Weekend food with Darina Allen
Despite the weather, we still have lots of ripe tomatoes, beets, marrows and overgrown courgettes in the garden, plus we are surrounded by wild food. Most of the blackberries have ripened at last, we’ve had a ton of damsons and sloes and there are still lots of elderberries and crab apples to be gathered for free.
Last week, with my Euro Toques chefs hat on, I spoke to students at Cork Institute of Technology about wild and free foods and how to forage for them.
I brought over 25 plants, berries, nuts, mushrooms, seaweeds and shellfish with me, all of which had been gathered in a couple of hours within a mile of the Ballymaloe Cookery School in Shanagarry.
Plants: Watercress, sorrel, chickweed, sweet woodruff, tansy, goosefoot, salad burnet, comfrey, samphire (marsh and rock)
Fruit and Berries: Crab-apples, blackberries, elderberries, sloes, damsons, hazelnuts, chestnuts, Spanish (edible), horse chestnut (not edible.)
Seaweeds: Carrageen moss, alaria, bladder wrack, slocan or nori, kelp, dilisk or dulse…
Wild Mushrooms: Chantrelles, yellow legs, girolles, field mushrooms.
Shellfish: Periwinkles, limpets, mussels, cockles, razor clams.
I suggested lots of ways to use each food and also made several recipes. Crab apple jelly is a brilliant recipe to make on its own or a catch all to add all manner of wild fruit and berries to — sloes, damsons, elderberries, haws, rowanberries… The name can be changed depending on the content.
A mixed jelly with all or some of the above additions can be called Hedgerow Jelly and very good it is too — better still it can be used as a sweet or savoury condiment and is equally good with scones or roast pork or game.
We just had a few wild mushrooms, they are great on buttered toast but they can add excitement to many other dishes. We decided to add them to a frittata, a simple filling recipe that students could easily make on one gas ring. It would serve six hungry or four ravenous students, also great in a lunchtime sandwich the next day.
I added some chopped tansy to an omelette — the quintessential fast food, normally a French omelette takes 30 seconds to make and maybe 45 seconds if one wants to add a filling. However, mine took about 20 seconds to make such was the intensity of the heat on the state-of-the-art halogen hob.
Needless to say it causes much hilarity and consternation and a red face (mine) when I managed to set off the smoke alarm in the super duper new demonstration area.
Wild watercress has more depth of flavour than farmed versions, so see if you can find some.
This soup has been a favourite on the menu of Ballymaloe House since it opened in 1963.
45g (1 1/2 ozs) butter
150g (5ozs) peeled and chopped potatoes
110g (4ozs) peeled and chopped onion
Salt and freshly ground pepper
600ml (1 pint) water or homemade chicken stock or vegetable stock
600ml (1 pint) creamy milk
225g (8ozs) chopped watercress (remove the coarse stalks first)
Melt the butter in heavy bottomed saucepan. When it foams, add the potatoes and onions and toss them until well coated.
Sprinkle with salt and freshly ground pepper. Cover and sweat on a gentle heat for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile prepare the watercress. When the vegetables are almost soft but not coloured add the hot stock and boiling milk.
Bring back to the boil and cook until the potatoes and onions are fully cooked.
Add the watercress and boil with the lid off for 4-5 minutes approx. until the watercress is just cooked.
Do not overcook or the soup will lose its fresh green colour.
Puree the soup in a liquidiser.
Taste and correct seasoning.
A brilliant little recipe cooked in minutes, given to us by Jonathan Jones of the Anchor and Hope restaurant in London.
The sorrel cuts the richness of the sauce in a particularly appealing way.
Serves 8-10
A side of wild or organic salmon — pin-boned and well-trimmed
A little melted butter
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
300ml (10fl oz) double cream
Dry white wine (optional)
70g (2¾oz) sorrel — shredded
Preheat the oven to 230C/450F/Gas Mark 8.
Paint a main course plate per person with melted butter, slice the salmon fairly thinly at an angle, as you might for smoked salmon.
Cover the base of the plate with one layer of just overlapping salmon.
Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Bring the cream to boil, season and take off heat.
Paint the salmon with melted butter (and drizzle a little white wine over if you like).
Place in the preheated oven for two to three minutes.
Immediately, stir the shredded sorrel into the cream.
Remove the plate from the oven, the salmon should be slightly undercooked.
Spoon a little sorrel cream over the top and enjoy immediately.
A little bit of tansy really wakes up an omelette.
Serves 1
2 eggs, preferably free range organic
1 dstsp water or milk
1 tsp tansy, finely chopped
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 dstsp clarified butter or olive oil
Omelette pan, preferably non-stick, 23cm (9-inch) diameter
Heat the omelette pan over a high heat.
Warm a plate in a low oven. Whisk the eggs with the water or milk in a bowl with a fork or whisk, until thoroughly mixed but not too fluffy.
Add the finely chopped tansy. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper.
Put the warm plate beside the cooker.
Have the filling also to hand, hot if necessary with a spoon at the ready.
Add the clarified butter to the hot pan, it should sizzle immediately.
Pour in the egg mixture.
It will start to cook instantly so quickly pull the edges of the omelette towards the centre with an egg slice or plastic spatula, tilting the pan so that the uncooked egg runs to the sides four, maybe five, times.
Continue until most of the egg is set and will not run any more, the centre will still be soft and uncooked at this point but will continue to cook on the plate. If you are using a filling, spoon the hot mixture in a line across the centre at this point.
To fold the omelette: Flip the edge just below the handle of the pan into the centre; change your grip on the handle so you can hold the pan almost perpendicular over the plate so that the omelette will flip over again.
Finally, half roll, half slide the omelette onto the plate so that it lands folded in three. Serve immediately.
In July Peter Shanahan opened an excellent little fish shop and deli — ‘Fish!’ — at Owenahincha Cross. Peter sells fish fresh from Union Hall and Baltimore as well as Rosscarbery black and white pudding, Glenilen country butter; Union Hall smoked salmon and mackerel… Contact 087-1215248 / fishrosscarbery@gmail.com / www.freshfishrosscarbery.com
Local, clean, authentic fresh produce — that’s what the new Urru Greengrocer in Bandon promises their customers. Run by local food writer Diane Curtin, it provides a platform for local artisan foods. www.urru.ie; www.facebook.com/urruculinarystore
The Rural Food Skillnet has a number of courses scheduled for the remainder of the year. Wednesday, October 26 and Thursday, October 27 is Butchery and Small Scale Meat Production with Teagasc in Ashtown and on the Wednesday, November 9 and Thursday, November 10 it’s a Farmhouse Cheese Production course in Moorepark. Contact John Moriarty, Project Manager, Rural Food Skillnet. Tel: 068-23429 / 087-2055676; email: ruralfood@eircom.net; web: nekd.ie/index.php/skillnet
At the National Irish Food Awards this year, Una’s Pies won all three prizes in the Pies and Quiches category. You can find Una at Mahon Point Farmers Market every Thursday from 10am to 3pm — contact 087-2859957.
FOOD APPS: Find all the very best places to eat, drink & stay in Ireland with Georgina Campbell’s Ireland Guide iPhone app.
Neven Maguire’s new iPhone cookery app has 60 of his favourite recipes.
And not forgetting our own Rachel Allen’s app, with 66 of her favourite home recipes.
