May

Fade Street Social

As new openings go, Fade Street Social was one of the most hyped of the year and judging by how full it was when we arrived that hype hasn’t really died down very much. The atmosphere is buzzy, there’s pumping music playing – but not so loud you can’t have a conversation – and the chefs haring around the open kitchen all sport natty headbands which make them look more like extras in a kung fu film. As you can tell, it’s all pretty breathless stuff.

We had booked our table in the tapas bar rather than the restaurant as the menu seemed much more interesting (and nowhere near as needlessly confusing). There’s still a lot of choice but it’s not overwhelming even if it is laid out somewhat idiosyncratically. Our waiter, for some reason, thought he needed to explain the concept of tapas to us but he meant well and there was no upselling or any of that nonsense.

I was greedy and ordered four small plates while everyone else chose three and I managed to have a taste of pretty much everything. There are lots of clever and interesting flavour combinations on display: soft-shell crabs, deep-fried and crunchy, with miso mayonnaise and lemongrass dip eat as well as they sound and it’s a shame not to see them on more menus. The pata negra steak poached in fennel powder is eye-rollingly good, finished off on the grill there’s also notes of orange amongst the charcoal.

A second crab dish loaded with melted cheese, duck egg, hollandaise and truffle mayonnaise should be a mess but actually works surprisingly well. The half a duck option is, in reality, a leg and half a breast with that edge to edge doneness indicating time spent in a water bath: it’s a fantastic piece of fowl, one the best I’ve eaten in a long time. There’s vegetarian options too and a lovely riff on leeks vinaigrette with parmesan and hazelnuts is only let down by slightly stringy leeks and some chickpea ‘chips’ accompanied by a pernod custard provide yet another inventive combination.

So, the cooking here is definitely of a high standard but it does come at a price: the whole tapas thing is fine in theory but in practice it’s not for the customers’ benefit. All our plates arrived over the course of two to three minutes with the exception of my friend’s, he sat watching us eat for a further ten minutes and all he was waiting on was some chips and the duck. And while serving everything at once is great for turning tables quickly it means by the time you’ve finished one thing the others have gone cold. For example, a bowl of truffle (truffle oil, a cheap trick at best, features far too heavily on the menu) popcorn with shards of crispy chicken is fantastic when hot but a chewy mess a few minutes later.

A little bit of order management to ensure everyone gets to eat whilst not inundating the table shouldn’t be beyond the kitchen but then when you’re doing as many covers as this place there’s no incentive to bother with that sort of thing. I really like the food but if we come back it will be when the hype has dissipated somewhat and on a day of the week that won’t be as busy. To end on a positive though, the bill was a pleasant surprise: we had thirteen tapas, two cocktails and a thirty euro bottle of Malbec all for under €150, which is very good value to my mind.

5 days ago Short URL Comments

Reviews

Gastropub/Review/Tapas

May

Bison Bar

I’m fairly sure Bison Bar is the first place in Ireland to provide anything resembling proper American BBQ and even my use of the the word ‘American’ glosses over the huge regional differences that exist between the various traditions, not only between states but within them too. I don’t claim to know very much about these distinctions other than the food on the menu here focuses mainly on the Texan style with the exception of their pulled pork, which hails from Memphis, and the ribs via St Louis, Missouri. I’m surprised though that, while terroir and regionality have become fetishised to near parody (I’m looking at you Noma et al), such a vibrant and varied food culture has not become more popular abroad than it is.

As the name implies Bison Bar is also a whiskey bar, something we didn’t realise as we traipsed in with a kid in a buggy; thankfully we were the only customers in so we weren’t in anyone’s way. Pretty much everything on the menu is based around the holy trinity of fat, salt and smoke and is all the better for it. My hefty portion of that toughest of cuts, brisket, had been reduced to thin, yielding slices by a 13-hour slow roast but the standout was the pulled pork with a more assertive dose of smoke: each bite infused with a gorgeous note of charcoal. There were also sides of beans, all sweet and smokey (noticing a theme?), spiked with bacon and hand cut chips with a fantastic chipotle mayo, which my son ended up eating with a spoon. The potato salad and coleslaw were less successful and just made us wish we’d ordered more of those beans.

So as you can tell, you get a lot of food in this place and while it’s definitely not somewhere to go to if all you’re looking for is a light lunch, I didn’t feel overstuffed at all, especially given the vast quantities of protein piled on my tray (there’s no plates here). As I said, I’m hardly an expert in barbeque but it feels like the kitchen, or more precisely whoever operates the in-house smoker, really knows what they’re doing here and this is a great addition to the food scene of the city.

