Darina Allen: Comforting recipes I'm turning to while recovering from a knee replacement

This porridge is a wonderful way to add pep to your step, full of vitamins and minerals.

This week, a more personal column. I’m somewhat incapacitated at present, recovering from a knee replacement. As I write it’s been three weeks to the day since my operation. Fortunately, I sailed blissfully into it without realising that it is in fact a major operation — how naive can you be? In many ways, that was a bonus because I didn’t fret too much ahead of time, just delighted to remedy my banjaxed, constantly aching knee.

After three days, I arrived home from hospital with a bag of painkillers and reams of physio instructions. I hate physio but know it must be done. Everybody tells me cheerfully that I’ll be a ‘new woman’ with a new lease of life in three or four months’ time. I certainly hope they’re right.

So, I’ll continue to work on my 90-degree bends (ouch) and give fervent thanks that we can now get ‘spare parts’ when our old joints wear out. I believe my ‘bionic knee’ was actually manufactured locally. How fortunate are we? So lots of healing to be done. The urge to sleep all day long is irresistible but apparently, no — I must get out of bed and walk to get those joints working!

My physio, who is lovely but determined, taught my daughters how to help me. And I’m deeply grateful to all who repeat ‘Mar-vell-ous’ over and over again to encourage my painful efforts and to those who make me laugh and suggest programmes like The Durrells that are easy on the nerves and take my mind off the aches and pains. It’s slow but I definitely think that I’m making progress.

Who knew there is a whole crutch lingo: Bad leg, good leg, and different colour crutches! Mine are Kingfisher blue which, coincidentally, match my blue corduroy dress. It means I get lots of compliments for my stylish but nonetheless totally accidental co-ordination. 

I now know this major op takes time to heal, so I’ve been practising what I preach: Using food as my medicine. I’ve been drinking lots of bone broth with thick slices of buttered bread immersed in the nourishing liquid, so comforting that it should be good for my bones.

Lots of natural yogurt and honey too, with crunchy ashura over the top. This is a delicious Middle Eastern breakfast cereal made from puffed rice, dried fruit, and toasted nuts. It’s brilliant stuff to start the day, as is tangy milk kefir made from our own Jersey milk.

Macroom Oatmeal porridge is another wonderful way to add pep to your step, full of vitamins and minerals. They contain unique antioxidants called avenanthramides — there’s a mouthful!

I went out of my way to find organic, chemical-free, free-range, pasture-fed, beef, lamb, pork, and liver too.

The shrimp season has just opened in Ballycotton. For just a few months in the year we can get these little grey shrimps which turn bright pink when cooked in boiling salted water (1 heaped tablespoon of salt to 1.2 litres of water). They have lots of omega-3 and calcium, particularly if one eats the shells as I do. The heads are too prickly, so I don’t eat them but still suck out the delicious contents from the head.

Carrageen Moss is another favourite with soft brown sugar and Jersey cream; lots of iodine, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.

One of my best treats was this blackberry and sweet geranium posset made from the wild blackberries (high in Vitamin E, K, and C and lots of dietary fibre.) They are dripping off the brambles in hedgerows all over the countryside at present. Pick as many as you can. Use them in every way possible, from breakfast cereals to smoothies, crumbles, tarts, jams, and jellies. 

Best of all they freeze brilliantly. Just freeze flat on trays first, then pour the frozen berries into bags or plastic boxes to enjoy during the winter. The combination of sweet geranium, (Pelargonium Graveolens) and blackberries is a marriage made in heaven. If you don’t already have a plant, look out for them at your local garden centre or we have them here at the Ballymaloe Cookery School Farm Shop in Shanagarry (call in advance: 021 4646785).

Macroom Oatmeal Porridge

recipe by:Darina Allen

Virtually every morning in winter, I start my day with a bowl of porridge. Seek out Macroom stone ground oatmeal which has the most delicious toasted nutty flavour. It comes in a lovely old-fashioned red and yellow packet, which I hope they never change.

Servings

4

Preparation Time

 10 mins

Cooking Time

 20 mins

Total Time

 30 mins

Course

 Main

Ingredients

• 155g Macroom oatmeal

• 1.4 litres water

• 1 level teaspoon salt

• Obligatory accompaniment: soft brown sugar

Method

1. Bring 6 cups of water to the boil, sprinkle in the oatmeal, gradually stirring all the time. Put on a low heat and stir until the water comes to the boil.

2. Cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the salt and stir again.

3. Serve with Jersey cream or whole (preferably raw) milk and soft brown sugar melting over the top or any other favourite toppings of your choice.

4. Leftover porridge can be stored in a covered container in the fridge – it will reheat perfectly the next day but will need some extra water added.

