Big Green egg. – Shananigans Blog

Pulled Pork Spring Rolls

My daughter in law Gao Shan and I have a good thing going on now that she’s my neighbour down the road in Bray. At least once a week she cooks a meal for us in her house and at least once a week I cook for her, Shane and Dermot. While I experiment with new banneton baskets and shawarmas, she cooks wonderful Chinese meals for us and increasingly tries her hand at preparing western dishes. Meanwhile Dermot wanders around under all our feet, “helping” and giving his two year old views on hao chi – good food. He is already a determined carnivore and has become fascinated with my Big Green Egg, helping me sprinkle rub on cuts of meat, salivating as we check at regular intervals to see how the internal temperature is coming on and proclaiming that the Egg is “hot”. He loves his “big egg”.
Last Friday night Shan served us a fabulous dinner of a starter of grilled prawns with mushrooms followed by a main course of spatchcocked quail to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I have never attempted to cook quail – I’m a bit squeamish about the finicky work of preparing them – but Shan found information on line that taught her how to do it and the result was delicious. I wondered what to do for a reprise.

Shan's spatchcocked quail — Shan’s spatchcocked quail

The glorious weather over the weekend encouraged me to fire up the Big Green Egg again and try out my Chinese take on pulled pork on her. Although pulled pork had taken off among the ex-pat community in Beijing before they left, this was the first time Shane and Shan had tried pulled pork cooked at home and served with Chinese pancakes, apple sauce and hoi sin sauce. They and Dermot gave it an overwhelming seal of approval. Dermot seems to have decided that apple sauce is his new favourite thing.

I’ve finally cracked the secret of cooking pulled pork – low and slow for about 9 hours and the time it takes is so worthwhile. You will find my recipe for Duncannon pulled pork and the story behind it here in the blog archives. Yesterday I didn’t bother with injecting the meat but the five spice rub and spritzing it frequently with the apple juice and cider vinegar spray infused the pork with plenty of melting flavour. A €12 shoulder of pork cooked like this goes a long, long way.
We were wondering what we could do with the leftovers and Shan suggested that I could use them in a variation on my recipe for duck spring rolls. So that is just what I did. Although tired after a long day at work, I enjoyed the calming ritual of preparing the ingredients. The result was Monday night flavour bombs that got this weeks cooking off to a good start.
Now my next trick is to teach Dermot and his Mum how to make ginger biscuits although Shan is ahead of me on that one having made her first ever batch of cookies this weekend. Competitive? Me? Never… 🙂
Pulled Pork Spring Rolls

(Makes about eight spring rolls serving eight as a starter or four as a tasty weekday supper.)
Ingredients

About 200 – 300 g of shredded pulled pork – simply bulk out the mix with more of the shredded vegetables if you have less pork)
1 large carrot cut into thin julienne strips
1 large red onion thinly sliced
150g bean sprouts, washed and patted dry
2 tbs oyster sauce
2 clove garlic, finely chopped
30g pickled sushi ginger, finely chopped
A lage handful of chopped coriander plus additional coriander to garnish
Salt and pepper to season
12 sheets of spring roll pastry 215 mm/10’’ square*
Sunflower oil for deep-frying
Sweet chilli jam to serve

*available in the freezer section of your local Asian market
Preparation

Shred the pork shoulder or cut it into thin matchsticks and mix with all the other prepared ingredients. Taste and adjust the seasoning to taste.
Take 1 ½ sheets of pastry for each spring roll. Place a full sheet down and a half on top from one corner.
Fill the doubled-side, near the centre with some pork mix. Starting at the doubled corner, roll to half way then fold in the sides and continue rolling to the end.
Brush some water on the far corner to stick the pastry together if necessary.
Fill a wok about a third full with sunflower oil and heat until a cube of bread turns golden in a few seconds. Deep fry the spring rolls two at a time until golden.
Slice each spring roll in two on the diagonal and serve with chilli jam and garnished with coriander.

Shan's Yunnan Barbecued Lemongrass Fish – 云南香茅烤鱼

My daughter Claire sent me a random morning thought from Sydney earlier this week. It read “Most people’s first word of the year is ‘happy'” – a cheerful notion evoking images of clinking glasses and reminding me of our celebration of the arrival of 2015 in Australia and, more recently, of Shane, Shan and Dermot’s first Chinese New Year in Ireland.
On those rare occasions when I’m in Australia at the start of a New Year I have my own special way of marking it. I head to the Royal Botanic Gardens before I return home to find the “I wish” statue. There can hardly be a more beautifully located botanic gardens on this earth, perched as they are over Sydney Harbour and providing a still place, a peaceful escape from the noise and searing summer heat of the city and a breathing lung at its heart. The simple sculpture I go in search of is by Czechoslovakian artist Arthur Fleischman and has been in the gardens since 1946 where it marks the site of the first Wishing Tree.

The first time I stumbled on my wishing girl was on a visit to Sydney in 1999. That was long before I had a daughter living in Australia or a son in China and I doubted I would have an opportunity to return to Australia in my life time. But something about the simple sense of yearning the statue conveyed struck me like a powerful memory of the future and I tried to capture it in a tiny photo that has sat ever since on my window ledge in Duncannon.
Since then, as my children’s lives took their own twists and turns, my wishing girl has become a symbol for me of the conflicted emotions of longing for home and missing those we leave behind in an adopted country. I’ve returned to Sydney several times and each time I seek her out, touch her cool stone and pause in the still shade that surround her to reflect on what is important in my life right then. This January my prayers were many and heartfelt… that Claire will have a safe delivery of a healthy baby in April and enjoy the happiness of motherhood… that Shane, Shan and Dermot will settle into their new life in Ireland despite missing the family and friends they leave behind in China… and for well-being for other friends and family important to me.
Fast-forward to early March and Claire’s baby is due just seven weeks from today. The waiting, wishing and hoping have become an urgent knot in the pit of my stomach. At the same time I’m adapting to the joy of having SS&D living just down the road and the ordinary, extraordinary pleasures of grand-parenting. It’s time to start writing the blog more regularly and to capture the moods and moments of a special time.
One of my best memories of our Christmas/ New Year trip to Australia is of ringing in 2015 at Culburra Beach on the South Coast of New South Wales while celebrating our son-in-law Mike’s birthday which falls on new Year’s Eve. We had decamped down there to two beach houses overlooking the ocean where dolphins cavort in the evening sun – our house was called “Sea La Vie” while Shane, Shan, her MaMa and Dermot were down the road in “Time to Unwind”. Various friends of Claire and Mike, couples with young children, had taken other apartments nearby and the combined New Year and birthday celebrations were held on our deck.
For a once in a lifetime opportunity to spend a New Year’s Eve with all of us together including Shan’s MaMa, it seemed fitting to import some Chinese new year traditions into our celebrations. So Shan and MaMa took charge and put together a Chinese inspired barbecue which featured platters of Chinese pot-sticker dumplings, lamb chuan’r kebabs flavoured with cumin and chilli and Yunnan style, barbecued whole barramundi fish. The boys manned the barbecues in true Aussie style.
Dumplings symbolise good luck, fortune and family togetherness. They are served as the first meal of the New Year and before members of a family depart on a journey to remind them that family wraps itself around you wherever you are. This time MaMa made up two kinds of filling – traditional pork and cabbage and beef with carrot. – She, Shan and Shane wrapped the dumplings at their house and brought them along in tray loads for me to cook pot-sticker style just before serving. You will find lots of similar dumpling recipes on the blog starting with the link here.
MaMa’s delicious lamb kebabs combined the excellent flavour of Australian lamb with the the spices of her home town in Urumqi – the diced lamb was marinated in onion and tomato and scattered with cumin and chilli before serving. We will try them out on the Big Green Egg soon.
My contribution to proceedings was to make the desserts. The birthday cake, a special request from Mike, was a chocolate cheese cake. I used this recipe by Nigella Lawson and also made a back up Chocolate Ripple Cheesecake from a Mary Berry recipe and a large summer berry pavlova.
But it was Shan’s barbecued fish which was the highlight of the meal. As Shan says:
“Having a whole fish at the Chinese New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day is very important. It has an auspicious meaning that sharing a whole fish with one’s family will bring luck and fortune to the whole family for the coming new year. This is because Chinese word for fish ‘yu‘ has the same pronunciation as the word ‘abundance’. It is important to have the whole fish including the head and tail which means a good year from start to end. Superstition really but it is so common that people don’t even think about it, it is just a ‘must have’ dish for new year or any big family reunion events.” Another part of the tradition is that the whole fish is never turned over on the plate once served because of the negative association with the turning over of a fishing boat and flipped fortunes.

