Ireland – Shananigans Blog

Aldridge Lodge Restaurant Duncannon

I love to travel, to wander the world in search of new experiences and great food, but sometimes the best treats of all are on my own doorstep. This weekend is one of those lovely summer weekends in Duncannon. My Big Green Egg has been on since 6 am this Sunday morning and Pulled Pork and Beer Can Chicken are cooking away as I write. I’m preparing a barbecue for 12 of our family to celebrate my Mum’s birthday and my own which we both shared on 18th July and I’m taking a short break to reflect on the moment and the place.
As I sit here, gazing out at the expanse of still water and the view down to Hook Head, I’m reminded of what a beautiful country Ireland is and how privileged I am to come from the south east corner of this island. I woke at 4 am this morning and, in the early morning light, a row of rooks had lined up on the telegraph wires outside my dormer window for a natter. A faint tinge of pink was already beginning to seep into the sky, and I acknowledged, with gratitude, the joy of living sufficiently far north of the equator to savour these long days and bright early mornings of birdsong and racket. Sometimes the true value of travel is appreciating the place to which we return.
This is is my second weekend in a row in Duncannon. Last weekend I visited my Mum in Wexford to mark the anniversary of my Dad’s passing 8 years ago and she came down with me for the night. We got a cancellation booking at Aldridge Lodge and dropped in for Saturday evening dinner which turned into an early celebration of our birthdays.

Today is exactly 9 years since my first visit to Aldridge. Back in 2005 I had heard rumours locally that Billy Whitty and his partner Joanne Harding were opening a new restaurant and guest house. I knew Billy’s reputation from Horetown House and in late May that year, on one of our Sunday walks, we wandered out past the mobile home park up the the road towards Hook Head to investigate. We peered through the windows of the unfinished house and knocked on the door to make a provisional booking to celebrate a significant birthday.
That occasion in July 2005, shortly after Aldridge opened its doors, turned out to be the last big family get together attended by my whole family including my beloved Dad. We had a raucous celebration, waking the unfortunate German tourists in the room above with our sing song. (Sorry lovely tourists). The memories of that night, and the sunlit barbecue in our back garden the next day, are with me still. Even then it was clear that Aldridge Lodge was set to be a special place offering exceptional food and hospitality.
Since then the restaurant is where we have celebrated every important family event – my Mum’s 80th birthday, our family meal before Claire and Mike’s Wedding, our grandson Dermot’s first outing to an Irish restaurant, countless birthdays and Mother’s Days and New Year’s Eves. It is where Shane told Derry that he and Shan had decided to name their unborn son after him. It’s where we go once in a while on the spur of the moment when there’s no food in the fridge and, if we are lucky, Billy and Joanne can squeeze us in for a table.
While our lives have changed with the passing of the years, gaining new family members and losing others precious to us, Billy and Joanne have gone on to build the excellence and the reputation of their guest house and restaurant. They’ve held a Michelin Bib Gourmand since 2007 and no year goes by without them picking up another award for their food and their service, most recently Best Chef in Leinster at the Irish Restaurant Awards. Along the way, they’ve had a baby daughter Caitlin, born completely unexpectedly on 13th April 2012, my son Shane’s birthday. And when I say “completely unexpectedly”, I mean just that. Joanne was making beds in the guesthouse and contemplating a pile of ironing when she went into labour not realising she was pregnant. Like everything else in life, she took the experience in her stride with characteristic aplomb and she and Billy embraced Caitlin with love into their busy lives.
And they work so hard. It is a relatively small operation and Billy is always in the kitchen, controlling every detail of every dish that comes to the table. Joanne is front of house, greeting each new arrival with a warm smile, her engaging personality making you feel more like a guest than a customer. Between them and their loyal team, every detail is attended to. Despite the friendly and relaxed atmosphere, they pay close attention to small details in the laying of the table and the service from the moment you arrive until you are waved off from the front door with a smile and a flurry of good wishes.
And the food, oh the food. It delivers. It excels every time..
Take our impromptu dinner last week for instance.

Mum and I were seated at the window with a view out towards Duncannon on one of those peachy summer evenings when the light set the fields aglow. This is my favourite table in the dining room which is a light, airy, modern space on two levels, walls decorated with local artwork. We were served a little cup of home made red pepper soup while we made our choices. A selection of homemade breads was brought to our table along with our drinks. Out in the reception room other guests were arriving and choosing from the menu over pre-dinner drinks.

Scallops with Black Pudding Toast and Red Onion Marmelade — Scallops with Black Pudding Toast and Red Onion Marmalade

I opted for a starter of Scallops with Black Pudding Bread Toast and Red Onion Marmalade.

Mum had a Crab Cocktail but this was no ordinary seafood cocktail. It was a work of art. I’m not surprised that Billy won Seafood Chef of the Year at the 2013 Georgina Campbell Awards. His creations use only the best of locally caught produce, including lobster from his Dad’s lobster pots so you can expect the zinging fresh taste of the sea to leap off the plate.

My Mum waxed lyrical about her main course of Pan-Fried Fillet of Kilmore Monkfish with Samphire, Wild Herbs, De-hydrated Tomato and a Fennel Cream.

I opted for the main course special which was a slow-cooked Short-rib of Beef served with clams. Short-rib is a tricky cut to present well and the combination of long slow cooking and the unusual pairing with clams elevated this dish above the ordinary. Seasonal vegetables and chips were served on the side.

