My Food Guide to Northern Ireland

This year I am starting a new independent project which looks at the food scene in Northern Ireland. I really believe that Northern Ireland is an incredibly underrated food destination. In my years of living here, eating out, shopping for food and actually meeting farmers and small-scale producers, I have really enjoyed local quality produce which is available at very affordable prices. And because I feel so passionate about local food and about the great deals on offer I want to share my experiences, where I eat, where I shop and what farmers and producers I meet as I travel around the country this year. It's a personal journey really, of me discovering Northern Ireland's food culture, which I hope you will follow.

I have already started out with some reviews of where to eat in Belfast. Belfast has a varied selection of high quality yet affordable restaurants, and here are a few of them. In future I will also be looking at certain shops, markets or schemes where you can get your food from, so stay tuned. And finally, I'm arranging with boxa box scheme in County Antrim to make a short programme on their scheme and some of the farmers that supply them. So thanks for reading and there will be more interesting stuff to come!

Reviews below:

Afternoon Tea at the Merchant Hotel:
http://myfoodguidetonorthernireland.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/afternoon-tea-at-merchant-hotel-belfast.html

Lee Garden for Dim Sum:
http://myfoodguidetonorthernireland.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/lee-garden-dim-sum-belfast.html

Lunch at the MAC:
http://myfoodguidetonorthernireland.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/lunch-at-mac-belfast.html

Fried Chicken at Birdcage:
http://myfoodguidetonorthernireland.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/fried-chicken-at-birdcage-belfast.html

How to make Sourdough: From Starter to Bread

Sourdough Bread is bread made with homemade yeast, also called natural or wild yeast sometimes, and it's very unique in flavour. As the name suggests, it does have a slightly sour hint to it, but this really depends on what kind of starter you use and what flour you use to make your bread. As a rule of thumb, the more wholemeal is in your starter and in your bread, the more sour it will get and using mostly white flour doesn't really make it that sour. What sourdough also does which is unique really, is to give bread that mellow depth of flavour. It's quite hard to describe, but when you're eating sourdough it just tastes so natural you could say, or the way bread is supposed to taste. 

Sourdough is really comforting and I think it's the perfect 'home bread' because of how non-fussy it is. This may sound strange because most people say it's complicated and it needs more time to make, but it's really such a forgiving bread. You can forget it for a few hours while it rises and just make it whenever it suits you, there's no time presure. And doing most of your work during the morning and evening means that even with a busy lifestyle you can afford to make homemade bread. The starter itself is also pretty flexible and forgiving. If it doesn't ferment that much anymore you can add more flour and water, maybe a bit of sugar or honey, put in a mixer or whisk by hand and after letting it rest for a while it should work as usual again. That's also why I consider my two videos to be a guide on sourdough making and not a recipe. Conditions for sourdough bread are always different and everybody has their own way of making it, which shouldn't discourage you at all, but encourage you to put your own personal twist on it. This bread is made to suit your needs!

Thanks for watching and we're sure your bread will be a success!!!

Nasturtium Capers, A Great Local Alternative

The title says alternative, but I should really call nasturtium capers a replacement to the otherwise boring capers you get in supermarkets. Nasturtium capers are the business and I just love them, and I don't understand why I've just discovered them now. For any of you who don't know what nasturtiums are, they are that ever-present creeping garden flower that some people might call a weed. Now it's true that its growing habit is very much weed-like, because if you start growing a few nasturtium plants somewhere in your garden, they'll come back year after year. While some people loathe this vigorous behaviour, some people are truly excited about the sheer promise that this yearly cycle entails. Every part of the nasturtium plant is edible, and it might not be very consistent food, but it's absolutely beautiful and so peppery. 

At the start of the growing season, one of my all-time favourite things to do is to go to the community garden during a nice sunny day, bring a nice loaf of homemade bread, a nice dressing and a cool drink; all the other ingredients for our impromptu lunch I gather from the garden. Nice crunchy fresh lettuces, pungent pink chive flowers and beautiful red and yellow nasturtium flowers. Toss it in a bowl, put a light dressing over it and you've got summer and sunshine in a bowl. A gorgeous and so satisfying meal, and yet so simple. For that reason alone I would grow nasturtiums and because they attract beneficial insects to your plot and harmful insects away from your actual crops. But it gets better.

In late summer and early autumn the beautiful nasturtium flowers turn into wrinkly seed pods. They're bright to dark green and already look surprisingly like capers. And there's plenty of them! A few plants will probably produce hundreds of pods...ok maybe that's a bit exaggerated but that's what it feels like, and that's the reason why some people call nasturtiums a weed. If you don't pick all those pods, which you won't, then they will get into the ground somehow and sprout again next year. So yes, if you want to grow them in your garden be mindful of where you will put them. 

