for the summer.  At the weekends, families would come to the golf club for dinner but first they would all have a cocktail in the bar, also at the weddings I worked, cocktail hour is a big tradition before sitting down for the meal.  In Ireland it’s more like every hour is cocktail hour but we don’t experiment as much as our American cousins.  When bartending in the golf club I had to learn the names of lot of cocktails, Tom Collins, John Collins, Martini, Dirty Martini, extra dirty…excuse me!!! No that actually only means more olive juice before you get on my high horse with me! I used to have a big book of cocktails behind the bar and would panic when a customer asked me a drink I didn’t know. And I have tasted the dirty martini, sure I had to after serving so many of them…it’s not good, tastes like the sea but those Cape Codders went mad for them, actually Cape Codder that’s another drink, vodka and cranberry to you and I.  These drinks are also very strong which points out another difference between us and the Yanks, they want their buzz strong and fast and tend to go home early, we Irish are more like marathon runners, slow, steady and less adventurous,  mainly pints and single measures of gin or vodka but ultimately able to last longer.

Regular Mojitos

So I decided to introduce cocktail hour to my family of a Sunday.  Sundays are when we usually get together in the evening for a nice dinner and some wine, so I thought this was the perfect excuse to try out some cocktails.  It started out with a jug of mojito’s a few weeks ago with mint fresh from my garden which went down extremely well, they are very refreshing and a nice change from a glass of white.  Last Sunday I decided to début my watermelon mojitos, well I say mine and I mean Ina’s.  You blitz up the watermelon in the food processor and that is the substitute for soda, your only mixer…Ina likes her booze!  This recipe made 8 large glasses and let me tell you, 1 each is actually enough they are quite potent and let’s just say lucky the dinner had been made in advance as I don’t think I would have had the head for intense cooking!  I’m definitely continuing the tradition, I decree from now on every Sunday will have cocktail hour, you should try it too, especially these watermelon babies, they will make you feel like you are on holidays with the sand between your toes rather than in your kitchen looking out at a wet miserable Irish 'summer' day!

Watermelon Mojitos

Large bunch of Mint

About a quarter of a small watermelon, try to remove some of the pips

12 ounces Bacardai or light rum (about half of the half bottle)

1/2 cup simple syrup (disolve 1 part sugar to 2 parts water in a saucepan and allow to cool)

Juice of 3 limes

Mash the mint leaves in a mortar and pestel

Puree the watermelon in a food processor untill it is a smooth puree

Put the mashed mint in a large jug, add the puree, rum , sugar syrup and lime juice and give a good stir

Add lots of ice and also ice to the glasses and serve, garnish with a slice of lime

Serve ice cold

Prawn and Cous Cous Salad

I’ve been making variations of this dish for about 5 weeks now so maybe it’s about time that I blogged. It’s definitely a go-to weekday dish, maybe Wednesday.  Monday and Tuesday are over with and the weekend is now practically in sight.  Its easy, relatively quick and involves no real actual heavy cooking, just a lot of chopping which I actually find is quite relaxing after a busy day.  I started this dish with quinoa but recently have moved on to cous cous, simply for the fact that I had no quinoa left!  That’s the thing about this dish, its adaptable to whatever you have handy.  I used chicken last week which works well with pomegranate seeds.  I’m actually apprehensive of trying to write down everything that I put into it tonight but what I basically work from is protein (prawn)+carb (quinoa or (cous cous)+ vegetables (everything!)+seed or nuts (pumpkin) + cheese(feta) + fruits (sultanas) fresh herbs (parsley, mint and coriander) but there are so much other little components that up the flavour factor to make it a true taste explosion I’m going to try and write it down!!  I know it seems like a lot but just trust me on this one, make this once and you will make it over and over, it will become one of your trusty mid-week dinners especially in the Summer and it never gets old because you can keep experimenting with the ingredients.  Also don't worry too much about quantiles, I'm just guestimating the exact measures of everything because the beauty of this salad is that you can just throw ingredients in at a whim and it always works!

Ingredients

Large cup of Cous Cous

1 cup of Sultanas

1 tbsp Curry Powder

1 tsp Turmeric

About 25 large pre-cooked King Prawns

3 cloves of garlic

Olive oil

Big handful of Pumpkin seeds

Bif handful of Sunflower seeds

Half a block of Feta Cheese, diced

1 Small Courgette, grated

1 Carrot, grated

1 Yellow Pepper

1 Red Onion

1 Cucumber

1 Punnet of Cherry Tomatoes

3 Sticks of Celery

1 Small Bunch of Fresh Mint, Coriander and Parsley

For the Dressing

Juice and Zest of One Lemon

Salt and Pepper

Olive Oil
1 Tsp Wholegrain Mustard

First get a massive bowl where you will put all the chopped veg, dice them all so they are quite small and the same size.  Grate the courgette and the carrot.  Meanwhile add the turmeric, curry powder and sultanas to the dry cous cous, add an equal measure of boiling water and cover with cling film and set to one side. Finely dice the chilli and add to the bowl, also add the pumpkin and sunflower seeds and chopped feta cheese.  Now to the prawns, crush the garlic and add to a non-stick pan with a good glug of olive oil, add the prawns and cook gently till the prawns are warmed through.  Your cous cous should now be done, fork the grains so they are fluffy and add to the big bowl of everything.  Also add the prawns, oil and garlic, the freshly chopped herbs and dressing.  So there you go; an everything-but- the-kitchen-sink salad, now sit back and lap up the glory.