We didn’t think we would have room for dessert but we couldn’t resist sharing a Wexford Strawberry Mess. This was almost too pretty to eat but we ate it anyway and it tasted as good as it looked. You can’t beat Wexford strawberries for flavour.

Then Joanne surprised us with an early birthday treat – two perfect little tiramisu just for us.

The wine list is short and offers a good value selection of interesting wines by the glass, half litre and bottle. I chose a half litre of a Spanish white wine – Macabeo Vina Garria – and then asked for a bottle of red to be opened so that I could have a glass with the short-rib. Joanne suggested La Bascula Catalan Eagle from Tindal Wines.

This full-bodied spicy red made from Garnacha, Carinena and Syrah grapes worked beautifully with the rich beef. Joanne kindly provided a wine gift bag when we were leaving so that we could take the rest of it away with us. She also organised a local taxi so that I could leave the car and collect it the following morning. Sated, Mum and I chugged off in a 16 seater people carrier for the 5 minute journey home, my Mum clutching my bottle of wine.
Our total bill, including wines and before discretionary service came to €127.75. The dinner menu itself is €38.50. The quality, presentation and value of this food stood comparison to the best meals I’ve had in Ireland and abroad in recent years. Even better value is to be had mid-week and on Sunday evenings when a set tasting menu is served for €28.50.
The restaurant is open Wednesdays to Sundays throughout the year except for a few weeks in January. They also have lovely bedrooms available above the dining room for those who make a long distance trek for their dinner. On Sunday morning when I walked up from the village to collect my car, Joanne was there, cheery as always and offering me coffee as she served breakfast to her guests. They work hard that pair.
Over the past nine years Joanne and Billy have given me some insight into the life of restauranteurs. It is a tough and demanding profession that rewards sustained effort and resilience in face of setbacks. You would want to love it to live that life. There must have been rough times since they opened in the heady days of the Celtic Tiger but they have weathered the recession and this summer Joanne says “every night feels like Saturday.” Nine years on I think of them as friends and an integral part of our Duncannon life. Next year I will be having another significant birthday to coincide with the 10th anniversary of their opening. No prizes for guessing where we will want to celebrate.

Aldridge Lodge Restaurant & Guesthouse
Duncannon
New Ross
Co. Wexford
Ireland

Telephone: +353 51 389116
Email: info@aldridgelodge.com

www.aldridgelodge.com

From Duncannon via Beijing – Shananigans Pulled Pork

Well hello there. I’m the pool of liquid on the sofa in Shane and Shan’s Beijing apartment trying my best to reconstitute myself into human form. I am back in China for a second time in as many months and it is hot, hot, hot. Summer has arrived with a vengeance. The temperature rises from 28 degrees C at 6 am to a humid high of 36C in the early afternoon and then slowly drops again overnight. Even now at 11 pm on a Saturday night it has barely slipped down to 32C and the timid air-conditioning in this 21st floor apartment is making little impact. I am nearly as well cooked as the slow-cooked pulled pork in the recipe below.
It is my fifth visit to Beijing in less than two years and I am reminded how definite the seasons are here – the cold, sharp winter followed by a short Spring, a long stifling summer and a short autumn. The locals adapt. “Beijing air-conditioning” is the preferred attire of the menfolk with their t-shirts rolled up to allow any breeze to cool their bellies. The women carry home enormous water melons tied up with string to eat in wedges or press into juice. The streets in this residential area are teeming with people and makeshift stalls have sprung up all over the place selling juices and yoghurt drinks. Girls in pretty short dresses carry floral umbrellas to ward off the sun’s rays. The skies are uncharacteristically clear of smog and a soft wind rustles the trees providing limited shade on the uneven sidewalks. In the evenings groups of every age gather in any open space they can find to perform exercises to music.

Exercising in Beijing - a long way from Duncannon Beach — Exercising in Beijing – a long way from Duncannon Beach

My visit this time is part business, part family reunion and it comes with the unparalleled pleasure of knowing my grandson Dermot is sleeping soundly in the next room. In the six weeks since I last saw him he has changed again from toddler to small boy. He has the same impish sense of humour but it now comes with a patter of conversation in Chinese and I’m struggling hard to learn new words as fast as he does. By our next reunion he will have will have long passed me out and he already understands what is said to him in Chinese and English.
I will fill you in on some of my dining experiences on this trip over the next few blog posts but first I owe it to my loyal followers to post the recipe for barbecued pulled pork which I have been working on for the last while.
When I started the blog in the Summer of 2012, my first original recipe was for Sichuan Seafood Duncannon Style, named for the little fishing village in the south east of Ireland where I like to spend my weekends. The recipe was subsequently included in Goodall’s A Modern Irish Cookbook, which was recently awarded “Best in the World” at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. This is a book of recipes from Ireland’s thriving food blogging community and represents what Irish home cooking looks like today in all its diversity. All the profits are donated to Cork Penny Dinners and Crosscare charities and it can still be downloaded from www.goodalls.ie for €2.99.
Anyway the excitement about the award reminded me that it was about time that I came up with a new recipe. I wanted to create one that would use the best of Irish ingredients, have at least a hint of Chinese flavours, be influenced in some way by Duncannon and be capable of being cooked on the Big Green Egg as, after all, that’s where I do most of my BBQ cooking. Cue Twitter to the rescue. My friend Sinead @BumblesofRice happened to mention the fabulous pulled pork she had tasted at Roches Bar in Duncannon during our #Funcannon June bank holiday weekend.
A tweet to Cindy @RochesBar was all it took to get hold of the recipe their chef Craig Power had used. He has recently returned from England to his family home in nearby village of Slade and he cooks his pork shoulder in the oven for 12 hours at low temperature using a five spice rub and Stonewell Craft Cider. Like all good chefs he doesn’t use measurements so the recipe below is my own interpretation of his basic idea adapted for the barbecue. Along the way I consulted other Twitter friends and BBQ experts – @bbq_joes and @RoomOutside – and of course I can never fire up the Egg without reading every relevant recipe from @AdamPerryLang – my favourite BBQ guru.
This day last week, Summer Solistice -夏至 or xia zhi in China- was the perfect day to try it out. It was a glorious day in Ireland and one that made me dream forward to when Dermot comes to live in Ireland and can roam free in the clear, fresh air of an Irish summer in our Duncannon garden.
So with thanks to my Twitter friends for the inspiration, here goes. This could be cooked on any covered BBQ using indirect heat. Just allow yourself plenty of marinading and cooking time, starting with rubbing the pork the night before and getting your BBQ on early the next morning for an evening dinner. It needs very little minding but including the time it takes to light the BBQ and rest the pork it takes about 11 hours. Believe me, it’s worth the wait, it tastes delicious.
Shananigans Duncannon Pulled Pork