Shan calls her fish recipe Yunnan Xiang Mao Kao Yu. Yunnan is a province in the very South West of China which shares a border with Burma,Vietnam and Laos, hence you see lemon grass, a common ingredient in South East Asian countries in this dish. Xiang Mao is the Chinese word for lemongrass, Kao means barbecue or grill, Yu is fish.
Now that spring is in the air here in Ireland and it’s time to dust off your barbecue or Big Green Egg, I thought you might like to experiment with Shan’s recipe. It doesn’t have detailed measurements for its ingredients. Chinese cooks don’t work that way so Shan has written down below the principles of what she did and the rough amounts of ingredients she used. Feel free to play around with it until you get the balance of flavours that suits your preference and liking for chilli heat.
Belated happy Chinese New Year from myself and Shan – xin nian kuai le – 新年快乐
Shan’s Yunnan Barbecued Lemongrass Fish – Yunnan Xiangmao2 Kao Yu – 云南香茅烤鱼
Serves 3 – 4 as part pf a multi-course meal

Ingredients

A whole sea fish with a body length of 25 to 30 cm (body length excludes head and tail), gutted and scales removed but leave the head and tail intact – you can ask your fish monger to do this bit for you.

For the stuffing

3 sticks of lemon grass
2 packets of coriander
1 big chunk of ginger (3 thumb fingers size)
4 spring onions
½ of a bulb of garlic
2 green chillies (depending on the spiciness of the chilli and your personal preference, use less or more)
Salt

The above measurements are indicative, the aim is that you have enough mix to stuff the whole fish, in its body and slits on both sides.
For cooking

2 banana leaves large enough to wrap the whole fish neatly, preferably in two layers.

Preparation

Wash the fish clean then cut slits at 3 cm intervals on both sides – this is for stuffing the seasoning mix into slits so the whole fish body absorbs the flavour, if you are testing with a small thin bodied fish, then this procedure is not necessary.
Peel away the tough outer layer of the lemon grass, trim your spring onions and peel your garlic. Then finely chop all the stuffing ingredients and mix in a bowl, add salt. You will have to taste the mix, the flavour you are aiming for is robust, wild flavour dominated by coriander, lemon grass, garlic and ginger, spiciness is personal preference. And it should tastes almost a bit too salty.
Stuff the mix inside of the fish’s body and into the slits on both side of its body; you want the stuffing to pack the fish well. Wrap tightly with banana leave and tie up the parcel with thin slice of lemon grass (preferred) or cotton thread.
Leave the fish to marinate for 20 mins; flip it when after 10 minutes so pressure from its weight will marinate both sides evenly.

Cooking and serving

Heat your barbecue or Big Green Egg to high on direct heat.
Put your fish on the open fire grill for about 5 mins on each side, depending on the heat of your barbecue. The indicator for ‘done’ is that the fish’s body has collapsed on both sides hence looking much more flatter than before and the banana leaves are burnt but still protecting the fish.
Serve it on a platter and allow your guests to unwrap the fish and help themselves, oohing and aahing as the perfume of the stuffing escapes from the package.

Variations
Fresh water fish can also be used in this recipe but it usually has a muddy taste and more bones. In Australia we used Barramundi fish. A whole salmon could also be used.
Shan would suggest making the mix slightly less salty if you are using sea fish, as they tend to taste a tiny bit saltier the fresh water fish. Add black pepper into the mix if you are a pepper lover!

Beer Can Chicken

What a glorious Irish summer we have been enjoying. It reminds me of the idyllic summers of my Wexford childhood or my rose-tinted memories of them anyway. Irish seaside holidays are back in fashion. Duncannon is teeming with families, small children licking 99 ice-creams, trailing sandy towels up the tiny main street, teenagers in languid groups chatting, the beach packed with cars acting as windbreaks for impromptu picnics of sandwiches, crisps and fizzy drinks, the picnics of my childhood, the new playground a hive of energetic activity as little ones “wheeeee” down the long slide, even the grown ups getting in on the act in the adult playground, the familiar sounds of the commentary from weekend GAA matches echoing down the strand on car radios as we all tune in with bated breath to the latest Wexford hurling performance.
Up the hill our little Duncannon house is an oasis of calm by comparison. It is perfect weather for barbecuing and last Sunday I organised a family get together to mark my Mum’s and my birthday the previous week. My extended family are now beginning to put in special requests for their favourites from the Big Green Egg – “any chance of those fantastic spareribs?” (Adam Perry Lang’s Reliable Pork Spareribs) “or that beef that Jack said was the best ever?” (Adam Perry Lang’s “Get a Book” Whole Beef Brisket). Well no actually, the chef had other plans. On the menu last Sunday were

Shananigans Pulled Pork

Beer Can Chicken

Chilli Crusted Rack of Lamb

not to mention steak, burgers, sausages and lots of vegetable dishes. Tis far from chilli crusted rack of lamb they were all reared…

Pork Butt ready to cook in the early morning sunshine

As I get more used to cooking with the Big Green Egg, the full versatility of this all in one kamado oven, smoker and grill is becoming more apparent. If I get up early enough I can have the pork butt on by 7 am cooking low and slow and later there is lots of space to cook the beer can chicken and to add the racks of lamb while the pork is resting, tweaking the temperature up as needed.

We cooked the pork butt to my own recipe for Shananigans Pulled Pork, a recipe with a Chinese twist created with the help of the chef in Roches Bar in Duncannon. This time I injected the pork with an apple juice and sugar mix before cooking which made it even more tender and I’ve added that variation to the original recipe.