5. Note: If the porridge is waiting, keep covered otherwise it will form a skin which is difficult to dissolve.

Ashura Cereal

recipe by:Darina Allen

Ashura is a traditional Turkish dessert known as Noah’s Ark pudding. This recipe was given to us by Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich from Honey & Co Restaurant in London.

Servings

4

Preparation Time

 10 mins

Cooking Time

 20 mins

Total Time

 30 mins

Course

 Main

Ingredients

• 95ml vegetable oil or coconut oil

• 110g honey

• 110g dark soft brown sugar

• 1 tsp table salt

• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

• ½ tsp ground mahleb seeds or replace with freshly ground cinnamon

• ½ tsp ground cardamom pods

• 1 x packet puffed rice (160g)

• 85g pecans, roughly chopped

• 40g sunflower seeds

• 50g pumpkin seeds

• 30g sesame seeds

• 85g almonds, very roughly chopped

•  

Method

1. Preheat the oven to fan 170°C/Gas Mark 4. Line a couple of large flat baking trays with some baking parchment.

2. Combine the oil, honey, and sugar in a medium saucepan and set on a high heat.

3. Mix well and bring to the boil, stirring occasionally to avoid it burning on the base.

4. Place the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl and mix well.

5. Once the honey syrup is bubbling, carefully pour it over the dry ingredients in the bowl. Use a large spoon to stir, turning the contents of the bowl over a few times until everything is well coated with the syrup.

6. Transfer the mixture to the baking trays and flatten it out a little so that there is an extra there is an even layer of cereal.

7. Place in the centre of the oven and bake for 10 minutes.

8. Carefully remove one tray at a time and mix the cereal around to make sure everything is getting roasted and crispy.

9. Return the trays to the oven for an additional five to six minutes, then remove and leave the ashura to cool entirely on the trays before breaking into large clusters.

10. Once the cereal is cold, transfer it to an airtight container.

11. This keeps for well over two weeks, if you don’t get addicted and eat it all before then!

Rory O’Connell’s Blackberry & Sweet Geranium Posset

recipe by:Darina Allen

Make these delightful little possets with the freshly picked wild blackberries now in season. Rory likes to serve them in little cups or glasses.

Servings

8

Preparation Time

 15 mins

Cooking Time

 15 mins

Total Time

 30 mins

Course

 Dessert

Ingredients

• 400ml cream

• 90g caster sugar

• 5 leaves of rose- or lemon-scented geranium

• 100g blackberries

• 50ml lemon juice

Method

1. Place the cream, sugar, geranium leaves and blackberries in a small saucepan and bring to a bare simmer.

2. Stir the saucepan occasionally to encourage the sugar to dissolve.

3. Maintain that bare simmer for five minutes. If the cream boils hard, the texture and consistency of the posset will be spoiled.

4. Remove the saucepan from the heat and stir in the lemon juice.

5. You will notice the colour of the cream improving dramatically as soon as the lemon juice goes in.

6. Now strain the cream through a sieve to remove the geranium leaves and at the same time push as much of the blackberries through as possible.

7. Pour the strained cream into eight little cups or glasses and allow to cool before placing in the fridge for three hours to set. The posset will keep perfectly in your fridge for several days. I like to cover them to protect the delicate flavour.

8. Serve with a little softly whipped cream and if you have them, a fresh or crystallised rose petal and a nougatine biscuit.
   Recipe from Rory O’Connell’s ‘The Joy of Food’ published by Gill Books

Climate Carnival, September 29-30 

There’s a festival with a difference coming up in Co Laois — a pretty awesome lineup of speakers, musicians, creatives, and scientists to brainstorm and share radical and creative solutions to drive planetary climate change.

All going well with the bionic knee, I plan toparticipate in a panel discussion entitled The Eat More Plants Paradox: Ireland’s Food Insecurity curated by Michael Kelly of Grow It Yourself Ireland with lots of suggestions of how each and every one of us can make a difference in our own environment.

Check out climatecocktailclub.org to see content of the two-day event at Ballintubbert House,Stradbally, Co Laois.

Emerald Mushrooms 

Audzej Rozyeki who originally hails from Poland, is passionate about fungi and has been growing lots of mushroom varieties as a hobby for seven or eight years.

He recently managed to rent a warehouse in Knockraha and now his hobby has become abusiness. He sells his fresh lion’s mane and oyster mushrooms at Mahon Point Farmers Market on Thursdays and Douglas on Saturday mornings.

He also has a selection of dried mushrooms and intensely flavoured mushroom powder. Look out for him at the markets or alternatively you can contact him at www.emeraldmushrooms.ie