Pork shoulder ready for a long slow-cook

Ingredients

1 bone in whole pork shoulder, fat scored
2 bottles Stonewell Craft Cider or any dry cider
4 star anise

Injection (optional)

1 cup apple juice
½ cup water
2 tbs light brown sugar
1 tbs salt
Dash of soy sauce

Rub

3 tbs soft brown sugar
3 tbs Chinese five spice powder
1 tbs salt
1 tsp ground pepper

Cider Mop Spray

½ cup apple juice – I used Crinnaghtaun but any tart apple juice will work
½ cup water
2 tbs cider vinegar

Wrap Mix

6 tbs honey
2 tbs apple juice

Glaze

Hoisin sauce – any good quality bottled sauce or make your own from the recipe in the post for Big Green Egg Peking Style Roast Duck

To serve

Hoisin sauce
Homemade apple sauce – simply peel and chop a large cooking apple, add a tablespoon of water and sugar to taste. Simmer gently in a saucepan or cook for 5 minutes in a covered bowl in a microwave until softened. Stir before serving and adjust sweetness to taste.
Chinese pancakes (the type used for wrapping Peking Duck which you will find in the freezer section of your local Asian market)

For the BBQ

Oak lump wood
Apple wood chips (optional)

Method
The night before

Combine the rub ingredients and mix well.
Pierce the pork fat all over at about 3 cm intervals by inserting a small blade deep into the flesh and twisting aggressively to create small holes.
If using the injection, mix the injection ingredients until the sugar is dissolved and inject the mix deep into the pork butt with an injection needle.
Season the pork all over with the rub and massage it into the holes, reserving any leftover rub for later use.
Let it stand in the fridge overnight, on a plate or in a covered bowl, to absorb the flavours.

Prepare the Big Green Egg

Remove the pork from fridge and allow to come to room temperature while the Big Green Egg is heating up. Sprinkle with the remaining rub.
Prepare your grill for indirect cooking using oak lumpwood and heat to 130 degrees c. Soak some apple wood chips if you have them and drain them and add to the Big Green Egg when it has come to temperature. Insert the plate setter with legs up and place a drip pan under the grill rack. Add a bottle of cider and the star anise to the drip pan.
Place the pork butt, fat side up on the grill. Mix the ingredients for the cider mop spray and place in a spray bottle. After about 3 hours, when a nice crust has formed on the pork, spritz the pork with the spray. Spritz it at hourly intervals thereafter. Cook for about 6 hours before wrapping in foil.

Six hours later

After 6 hours get two large sheets of foil and place them on top of one another. Remove the pork from the grill and place it on top of the foil. Combine the honey and apple juice for the wrap mix. Drizzle the wrap mix over the pork. Wrap up the pork to make a sealed parcel. Return it to the grill and cook for 2 hours or more until an instant read thermometer reads 88 degrees C.
Remove the pork from the grill. Wrap the foil package in heavy towels and rest for at least one hour.
Carefully unwrap the pork, reserving the honey and apple juices. Spritz with the apple spray. Drizzle the reserved juices and some hoisin sauce over the pork and return it to the grill for up to 30 minutes to tighten and carmelise the glaze
Serve the whole shoulder of pork on a platter. Pull the melting, tender pork apart into shreds and chunks with two forks or “Bear Claws”. Serve with apple sauce, hoisin sauce and pancakes on the side and allow your guests to help themselves by spreading some of the sauces on each pancake and wrapping them around the pork shreds.