Harvesting nasturtium pods is a real treat, they come off the plant very easily and remind me a bit of harvesting small berries. Once you've got a few handfuls take them into the kitchen and you can pickle them according to your taste. Now we chose the simplest way, cider vinegar and a bay leaf, put into a pickling jar along with the washed capers and then you just have to wait for a few weeks and they're ready. It's honestly the easiest thing you can pickle. But there are recipes where you add other spices, a bit of sugar and warm the whole mixture before adding it to the capers. You can experiment a bit with the variations which are good fun, but honestly the simple recipe makes for a great result as well. 

The simple version is quite crunchy, has a really nice peppery taste to it and a great lingering aroma from the bay leaf. The acidity of the cider vinegar rounds it off nicely making it a perfect condiment. They are truly amazing I think, because they are so simple and cost nothing at all and I prefer their flavour and texture to the shop bought alternative, which is more expensive and almost more complicated to get. And because they are that bit different and more interesting they really transform your food or a simple dish. The other day I made tartar sauce with these capers and with homemade mayo, parsley from the garden and some nice lemon zest. Again simple, but so different that it makes for a food experience even just by spreading it on a slice of homemade sourdough bread, which in itself is an experience. 

Nasturtium capers, homemade tartar sauce and sourdough bread are such simple things, yet when they're homemade with homegrown ingredients and then combined make for a delicious bite. These are the moments I love the most about food, when something simple inspires you and surprises you. 

Why nobody in the UK or Ireland is selling Nasturtium capers baffles me, they're plentiful and can't be more expensive to produce than normal capers, and they're local and thus more sustainable. Maybe I found myself a business idea...

A Story of Leftovers

One man's trash is another man's treasure. In a way this popular saying kind of reminds me of leftovers. Most people seem to have a dubious and reluctant relationship towards them. Quite often whatever remains of your meal is simply discarded or just boringly reheated in the microwave to make a less tasty and drier version of the same meal. Even the word 'leftovers' doesn't sound too appetising. But then again leftovers are frequently used in restaurants in order to save costs and reduce waste and make delicious meals (don't worry, they're not actually using the leftovers from your plate). And there are also some people at home who make wonderful and diverse meals with the remains of their previous dinner. But why isn't that more common? Is it because the microwave has made using leftovers a no-brainer? Or is it because we have been taught all our lives that we don't have to finish our meals and then simply throw them away? Might it be the fact that less people are confident and creative cooks these days, and that the concept of necessity isn't really a stimulating impulse for cooking?

Who knows. I on the other hand love leftovers as a creative ingredient for making exceptional dishes, and instead of trying to figure out why people don't like leftovers I will try to convince you that you should love them! A good starting point for this I think is Christmas or the whole festive season when everybody buys lots of great food and a lot of that food becomes leftovers. Leftover turkey sandwich for example is a leftover meal that most people love, and that's because there are all these ingredients and toppings available to make a really nice sandwich. And maybe people will still make turkey soup, but that's as far as it will get most of the time. But there is so much more potential, especially with nice joints of meat. So lets have a look at our New Year's Day feast and how many meals that one shoulder of lamb provided for two greedy foodies and how sensationally amazing leftovers can be. 

Day 1) Here's the original feast. A jerk-style slow roasted shoulder of lamb with spiced couscous, a gravy made with the roasting juices and some wine, and a selection of roasted pumpkin, sweet potato, celery, topped with dried figs and apricots. Yum! It was incredibly rich, and we didn't actually eat that much for lunch and then for supper we just cut off slices of cold lamb and picked at the veg and the couscous and basically had a bit of a food orgy. 

Day 2) The following day I decided to pick the rest of the meat of the bone and I was really surprised to see how much meat was on it. I even left a bit for future use, because I knew I was going to use the bones as well. Anywho, I took the meat, the gravy and some leftover mulled wine and put everything in a pot on low heat. The rest of the celery I cut into strips and added them as well, the figs and apricots too and the pumpkin and sweet potato I squished into a mash and mixed it into the now thick, dark and rich stew. The pumpkin and sweet potato really added a lot of body and sweetness, and this is really something I would never do if I would make a stew from scratch, because I'm a bit lazy like everybody. But having all these amazing leftovers after such a feast means that you have an arsenal of unique ingredients to play with and make the most delicious dishes that are bursting with flavour and that would otherwise take loads of preparation and time to make. But because you're stretching that preparation over a couple of meals and days the workload becomes less and allows you to add flavour on flavour and make the tastiest of dishes!

