family

it’s pancake tuesday!

~ maireaddoyle ~ 1 Comment

>The day before Lent begins means a stack of pancakes for lunch and more after dinner. Or that was how it was when I was a child.

I would come home from school for lunch and Mum would have made a big stack of pancakes, frying-pan sized, made from freshly-mixed homemade batter. Simple: flour, eggs, milk, beaten until smooth then poured into a frying pan spoonful by spoonful.

The first one was always less than average. The frying pan was never hot enough, and the skill of pouring just exactly enough batter to make a thin pancake forgotten since last year. The second one was always better.

A perfect pancake was extra-thin, it filled the whole frying pan and it was cooked just long enough to give it dark brown grooves of caramelised loveliness on each side.

There was no messing about with exotic toppings in our house. This was a pre-Lent ritual, designed to get all the flour, eggs, sugar and butter used up before the fasting began. Each pancake would be spread with butter, sprinkled with a liberal amount of sugar and finished off with a good squirt of lemon juice. The three toppings would mingle into a sweet-and-sour liquid of perfect viscosity.

Mum always stacked the pancakes one by one, topped individually as described above, then when the whole stack was done she would slice them into wedges like a cake. Personally I always preferred to eat my pancakes whole, rolled up, with butter, sugar and lemon juice added fresh each time. This is how I do it myself when I make pancakes in my own house.

Anybody else doing Pancake Tuesday? Anybody got any other family rituals you want to share?

bajan sweet bread

~ maireaddoyle ~ Leave a comment

>This is a lovely cake/bread from Barbados.

Ingredients

125g butter
1/2 teasp coconut essence
1 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup coconut
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
300g sour cream
1/3 cup milk

Method

Grease a deep 23cm round cake tin.
Cream butter, essence, and sugar in a small bowl until light and fluffy.
Beat in eggs one at a time until combined.
Transfer to large bowl.
Stir in half the coconut and sifted flour with half the sour cream and milk.
Then stir in remaining ingredients. Stir until smooth.
Pour into cake tin.
Bake in moderate oven for 1 hour.
Stand five minutes before turning onto wire rack.

making patties

~ maireaddoyle ~ Leave a comment

>We set up a pattie-making factory one hot afternoon, Eric, Orlando and I. We had been hankering for a proper West Indian pattie for a while and Eric was the resident expert. We would have liked saltfish patties but the salted cod here takes far too long to prepare – a full weekend for one side of salted cod. So we went with beef instead.

First, Orlando set about cooking the beef filling. He browned a large chopped onion, then added 800g of heart-smart minced beef, four large chillies (two red and two green) finely chopped, a decent dollop of old-fashioned curry powder and some Indian meat masala. When the meat was brown he added four medium potatoes which had been cooked, cooled and diced beforehand.

About a cup of beef stock was added to make the mixture moist, then about the same again of breadcrumbs to make sure the mixture bound enough for us to fill the patties.

Actually, we didn’t have breadcrumbs so we used cornflake crumbs instead – which I think worked better.
Meanwhile I coloured the pastry by painting it with turmeric, then rolled out the sheets and cut out large circular shapes using a breakfast bowl. I kept all the offcuts and Orlando insisted he would not waste a bit. He persevered, and from the scraps of five pastry sheets he got an extra size cutouts plus one tiny piece we made into a party pie. Then the factory line began.
Orlando placed a dessertspoonful of the beef mixture onto the pastry round. I wet the edge with water, folded it over and used a fork to seal the edges into a half moon shape.
Then once we had a full tray ready, Orlando brushed the top of with a beaten egg to glaze them. Not too many in a tray – we didn’t want to crowd them. Then into the oven at 200C for about half an hour.
The results were splendid: 26 perfectly golden, sturdily made patties with a rich beef filling with just enough bite to them. We ate two each on the spot (just to make sure they were ok).
Now we know how long it takes, and we have had a bit of practice, there is no stopping us. Two hours in the kitchen makes over two dozen patties. Only problem is, they take less time than that to polish them all off…

>le parisien geelong

~ maireaddoyle ~ Leave a comment

>15 Eastern Beach Road Geelong
www.leparisien.com.au

A long lingering lunch with my sister Mena was in order. We had much to catch up on. we headed to Mena’s favourite place on a breezy Sunday afternoon, to sit by the water and graze the afternoon away.

I was feeling really ill, with a chest infection picked up in Perth just not going away. I kicked off with two paracetamol and a full-fat Coke to get the heart going, quickly followed by a nice glass (or two) of Austin shiraz – a local red. I was starting to enjoy this.

We both chose the seafood chowder to start, and we were not disappointed. This is one of my favourite soups and it is rare to get a good one anywhere I find. By the time I had soldiered through mine I was feeling much better and wondering how I could fit my main course in.

