Tuna With Aubergine Hummus

Tuna with aubergine hummus – Seared, spice dusted tuna, with a creamy chickpea and aubergine hummus.

I’ve got a bit of a love / hate relationship with tuna. I love cooking it and I love eating it even more. But I don’t like putting it on the menu any where I work.

I’ve a couple of reasons. First off tuna has got to be cooked rare…or not at all if you like sushi. For some reason because it slightly resembles a fillet of beef and can be cooked rare customers seem to think it can’t be cooked medium, pink and every other cuisson you can apply to meat.

This just isn’t the case. It can’t be cooked medium or pink. It’s not beef there’s no blood and it will never take on that beautiful pink hue you get at the center of a perfectly cooked steak.

The best any chef can do is kind of half cook it for you, which is a difficult thing to do and get spot on. Do the chef a favour and eat rare. You’ll love the crusty caramelized exterior and the soft, moist red center and if you want it well done I’ll open a tin of John West’s finest for you.

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Chilled Melon Soup With Mojito Ice

Chilled melon soup with a tangy mint and lime infused mojito ice. A great way to cool off on a hot summer’s day.

I’ve been waiting all summer to rustle up this soup but the weather just wouldn’t play ball. We’re into september now and with the recent  spell of good weather I decided it was now or never.

It always seems to me that the minute autumn officially starts the sun decides to make an appearance. It didn’t turn out to be an indian summer, but the warm weather lasted a couple of days and the temperature rose enough for me to be able to make one of the simplest chilled soup recipes you’ll ever see.

All you need is one simple ingredient. A sweet, juicy, overly ripe melon. Peel it, remove the seeds, and whirl it up in a food processor…and voila a simple summer soup made in seconds. Just chill it for an hour or so and you have a light and refreshing way to start a meal. Read More

Monkfish And Mango Skewers

Monkfish and mango skewers – Cubes of spanking fresh monkfish, skewered with juicy ripe mango, and char grilled over red-hot coals.

We’re not great at barbecues here in Ireland, are we? Not surprising when you can count on one hand the number of days when the opportunity might arise to fire it up and get cooking al fresco.

Burgers, sausages, chicken, and maybe a cut of steak are the usual suspects when we decide to do a bit of searing over coals.  A lot of the time when cooking fish on a bbq is gets relegated to a convenient foil parcel, placed over the searing heat.

It’s a handy way to cook a bit of fish, but kinda defeats the whole purpose of getting out the bbq and going to the hassle of firing up the coals in the first place. Fish well wrapped up in foil will never take on the slightest hint of that beautifully charred, smoky, and caramelized flavour we all love when we bbq. Essentially the fish gets steamed in its own juice, and not barbecued.

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How To Make Sauce Vierge

Anyone who’s ever learned how to make sauce vierge will know that the use of the word sauce in its title is perhaps a little misleading. Sweet tomatoes, fragrant coriander seed, and freshly chopped soft herbs, all mingled together with fruity extra virgin olive oil is definitely something I’d call a dressing.

For me the word sauce conjures up images of rich, silky, indulgent liquids made with large amounts of cream and butter. Sauce vierge on the other hand is something a lot lighter, better for you, and ultimately very tasty.

It’s little wonder that it’s a sauce I come back to again and again. It’s a classic companion for any type of white fish, shellfish, and even works well with pasta. Any leftovers make a great dressing for potato salad too.

Sauce vierge translates as virgin sauce. Maybe the name comes from the use of virgin olive oil in the recipe, I’m not sure. It was made popular by the french chef Michel Guérard, one of the founders of nouvelle cuisine. A recipe for it first appeared in his book  La Grande Cuisine minceur. Its since gone on to become a modern classic

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Caramelized Spiced Pineapple With Vanilla Ice Cream

Warm juicy pineapple, spiced with chillies and vanilla then caramelized till golden.

Why is it the older I get the sweeter my sweet tooth seems to becomes? I’m at the stage now where dessert is often the part of a meal I look forward to the most. I love to bake but unless I’ve a day off then I just don’t have the time.

Cooking up sweet treats takes time and if you’re anything like me you keep a look out for dessert recipes and sweet things you can whizz up in a hurry. One of my favorite thing to do for a quick sugar hit is to caramelise some seasonal fruits in a hot pan with a little sugar.

Ripe mangos, bananas, strawberries ( so plentiful at the moment), and of course pineapple all caramelize nicely. Than you can just deglaze the sticky fruit with whatever liquor you’ve got in your cabinet. Rum, cointreau, sambuca, even whiskey, or a good desert wine all work well. Read More

Shellfish Mac And Cheese

Shellfish mac and cheese – baked macaroni in a super silky sauce laced with flecks of sweet crab and succulent prawns.

Macaroni and cheese has been popular ever since Kraft put it in a box and sold it as a convenience product in 1937. It was around long before that though. Its roots are Italian and date back to the 14th century where recipes for pasta casseroles can be found in cookbooks written in latin.

We might never have heard of mac and cheese if not for American president Thomas Jefferson. Apparently he fell in love with the dish while traveling in northern Italy at the beginning of the 19th century and brought the recipe home with him.

Friends in the U.S tell me that as  kids they grew up on mac and cheese. Not so here in Ireland. I can remember as a young lad hearing references to it on the T.V and never really knowing what it was. I grew up on spuds, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The only pasta I was familiar with as a kid were the spaghetti hoops that came from a can.

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