A Tale of Three (Irish) Restaurants

A word of warning. This is not a restaurant review. It’s just a reflection of what it’s like to visit Irish restaurants where you are made feel at home and embraced and welcomed like old friends of the family.
It’s been a quare few weeks. My Mum ended up in hospital for a week or two but has made an excellent recovery, my daughter Claire experienced various traumas at the hands of the normally excellent Australian health services but is also on the mend, I got stricken down by a bug that has had me flattened and fairly uncommunicative for over two weeks.
But this week we were reunited in Ireland, a rare coming together of three generations of the women in our family to celebrate my Mum’s birthday and mine which she and I share on 18th July and to catch up with Claire’s friend Diane who is dealing, with spirit, with her own health challenges at the moment.
Normally on these occasions I do most of the cooking at home but this time it made more sense to have our special meals out. As a result we’ve eaten in three different restaurants in the past week, all a powerful reminder that the so-called “Irish welcome” is not a myth, it’s a very special experience of being treated like guests and not just as customers.
Restaurant 1 – China Sichuan, Sandyford, Dublin
First up was China Sichuan in Sandyford, Dublin. Kevin Hui the owner has become a friend since he welcomed me inside the kitchen of the China Sichuan nearly a year ago when this blog was barely new born. It has become our “go to” place for family reunions and departures. It’s where we had our farewell dinner for Shane and his Chinese wife Shan when they were home a few months back and Shan declared it more authentically Chinese than she had ever experienced outside China.
Kevin has acquired a new chef recently, Andy Foo who has worked in Yauatcha in Soho, London which is my favourite Chinese restaurant on the planet. Andy is doing fabulous things to the menu at China Sichuan. He is refreshing old favourites like Luo Bo Gao (Chinese turnip cake) and gradually introducing new dishes including soft shell crab with roasted almonds which is sublime.
Last Tuesday night we went there with Claire and Mike and her friend Diane and simply put ourselves in the hands of Kevin to organise an impromptu tasting menu which would play to our taste for Sichuan food and our flagging appetites. Dish after dish appeared at our table, some hearty meat dishes zinging with spice, some light, steamed fish releasing the fresh flavours of the sea, vegetable and noodle dishes in heart-catching sauces, none gloopy or clawing, all bursting with flavour. All five of us were blown away by the experience. Taste buds tickled for the first time in many weeks, we left sated and oozing contentment and collapsed at home to watch Enchanted together because who doesn’t like a happy ending.

China Sichuan reunion — Family get together at China Sichuan

For once, living in the moment, I didn’t take many photos of the food but on 31st July you can have the chance to experience this quality of food for yourself. Chef Andy Foo has arranged a special tasting menu of 7 dishes, each paired with wines for €75 and all proceeds go direct to Laura Lynn Children’s Hospice. You can read about it on China Sichuan’s Facebook Page here. Kevin didn’t ask me to mention this but I’m doing so because it is a very special cause. Kevin is cycling Paris to Nice for the cause later this year with a group of his friends and customers.
Restaurant 2 – Samphire at the Waterside
Next up was Thursday’s visit to Samphire at the Waterside in Donobate where we were joined from Wexford by my Mum to celebrate our birthdays. So there were now six of us including Diane who we decided (not for the first time) to adopt as our second daughter for the week. Chef Tom Walsh at Samphire is another of the friends I made through the blog and Twitter as he got involved unsolicited in giving me ideas for recipes such as Braised Pork Cheeks and of course his chilli jam is now legendary. He is an emerging talent to watch.
We dined on delicious food of local provenance from the set menu and the optional extra dishes. We had the best of fresh, local seafood, vegetables and lamb beautifully presented in a glorious location as the sun set over the Irish sea after another peachy day.

Three generations at Samphire at The Waterside

Consider a trip out by train some summer evening or arrange to stay over night over the autumn or winter. The nice folks at the Waterside will collect your from Donobate Station and return you there. Be warned Tom, I intend paying a visit to your kitchen some day soon.
Claire and Mike returned to the UK yesterday for a week so I decided to spend some quality time with my Mum and we had an evening of great entertainment at Michael Bublé at the O2 last night courtesy of tickets I won from the nice people at Rewarding Times.
Today Mum and I made a cross-country trek via Kildare Village to the lovely folks at A Room Outside, Caroline and Liam so that I could investigate a Big Green Egg barbecue and onwards to Duncannon. (Watch this space dear readers, the Big Green Egg is a very sophisticated version of the traditional Chinese ceramic clay pot and I’m smitten. Now I just have to convince my Mum that it’s not called a “Big Green Chicken”.)

Restaurant 3 – Sqigl, Duncannon
I tweeted ahead yesterday as I often do to see if Sqigl could fit us in for a quick early-bird in this friendly neighbourhood restaurant above Roches Bar. Bur shock, horror, the restaurant was block-booked for the night by a local group. Not to worry, a quick consultation with the chef and Cindy came back by Twitter to say the chef would open early at 6.30 to feed me and my Mum before the group arrived.
There’s something about coming into Wexford via the Passage East – Ballyhack ferry which, at any time, catches the back of my throat but today, with my Mum at my side, after travelling the glorious green and verdant Irish countryside not yet parched yellow by the heat of the last few weeks, it was very special. It was that sweep down into Duncannon, past Star of the Sea church with the view over the harbour and the sea more blue and the tide fuller than I’ve ever seen it.

Sqigl menu — The new menu cover at Sqigl – photo by Gerry Browne

We made it to Sqigl on the dot of 6.30 as they unlocked the door specially for us. The lovely local staff served us simple, delicious prawns and scallops, followed by locally caught hake and fresh fruit pavlova. Squigl is a quality local restaurant serving fresh, flavoursome, locally sourced food. It never disappoints.

Sqigl hake — Perfect fresh hake at Sqigl

My Mum and I walked back up the hill to our little summer house linking arms as the sun set.
Three very different restaurants. Three friends made as a direct result of this blog and Twitter. Three places that restore my faith in Ireland, our people, our innate kindness, our hospitality and our food. And in all three places the value for money and service was excellent.
PS: The only ones missing form these few days of celebrations were Shane, Shan and Dermot. But they did send me this birthday photo greeting from Dermot, my first ever “happy birthday Nai Nai”. Say a collective “aw” people….

