Three in a row

My "baby boy" turned 8 a couple of weeks ago!!! The perfect excuse to bake some cupcakes...

My boys are now aged 8, 9 and 10. A lot of people think we were insane to have our kids so close together but I am so glad we did. Yes there are crazy days where I think "what were we thinking???" but then I look at them playing together, enjoying the same toys, movies and games and just know how blessed we are :-) Other days when they're all wrestling and being totally feral I think maybe we should have spaced them out by about 10 years each :-D!!!

Tapas with the folks :-)

One of my absolute favourite things about living back in Ireland is being able to see my parents whenever!! After 14 months back it's still a novelty being able to phone them and say "Call over for lunch"!! I love cooking for my parents, they love food as much as I do and I love getting their positive feedback on my dishes (something you don't get so much from kids eh?).

Yesterday I decided to do Tapas. I really love all these delicious little dishes and decided to try to recreate (without any recipes) some of my favourites.

Here's what I made...

Garlic and spinach prawns and scallops with black pudding in a garlic butter sauce.

"Patatas Bravas" and chorizo with char-grilled peppers in a spicy onion and tomato sauce.

Mushrooms and onions in a garlic and flour coating and a little dish of mixed olives and peppers (the stuffed peppers were from Aldi).

Serrano ham and lovely cheese and onion bread (from Supervalu)

Everything looked so lovely and colourful laid out on the table and I was really happy with how everything tasted.

I served all the tapas up in these cute dishes I got at TK Maxx.

It's a real treat to do a bit of cooking like this while the boys are at school, it gives me a chance to have a few hours to sit and really chat with my parents before I collect the boys who love coming home to find their Nana and Grandad there :-)

I'm hoping to try and make churros for dessert next time, this time there were cream cakes :-)

No Food Stylist

As you can see I am no food photographer/stylist. The instant I am served or have cooked a meal I just want to eat it. If something looks particularly nice I may occasionally (twice I think, one being the chowder in my previous post) take a snap with my phone but other than that when I have food in front of me I get stuck straight in!

The same can be said for my presentation skills, when my meals are ready I just like to heap them onto a plate and get going, case in point - this risotto...

I made this last week and if I do say so myself it was DELICIOUS! Really earthy and intense and mushroomy, exactly what I wanted. I had eaten the most amazing risotto ever one evening on our trip to Paris and had been having cravings ever since. I looked up lots of tips on how to get it just right and using dried porcini mushrooms in hot water, homemade stock from a soup I had made the day before, heaps of fresh mushrooms fried in truffle oil and some good Arborio rice, I got it just right!

So it may not be beautiful but it tasted pretty damn good and I just thought I'd share :-)

Don't worry I won't be sharing too many of my repulsive looking food photographs here in the future, I'll just continue to swoon over other people's work on all the foodie sites I love :-)

Dublin Coddle

No don't leave!!! I know it looks horrendous but I promise you it's delicious!!! :-D

This bowl of boiled potatoes, onions, sausages and bacon (or rashers as we call bacon here in Ireland) is called "Dublin Coddle".

It's a really old Dublin recipe and if you grew up here, chances are your mum or granny made it for you regularly.

If you're not Irish but are looking for some yummy, comfort food, especially for all you Aussies who are in the middle of Winter right now, then this could be the meal for you.

If you google "Dublin Coddle" you will find hundreds of recipes, all with slightly different variations but here's my take on Dublin Coddle.

Ingredients:

16 Irish pork sausages (Irish sausages are so delicious and salty, the closest I could find in Australia taste-wise were David Jones' Gold Medal sausages).
8 strips of back bacon.
2 large white onions
8 large potatoes
2 chicken stock cubes.

Method:

This couldn't be simpler, just peel and chop your potatoes and add them to a very large saucepan or casserole dish. Add your sausages, slice each piece of bacon into thirds and add to pot and lastly slice your onions into large slices and add to the pot. Fill the pot with cold water and add the 2 stock cubes and bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer for approx 80 minutes.

It's that easy! The potatoes and onions melt a little while the water is reducing which results in a nice thick sauce, the sausages and bacon will taste so tender and salty and delicious.

Serve with your favourite bread or roll, I love it with a slice of Brennans bread with Kerrygold butter :-)

Homemade Lemonade

It's gotten warmer here in Ireland the last week or so and my boys are loving it! On Saturday they asked if we could make some homemade lemonade, unfortunately we don't have the luxury of a lemon tree in our garden anymore but a quick trip to Supervalu got us the required citrus haul.

This is the simplest drink to make and so delicious and refreshing!

First we put one cup (250ml) of water and one cup of sugar in a saucepan, brought it to the boil and mixed until the sugar had completely dissolved, (this makes a nice sugar syrup which works a lot better than simply adding sugar to lemons and water which would be gritty and just sink to the bottom), we then set it aside to cool.

While the syrup was cooling we squeezed 6 large lemons to get one cupful (250ml) of lemon Juice. We got a large jug, added the cool syrup and lemon juice, lots of ice and cold water to fill it to the top,  gave it a good mix and topped it off with thin lemon slices.

A nice simple way for kids to help in the kitchen with a treat at the end of it :-)

Finishing Touches

The last few days have been a flurry of doing all those last things that need to be finished for Christmas...

Wrapping the gifts.

Making homemade treats.

Icing the cake.