The Pork Butt returned to the grill wrapped

We served it Chinese style with thin Chinese pancakes, the type used for Peking Duck, homemade hoi sin sauce from the recipe on my blog post for Peking-style Roast Duck, shredded carrots and spring onion. The sauce was a big hit with our visitors.
The rack of lamb is another Adam Perry Lang recipe – crusted with a chilli and wholegrain mustard blend and drizzled with herb oil before serving.

Nearly every BBQ cook has their own version of Beer Can chicken. Mine is a variation of yet another Adam Perry Lang recipe and is finger-licking good every time. Last Sunday my guests decided that it tasted particularly good drizzled with the hoi-sin sauce.
Beer Can Chicken

Ingredients

1 large free range or organic chicken
1 can larger beer such as Heineken

BBQ fuel

Good quality charcoal lump wood
A handful of apple or cherry wood chips, soaked (optional)

Garlic Marinade

¼ cup rapeseed oil
¼ cup Worcestershire sauce
2 tbs soy sauce
8 garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped
1 medium onion chopped

Puree in a blender. The marinade will keep in the fridge for a week.
APL’s Seven Spice Dry Rub

½ cup dark brown sugar
½ cup paprika
¼ cup salt
¼ cup chilli powder
¼ cup dry mustard powder
1 tbs ground black pepper
2 tsps Old Bay Seasoning
½ tsp ground ginger

Mix the ingredients in a jar and store for up to 6 months in the fridge. If you can’t find Old Bay Seasoning just omit or add another spice of your choice.
Cider Mop Spray

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

Mix the ingredients in a spray bottle. The spray will keep in the fridge for a week.
Preparation and Cooking (Allow at least 3 hours for cooking plus marinating the chicken overnight.)

Coat the chicken generously in the marinade. Place in a freezer bag or covered dish and marinate overnight in the fridge or for a few hours at room temperature. Bring to room temperature for at least one hour before cooking.
Prepare your Big Green Egg for indirect cooking with the plate setter legs up and stainless steel grill and heat to about 130 degrees C. Meanwhile soak a handful of apple or cherry wood chips in water. When the Egg is nearly at temperature, drain the wood chips and add to the charcoal. Place a drip tray on the plate setter under the grill and half fill with water.
Discard half the can of beer or add it to the drip pan. Remove the chicken from the marinade and place it upright on the beer can, legs down. Sprinkle with enough of the rub to coat. Don’t worry if there’s any excess. It will fall off during cooking. Carefully place the chicken and beer can on your stainless steel grill.
After about an hour, when the rub has formed a nice crust, give it a spray with the cider mop spray and then spray it at about 30 minute intervals until an insta-read thermometer in the inner thigh reads 74 degrees c. This takes around 3 hours depending on the size of the chicken at the temperature of your BGE. Don’t let the drip tray dry out. Add more water if necessary.
Remove the chicken from the grill and discard the beer can. Use mitts and be careful as the beer can gets very hot during cooking. Allow the chicken to rest for 30 minutes before carving.

Tips and variations
To oil your grill – to 1 cup of rapeseed oil add a few black peppercorns, 2 star anise a bay leaf, sprig of thyme and sprig of rosemary. Halve a red onion and stick a fork in the half with the root. Dip it in the flavoured oil and use it to brush your grill as needed during cooking.

Drip pan – I use and old roasting tin that fits in the BGE. You can also use a disposable roasting tin or deep pizza tray. I usually add the leftover beer to the drip pan.
If you don’t have a Big Green Egg – we have cooked this chicken successfully on indirect heat on our Outback covered gas BBQ by heating just the middle of 3 burners and placing the chicken to one side. It can be cooked on any covered BBQ, charcoal or gas.
Rotating your chicken during cooking – some recipes recommend rotating the chicken at intervals to make sure all sides are cooking evenly. I don’t find this necessary on the BGE but it may be a useful step if you are cooking on another type of charcoal or gas barbecue.
Ways with leftovers
Sichuan Chicken Salad

Sichuan Spicy Chicken Salad — Spicy Sichuan Chicken Salad

Last Monday night I needed a Sichuan fix so I used the leftover chicken in the recipe for Spicy Sichuan Salad which I had learnt how to make at Hutong Cuisine cookery school in Beijing last year. This is a very tasty summer salad and the smokey, succulent chicken works perfectly in it.
Beer Can Chicken Legs with BBQ Sauce
Adam Perry Lang likes to halve his chicken, glaze it with diluted BBQ sauce and return it to the grill on direct heat for about 15 minutes until it is crisp and glazed. I don’t bother with this step because we love the flavour of the roasted chicken but I have glazed leftover chicken legs and wings and popped them under the grill the next day for a very tasty Monday night supper. You can use any good quality BBQ sauce or your favourite homemade recipe.

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

Gan Guo Tu Duo Pian – Hunan Spiced Potato and an easy Chinese dinner party menu

I’ve started Chinese lessons. Once a week Wei Wei, who was Shan’s bridesmaid, comes to my house. We spend a few hours poring over her notes while I try to get my head and tongue around Chinese phrases, echoing the sounds and tones familiar in Beijing. My dream is to surprise Shan’s Ma Ma, my qing jia mu, with a text message in Mandarin characters and by addressing her in Chinese the next time we meet. I’ve a long, long way to go.
The language lesson finished, Wei Wei and I roll up our sleeves, get out the cleaver, chopping board and wok and she teaches me a new recipe. To start with she is helping me to recreate some of the dishes I came across on my last visit to Beijing. It’s fun, the hours fly by and I am learning at all sorts of levels.
Wei Wei writes her own blog MyChineseKitchen.com and is an accomplished Chinese cook. Her Mum and Dad taught her basic techniques from a very young age in her home town of Tianjin and she has wielded a cleaver for as long as she can remember. Next week her parents are coming to visit her and her husband Oisin in Ireland for the very first time, no doubt bearing a suitcase full of ingredients like Shan’s family did at Christmas.
Last weekend our friends Brenda and Jimmy were coming to Sunday dinner. I wanted to serve a meal like Shan and her Ma Ma would cook, a selection of dishes for sharing, some spicy, some light. Gan guo tu dou pian was on my mind – a potato dish that I had tasted in our favourite Chinese Duck Restaurant XiHeYaYuan in Beijing and which I wrote about here. Gan guo translates loosely as “dry wok”. It is a style of cooking that comes from Hunan Province where the food is rich and spicy and in restaurants in China it is served in a little cast iron pot at your table over an open burner. As well as gan guo made with slices of fried potato and smoked Hunan pork, I had also enjoyed gan gou niu wa, made with bull frog, at our Hunan dinner at Pindian in Wangjng.
As luck would have it, Wei Wei also loves the dish which she and Oisin used to have every time they visited a local Hunan restaurant they called “The Cheap Place” in Beijing . She has come up with her own recipe for gan guo potatoes which tastes exactly as I remember it in Beijing and she has set out the steps for making it in detail here on her own blog. We used her recipe for my first cookery lesson and as we worked she taught me the Chinese words for the ingredients and helped me improve my knife skills and cooking techniques.
The next day I made the dish again working without a recipe, using the instincts Wei Wei had helped me develop to balance the flavours. My proportions were a little different to Wei Wei’s so here is what I did.
Hunan Spiced Potato – Gan Guo Tu Duo Pian