Day 3) This one I am particularly proud of and it really deserves a few pictures. The next dish we made was a pie, and I truly think without making it sound like a cliché, that this was perhaps the best pie I've ever had! We used some leftover mash-potato and some spare cheese that was left in the fridge to make a pie base, quite unusual but such a good idea! There wasn't that much meat left in the stew because we had two servings of it the day before, and so we decided to fry some onions, peppers and mushrooms to add them into the mixture. Good meat pies need vegetables! 

The savoury sweetness of the onions, the roast pepper flavour and that mushroomy goodness along with some leftover cream truly transported this dish to the next level. Flavour upon flavour, it was such an explosion of taste, even the memory of it still seems to linger on my tongue. And what else is missing to make this dish complete? Yes, some nice puff pastry, crunchy buttery goodness topped with some lovely (slightly tacky) love motives to give that old-fashioned pie sensation. And here it is, the best pie of all times, in our humble opinion. 

So that's it folks, the magic of using leftovers in its full glory! A dish like this would have never happened from scratch in our house, even though we're keen cooks. And it's not only the time and prep that is of importance here, it's the unusual collection and composition of the ingredients which are truly unique in a sense. I will perhaps never again eat a pie this good! Or perhaps I'll make an even better one some day, but probably never again this exact same one. And that is special and makes a dish worth remembering. And this specialness in a way comes from necessity and the need I felt to make and eat my leftovers because I didn't want them to land in the bin. Need and necessity are a powerful drive and although they're not that common anymore when it comes to our modern ways of preparing and consuming food, I always feel a challenge when I have some amazing leftovers and that challenge inspires me to make the next dish that much better than the previous one. So I hope this story of leftovers will have made you think about the humble beginnings a masterpiece of a dish can have and how we all can create such masterpieces at home, that are unique and bursting with flavour and excitement!

Day 4) And what about those bones you might ask? I did mention them after all, and yes after all that feasting and decadence and food moments that changed our lives we wanted something light and simple again to clean our tastebuds. An Irish stew is the answer - no rich gravies, roasted veg, cream, puff pastry, nothing like that. Carrot, Onion, Spud, Celeriac, some water, salt and pepper and a few bones. Let it cook for a while, remove the bones, mash it a bit, and there's your dish. Clean flavours, simple tastes.

How to make real Glühwein (mulled wine)

This was our last video of 2012, and it's perfect for celebrating! Glühwein or mulled wine is such an amazing drink when made from scratch, it really doesn't reflect most mulled wines you get in the UK. And I think the problem in the UK is that the recipes here are more like a fruit punch than a Glühwein. There's often way too much juice, not enough spice and sugar and certainly not enough alcohol to make it a heart-warming experience. And that is what Glühwein is all about. Glühen means to glow in German, and so Glühwein is glowing wine in the sense that it gives you that glowing or warming sensation. And that is what regular mulled wine in the UK lacks the most. Because the glow in mulled wine is not only created through the heat of the drink and the Christmas spices, it's that extra shot of hard alcohol, like whiskey, brandy, rum or schnaps (often in Germany) that makes the whole difference.

And what also makes our recipe of mulled wine different is that at times we like to use optional ingredients that we have, like star anis, bay leaf, cardamom, lemon zest as an addition to the holy trinity of Glühwein flavours, cinnamon, clove and orange. Also, for the orange and lemon, it is better to use a zester than to put entire lemon or orange peels into the wine, after some time it will make the whole mixture bitter. We always put our spices and zest into a reusable muslin bag so that the flavour goes into the wine, but you don't end up having to sieve the bits and pieces with your teeth, which is very often the case with homemade mulled wine. You can also pass the orange juice through a sieve to guarantee no bits in your wine.

And finally, if you can afford it, use a decent wine. It doesn't have to be amazing, but tastewise there is a real difference between using the cheapest of wines and decent wines, so £5-10 bottles. But really exceptional wines don't make a difference, so don't splurge unnecessarily. And do try making Glühwein with white wine and rosé as well, it makes for very pretty alternatives, but do be aware that orange juice will cloud the mixture, so you could decide to only add zest for white and rosé. And serve it in pretty glasses :)

Best Ever Brioche

Here we are with another installment of the Cool Kitchen. It's beautiful Brioche bread, homemade and thousand times better than the stuff you get in supermarkets. It's not that difficult to make, it's probably cheaper than buying one and it's just fluffiest bread ever. It's so light, it really tastes like eating clouds. And this heavenly experience is pretty straighforward to make, it's pretty much a basic bread recipe with a few added ingredients, some small alterations and a lot of time! Now good bread simply takes time, there's no way around it, but the time you have to actually do something is only 10-15 minutes. So you just have to find a way of making bread baking fit into your daily routine, which is pretty easy. Good luck with the recipe and thanks for watching!