Sydney Seaplanes Lunch at Cottage Point Inn

There’s something very evocative about flying boats and sea planes. I have been fascinated by them since I visited the Flying Boat Museum in Foynes, Co. Limerick which recalls the nostalgic era from 1937 to 1945 where Foynes, on the Shannon estuary on the western coast of Ireland, briefly became the centre of the aviation world. That delightful museum is housed in the original terminal building of Foynes airport and features a full size replica of the B314 flying boat which transported the first adventurous transatlantic passengers. If you get a chance pay it a visit.
Rose Bay in Sydney Harbour was also pivotal in the aviation world in that era when a first class mail service was delivered to the “colonies” by flying boat. It still holds its airport licence and is now the home of Sydney Seaplanes.

How many miles from here? — How many miles from Rose Bay NSW?

As we have too little time for side-trips outside Sydney on this short visit to Australia, it was Claire who suggested we take a once-in-a lifetime trip and fly to lunch at Cottage Point Inn on the Hawkesbury River in the heart of the National Park north of Sydney.
Our plane for the day was a “Cambria” VH-NOO DHC-2 Beaver named after a classic Empire Flying Boat. de Havilland in Canada started producing these single-engine monoplanes after World War II and their construction was placed in the top 10 most influential Canadian developments in history.

Our pilot Andy, who was born in Alaska and lived in Oregon most of his life, explained that the one we were travelling in was built in 1961 and has been used in the Bolivian airforce and as a crop-duster among other things before becoming part of the Sydney Seaplanes fleet. These hard-working planes go on and on and are completely manual in operation.
At 11.30 am six of us passengers set off with Andy, sweeping over the glorious beaches and pristine seas north of Sydney and in over the bush to land at Cottage Point Inn.

Landing cottage point — Landing on the Hawkesbury River

There we had a relaxed lunch of delicious fresh food made with local ingredients. Subtle Asian influences were obvious in the menu which included Rangers Valley Beef Tartare with Quail Egg Yolk and Pan Seared Scallops with Fluid Almond Gel as starters and Steamed Barramundi Fillet and Tasmanian Atlantic Salmon as mains. Denmark Riesling from Western Australia was a good choice to accompany the meal – bone dry but with lots of floral notes – at least that’s how the owner described it. 🙂

Beef tartare — Ranger Valley Beef Tartare

A highlight of a meal of highlights was the plum soufflé served at the end of the long and leisurely meal.

At 3 pm we left the peaceful river side and flew back to Rose Bay in a long sweeping arc over Sydney Harbour. This truly must be one of the most beautiful harbours in the world and the most special way to see it. You begin to appreciate the expanse of water, the beaches stretching away north and south, the bush lands never far away from the modern city centre and the way in which the plain on which the city sits nestles in the arms of the Blue Mountains. And then of course there is the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge, both beautiful from any perspective but especially from a low-flying aircraft.

Opera House — A fascinating angle on Sydney Harbour

Verdict: This was a special trip and definitely a once-in-a lifetime experience, both because it is very expensive and because the memories of that unique perspective on Sydney and its environs are powerful enough to last a life time. Lunch is included in the price but drinks are not and they are pricey at $15 for a glass of wine. It would be nice to have a little time to explore the immediate area around the Inn but the leisurely lunch service did not allow for that.
All, in all a great day out and worth saving up for if you are ever planning a holiday Sydney.
I’m not surprised that Sydney Seaplanes won the 2009 Australian Tourism Award for best Tour/ Transport Operator.
For a much larger selections of photos from the day see the gallery below.
Thank you Andy and Sydney Seaplanes.

Sydney Seaplanes – www.sydneyseaplanes.com.au

Saba: The Cookbook – Stir-fried Beef with Cashews and Asparagus

To celebrate the Vietnamese New Year known as Tet, the lovely Paul Cadden, owner of Saba Thai and Vietnamese Eatery on Clarendon Street Dublin, has given me a copy of Saba: The Cookbook – Inside a Thai/Vietnamese Kitchen to give away on the blog. The book traces the story of Saba and is beautifully illustrated and crammed with Thai and Vietnamese recipes, not to mention a great selection of cocktails.
Now this is the first time I’ve ever had a competition on the blog and, to be honest, I’m a teeny, weeny bit nervous. Bear with me a moment while I work up to it.
It all came about like this. The other day I was looking for help on Twitter to track down Sri Racha chilli sauce to make Kaffir Lime Chilli Prawns for Taste of China when up popped a helpful reply from @SabaDublin. So I dropped into Paul in this “happy meeting place” (that’s what the name means in Thai) for a chat.
Tet coincides with Chun Jie the Chinese Spring Festival and the Vietnamese are also marking the beginning of the Year of the Snake. Snakes are considered to be lucky in Vietnam, having a snake in the house is considered a good omen as it means your family will never starve. Hmmm… I can see certain issues with that if you’re living in Ireland.
Paul offered me the recipe for their fantastic New Year’s cocktail Dragon’s Tail from the cookbook for Taste of China. With our own little grandson Dermot having arrived in Beijing on the very tail of the Year of the Dragon, how could I resist… Try it at home or in Saba – grapefruit vodka, fresh dragon fruit and lemon juice muddled with crushed ice. You will feel as if you have been plunged back in time to colonial Hanoi. (Don’t you love that word “muddled”…)