(Serves 4 as a side dish or 2 as a main course)
Ingredients

3 firm medium potatoes
4 slices of Hunan smoked pork or pancetta or smoked streaky rashers, rind removed
1 red chilli
1 green chilli
a small thumb of ginger
4 cloves of garlic
1 leek
½ an onion(red or white)
1 stick celery
1 spring onion
cooking oil
coriander to garnish (optional)

For the sauce

1 tbs hot bean sauce
2 tbs light soy sauce
¼ tbs dark soy sauce
1 tbs shaoxing rice wine
2 tsps sugar
salt to taste

Preparation

Wash and peel the potatoes and slice them about ½ cm thick. Wash the potato slices twice in cold water to rinse out the starch and pat them dry.
Slice the pork or bacon into thin pieces a littler smaller than the potatoes slices.
De-seed and thinly slice the chillies; slice the ginger, peel and slice the garlic.
Slice the leek, onion, celery and spring onion into julienne strips.
Mix all the sauce ingredients and set aside.

Cooking

Heat sufficient oil in a wok to about 140 degrees to fry the potato slices in batches until golden, setting them aside to dry on a dish lined with kitchen roll.
Empty all but just over a tablespoon of oil from the wok. Over a medium-high heat stir-fry the chilli, garlic and ginger for a few moments to release their aromas being careful not to burn them. Add the pork slices and stir-fry until they turn colour.
Add the leek, onion, celery and spring onion and stir-fry briefly before adding the sauce and mixing well.
Fold in the cooked potato slices and keep stirring until the sauce has almost evaporated, being careful not to break up the potato slices. Season with salt to taste. Serve immediately, garnished with coriander if using.

I had some of the very special cured pork from Hunan Province which Shan used in her home-style dinner. It has an amazing umami flavour and adds an extra jolt of authenticity to the taste. But any good quality cured or smoked pork or bacon can be used, even Italian pancetta.

This was just one of the dishes I served at dinner last Sunday. Here is the full menu:

Confit Duck Spring Rolls with Tom Chef’s Chilli Jam

*****

Adam Perry Lang’s Beer Can Chicken

Sichuan Dry-fried Green Beans, Vegetarian Style

Broccoli Stir-fried with Garlic

Bai Cai with Ginger, Dried mushrooms and Oyster sauce

Gan Guo Tu Duo Pian

Steamed rice

*****

Strawberry, raspberry and orange tart

We slow-cooked the Beer Can Chicken to moist perfection on the Big Green Egg. APL’s recipe has enough Asian flavours going on to make it a good foil for Chinese vegetable dishes.

I used the recipe from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Every Grain of Rice for the vegetarian version of Sichuan Green Beans but you can also use the recipe here on the blog and just omit the pork.

I had picked up some interesting Chinese leaves from the Asia Market with long green stems and delicately flavoured leaves. Wei We said they were a type of Chinese cabbage – bai cai . Shan had given me some wonderful speckled dried mushrooms which are called xiang gu because of their excellent flavour.

Wiang Gu Dried Mushrooms — Xiang Gu Dried Mushrooms

Rehydrate a few dried mushrooms in hot water for half an hour, then slice them thickly and stir-fry them with a few slices of ginger and spring onion (no garlic) until soft before adding the bai cai until it wilts down. Add a dash of oyster sauce, season with salt and the earthy flavour of the mushrooms combined with the delicate cabbage will transport you to MaMa’s kitchen in Beijing.

I worked the way Shan had taught me in Beijing, preparing all the ingredients well in advance and lining them up in separate dishes, cooking the lightest vegetable dishes first and then, a quick wipe of the wok and on to the next one so that I was able to get each bowl to the table in quick succession and join in the conversation.

Dessert was a random find from Twitter – a recipe from Catherine Fulvio’s blog to which I added a few raspberries. This was a great success and has now been included in my limited repertoire of sweet treats. We loved the crunchy, no-bake base, which was made from amaretti biscuits, and the tang of passion fruit, yoghurt and orange zest in the filling.

No bake strawberry, raspberry and orange tart

Now it’s time to start planning my next visit to China in two weeks time. Nai Nai hugs coming up…

Funcannon BBQs on the Big Green Egg

Our second last meal on our recent trip to China was the Grill Mates BBQ with Shane and Shan’s friends in a hutong on the outskirts of Beijing. While the menu that day had all the hallmarks of a classic American BBQ, the experience of sharing good food with family and friends, everyone helping themselves from a communal table, felt quite Chinese. I arrived home looking forward to a summer of experimenting with my Big Green Egg and to putting into practice what I learnt at Barbecue Joe’s cookery class at Cloughjordan House Cookery School in April.
And so for the last two weeks I have been getting to know my Egg all over again and my go to chef for inspiration is Adam Perry Lang whose recipes push me outside my comfort zone, but in a good way. APL is one of those generous chefs who posts many of his recipes, including from his Serious Barbecue cookbook, on his excellent website. He also picks up on tweets that mention him. Let’s face it, we amateur cooks all get a great kick when the chef who devised a recipe sends us a nice comment on a photo or a tweet.
The previous weekend it had rained non-stop in Duncannon and we were up at 6 am on the Sunday setting up the Big Green Egg to cook APL’s aptly named “Get a book” Whole Beef Brisket for 12 of my family. It took 8 hours but was voted by my little nephew Jack as “the best beef I have ever tasted”.
We also cooked APL’s Beer Can Chicken, sitting two large organic birds over cans of Heineken. This was something I had wanted to try out since I tasted Elvis’ version in Beijing. The result was moist and delicious chicken which fed us for most of the week.

Well you would be sore if your butt had been stuffed! — Beer can chicken hot off the BBQ

And let me confess a little secret. Because the whole beef brisket took so long to cook, we actually cooked the chickens on our old Outback Gas BBQ on indirect heat, covered and with a packet of wet oak chips in punctured tin foil sitting on the lava rocks. There was so much smokiness going on with the brisket and other vegetables that no one even noticed. I also skipped the last stage of APL’s recipe, that called for cutting the chicken in half down the backbone and glazing it with his sweet and sticky BBQ sauce because the skin was already nice and crispy. Instead I just served the sauce on the side. The following day though I reheated half of one of the cooked chickens, glazed with the sauce, under our ordinary grill for a feast of leftovers of sticky deliciousness.
The weekend just gone by was a bank holiday here in Ireland and Duncannon was in fete for a military re-enactment taking place in Duncannon Fort. A brother of my friend Bumbles of Rice, who also hails from these parts, labelled the village #Funcannon for the weekend and got it trending on Twitter.
We travelled down from Dublin in glorious sunshine on Saturday but by Sunday rain was threatening. Undaunted, we invited my family to another barbecue. I had an added incentive to try new recipes. Joanne Cronin who writes Stitch and Bear had given me a tin of Old Bay Seasoning which she had picked up in the States and which features in many of APL’s recipes.