And making the pudding (six hours of my life I'll never get back).

I'm signing off now for Christmas and hope you all have a wonderful time and a fantastic new year :-) See you in 2015!!!

The cake

While the boys were at school the other day I finally got round to baking the Christmas cake. This is a day's work between the prep and baking so it's best to get it done without the rascals under my feet :-) 

Ta daaa! I'll leave it to rest for a week or so before icing it. Now I just need to find a spare 6 hours to get the pudding done!!!

No oil painting...

Let's be honest, tonight's dinner (chicken and veggie pie) wouldn't win any prizes in a beauty contest...

...but it was really, really yummy :-)

A simple treat

After a long, cold, rainy week here in Dublin we were all ready to just unwind this evening. There is no homework on weekends here which I LOVE and the boys' little cousins popped over for a play after school. This evening's dinner was made from leftovers and followed by my "special homemade apple pie" ;-)

This is probably the easiest treat in the world to make and your kids will love it. I always keep some puff pastry sheets in the freezer, then when a dessert is called for, all I need to do is take one out to defrost, stew some apples, add some cinnamon and sugar and roll it up and bake for 25 mins at 180 degrees, serve with strawberries and vanilla ice cream, couldn't be simpler, a classic treat without any fuss :-)

♥♥♥ Le Creuset ♥♥♥

Today I just thought I'd share some new additions to my Le Creuset collection. This cast iron cookware is a dream to cook with and comes with a lifetime guarantee, so I always snap it up if I see a piece I like on special or vintage pieces at bargain prices.

The new collection in Rosemary green is so pretty, such a gorgeous colour and this 24cm casserole is perfect for soups :-)

This 22cm casserole in the Dune/Almond colour is perfect for mashed potatoes cooked in chicken stock and mixed with chives.

This limited edition 22cm shallow casserole comes in really handy for my cheesy rice bake, yum!

This wok is MASSIVE!!! I love Thai green curries and chicken chow mein.

Ever since finding my first vintage Le Creuset saucepans designed by Enzo Mari I have never looked back. I much prefer these to cooking with stainless steel or non-stick pots now, the enamelled finish on Le Creuset pots is a dream to clean up and when looked after properly lasts a lifetime. I was delighted to snap up this set of 3 pots for a steal, the wooden handles are awesome too, no worry about burning your hands on the handles!

Speaking of Enzo Mari designed pieces I am thrilled to have finally added one of his casseroles to my collection. He designed these for Le Creueset in 1972 and this one is in lovely condition. I also have a lime green baker designed by him.

These stoneware bean pots are in the really pretty Satin Blue colour, they are perfect for single serves of comfort food like Chilli Con Carne or Cottage Pie, perfect to eat on the sofa with a fork :-) Try Sophie Dahl's Shepherd's Pie or Nigella Lawson's Chicken, Mushroom and Bacon Pie :-)

And finally, a utensil holder also in Satin Blue, I now have these in 3 different colours and they look lovely together :-)

If you're a Le Creuset fan too and would like to see the rest of my collection I shared it here :-)

Rest

We're having a lazy Sunday at ours. In our PJs until midday, a nice roast chicken for lunch followed by cartoons :-)

Hope you're all having a nice day of rest too :-)

Comfort when it's cold outside

The temperatures have dropped here in Sydney, whilst the sun is still shining there's a chill in the air. Today a fierce wind is blowing outside, I love being indoors on days like this, looking out at the beautiful trees in the National Park that our house backs onto. 

An unfortunate side effect of Winter, for me though, is that little bit of "Winter Weight" I always seem to pile on. It can't be helped, at this time of year all I want to cook are big casseroles with rich, creamy sauces, lots of comfort food (mostly involving melted cheese where possible) and I bake more in Winter than any other time of the year. Lemon cakes, hot chocolate pots, apple pies... you get the picture :-)

I love browsing though (my way too big) cookbook collection for inspiration. Whilst I find I rarely follow a recipe exactly as printed from start to finish (unless baking which is an exact science), I prefer to use the books as inspiration for my own concoctions.

A large majority of my cookbooks were online purchases from Book Depository, World Books etc. but I also love to browse through the bookshelves in Op Shops for bargains. Here are a few of my favourite op shop finds...

First up, "Bourke Street Bakery" from the popular bakery in Sydney's Surry Hills, it is full of fab recipes for breads, pastries and cakes.

I think I will try some of these olive breads soon, they look so yum!

This book "Kitchen Coquette" is so cute, full of recipes to suit your mood/condition, there are hangover foods, heartbreak ideas and all sorts of occasions too :-)

I think this rosewater madeleine recipe will put my lovely vintage madeleine tin to good use.

"The Ethnic Paris Cookbook" is a beautiful celebration of the melting pot of cultures that is the city of love :-)

Usually I prefer cookbooks to have photos for inspiration (and to let me know what the finished product should roughly look like) but the illustrations in this book are so cute I couldn't resist!

The "Country Show Cookbook" is a family favourite!

The boys and I love their "orange cake" recipe except we substitute the oranges with lemons from our tree, "So yummy" to quote my youngest :-)

And finally "Apples for Jam", a really beautiful book packed with recipes for all the family, gorgeous food kids will love too.

Can you think of a better comfort food on a cold day than fried mozzarella sandwiches?!?

That's all for now. These photos have made me hungry, I'm off to cook something gooey and cheesy :-)