Vietnamese cuisine has been on my radar since my daughter Claire and her husband Mike went along to check out The Red Lantern in Sydney so I am keen to learn more about it and how it differs from Chinese food. I was delighted when Paul gave me a copy of Saba: The Cookbook so that I could try out some of their recipes at home and also gave me a second copy of the book to offer as a prize.
Which brings me to my first ever giveaway on the blog. As my daughter Claire would say “how exciting!!” Continue reading

Happy Chinese Cooking in the Year of the Snake

I hope wherever you are in the world you have been enjoying celebrating the Chinese New Year and the Spring Festival or Chun Jie.
When I attended the launch of the Year of the Dragon in Meeting House Square, Dublin last February, I had no idea how important the year was going to become for me or that by the end of it we would have our own little Flying Dragon grandson in Beijing – Teng Teng is his pet name in Mandarin to symbolise the movement of the flying dragon but his full name is Dermot Gao O’Neill.

So this year we celebrated the new year in style by attending the Chinese New Year Banquet in the Round Room of the Mansion House, sponsored by Etihad Airways and hosted with good humour by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Naoise Ó’Muirí. It was great fun in a special and historic setting.

We had a full Spring Festival Chinese Style Banquet, using the best of Irish seafood, beef and other produce and then we were treated to a fusion of intercultural entertainment ranging from Chinese opera to a special performance of Riverdance which has taken China by storm.

Sino-Irish Performances — A future Riverdancer in the making

Meanwhile I’ve been busy for the last week, over on www.cny.ie publishing a recipe each day to encourage a wider audience to explore the delicious and positive aspects of Chinese food. We have been featuring recipes from Chinese restaurants around Dublin and fusion dishes that show how Chinese cooking techniques influence the menu in some of our best Irish restaurants. I’ve also included some home-style recipes from Shan and her MaMa to show how easy it is to cook nutritious and appetising Chinese food at home.
When the Spring Festival is over I will tell you more about some of my experiences of reproducing these recipes as home and the pleasure I’ve got from learning new techniques such as how to brine and smoke duck and how to make home made chilli jam and ginger and cucumber pickles. For now I just want to point you in the direction of some of my favourite recipes from the last week. You will find all of them at Taste of China on the Dublin Chinese New Year Festival website here.
I got so much pleasure out of recreating head chef at Isabel’s Baggot St., Niall O’Sullivan’s Lapsang Souchong Tea-Smoked Duck with Scallops, that I felt briefly like a participant on MasterChef, especially with Niall at the other end of a tweet reminding me not to put too much orange in the smoking mix and to let the duck rest after smoking. My first attempt is photographed below.

Tea-smoked Duck with Scallops — Tea-smoked duck with scallops

I liked the lapsang souchong smoked flavour so much that the following night I made a simpler variation, thinly slicing the duck and serving it with the chilli jam I had made for the recipe for Spring Rolls of Duck Confit which the head chef of Samphire@the Waterside, Tom Walsh gave me for Taste of China. As Niall says, I’m not quite sure which chef should get the royalties for that one!
Tom’s chilli jam, which I got right on my second attempt is to die for.

My first attempt at his spring rolls didn’t look quite as pretty as Tom’s version but they sure passed the taste test and were given a firm thumbs up by my tasters at home.

I loved the way my Twitter chef friends entered into the spirit of the Spring Festival, shared their creativity with me and showed endless patience with my attempts to learn their professional techniques.
I’ve also enjoyed getting more recipes from my favourite Chinese restaurant in Ireland – China Sichuan in Sandyford, Dublin who were the first to let me inside their kitchen. Indeed I have so many of owner Kevin Hui’s recipes now that I could almost produce his unofficial cookbook. Chongqing Chicken is a dish I’ve tried to guess the recipe for several times at home so it is great to have the authentic version. And no, the amount of dried chilli mentioned in the recipe is not a mistake. Large quantities of dried chilli are used in this dish for colour and effect. They are not all meant to be eaten. I was quite pleased with my first attempt to recreate this dish at home and even got a compliment from Kevin for my efforts. This is going to be one of my staple week day suppers.

I’ve also discovered a few new (to me) Chinese restaurants in the past week and I can strongly recommend the recipes for Stir-fried Chicken with Celery from New Millennium restaurant beside the Gaiety in Dublin, MaPo Tofu from Green Dragon Well in Killiney Co. Dublin and Kaffir Lime Chilli Prawns from Chi Asian Takeaway in Galway.
I will be posting more Chinese and fusion recipes on Taste of China in the coming week but meanwhile, happy cooking and…
Chun Jie Kuai Le – Happy Spring Festival.
May the Year of the Snake bring health, happiness and prosperity to you and your families wherever you are in the world.

Savouring Savour Kilkenny

I wrote this guest blog post today for my good friends and colleagues in MCSquared so that they could share with their friends and clients some of the fun of Savour Kilkenny. I thought some of my regular reviewers at home and abroad might also enjoy an insight into a special Irish food festival and the power of local volunteering.

What makes a good food festival great? Well take one of Ireland’s most beautiful cities, a community well versed in getting behind a shared passion and an engaging approach from the volunteer organisers that gets young and old, professional chefs and amateur cooks, local producers and consumers all involved in a weekend of fun and good food. Invite in some celebrity chefs, a few respected food critics and lots of enthusiastic food producers and bloggers. Throw in excellent dinners prepared by the best local chefs and a dash of beautiful Autumn weather on an October bank holiday weekend and you have all the makings of a fun and entertaining event.

