Friday 24 October 2014

More international inspiration.

My sister was never into cooking or baking. While I grew up with an obsession for food, often helping in the kitchen at dinner time and always in the kitchen when my mother was baking, she had other hobbies. Since having my gorgeous nephew 5 years ago she has developed into a domestic goddess but sometimes her lack of experience shows. Now I don't want to embarrass her but most recently she bought corn flour with the intention of making corn bread. Needless to say it did not go well! But when I saw Corn Meal in the Caribbean section of my local supermarket I was inspired to have a go myself.
I've always thought that Brits were missing something by not using corn as a grain. From the moment I saw Wild Bill denied a piece of cornbread in the Green Mile I've wanted to try it and when I was recently in Blackpool I had the opportunity to try a corndog, delicious!
The cornbread that I've made was a little dry for eating on it's own so I've done a bit of reading on how it should best be eaten, I've discovered that Americans take their corn bread very seriously and there are arguments about the right corn to use, the use of sugar in the recipe, the way it's cooked etc etc. From what I can tell this cakey variety is Northern style and the use of sugar makes it a dessert or sweet treat and would therefor best be eaten with honey or maple syrup. The southern version would omit sugar and be cooked in a skillet, it would accompany savoury foods such as chilli. Either way I still think corn meal is underrated in Britain!

This recipe was taken from the Betty Crocker recipe and works really well for a moist yet grainy cake style corn bread. I've converted all the measures below. 

Ingredients

240ml Milk
56g Butter melted
1egg
185g Coarse yellow corn meal
150g Plain flour
100g caster sugar
3 teaspoons Bicarbonate powder
1/4 teaspoon Salt

Preheat the oven to 200•c and grease a 20cm square pan.
Melt the butter, then beat in the egg and milk. 
Add in all of the dry ingredients. I'm told to expect a lumpy batter so don't worry about sifting.
 Pour the batter into the tray and bake for 20-25 mins until golden brown. 
So easy!



Tuesday 21 October 2014

The Emerald Isle Continued...

Continuing on in Ireland, I never spoke about my other favourite restaurant, this time in Galway. Galway is famed for its colourful eclecticism which attracts artists of all kinds. It's a wonderful, lively city and the focus point of it seems to be the Spanish quarter where a stroll to the harbour passes craft shops and restaurants and the bustling atmosphere is warm and inviting. In a very European fashion restaurants spill out onto the street in an attempt to  entice you in and trying to decide on a place to spend your money can be difficult, everything looks so good. We chose a place based on its A board menu as it was tucked away upstairs.

The Artisan captured us with it's tantalizing menu for only £25 for 3 courses and the food really was tantalizing. From start to finish it was delicious and extraordinary: the goats cheese starter was served in the form of a pate, the sea bass was subtly seasoned and expertly pan fried and the selection of desserts were delicate and delectable.

Now I just want to detour a moment to speak about hospitality. We were completely underdressed for an evening out in Galway, we had travelled all day and just wanted somewhere nice to eat. We hadn't pre-booked even though the Spanish Quarter was becoming lively and it was pretty obvious we weren't their usual art collecting punter. Despite this, the hosts welcomed us with warmth and cheer and were very attentive to our small cover. While we gazed at the artwork adorning the walls we were offered freshly baked breads and we soon felt very comfortable. When we asked about an art piece the owner came over to speak to us about it and gave us the information of the artist. By the way HERE is his link, strikingly visual topography which can be made to order. The Artisan was more than we could have hoped to stumble across and turned into the perfect romantic evening.

Now back to the food! While in Ireland the majority of my diet consisted mainly of sea food, salmon fillets, prawns, sea bass (at the Artisan) and in particular the delicious combination of Irish bread and smoked salmon. As you would expect being situated on the coast both Dublin and Galway are authorities in sea food, in fact Galway had just hosted it's 60th oyster festival a few days previously to our arrival. It has to be said that I love my smoked salmon, a firm favourite at any time of the day and I always go for quality over price at the supermarket. However, there is a (disputed) claim that Coton in the Elms in Derbyshire, only 12miles away from me, is the furthest point in England from any coastline and despite the quality you can taste the distance. By that I mean that the fresher salmon smoked and served on any coastline is so much richer and deeper in flavour than any which has travelled courtesy of the supermarkets. When you combine that with the dense, grainy and flavoursome soda bread of Irish bakers you get a combination of flavours that are made for each other. Move over salmon finger sandwiches, make room  Scandaweigian open face sandwiches, there's a sexy new Irish charmer in town.

For this post I intended to make soda bread with Irish stew (as the weather has turned colder)  and then smother the left over bread with  sexy smoked salmon for lunch. I'm afraid the leftovers weren't used so I'll have to make do with the original bread and stew!


For the Irish Stew Delia is the queen of traditional! 



