We’re just standing up from Dinner at JD’s parents’ place, we’re soo full we can barely waddle to the couch and we just wanted to wish you all a happy, peaceful Christmas.

Sorry about the recent lack of posting, but between work and dogs, and the fact that it’s dark and we’re tired, we just haven’t been up to it. We also haven’t been that great about thinking about new recipes, but this is the one we’re currently working on improving.

So, last night we arrived home late, tired and starving. I had been intending to make Ho-Fan Beef Noodles, but realised I had no Soy Sauce in the house! This took about 35 minutes to make, and is very tasty and healthy (if you disregard the cheese).

250g round steak

Sunflower Oil

2 peppers

1 onion

1 clove garlic

Mexican Seasoning (we use our own mix)

1 bottle Passata

4 tortillas

80-100g cheddar

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 150C.

Chop up the onion and garlic and divide between two pans with a little sunflower oil.

Cut the round steak up into bite-sized pieces, season with the mexican mix and throw it into one pan and saute quickly. Add the passata to the other pan and throw about 2 tsp of mexican seasoning onto that.

Chop up the peppers into bite sized pieces and add to the steak, draining off any fat if you wish. Give the round-steak and peppers a few minutes to get happy, and stir the passata.

Grate the cheese while everything else is cooking, and microwave the tortillas on low for 30 seconds to soften them.

Add about 3/4 of the passata mixture to the steak and let it simmer for a couple of minutes.

On a clean chopping board, lay out your first tortilla, and add a few spoons (about a quarter, obviously) of the steak mixture. Tuck the two “ends” in and roll up. Place open side down in a baking pan or pyrex which you have barely oiled. Do this for the other three tortillas, and lay them in the pan as well.

Pour the last 1/4 of the passata mixture over the tortillas in the baking pan, and top with the cheese. (You can put cheese inside the tortillas as well, but this is the quick version.

Whack them into the oven and leave until the cheese is melted. Remember, everything else is already cooked, so no risk of anything happening to you.

Open a few beers and enjoy.

Alright, I know these are not the most authentic burritos in the world, but they’re quick, they’re easy, and can be made in advance up to the final assembly stage. You could (if you’re a fan of spice) add a chopped up chilli to the beef bit before you add the passata, you could do all kinds of stuff to it, but in fairness, it can’t get much easier!

According to Lette, Christmas is eight six-ish weeks away. Eep! I have to admit that I’m fairly grinchy most of the time; I think it’s way over-rated and I hate hearing Christmas songs on the radio in November! I do really love the Budweiser Christmas ad though, and have done since I was a child, so here it is for you.

OK, having said all that, I LOVE cooking for Christmas. Last year, JD and I had his parents over for the big day, and it was great, planning what we were going to do and working out the timings and so forth. I would say that the big trick is doing as much as you possibly can on the day before, eg prepare the carrots and parsnips, par-boil the potatoes and boil the ham, etc. Then on the day all you have to do is whack a few things in pots or into the oven and you’re golden. Stress-free Christmas! I’ll be posting in more detail on this in a few weeks, but first I have to make a confession.

I’ve already made my Christmas Cake.

There, I’ve said it.

And, actually, it was dead easy. I used this recipe, and it’s little to no effort. And I’ll be making puddings this weekend, and this is the recipe I use. Again, insanely easy and totally delicious. I’ve made it before and it’ll be a stalwart of my recipes for a long time yet.

However, my absolute favourite Christmas cooking is making foodie gifts for other people. In the past I’ve made Red Onion Marmalade, Mango Chutney, (which I’ve just realised I’ve never posted - oops, anyway, here it is), Chocolate Chip Cookies, Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies, or Dark chocolate fudge. I usually top this up with a bottle or two from The Wine Buff and some cheese from the Limerick Market, and maybe a Brown Soda made by himself. People seem to really enjoy it, I enjoy making it, and everyone winds up happy!

Maz has been pushing the “Buy Handmade” pledge, so if you don’t feel like baking all your Christmas gifts, maybe she has some inspiration for you!

I’m a firm believer that Ireland has the potential to be up there among the world’s “Culinary Capitals”. In fact, I’d suggest that the reputations of other “Culinary Capital” countries are as much due to some clever marketing than anything else. This is a common rant of mine (especially after a few pints), so I’ll save it for another day, but I challenge you to show me a better lunch on a cold, wet day than a bowl of hot soup (or chowder), served with fresh homemade brown soda bread, and washed down with a pint of stout.

So with that in mind, here’s a recipe for Irish brown soda bread. It’s a slight adaptation from the one written by Paul Hollywood in his book 100 Great Breads (which, incidentally, is the only book on bread making you need). Hollywood claims this recipe was given to him by the monks in Roscrea monastery. My mother often visited Roscrea monastery as a child, and she told me that this bread tastes exactly as she remembers it. So it’s not just a marketing gimmick.