After a sublime meal on Thursday night in 3 AA rosette The Lady Helen restaurant at Mount Juliet to launch the 2012 Festival, I spoke at Foodcamp at Savour Kilkenny about Shananigans Blog early the next morning.

The aim of my talk was to convince the audience that it is possible to make authentic Chinese food with the best of Irish ingredients. A slow-cooked Chinese stew made with Irish produced wagyu beef, from James Whelan Butchers’ herd in Garrentemple, Co. Tipperary , simmering on the hotplate in the background, helped lure the punters in. I enjoyed telling the story of the blog and of the fun I have had experimenting with using products as diverse as Flahavan’s Porridge Oats from the Love Irish Foodbrand and Irish artisan beers in regional Chinese cuisine.
No sooner had the session finished than I was whisked off to KCLR to The Sue Nunn Show. There I waited in turn to be interviewed after a wonderful bunch of young students who had been through a foodie boot camp with celebrity chefs Anne Neary and Edward Hayden and were to sell their produce in the Young Food Producers Market on The Parade the next day. Their confidence and enthusiasm was inspiring. It seems that every young Kilkenny person aspires to be a chef or play for Kilkenny.

Food Art at Savour Kilkenny — Food art at Savour Kilkenny

It was only slightly daunting to have my wagyu stew “stolen” and tasted live on radio by Chef Anne Neary as soon as my back was turned.

KCLR — Live tasting on local radio – all part of the fun at Savour Kilkenny

Sichuan Seafood "Duncannon" Style

Fuchsia Dunlop describes Sichuan food, Chuan Cai as the spice girl of Chinese cuisine “bold and lipsticked with a witty tongue and a thousand lively moods.” Too true. Even the Chinese warn you against the chilli heat of Sichuan cooking “Ni pa bu pa la?” “Are you afraid of chilli heat?” but once you get it in the right balance it’s addictive and milder alternatives seem bland. Since I returned from China I’ve been hoping to re-create those taste sensations at home.

Drumroll everybody… this is my first time ever to create a dish without a recipe. It’s based on the Seafood Typhoon Style prepared for me Inside the Kitchen of the China Sichuan. One of the things I’m determined to do as I learn to cook Chinese food is to use the best of Irish ingredients along with authentic Chinese spices and flavourings. I’m convinced there’s a marriage made in heaven to be had here. After a morning spent yesterday at Cavistons of Glasthule, thanks to @mumofinvention, learning how to prepare crab and lobster with Peter Caviston, seafood was on my mind as I made my way south to Wexford.

Duncannon sunset — Arriving in Duncannon yesterday evening

Seafood is not readily available in the land-locked province of Sichuan which explains the popularity of Fish-fragrant flavours there – see recipe for Fish Flavoured Pork Shreds. But fish is abundant here in Wexford in the south east of Ireland where I was born and where I spend many weekends in the little fishing village of Duncannon. I recently tracked down, through Twitter, a relatively new fish shop in nearby Arthurstown called Fish Ahoy. They are on Facebook and on Twitter @Fishahoy1. That means that it’s now possible to get fresh fish from Bernie by arrangement on a Sunday morning if a new boat load comes into Dunmore East or Duncannon late on the Saturday night. So I made this dish with the zingy fresh fish that had come in with the last catch of the day yesterday rather than the combination of sole. monkfish, prawns and scallop used in China Sichuan.

So here goes with Sichuan (Chuan Cai) Seafood “Duncannon” Style. It doesn’t pretend to be an authentic Sichuan recipe but it captures the flavours all the same,

Chuan Cai Seafood “Duncannon” Style
Now don’t be expecting very precise amounts of ingredients – I’m new at this lark after all – just play around to suit your personal taste. Continue reading Sichuan Seafood "Duncannon" Style

Inside the Kitchen of the China Sichuan, Dublin

My first experience of Chinese food was at The Universal in Wicklow St, Dublin. As a 17 year old just out of school and “up from the country” there was a heady excitement about spending Saturday morning in the Dandelion market followed by a 10 shilling lunch of chicken and sweetcorn soup, chicken curry with fried rice and pineapple fritters with ice-cream. Oh the sophistication. I can still taste those thick gloopy slices of onion and chicken in their curry sauce. Later I graduated to Wong’s and to this day a Chinese meal doesn’t seem quite right without a few After Eights with the bill. I hankered for them in Beijing.
Sometime in the early 80s, when Claire and Shane were small children, I started cooking Chinese food at home using recipes and sauces from Sharwoods – yellow bean, black bean, hoi sin, sweet and sour, hot chilli. Our first dinner guests sent us a thank you note (people used to do that in those days) asking if we had a bevy of Chinese staff working away in the kitchen. Little did I know where this was heading…

A few years ago I re-discovered the China Sichuan – www.china-sichuan.ie – when food critic Tom Doorley reviewed it in its new location in Ballymoss Rd., Sandyford Industrial Estate, Dublin and I was lured there by the scent of tea-smoked duck and drawn back by the fiery taste of sichuan peppers, a far cry from the Cantonese food of my early Chinese food experiences.

