Italian

With the onset of summer something Italian seemed fitting. 
 
For starters - bruschetta with:
- tomato jelly and basil (it's just tomato, whizzed, with gelatin)
- anchovy and buffalo mozzarella
- aubergine and chili

 Mushroom ravioli with truffle oil. There’s not much more to say here really.
 

This is a pea puree with a scallop. 

The stuff sprinkled over the scallop is the orange roe from the scallop that’s been dried out in the oven and then ground up to a powder in a pestle and mortar. The green roll is langoustine rolled up in spinach (same technique as described in a previous blog post) and topped with some lumpfish roe. The sauce is made from boiling up the heads and shells of the langoustines in milk and frothing up with some butter and a hand blender. 

This is just a piece of beef, a simple red wine jus and horseradish. The beef is 21 day, dry aged fillet purchased form O’Toole's of Terenure.
 

Most meat is wet aged which means it’s vacuum packed in plastic. This makes the aging process quicker and also retains all the moisture (weight) in the meat both of which are a big plus for the retailer but which don’t benefit the taste or tenderness of the meat. By contrast dry aged beef is hung for much longer. Moisture is evaporated from the meat which concentrates its flavour and the natural enzymes break down the connective tissue in the muscle, which leads to more tender beef. Dry aged meat is more expensive to produce in that it needs to be hung for longer and at near freezing temperatures which results in about a third of the weight being lost. Add to this the fact that it is only those higher grades of meat which are suitable for the process `(such as fillet or sirloin which have a higher proportion of evenly distributed fat). All thing considered its understandable why it costs more to buy this but it’s well worth the extra for a special occasion.

The piece I cooked weighed about 0.8kg. Seasoned and the seared all over in a very hot pan and then straight into a hot oven for 15 mins and then removed from the pan and left to rest wrapped in foil. To make the sauce I just deglaze the pan with red wine and whisked in cold butter to add gloss. For the horseradish just grate the root into crème fraiche and add a little white wine vinegar and seasoning to taste.   
 

Salad and cheese to follow.
 

 

































And for desert  - apricot soufflé.

This was my first attempt at a soufflé. I had a kumquat soufflé recently in the Gordon Ramsey restaurant at Ritz Carlton which was pretty spectacular. It was the highlight of the meal and I've been looking for an excuse to have a crack at producing a soufflé ever since. My effort here was reasonably successful but a little overdone I think and not as light and risen as it might have been. I think my downfall was not sticking with one recipe. I'd started off with the intention of following Julia Child’s supposedly foolproof instructions including her detailed essay on whisking egg whites by hand with a pinch of cream of tartar - but at the last minute I decided to mix it up with another recipe I’d found online and another from Gordon Ramsey's Just Deserts. The base was a creme patisserie and the fruit puree came from dried apricots soaked overnight. For dusting the the buttered molds I made up a praline and blitzed it to a powder. Served up here with a scoop of sweetened mascarpone and a little more of the praline.

Monkfish livers

If you’re lucky enough to come across any of these , snap them up. Monkfish livers are the foie gras of the fish world, except without the forced feeding, general cruelty etc. I picked these up in Wrights of Howth at the weekend and cooked them up for lunch as soon as I got home. Dusted in flour, fried in butter, toast, lemon, mmmm.

Stuffed squid

 
If you can find these baby squid ready prepared it’s a bit quicker but if not its simple enough to do and there is something very satisfying about plucking the plastic like quill out of those little white sacs.

For the filling I used the tentacles of the squid, Dublin bay prawns, chorizo, garlic, chili, onion and parsley stalks all chopped up finely and gently fried until just soft. Into this grate lemon zest and add the parsley leaves, a squeeze of lemon and a splash of Thai fish sauce. Let this all cool before starting to stuff.

The stuffing is a bit fiddly and best done by hand. They shouldn’t be over filled as the squid will shrink as it cooks. Seal the ends with cocktail sticks.

The cooking needs to be done quickly in a hot pan with a smear of vegetable oil. If they’re cooked too long the squid will go rubbery. A minute or two on each side should be fine, you want to see some searing. At the end of cooking pour in a little white wine or dry sherry to deglaze and let it bubble down to a syrupy consistency.

Served here with some sourdough bread to mop up the juices and a sharply dressed salad. 

 

Rabbit ravioli.....with carrots

 

There’s always something rather gruesome about stating with a whole carcass of a mammal, and when you put the thing through a mincer the effect is doubled. But if you can’t cope with this sort of thing you shouldn’t be eating meat in the first place. The rabbit was a wild one from Hicks.

This was my second stab at ravioli. The basic gist of it is outlined in an earlier post. For the filling the boned and minced rabbit is mixed with finely chopped and fried garlic, onion and a little mushroom, seasoned with thyme, juniper and a splash of red wine.

I was trying to think of a sauce that would have some affinity with the rabbit and carrot just seemed natural. It’s a light carrot broth enriched with a little cream and frothed up with a hand blender.