A feat of engineering propping up those ribs

On the menu we had APL’s Reliable Pork Spareribs which I served as a starter. Over seven hours on the Big Green Egg at a low temperature, they were moistened with a mustard spray, drizzled with a spicy rub, sprayed with apple juice and cider vinegar, wrapped with honey, brown sugar and apple juice, coated with BBQ sauce and sprayed with apple mist once more. The result was succulent and delicious and the four racks of ribs, with the tender meat falling off the bones, were gobbled in minutes. My brother’s dogs were the lucky recipients of the leftovers. I hope they weren’t expecting any meat as every last morsel had been sucked off by my hungry guests.

The mammy likes her ribs (great appetite)

We followed the ribs with Leg of Irish Spring Lamb based on Adam’s recipe in his BBQ 25 cookbook which I downloaded from Kindle Book Store on my iPad. I scored the leg of lamb in a cross-hatch pattern and marinated it for three to four hours in a mix of rapeseed oil, chopped rosemary, flat leaf parsley, thyme and cumin. I put it on the Big Green Egg, on indirect heat, while the ribs were still cooking which meant the temperature was lower than the recommended by APL and it took longer to cook. I glazed it at intervals with a mix of a half cup of olive oil, lots of crushed garlic, the grated zest and juice of a lemon, a few tablespoons of honey and more chopped flat leaf parsley.

Once the internal temperature had reached 60 degrees C on my snazzy, new super-fast Thermapen thermometer (or 71 degrees C if you prefer well done lamb) I rested in on a board dressing of Broighter Gold rapeseed oil infused with rosemary and mixed with fresh flat leaf parsley for about 10 minutes before carving. The meat was so moist and tender that we did not need gravy.

We threw a few burgers and steaks on the barbecue for hungry young people . With the beef and lamb we served lashings of Irish new potatoes, baby peas, roasted vegetables, mushrooms cooked with thyme in butter and olive oil and asparagus. I marinated the asparagus tips in a little Broighter Gold rapeseed oil infused with lemon and griddled them on the BBQ for a few minutes on each side. Once they had nice scorch marks on both sides but still had a good crunch I removed them from the BBQ and drizzled them with a little balsamic vinegar. These were greeted with sighs of approval.

Keeping it simple - dessert — Keeping it simple – dessert

Dessert was simple – fresh raspberries, strawberries and peaches served with little meringues and cream and then my nieces and nephews entertained us for a few hours with mimicry and dance and general good humour.
Last night we had a dinner of leftovers in Duncannon – a Lamb Hash of cooked Wexford new potatoes crushed in duck fat to which I added shredded leg of lamb which had been smoked on the Big Green Egg and roasted vegetables from Sunday’s BBQ including peppers, aubergines, courgettes, red onion, tomatoes and mushrooms. When it was all sizzling away nicely and lovely and crispy on the base, I made space to crack in two eggs and flashed the frying pan under the grill to set the egg white and crisp up the topping. A drizzle of Adam Perry Lang’s BBQ Sauce and I didn’t even need to fire up the Big Green Egg to recapture the flavours of our BBQ in the rain.
As we polished off the leftover leftovers today I mused about my Big Green Egg, how it has become like an old friend now, one whose temperament I have got to know and learned to managed so his temperature and mood stay steady. I learnt a lot from my class with BBQ Joe. He taught me to understand how the fibres of the meat react at different temperatures, the importance of the temperature plateau and of resting the meat after cooking. His tips for lighting the BBQ with a Lidl weed burner, using a super fast Thermapen to check internal temperature and oiling the griddle with half a red onion on a fork dipped in olive oil flavoured with spices and herbs, have left me feeling more confident and professional around my Egg. It is a joyous learning experience.
I’ve discovered that barbecuing is a forgiving way of cooking food. A few degrees heat either way makes no difference to slow cooked meats once you eventually get to the correct internal temperature. While the Egg is a magic piece of kit, most of the recipes work equally well on other covered charcoal or gas barbecues. But leftovers from the Egg taste simply wonderful with the traces of smokiness still lingering.
Last week the Goodall’s Modern Irish Cookbook, won the Bloggers’ Cookbook Award in the Gourmand World Cookbooks Awards 2014. The book includes one of the early recipes from this blog – Sichuan Seaf00d Duncannon Style. So on our “Funcannon” weekend, Duncannon was featuring, in a small way, on the world stage.
I think it’s time to develop a special Duncannon recipe for the Big Green Egg, don’t you. Watch this space.

A selfie from my giddy nieces and nephews

Barbecue Joe comes to Cloughjordan House

It’s strange the way good things happen. On Friday afternoon last, a quiet weekend in prospect, I dropped into The Corkscrew on Chatham Row and spotted that signed copies of Neven Maguire’s MacNean Restaurant Cookbook were on special offer for €15. I hopped on Twitter to broadcast this good news – this great cookbook includes lots of the recipes that feature in Neven’s latest series on RTE in which he makes his more complex dishes accessible and gives you the confidence that you can recreate them at home. At that price his book is a steal and includes recommendations for wines to match the recipes which you can pick up at The Corkscrew. But I digress…
I don’t usually visit Twitter at that time on a Friday afternoon but skimming through my time line I spotted a tweet from @sarahbakercooks with a competition for a free cancellation place at a barbecue class at Cloughjordan House the following day. Now I’ve been meaning to visit that cookery school for some time so the prospect of a barbecue course, just as I need inspiration to get going on my Big Green Egg for the summer season – was enough to make me willing to drop everything and re-arrange my weekend. And so when Sarah tweeted later that evening that I had won the place I did just that and headed off at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning to North Tipperary. Derry came along to take the photos.

"Hmm is any of that for me?" — “Hmm is any of that for me?”

The course was given by Brendan of BBQ Joe who specialises in low ‘n slow cooking. Ireland being such a small place it turned out that I had met Brendan once before when he was restaurant manager at Sheen Falls in Kenmare. He has now re-invented himself and caters for weddings and other large events, cooking the best of Irish produce on his own custom built charcoal grills, smokers and pits. Watch out for him later this year when he barbecues on a grand scale for visiting american footballers and their fans.
I was delighted when we arrived to discover that he would be cooking on a Grill Dome. This Kamado style ceramic barbecue is very similar in concept and performance to the Big Green Egg so I felt right at home. I remain devoted to my Egg but it’s great to know that there are alternative products on the market that fulfil a similar function.
This was Brendan’s first cookery demo and I loved his relaxed and informal style as he shared his passion for barbecuing and the tips and insights he has picked up as he builds up his business. He has travelled widely to study techniques in places as different as Texas, Turkey and Georgia. He works alongside professional chefs but brings his own un-cheffy and intuitive approach to producing tasty food for sharing.