Yesterday Kevin Hui allowed me into his kitchen to watch his head chef Ricky prepare 4 dishes that I should be able to reproduce at home. Well that’s the theory anyway.
China Sichuan is a good example of the challenge top end Chinese restaurants face in the current climate – stick to traditional versions of, in this case, Sichuan cuisine and run the risk that the food will be perceived as too heavy and oily for current tastes; or give the dishes a fresh modern take with the danger of alienating loyal customers and Chinese chefs who like to do things the old way. I encountered the same tensions in China but was bowled over by an emerging lighter, experimental cuisine that still respects traditional ingredients. China Sichuan strives to get the balance right using quality Irish meats and importing specialist spices. I just hope they keep on experimenting.
Sichuan Grilled Chicken
The first dish they showed me is one of the Head Chef’s new dishes – chicken thigh off the bone, marinated for a few hours in chilli bean paste, chilli powder, sichuan pepper (dry-fried and ground) and grilled for about 20 minutes on a medium heat. Simple, light and delicious served with a hot chilli and garlic sauce. It is still work in progress and doesn’t even have a name yet.

Seafood “Typhoon” Style
The second dish was the one that plunged me back into the heart of China and the Sichuan flavours I had come to love. Similar sized pieces of sole, scallops, prawns and monkfish were scored, dipped in egg white and potato flour and very quickly deep fried in a wok while Choi Sum (Chinese spinach) was plunged into boiling water for a minute in the wok next to it.
Most of the oil was discarded from the wok and a paste of minced ginger and garlic added, followed by fresh chilli and spring onions cut at steep angles into “horse ear” slices, dried chilli, Sichuan pepper and fermented black beans which had been soaked in water for a few minutes. The fish was added back in for a few moments to warm through and some chilli oil and Maggi sauce were added to finish it off. This dish made me almost want to cry with pleasure so evocative were the flavours of my recent trip to China. The name “Typhoon” is a literal translation of a modern Sichuan cooking style.

Fish Flavoured Pork Shreds in Garlic and Ginger Sauce
Third up was Yu Xiang Rou – Fish Flavoured Pork Shreds in Garlic Sauce. Kevin gave me the recipe for this and I will post it in the next day or two. Using fillet of pork, it is probably one of the more famous dishes from Sichuan. Nary a fish or even fish sauce gets near it but in this land locked province it uses ingredients and spices normally associated with the preparation of seafood.

Ma Po Tofu
I loved tofu dishes when I was in China, the extraordinary ability of the bean curd to absorb the flavours of spices and oils. Ma Po Tofu is a Sichuan classic and Kevin recommended I source an original recipe for it from Fuchsia Dunlop author of Every Grain of Rice and Revolutionary China Cookbook among others. Kevin was the second person to mention Fuchsia Dunlop to me recently. Food blogger Joanne Cronin (@dudara; www.stitchandbear.com) also said she was a must-read for my growing Chinese bookshelf.
Ma Po Tofu uses diced tofu soaked in water and heated through in a mixture of yellow bean paste, chilli bean paste, dried chilli, Sichuan pepper and Chicken broth. I’m sure I’ve left out ingredients here – spring onions, a pinch of sugar, a dash of sesame oil and chilli oil perhaps – but I promise to track down a complete recipe.

Fried Green Beans
As we were finishing up, I mentioned the difficulty I had re-creating the fried green beans from Shan’s recipe for fried green beans so the chef grabbed a handful of beans and showed me how to do it. I was beside myself with excitement when I discovered that the secret to those crinkly edges on the beans is that you deep-fry the un-cooked beans for a few minutes in the hot oil until the skin bubbles, then drain them, discard most of the oil and fry off your ginger and garlic paste, Sichuan peppers, pieces of dried chilli and salt.The chefs believe the inner seeds of the green beans will cause you food poisoning if not fully cooked and they do not like steaming the beans as this draws out too much water and loses the texture of the vegetable.
Today’s version was a vegetarian one using Sichuan pickled vegetables but a similar approach will work with minced pork as in Shan’s recipe.

Now this is what I had been missing!

A few random insights
One of the great pleasures of my visit to China Sichuan was to watch the deftness with which the chefs used their woks, the flick of the wrist with the ladles, the back of the deep ladle used to constantly keep food on the move, the versatility of the woks – within moments changing from a deep fat fryer to a steamer to a pan of boiling water to a shallow fryer, the lightening speed of cooking, the instinct for a pinch of this, a dash of that to get the balance just right. I know sugar, salt, sesame oil, chilli oil, soy sauce, chicken powder featured in many of the dishes as well as the holy trinity of ginger, garlic and spring onions but I wasn’t fast enough to catch them all. I just marvelled at the ease of the chefs and their effortless familiarity with their station and tried to visualise this relatively small space on a busy Saturday night with every dish freshly cooked in minutes.

I learnt that chicken thigh is more tender and tasty than chicken breast and that sichuan pepper can be dry-roasted and ground down to provide a more subtle seasoning. Apart from some cook books I’ve added a few items to my shopping list – Maggi Sauce, Chilli Paste, Sichuan Vinegar and Sichuan Garlic Sauce as well as a proper Chinese strainer.
I am also contemplating, with some glee, setting Shane and Shan the challenge of re-creating the first 4 dishes, in their own style, in Beijing.
So a big thank you to Kevin Hui, to Head Chef Ricky and his team and to Alan the waiter who interpreted between Mandarin and English for the afternoon.

And a special thank you to Pat O’Reilly of Alexis Bar and Grill, Dun Laoghaire (@alexisdublin; www.alexis.ie) who made this all possible by picking up on my Twitter plea for a chance to learn from the professionals and connected me up with Kevin.
Of course all this has left me even more determined to learn how to wield that cleaver and use that wok properly. Cookery lessons anyone? 😉