12 days ago Short URL 4 Comments

Reviews

BBQ/Pub/Review

Apr

Crab, asparagus, alexanders, samphire, spring onion

Spring in Ireland may traditionally be said to begin in February but in the kitchen it really only starts in April. This is the month where we finally get to say goodbye to all those stews and root vegetables and lots of fresh greens start to become available (there’s only so much purple-sprouting broccoli you can eat).

There’s still nowhere near the range of produce available as come May but my favourite vegetable of all starts to make a sporadic appearance: asparagus. I’ve only managed to find Irish asparagus in one place and that’s from the Ballyroan Farm stall in the Dublin Food Co-op, otherwise, I’ll get some of the English stuff from Marks & Spencer’s because pretty much every other retailer only seems to have tasteless Peruvian imports.

This dish was initially going to be vegetarian but for the past few weeks Dunnes Stores have been selling fully dressed crabs replete with brown meat for only five euro. I think we’ve bought at least six so far! The great thing about the brown meat is that it has a much deeper flavour and is great for making sauces: a quick blast in the blender with some cream and you’re done. I also made a stock out of the shells but it was so strong I couldn’t use it because it would overwhelm the delicate asparagus (it went very well with Dublin Bay Prawns though).

I also managed to include a modernist twist too in the shape of a fluid gel made from spring onions. It’s based on a Heston Blumenthal recipe I found here but because I had no gellan I used the Modernist Cuisine formula for fluid gels of 0.9 percent agar and 0.2 percent xanthan gum. It worked well although again I found myself having to add more liquid than I would have liked to make sure the blades of my blender could puree the jelly.

Other than that, the rest just comprises blanched vegetables finished in butter although again there’s a trick: I vacuum pack the asparagus before boiling to maximise its flavour and help preserve the green colour. Sometimes steam can build up in the bag and cause it to float but I just circumvented this by holding it underneath the water with a potato masher.

Crab, asparagus, alexanders, samphire, spring onion (apologies for the photo taken on the phone but I’m currently between cameras)

Serves: 2

Ingredients:
For the spring onion fluid gel
30g butter
200g spring onions, thinly sliced
250ml milk
100g double cream
150ml chicken stock
1g thyme
3.6g agar powder
0.8g xanthan gum

For the crab sauce
50g brown crab meat
150ml double cream
100ml chicken stock
1ml fish sauce
1ml lemon juice

For the vegetables
10 tips of asparagus
15g samphire
75g alexanders, peeled and cut into 10 6cm pieces
15g butter

For the crab meat
30g white crab meat
1g pepper
1ml fish sauce

Method:

Heat a pan over a medium heat and melt the butter.
Add the spring onions and sweat for 5-7 minutes.
Pour in the milk, cream and chicken stock and bring to the boil.
Reduce the heat, add the thyme and simmer for 10 minutes.
Strain 400ml of liquid through a fine sieve into a new pan.
Bring to the boil and whisk in the agar until fully dissolved.
Pour the mixture in a blender with the xanthan gum and pulse a few times to disperse the gum (being careful not to incorporate too much air).
Place the mixture in the fridge to set.
Once fully set, break up the jelly and place back in the blender.
Blend until a smooth puree, (you may need to add a bit of milk to get it to pass over the blades). Reserve in a squeezy bottle.
For the crab sauce, add the crab, cream and chicken stock to a blender and blend until smooth.
Pass through a sieve into a saucepan and bring to the boil.
Reduce the sauce by half and add the fish sauce (use more if necessary). Reserve.
For the vegetables, fill a large bowl with ice and water.
Bring a large pot of water to the boil.
Place the asparagus in a vacuum pack and seal.
Add the asparagus to the pot and, after it has returned to the boil, cook for 2 minutes.
Remove the vacuum pack from the water and plunge into the ice bowl.
Add the samphire and alexanders to the pot and blanch for 30 seconds.
Using a slotted spoon, scoop the samphire and alexanders into the bowl of iced water.
Heat a sauce over a medium heat and melt the butter.
Add the alexanders and sauté for around 2 minutes until tender.
Take off the heat and add the asparagus (removed from the vacuum bag) and samphire, ready to be reheated.
For the crab meat, add the crab, fish sauce and pepper to small pan and heat through.
To plate, place five spears of asparagus in the centre of the plate; lay the alexanders over the asparagus; sprinkle over the samphire; warm the fluid gel and dot around the asparagus; top the vegetables with crab and spoon over the reheated sauce.