Brendan took some time at the beginning of the class to talk about different types of charcoal fuel and ways of lighting your barbecue – a “weed burner” has been added to my wish list as a result. He confirmed that it’s important to use the best quality lump wood charcoal you can get hold of – the heavier and denser the better. I’ve been using Big Green Egg Organic Lump Charcoal and Big K Restaurant Charcoal with good results. Both are available for delivery from A Room Outside in Limerick. Brendan also encourages the use of local wood shavings as a way of adding flavour – a handful of oak wood shavings or left over wood chips from whiskey barrels from your local distillery can work wonders. My next door neighbour in Duncannon left me in a bag of oak wood shavings recently which I will now put to good use.
Then he spent some time on the basics of putting together a good BBQ Rub and BBQ Sauce as well as how to prepare a Charcoal Salt which is a nifty way of adding a little delicate charcoal flavour to your meats.

Micro-planing a little charcoal into the salt

First up in the cooking, Brendan showed us how to prepare pulled pork – that quintessential barbecue dish beloved of Texans. While it cooked away low and slow, and Brendan explained the internal temperature “plateau” at around 70 degrees c which scares the wits out of most wannabe BBQ chefs the first time we encounter it, he produced one he prepared earlier (as all good cookery teachers do!) and showed us how to serve it in buns mixed with barbecue sauce and layered with a fresh crisp coleslaw including fennel and some paprika mayonnaise. That was our brunch – or breakfast in my case.

The edge taken off our appetite we went on to prepare rib eye steaks on the bone, each about 6 cms thick. We seasoned them simply with charcoal salt, cooked them over high direct heat, flipping them often and rested them on a board dressing of oil, parsley, pepper, garlic and chilli. The trick here lay in the quality of the well-aged steak and simple seasonings that allowed the flavour of the meat to come through.

Now that's what I call a steak — Now that’s what I call a steak

We tried out a few other dishes to prove the point that barbecues don’t have to be all about expensive meats. A pork bomb made with minced pork and stuffed with sauerkraut and wrapped in a bacon lattice held its shape beautifully and worked well with barbecue sauce.

Easing the pork onto the BBQ — Easing the pork bomb onto the BBQ

Pork bomb stuffed with sauerkraut — Done – pork bomb stuffed with sauerkraut

Chicken koftas made with thigh meat were glazed with pomegranate molasses and served with a satay sauce and some tzatziki.

Prawns and chorizo made an eye catching kebab needing little more than lime juice and zest to dress them.

Salmon was cooked skinless on a buttered tray and drizzled with flavoured honey and red pepper corns or lime to add a little flavour.

In barbecues the focus is firmly on the protein with side dishes playing a supporting role but we prepared portobello mushrooms with a filling of baba ganoush made from barbecued aubergine which would keep many a vegetarian happy. It can be teamed with haloumi cheese and roasted peppers for a more filling vegetarian option.

Aubergines roasting around the pork for baba ganoush

Portobello mushrooms on the grill extender

Side dishes were designed to add colour and we made a mango salsa and feta and watermelon salad that provided a light and refreshing contrast to the main event.

All through the day Brendan shared great tips such as using half an onion on a fork dipped in rapeseed oil, star anise, bay leaf and peppercorns as a “brush” for your grill, using apple juice and cider vinegar as a spray to moisten your meat, oiling the barbecue not the meat, cleaning your griddle with a wedge of lime, making board dressings… all of these will stay with me as I experiment in the coming months and try to develop my own personal style. “Taste and correct” will become my BBQ mantra. He taught us how to make the best use of space on the grill and sequence our dishes so that we got the maximum value from our charcoal.
As the day wore on and we got chatting to the other participants on the course, I was chuffed to discover that Greg from the nearby eco-village in Cloughjordan had used my recipe for turkey on the Big Green Egg to prepare Christmas dinner for his family and friends and it had worked for him too. Sometimes when you write a food blog you wonder if anyone out there is reading it and it’s so lovely to meet someone who has stumbled on it when googling for a recipe. Thank you Greg for making my day.
Cloughjordan House Cookery School is a very pleasant space in which to work for and is particularly popular as a venue for transition and fifth year students where cooking is combined with gathering fresh produce from the community farm. The main house is 400 years old and also offers bed and breakfast and a wedding venue. Some of the participants in the course had stayed over the night before and I look forward to returning for a more leisurely visit and a taste of Sarah and Peter’s hospitality.
Thank you Sarah and Peter of Cloughjordan House Cookery School and Brendan of BBQ Joe for a great day out and lots of inspiration to which I hope to give a Chinese twist in weeks to come.
Meanwhile to whet your appetite here’s Brendan’s basic recipe for BBQ Sauce which can be adapted to personal taste. For instance you can spice it up with chilli powder if you wish
BBQ Joe’s Sauce
Ingredients

2 cans tomatoes
20ml worcestershire sauce
45g castor sugar
50g treacle
1 tsp dijon mustard
30g barbecue rub (use your personal favourite)
½ tin of pineapple drained
150ml apple cider vinegar
160 ml water

Method
Combine all ingredients in a pot. Bring to a simmer over gentle heat to ensure the sugar has dissolved. Blitz with a hand blender to a smooth consistency.

Saying goodbye to the Gao O'Neills… for now

(written on 20th January, 2014)
I’m writing this through misty eyes while Dermot potters around finding the most dangerous thing in the room to play with and Shane and Shan try to whittle down their wedding photos to those to be included in their album. Their difficulty choosing photos echoes mine as I sift the memories of the past five magical weeks.
Tomorrow it’s officially over. Tomorrow Shane, Shan and Dermot return to China to celebrate the Chinese New Year with Shan’s family in Urumqi, the first time the Gao clan will all be together for Spring Festival for many, many moons.
Tomorrow I will gather up the scattered toys around my house and return them to their rightful owners along with the borrowed travel cot. I will straighten out Claire’s room which has recently become First Auntie’s room, then Dermot’s and will soon become Jodie’s again as my niece returns to university this week and to lodging with us. I will put the last of 14 sets of bed clothes on to wash, make up the spare room bed and the house will return to normal or what used to be normal before Dermot infused it with his cheery presence. That’s tomorrow.
But for today I just want to live in the moment with us still under one roof and to absorb some of the memories of a time that will surely become legend in our family history.
Where to start? Shane, Shan and Dermot’s arrival at Dublin Airport on 15th December – a sleepy, lost-looking little boy “making strange” and bewildered after his long journey who quickly made our house his home. An evening in Duncannon on the 20th, quiet time for my Mum with her only great grand child and a splendid dinner for the six of us at Aldridge Lodge.

Taking a shine to Joanne at Aldridge Lodge

The arrival of Shan’s family on the day before Christmas Eve, our house suddenly overwhelmed on a stormy night, as the group unravelled out of a people carrier with noise and baggage and laughter, most of them meeting their newest family member for the first time, and sitting down immediately to home-cooked Chinese food before taking off again to make it to Duncannon before midnight.