What you need:

• 250g Strong White Flour
• 250g Wholemeal Flour (You can use 300g wholemeal to 200g strong white if you want. More flavour, but might be a bit crumbly)
• 300ml Milk (or 270ml milk and 30ml buttermilk)
• 40g Caster Sugar
• 20g Baking Powder
• 75g Butter, Softened (not melted - it has to coat the flour by rubbing in)
• A handful of porridge oats (optional)

What to do:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200^o C
   
2. Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl. Squeeze the dough between your fingers until all the flour has been picked up. Mix thoroughly to form a soft dough.
3. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and shape into a ball.
4. Flatten the ball of dough to make a disk (about 2 inches thick or thereabouts).
5. Cut a cross in the top with a sharp knife. Stick a fork in each quarter to let the fairies escape. NB: Don’t mock - this is important.
6. Lightly oil or butter a baking tray and place the dough on the tray.
7. Sprinkle some porridge oats on top of the dough to add a bit of flavour, or just lightly flour it.
8. When the oven is up to temperature, bang it in. Bake for 30 minutes.
9. Allow the bread to cool on a wire rack before cutting.

Even before the credit crunch started looming, I was taking my lunches to work with me. There were a few reasons for this, including being too lazy to go out at lunch and find something nice, get back, and enjoy it, all in the space of an hour. Granted, there are some days when only a hot chicken roll with cure what ails you, but they’re few and far between. Also, once I realised it was going to cost me about €30-40 a week just for lunch, I realised I could put that money to much better use.

Of course, nobody wants to eat ham sandwiches every day, as that gets a bit boring, and I don’t know anyone who has the energy to assemble lunch before work, so where does that leave you?

Personally, I think the big trick is to have a few things in the freezer ready to grab on your way out the door. I usually have a few soups (delicious with Deb’s Farmhouse Cheddar Muffins) and the remains of a too-big dinner in there, ready to go. If I really thought about it, I could buy a bag of bagels, split them, and stick them in there too, but this goes back to organisation. I’m usually delighted if I manage to have bread in the house.

This leaves time then for you to dream up a few things of an evening when you have nothing else to do and you’ve already seen everything that’s on UKTV food. One of the things I made last week in a fit of industry was a cous-cous dish with stir-fried peppers and a few peas. It was dead easy and very tasty. I’d give you a recipe, but calling it a recipe would be the height of cheek, as it basically involved dicing up half a red pepper and half a yellow pepper and sautéeing them quickly with some salt and black pepper. I also simmered a few peas (about half a cup maybe) while the cous-cous was soaking. Now, I know this sounds terribly bland, but bear with me. The trick with soaking cous-cous is to do stuff to the water. I know that sounds airy-fairy, but there you go. Last week, I soaked it in chicken stock (veggie would also work), with paprika, pepper, a TINY bit of cumin, and a whisper of mustard powder. It made a great side-dish for dinner, and was even better for lunch the next day.

What’s your lunch strategy? Do you bring it? Buy it? Or a mixture? And what are your favourite can’t-fail lunch recipes?

Ok, it’s been quite a while since we posted anything. We’ve just had a new addition to our family and he has been keeping us extremely busy!

Behold our little bouncing boy called Barley:

Barley is a 10 week old Golden Retriever puppy. He’s very cute and very friendly, and has eyelashes that girls would sell their grannies for. Everyone who meets him falls instantly in love with him - he has our whole neighbourhood charmed. Even Toby the cat can’t help but tolerate him

However, to any of you who now simply must have a puppy, make no mistake - it’s hard work. I’ve already been interrupted 3 times while writing this post. Once to feed him, again to pick up his poo, and again to disentangle his jaws from my ankle. He’s not yet convinced about going for walks (I’m in the process of lead training him), but he still needs to burn off his boundless energy.

Puppies are just like that. He’ll grow out of the insane phase in a few months, and he’ll grow up to be the nicest, most handsomest coolest doggie in the whole wide world

In the meantime, we’ll get the cookzors posts going again (maybe with a couple of Barley progress reports thrown in).

And we’ll be very, very busy….

The onion is one of my least favourite things to chop, so lets get it out of the way early, eh?

The beauty of this method is that it helps to minimise the streaming, stinging eyes that usually accompany onion-chopping. I think this is because the onion is pretty much held together in one piece until the final cut. So by the time the majority of the fumes can escape, the job is done, and you can set it aside (or bang it in the pot). The quicker you get at doing this, the less it’ll bother your eyes.

1. Take a whole unpeeled onion, and chop a lump off the stem end with your Chef’s knife.
   
2. Peel the skin off the onion, leaving the root end intact.
3. Cut the onion in half through the root. You now have 2 half pieces of onion, which you will dice individually.
   
4. Lay one half of the onion on the cut side, and make a series of cuts along its length from root to stem. Do not cut through the root.
   