The waiter had taken a shine to me so our service was impeccable. The owner, a grand-sized Frenchman, also took time to visit each table and chat with the lunchtime crowd. It was a nice vibe and we really felt at home sitting at the window. There was no rush.

An elderly lady came in to lunch alone, nicely dressed up in a navy blue suit complete with hat. Perhaps she had been to church that morning. It seemed to me that she was a regular – maybe she had a favourite dish she had every week. She stayed about an hour and then walked briskly on home along the waterfront in the wind. I want to be like her when I am that age.

My fillet steak Cafe de Paris was huge: topped with sauteed mushrooms, bacon, onions and garlic butter it was a heart attack on a plate but I dug in and mopped up the sauce with chat potatoes. We tried to ignore the complimentary French fries on the table but failed dismally. My defence is that I did my sore throat good with all that salt.

How we managed to leave I do not know. We sat for over four hours putting the world to rights, sipping on our wine and finishing off with a couple of good quality lattes before facing the long drive home. It was comfort food at its best, and a location probably best enjoyed in the autumn or winter months when you want cosiness with your lunch.

At $202 the bill was not cheap, but I can see why it is Mena’s favourite and I will find an excuse to accompany her there again!

>Melba at the Langham

~ maireaddoyle ~ Leave a comment

>Langham Hotel, Southbank, Melbourne
melbourne.langhamhotels.com.au

It was Mena’s birthday. Lee organised a family lunch to celebrate. The Langham on Southbank is a favourite Sunday lunch destination for lots of families, and we were one of a number of family celebrations.

Dressed in our Sunday best, we met at one o’clock. Some of us had been reading the menu for weeks – some of us (well, me) were afraid of becoming too obsessed, so made do with a turn of the buffet counters to get prepared. I didn’t know where to start.

Seafood seemed the right place to start, washed down with a glass of bubbly. The king prawns were plump and juicy, but the cocktail sauce could have been a little spicier. Then Lee found Peking Duck pancakes, so there was a run on them. Orlando tucked into the sushi as well.

The Indian buffet counter looked good, so I got the chef to make me a keema naan while I watched, and filled my plate with lamb korma, potato and pea curry and mixed pickle. It was delicious. I ate slowly, relishing every mouthful, and washing everything down with more sparkling wine.

The thing I didn’t know was that it all finished at 3pm. I was sitting back, tasting a morsel of this and a sample of that. Then somebody said it was last orders. I’d not realised we were on the clock. Whilst I would like to say that the focus was firmly on my sister and her birthday, the reality was that we pretty much only talked about food. It’s what we do. We love it.

But suddenly it was all hands on deck. I could have eaten more if I’d had time to digest a little – why does a buffet bring out the avarice in everyone? Amy and Orlando hit the chocolate bar whilst Mena sensibly rescued a cheese plate for us all to share. I felt a bit like I was back in Butlins and we had to vacate the dining room for the second sitting. But I ordered a nice glass of Galway Pipe tokay, tucked into the cheese and ignored everything.

All in all, it was a lovely afternoon. Easy company, great views, anything you wanted to eat, all freshly cooked. But next time I would arrive at twelve or twelve-thirty: by the time we get the chat out of the way and order the wine, it would be just time enough to eat. Then there would be no hurry!

>Spago Portlaoise

~ maireaddoyle ~ Leave a comment

>www.theheritagehotel.com/bar-&-restaurants/spago–italian-bistro

On our way home from Dingle we stopped late in the evening in Portlaoise looking for some good home-cooked Italian food. Some might say we were being a tad ambitious, but this is 21st century Ireland and I was hopeful. We stumbled upon Spago, a new-ish Italian housed in the Portlaoise Heritage Hotel right in town.

A friendly maitre d’ with a broad Dublin accent seated us in a rustic-looking (but not as far as checked table-cloths) restaurant and immediately served us warm marinated olives, virgin olive oil and sourdough bread. A good start.

We opted for main courses only at that late hour. The two pizzas were freshly made with only the best and freshest toppings. Not too big and perfectly cooked (the Doyles like our pizzas done well). Connor’s chicken and mushroom pasta could have been ordinary but it tasted delicious. Not too creamy and the chicken flavours dominated. I ordered linguine vongole, one of my favourite comfort foods. Tomatoey and with a hint of chilli, I devoured it.

We could not be tempted by the desserts. Mum favours traditional fare such as her favourite, Knickerbocker Glory, and doesn’t go in for the usual Italian treats such as tiramisu. Ashling was sorely tempted but it was getting late. The last-minute coffee I downed was again freshly made and ended a very enjoyable but brief meal. Pity it doesn’t open Sundays or Ashling and Connor’s dad my brother Bernard) would make this a weekend hangout.