Tuesday 14 October 2014

The Emerald Isle.

So last week I was in Ireland with my boyfriend, a native Dubliner. We spent the week exploring both Dublin and some of the West Coast around Galway where I experienced some of the most dramatic scenery I'd ever seen; invigorating coastlines, serene lakes, sleeping giants of mountains and luscious green wilderness. There were also the tourist traps, some of which we visited briefly, and mainly consisted of a shop or two of green colour explosion. Imagine Kermit devoured a gift shop and spewed it all back up. My friend Dani would have loved the pure tat, so obscenely twee.

Along the way we discovered some amazing eateries and also some less so. There are two restaurants that have cemented themselves into my memory, both as different from each other as they are distant. The first was in Dublin, a place called Rustic Stone which (now I've had to read up on this after being told the basic story behind it's conception) is owned by Michellin starred chef Dylan McGrath, also the judge on Masterchef Ireland. This is his concept taken from the restaurants website,
""At Rustic Stone our philosophy is simple. We source the best seasonal ingredients, then we apply simple techniques to extract the most flavour, while giving you the information you need to add nutrition and structure to your diet. The produce I've chosen and our demand for freshness, is the cornerstone of our Rustic idea, while providing a healthy but affordable eating approach." After a stressful past in fine dining and suffering deeply in Ireland's recession he met nutritionist Erika Doolan and the two spent a year devising the menu which focused an a healthier choice for diners. There's an interesting blog on the restaurants website if you'd like to know more.  

So anyway, back to my experience. I chose the Posh Pesto salad which sounded good on the menu, and included some flavours I already knew I liked and some peculiar new ones too, "Watercress, baby spinach, baby gem leaves, iceberg, cherry tomatoes, black olives, coriander, basil and pickled saffron shallots bound in pine nut herb pesto." It was a risk but I can honestly say it paid off, this is the best salad I have ever tried! And not by a small fraction either. So now I strive to recreate this behemoth of salads. Now of course I'm fully aware of the inconvenience and cost of some of the ingredients, I don't think picked saffron shallots are something you could casually pick up from the local supermarket and I haven't the faintest inclination to pickle my own saffron infused shallots so I've had to omit accordingly. I've picked out a few flavours and created a basic salad with some of the key ingredients for texture, colour, greenery and health. The result was great, obviously not Michelin star worthy but the flavours were definitely there, along with the convenience!

The reason this meal is sweet sticky toffee in my mind is because it was a salad! Now remember that a year ago I refused to eat rabbit food, i was a self confessed salad dodger! The lighter me is now quite partial to a salad and this is another area where I'm really trying to learn how to satisfy my tastebuds. I'm aware that there are endless ingredients, assembly methods, seasonings, textures and themes that can build a salad but as I'm new to (an awful lot) of these foods i find that the path of discovery to mouthwatering salads is a slow one but this was a great start.


Ingredients: 
2 handfuls of pre-packaged salad. (I used morrisons lambs lettuce, baby spinach and rocket)
A small handful of fresh basil (I didn't have coriander or I would have used this too).
6-8 cherry tomatoes (pan fried in olive oil until very slightly browned on the edges)
8 black olives 
1 level tea spoon of green pesto- mix the pesto with a little dollop of olive oil to thin it enough to drip it over the salad then add an extra drizzle of olive oil to the salad.
Salt and pepper to season
Sprinkling of mixed seeds just for texture! 




Tuesday 7 October 2014

An introduction...

For anyone who may be interested in reading another baking/cooking/travel blog please allow me to introduce myself. I'm Natalie, 29 year old lover of food and cake connoisseur. I mean who can resist the sweet smell, the soft warmth and adorable allure of cake. As the title of this blog suggests you can't be sad when you're eating cake, its inconceivable!
Although I do my fair share of baking I've also become quite the cook (or so my boyfriend tells me) and in the last few years have developed a taste and style of my own in the kitchen. This style comes from my mother who I spent many of my childhood days in the kitchen with, watching and learning and also my desire to eat healthily and wholesomely.
My relationship with food is a difficult one, one which has comforted me, entertained me and in doing so has caused me to suffer in obesity. A year ago I was 5 stone heavier than I am now and morbidly obese. Since loosing the weight ( I am no where near slender but I'm sure a slim cake connoisseur is an oxymoron) my eating habits have been reformed. My tastes have broadened and I have a blossoming romance with vegetables, of which I'm constantly trying to discover and adapt new ways of cooking as I'd never chosen to eat them (let alone cook them) previously.
Inevitably you will find that my attempts in the kitchen will probably focus around baking and healthy recipes but variety will come from other inspirations including travel and people and (hopefully) many other interesting sources. I hope you will enjoy reading the blog, a tiny anchovy in the ocean of amateur cooking blogs, but maybe my attempts and discoveries can inspire a fellow foodie.