The unexpected appearance of our daughter Claire and Mike later that same evening, bringing forward their flight from Manchester for fear of being caught by the gales on Christmas Eve – a third dash to the airport in a week. More smiles and tears of joyous welcome and the unexpected opportunity to sit and chat before joining the crowd in Duncannon the next day.
Christmas Eve, chaotic, wind sweeping cartons of drinking glasses out of our hands and shattering them to tiny pieces in a Wexford car park. Peking style duck and rack of lamb served to 18 from the Big Green Egg alongside Claire’s signature meatballs, Claire and Mike getting used to the scale of our newly extended family.
A tiny Santa on Christmas morning melting all our hearts. The rare sight of 5 Christmas stockings lined up on the fireplace, my off-spring and their families under one roof for a few brief days. Christmas Mass in Star of the Sea, Claire emotional at returning to the Church in which she married and recalling the sad and happy events since her and Mike’s special day.
Exchanging gifts with the Gaos under the tree – their first ever celebration of Christmas – followed by a walk for them at Hook Head and Duncannon beach and, later, dinner with turkey cooked to moist perfection on the Big Green Egg. Blessed by a mild, calm day between the wild storms I didn’t even get wet in the cooking.

"Ooh I like this Christmas lark" — “Ooh I like this Christmas lark”

Christmas at the seaside — Christmas Day at Hook Head and Duncannon

A Stephen’s Day walk to The Local at Dunbrody and Mike’s first experience of the Wren Boys, a relaxed day followed by all the last minute wedding preparations and the fun of cooking 8 pizzas on the Big Green Egg – Second Auntie proving to be a dab hand at putting the pizzas together.
The 28th of December, Shan and Shane’s wedding day and Dermot’s Christening Day in Wexford – ah what a day. From start to finish it was special and the sun even shone for us, only the second break in the wild weather over Christmas. Too special to slip into the middle of a blogpost I gave it one of its own.
Then back to Duncannon to prepare a barbecue for 30 including Shan & Shane’s friends who had travelled from Beijing, a task made considerably easier thanks to Eunice Power, who left me salads, confit duck noodles and homemade beef burgers after the wedding, and Shan’s bridesmaid Wei Wei who turned the left over noodles into a sizzling and spicy Chinese feast.
A frenetic, frazzled morning on Monday 30th, packing up Duncannon and rushing to get Claire and Mike back to Dublin Airport and onwards to Australia. Cue tears and sad goodbyes tinged with happiness at how good the two of them are together and the precious time they had with their new godson Dermot and with Shane and Shan. Returning home slightly nervous at the prospect of 14 of us including our Chinese in-laws under one roof in Shankill for a week but rescued from cooking duties that night by my friend Ann who had made a huge beef casserole to welcome our guests back from Duncannon.
A New Year’s Eve buffet with bling, dumplings made by a super-efficient Chinese production line and a final celebratory dinner at China Sichuan and Chinese tea ceremony at home rounded off Shan’s family’s visit and we saw them off two weeks ago, delighted with their Irish holiday.

Gao Feng shares the art of making pu'er tea — Gao Feng shares the art of making pu’er tea

Since then it has been quieter but a very precious time with Shane, Shan and Dermot. Time to get to know his moods and moments throughout the day, loosing my rookie Nai Nai status and getting confident minding him on my own, introducing him to the ducks and swings at Stephen’s Green, watching him grow in stature and confidence, acquire his first pair of shoes and move to standing and walking with one finger support. His first steps can’t be long away.

"Ooh Granddad what big hands you have!" — “Ooh Granddad what big hands you have!”

Today, our last full day, I took Dermot off on his own for a Nai Nai adventure. On a beautiful sunny day we walked in Phoenix Park and I introduced him to Aras An Uacthtarain, a symbol of one half of his identity. We had lunch together in the Visitor Centre and we spoke about things that matter, him in baby talk, me in words he won’t remember.
Long after Dermot has been reabsorbed into his Chinese world, long after this house has been returned to a state of order as if the tide came in and washed away the evidence of his being here, long after the border of his tiny finger prints around the coffee table is no more, I will remember this day. I will hold it close to my heart like a little precious gem, as precious as Dermot is and always will be. In the words of my current favourite children’s book “I love you to the moon… and back.”
So that’s it. A job done. A plan fulfilled to the letter. A sense of achievement tinged with sadness that it’s all over and an ache at the prospect of missing watching Dermot grow over the coming months.
Meltdown moments during the Christmas period (or what my friends call my “choppy choppy” moments) – five (but I’m not revealing them!). Precious memories – uncountable.
Safe journey home little family. I think it’s time to plan a trip to China.

Twelve days of Christmas to be savoured

I always wanted to cook for a crowd at Christmas. With just two children in our household, the day was sometimes on the quiet side and I would glance with envy across the road to where our neighbours had uproarious parties until the early hours – charades and karaoke – while we dozed in front of the fire, sleeping off enough food to feed a cast of thousands. I used to feel tempted to rush out into the streets to rustle up a crowd but the most I ever served for dinner was six and one year it was just the two of us. I still produced the full Christmas dinner but it just didn’t seem quite right.
Well this year my dream looks set to come true in more ways than one. Santa is to make a return visit to our house for the first time in over 20 years, to do the needful for our little grandson’s first Christmas. Dermot, now aged 10 months, is arriving next Sunday from Beijing with his Mum and Dad, but that’s only the start of it. The following weekend eight of his Chinese aunties uncles and cousins and his Chinese Nai Nai join us to celebrate Christmas, Shane and Shan’s wedding and Dermot’s christening. And as if that’s not enough, our daughter Claire and her Welsh husband Mike, who have just acquired Australian citizenship, will arrive on Christmas Eve, Claire’s first time home for Christmas Day since she emigrated to Sydney six years ago.
But it’s not just a matter of cooking for Christmas Day. For most of Twelve Days of Christmas I will need to put together a meal for 18 people or more and make sure everyone has somewhere to lay their head at night. My excitement is building to fever pitch and planning has reached a nearly obsessive level as I make my lists and check them at least twice so that I can be well-prepared and able to join in the fun. As it’s Shan’s family’s first trip outside China we want to give them a real taste of an Irish Christmas and wedding but with a few touches that might make them feel a bit more at home.
So here’s the plan so far.
Day 1 – 23rd December – Chinese welcome buffet in Shankill
Shan’s relatives will arrive in the early evening, tired from their long-haul journey and we will have a Chinese meal ready for them before they transfer to Duncannon in Wexford – Beer Duck, Gong Bao Chicken, Braised Pork and a nice selection of vegetable dishes to ease them into the newness of Ireland.
Day 2 – Christmas Eve in Duncannon

Roast duck coming along nicely on the BGE

Peking Style Duck barbecued on the Big Green Egg and served with all the trimmings followed by Adam Perry Lang barbecued rack of lamb – our Chinese in-laws are from Xinjiang Province and love their lamb – served with girdled marinated courgettes.