Object of my Affection

This is not really a blog post more like an expression of desire.  I love skulls for some reason, can't get enough of them, even have a sugar skull tattoo on my leg! If that's not dedication I don't know what is.  I don't know where this love came from, I'm not a goth, just have a love of all things skull .   Add that passion to another passion of mine, kitchenware and what have you got; my latest obsession this Kitchen Aid.  I could literally spend hours browsing the kitchenware department rather than any clothes shop, I actually get excited about new gadgets like my latest grater which shreds cabbage perfectly and effortlessly for home-made cabbage!!! (sad, i know). Anyway how amazing is this Kitchen Aid? I WANT it! I will know I have arrived when two things happen: 1. I can do my grocery shopping in M&S and 2. I own this Kitchen Aid

The Vulgarity That is Man v Food

Is anyone else getting kind of bored of the programming on the Food Network?  Whenever I turn it on, I am sure to see some incarnation of a programme like this:  A man, usually a very annoying uncharismatic man, travelling the US to show us the most grotesque, calorific, deep fried American ‘specialities’ he can find.  He interviews the chef on how its made then shoves it into his mouth, moaning and groaning at the camera.  A hot dog stuffed with cheese, wrapped in bacon, deep fried and put in a bun with French fries? You got it.  I have a number of problems with this type of programming one of which is why they are all men? Can a women not front a show like this or is she too delicate and frail to take on the monstrosities that these men eat?  A second problem is all the programs are so similar; Man v Food, Diners, Drive Ins and Dives, Meat and Potatoes, Heat Seekers, Extreme Eats, United Tastes of America and Eat Street all follow a related concept.  Not only are these shows all so similar, they seem to be ALWAYS repeated on the channel, every time I turn it on I see Guy Fieri's overtly tanned bleached head!

But my main issue is Man V Food, Oh how I loathe this show from the bottom of my heart and I can’t for the life of me understand why it’s so popular? Surely watching obese Americans gorging mountains of fried food as a competition cannot be classed as entertainment? And if it is, maybe that goes someway to explain what is wrong with this world.  If we first look at it on a simplistic level, this man (Adam Richman) is encouraging obesity, challenging these competitors to eat, eat and eat some more untill they spontaneously combust.  He also gives them helpful tips, like for instance if the challenge is to eat 5 pounds of ice cream in one sitting, you should eat it with a side of bacon as the salty bacon will counteract the sweetness of the ice cream and help get it down your neck. At the end of each programme we see Richman in the centre of a restaurant being cheered to gorge himself on anything from spicy chicken wings, a 30 inch pizza to a burger that would feed a family of 5 for a week, its obnoxious.  In a recent documentary I watched ‘The Men Who Made Us Fat’ on the BBC; in the second programme we were shown how the concept of ‘supersizing’ food contributed to our detriment.  If we see a larger portion on our plate, we are compelled to finish it thus gaining weight. If we now know this why do these ‘challenges’ still exist?  Surely we should be superslimming our portions rather than continuing to eat to excess? Adam Richman is no slim guy but still he seems to have no fears about heart disease and type 2 diabetes that is currently nearly at epidemic status.  Man V Food should come with a health warning; Do not attempt any of these challenges for the sake of your own health.

One of the Challenges 

The show is wrong on so many levels, especially at a moral and sociological level; it promotes gluttony and eating to excess.  As we as a populace are getting fatter by the year, surely it is not right to be advertising obesity and how to fastrack to it? And now Man V Food has evolved into Man V Food Nation, how apt: Richman has realised that maybe his extreme overeating was damaging his health so now he coaches the unsuspecting public on the many ways of gorging.  The vulgarity is palpable, with over a billion people in this world still hungry, the first world need to take a long hard look at themselves.  Not only do these beasts rarely complete the challenge, panting and sweating on the screen, turning green in front of our eyes as they try to resist the urge to vomit, the sheer amount of food waste is sickening.  How can a TV company justify showing this blatant surplus of food when it is aware of poverty and hunger worldwide?

Richman and a fellow challenger

Suffice to say that I rarely turn on the Food Network these days for the reasons outlined above. I cannot bear to look at these people mindlessly stuffing their faces with greasy and downright grotesque food.  Food should be a pleasure, it should be enjoyed with friends and family, it should promote health and taste, it should not be stuffed into ones mouth surrounded by a crowd of people wolf whistling and shouting you on until you are ready to vomit.  Food Network, employ more girls, diversify your programmes don’t opt for lazy broadcasting for the sheer sake of ratings; it’s your moral obligation.