5. With the knife lying horizontal (parallel to the chopping board), make a series of cuts towards the root. Again, do not cut through the root. Keep your hand on top of the onion, so the knife doesn’t slice through to your fingers. This is the most dangerous part for your fingers! Pay attention!
   
6. The onion is now cut in 2 planes,yet it is still pretty much held together in one piece by the root. This helps keep the fumes trapped inside. If you like, you could bring the other half of the onion up to this point.
7. Now cut across the original cuts you made in step 4, using the part between the first and second joint of your fingers to guide the knife blade. Remember to tuck in your fingertips! The onion now falls away, properly diced. Discard the bit at the root end when it becomes to difficult to chop.
   

Your eyes will start stinging when you make the last series of cuts, so get them done as quickly as you can, then get the diced onion away from under your nose.

It’s funny that the co-incidence of me breaking a chef’s knife should coincide with JD’s excellent post on knife technique.

Just to set the scene, lette and I have moved into a new house (full of new things), some nice new things and some not-so-nice. One of the things I’ve neglected to bring from my old house was my old chef’s knife. It was unbranded but it had a straight through tang and always felt spot on to use. So we replaced this knife and other accoutrements with a “Dunnes Home” Premium range of kitchen utensils – big mistake.

Anyway long story short I was just about to halve an onion when the diabolically blunt blade of the “Dunnes Home” Premium chef’s knife decided to dig in and hop, the blade broke at the handle and flew up and slapped my left arm. I can’t believe how close I came to a very very horrible injury. Safe to say that if you have to force your knife through your food then it’s time to seriously consider getting rid of it before you get rid of an arm!

Anyway, heeding JD’s well heeled advice here I decided to go ahead and pick up a dick! An F.Dick 8″ Chef’s Knife, to be more precise, and I have to say that I’ve been very glad since I got it. Cutting is effortless, the blade is very very keen, and well balanced, so the knife really is doing all the work for you. The blade itself is nice and high too, which means plenty of room to move when chopping.

While the knife itself isn’t a particularly classy object to regard it is excellently crafted, it feels solid and precise while you’re using it. You’d most likely find this in a working kitchen rather than a tv chef’s studio, but all in all it’s still has got the seal of approval from me!

On a closing note, please consider your current knife very carefully. If you find you’re having to force your way through what you’re cutting then you’re entering a world of pain. If you’re in Limerick check out Flavin’s butchers, as per JD’s Recommendation and pick yourself up a real knife!

Keith

This is the first in a series of posts on knife technique. Practicing proper knife technique will make prep work safer, more efficient and more enjoyable. It’ll also give you something to show off to your friends! If you’re the sort who hates prep work because it takes ages, you always seem to cut yourself, and the veg always seems to end up uneven or crushed, then this is what you need to work on. Read on, and practice, practice, practice

The Pinch Grip

A popular way of holding the knife is called the “pinch grip”. It involves holding the blade forward of the handle between your thumb and the first and second joints of your forefinger. The heel of you hand then rests on the handle. A good knife should be balanced just forward of where the blade joins the handle, so this grip gives you excellent control over the knife. Cooks who use this hold eventually develop calluses on their forefinger where it rests on the spine on the blade. As a home cook, you’re not likely to develop calluses, but many professional cooks are quite proud of their calluses!

The Cutting Motion

Hold the knife in the pinch grip, and place the tip on your chopping board. Slide the knife forward and bring the blade fully down to the board. Slide the knife back, and raise the blade. Always try to keep the tip of the knife in contact with the chopping board. So that’s your cutting motion. Forward and down, back and up. This movement should be steady and continuous. Your other hand will guide the knife and position the food under the blade. It’ll take some practice to get this smooth and steady.

Holding the Food

The hand which holds the food is also very important. As well as holding the food steady, it also acts as a guide for the knife. Tuck your fingertips in, so that the part of your fingers between the first and second joints guide the knife blade. The speed at which your hand moves back across the food determines the thickness of the cuts. This will take quite a bit of practice, but you’ll get the hang of it.
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We love the Hairy Bikers - fab recipes, a bit of a travel show, and cooks who don’t take themselves seriously at all. We even have one of their books The Hairy Bikers Ride Again! So, last night when the Hairy Bakers was on, we settled down with our cuppas, and a slight look of confusion on our faces. Si and Dave have promised to do for baking what they did for motorbikes. Last night was bread-based; an easy white loaf, Naan Bread, baps, and a farmhouse loaf. They even did a Cheese & Beer Bread!

I have to say, I loved it, and I’m not even the bread baker in the house! But Si and Dave are so enthusiastic about their subject, while at the same time being totally irreverent, that you couldn’t but enjoy it.

BBC2, 8.30pm, Monday nights. Worth watching if you’re thinking of getting into baking at all.

By the way, who are your favourite Celebrity Chefs? Why? And are there any books you’d recommend to us? (Not that we don’t have enough, but you can never have too many books.)