Oh and maybe some Jamie’s Italian Meatballs because it has been our family tradition for Claire to cook these on Christmas Eve whenever she is at home. She will be on the meatball detail.
Day 3 – traditional Christmas Day dinner

Christmas in October — Turkey on the Big Green Egg

The works, but cooked 0n the Big Green Egg. I’ve had a practice run at cooking this for 17 in October and know I can pull it off if nothing goes wrong. Here’s the menu.
Day 4 – Lá le Stiofain
Cook will be on strike but there will be lots of leftovers and perhaps we can rustle up the turkey version of Bang Bang Chicken I never got to make last year.
Day 5 – Pizzas on the Big Green Egg

I figure if Shan’s MaMa could teach me how to make dumplings, I can return the favour by showing our visitors how to make pizza dough using Birra Moretti. Some of the pizzas we will bake on the Big Green Egg are in these blog posts – Lamb and Aubergine Pizza with a nod in the direction of the Old Silk Road with more typical italian toppings here.
Day 6 – Wedding Day
The 28th December, is Shane and Shan’s wedding day so the cook gets the day off , we all head for my hometown Wexford town to be joined by a much wider group of family and friends. Eunice Power will do the cooking in a unique Irish/ Asian fusion feast. Yeah!
Day 7 – Morning After BBQ

Shane and Shan’s friends from Beijing will be descending on an unsuspecting Duncannon and we will put together a casual BBQ including some typical Chinese street food to feed them all up before they adjourn to a local hostelry. The Big Green Egg and our old gas barbecue will be on the go all day. Cook will attempt to stay awake.
Day 8 – A Great Big Stew
This is the day we all return to Dublin so that our Chinese guests can sample some of the treasures of our capital city and environs. It’s also the day Claire and Mike will leave to visit Mike’s family in the UK. A VERY kind friend has volunteered to make a very large stew for me that day which we will serve with lots of vegetables and mash.
Day 9 – New Year’s Eve Buffet

Unfortunately Robert won't be there to cook it! — A splendid NYE feast – unfortunately Robert won’t be there to cook it!

I was a bit stuck for ideas as to how best to celebrate ringing in the new year so I used up my Rewarding Times voucher for Donnybrook Fair Cookery School yesterday and learned from my good friend Robert Jacob how to put together a New Year’s Eve buffet with bling. Sorted! Now all I have to do is cook it.
Day 10 – New Year’s Day Dumplings

(Possibly) my most perfect dumpling ever

We will greet the New Year in the manner familiar to our Chinese guests by making jiaozi. I’m hoping my guests will get stuck in when they come home from sight seeing and we can have a dumpling party. Lots of recipes for fillings are here.
Day 11 – Hotpot
Lot’s of coming and going planned for this day with a few side trips from Dublin so the meal will have to be easy to prepare – I’m thinking of variations on the hotpot I prepared for Claire’s friends last year.
The following day our visitors will spend the night in Kilkenny enjoying the hospitality of the Pembroke Kilkenny and an Italian meal at Rinuccinis. That day is also the first anniversary of my mother in law’s sad passing so it will be important for us to take some time out from the celebrations. It’s hard to believe that it’s nearly a year since I wrote this grief-numbed post about her – In Memory of Alice.
Day 12 – A Farewell Banquet at China Sichuan
Our guests return to Dublin to pack for their long trip back to Beijing, Shanghai and Urumqi. What better way to end their visit than with a farewell meal at China Sichuan Dublin. I’ve no doubt that Kevin Hui and his team will give them the send off they deserve with a unique Irish take on the tastes of home. Shane, Shan and Dermot get to stay on in Ireland for another few weeks so we will have time to re-group with them and absorb the memories of what promises to be a most extraordinary Christmas.
Table Talk at Donnybrook Fair
Now about that New Year’s Eve buffet, well Robert Jacob’s class yesterday was an inspiration and great fun too. He has a lovely, relaxed teaching style and it wasn’t just the food but his ideas for presentation that made this class special. Thanks to him my party menu will go something like this:

Cherry Red Gazpacho with Prawns

****

Maple Syrup and Mustard Glazed Wexford Ham

Smoked Haddock Leek and Gruyere Tart

Stilton Tart

Winter Pear and Goat’s Cheese Salad

Crab Salad with Goatsbridge Trout Caviar

Remoulade of Celeriac and Green Apples

Carrot and Broccoli Salad

****

Blingy Chocolate Chestnut Log

Peach and Raspberry Mock Trifle

That was a lot learnt in a four hour class. The chefs at Donnybrook Fair Cookery School including Niall Murphy and Robert put on a great selection of courses and they have lots of interesting guest chefs and food writers too. I want to attend them all!

In fact Robert and I are collaborating on a Discover China evening on 18th January. It will be Part 1 of their new Table Talk series. I will talk about Chinese food, he will cook recipes from the blog and dinner will be served afterwards. The honeymoon couple Shane and Shan will still be in Ireland so they will come along to share some of their insights and reminiscences about the food of Shan’s homeland. it would be lovely to see some of you there.

You can find out more about the classes here on DonnybrookFair.ie. It’s a great website for last minute Christmas gift vouchers for the food lover in your life.

Enjoy the run up to Christmas lovely readers. I will pop in from time to time to report on progress and the inevitable mishaps.

A bit of bling to welcome 2014 — A bit of bling planned to welcome 2014

When East Meets West on the Old Silk Road – Lamb and Aubergine Pizza

I’m in Dubai Airport waiting to board a flight for Beijing. As I sit here between two worlds in the surreal environment that is the transit area of a major international airport, the temperature is a sauna-like 30 degrees at 2 in the morning and a half moon is sitting like a smiley in the sky, glowing red from the dessert sands. In this part of the world I can’t be too far from the old silk road along which travellers took many moons to reach their destination in places like Xinjiang province in remote, northwest China where my daughter in law Shan was born.
Here the camels have been replaced by A380 planes. Big, lumbering beasts of burden that become suddenly graceful when they soar into the air.
Would you look at who’s waiting for me when I get to my destination – Dermot, camping in the living room so that his Nai Nai can take over his room.

Over the next two weeks I will get to spend lots of time with him, Shane, Shan and MaMa. I’m travelling to Beijing to speak at the Beijing Forum at Peking University next weekend but, of course, I’m adding on lots of extra days to have time with them.
I also hope to take some more Chinese cooking lessons, including spending whole days with Shan’s MaMa. She and I don’t yet have language in common but we can communicate through a mutual love of food and cooking. I’ve been thinking about how I can return the favour when she and her sisters in law and nieces visit Ireland for Shane and Shan’s wedding in December.
MaMa enjoyed showing me how to make noodles and dumplings the last time I was in Beijing so I thought that it could be fun to spend a day making pizza with her and the other ladies of the family. Although, come to think of it, with nine Chinese girls and women, ranging from age 3 upwards in our little house in Duncannon, none of whom speak English except Shan, it might have to be a demo rather than a hands on lesson!
Right down to the youngest girl, Chinese women are naturals at working with dough – flatbread, noodles and dumplings get whipped up from scratch every day – but they don’t have access to ovens and don’t use yeast. I think they would love the rhythm of working with yeast dough and stretching it to make a perfect thin, pizza round.
So cue experiment time. What happens if you take a very Italian pizza base, a topping with the flavours of Xinjiang province loved by Shan’s family and a Big Green Egg and put them together? Magic is the answer. Even if cooked outside in the dark in Duncannon, during a lightning storm, on a wild Autumn evening. Continue reading