21 days ago Short URL Comments

Recipes

Alexanders/Asparagus/Crab/Modernist/Seafood/Shellfish

Apr

W.J. Kavanaghs

I’m a big of L. Mulligan’s Grocer in Stoneybatter and when they opened a sister gastropub on Dorset Street I resolved to eat there as soon as I got the chance. That was over a year ago and it’s only now I’ve actually managed to get there. This is what happens when your wife is studying every spare hour and you’ve a mad two-year-old haring around the place!

The night myself and Pauline went we met up with friends and friends of friends, which, greedily, I always like because it means I get to taste lots of different things on the menu. Speaking of the menu, it’s very on trend, featuring lots of Irish ingredients with just enough information on provenance before becoming ludicrously detailed.

The starters are all pitched around €5-€7, great value and most of the standout dishes were to be found here: black pudding wantons all crispy, feather-light pastry and unctuous filling, richly buttered sourdough bread with white crabmeat and sea vegetables and an intriguing chunky ham hock and white pudding terrine.

Main courses are hearty pub fare, large portions and little refinement or affections, which is exactly what you want. There was a mountainous wild boar burger that oozed juice when you bit into it and a slab of oak smoked pork rib-eye with a cola sauce and a clever garnish of little scotch eggs. The only major misstep was my ale and beef pie, one, because it wasn’t a pie, just a stew with a pastry lid and, two, a lot of the meat was still quite tough, another hour or so on the stove for the filling would have made all the difference.

We didn’t have any desserts but we did manage to avail of the great beer list and try some of the suggested matches listed on the menu, the Rothaus Weiss to accompany the crab being particularly good. We even managed to nip into their off license on the way out to grab a bottle of White Gypsy, a stunning Belgian style dubbel from Tipperary that was listed as being on draught but, unfortunately, had sold out.

There’s lots to recommend here, the food is, for the most part, very good and the drink selection is outstanding; service could be a little bit more attentive but then it can be hard to stay on top of everything with a group of eight, it really was a minor thing anyway. And given the lack of passing trade on Dorset Street it’s a testament to the quality of the operation that the place was full when we leaving – early unfortunately, see paragraph one…

38 days ago Short URL Comments

Reviews

Bistro/Gastropub/Pub

Mar

Sprouting broccoli, wild garlic, alexanders, salsify, buckwheat, hollandaise

I know the whole foraging thing has become somewhat of a cliché by now but there is something great about the wild ingredients that crop up at spring time. I’ve written about wild garlic and nettles several times but never alexanders, which to my mind taste like a floral celery and since Roman times have served a very similar culinary purpose. I tried to cook with them last May but unfortunately if picked too late the stems become too fibrous to eat, now really is the best time of year for harvesting the plant.

Essentially this dish is just based on a very simple but effective premise: all vegetables taste better when paired with butter, whether it’s as a glaze or in the luscious form of hollandaise. The sprouting broccoli in particular works very well with the latter but then again I’ve yet to find something that hasn’t been improved by a slathering of hollandaise!

You may notice from the pictures below that the wild garlic has been plucked in its entirety and still has its roots intact: a big no-no when foraging as it prevents the plant reproducing next year. This was just down to my foraging partner being unaware of the problem initially; thankfully, the Phoenix Park is overrun with the stuff so there wasn’t much damage done and I do have to admit it looks a lot more impressive on the plate when all in one piece.

Sprouting broccoli, wild garlic, alexanders, salsify, buckwheat, hollandaise

Serves: 2

Ingredients
For the buckwheat
75g roasted buckwheat
150ml water
2.5g salt

For the alexanders and salsify
25g butter
200ml water
2 salsify sticks, peeled, each chopped into three equal pieces and rubbed with lemon juice
2 small alexanders stalks, peeled and chopped in two

For the chargrilled broccoli
150g sprouting broccoli
Grape seed oil

For the wild garlic
8 wild garlic stalks

For the hollandaise
5ml lemon juice, chilled
1 egg yolk, chilled
60g butter, cubed and chilled
Salt

Method:

For the buckwheat, add the buckwheat, water and salt to a saucepan and bring to the boil.
Reduce the heat, cover the pan and cook until all the water has been absorbed and the buckwheat is tender not mushy, around 15 minutes. Reserve and keep warm.
For the alexanders and salsify, melt the butter in a saucepan over a medium heat and pour in the water.
Add the salsify and place a lid on the pan and cook until tender but still slightly underdone, around 10-12 minutes.
Blanch the alexanders in heavily salted, boiling water for 30 seconds.
Add the alexanders to the pan and cook with the lid off until the contents are coated in a thick glaze. Reserve and keep warm.
For the broccoli, parboil the florets in heavily salted, boiling water for 2 minutes.
Remove and shock in iced water.
Heat a griddle pan over a very high heat until the pan is very hot.
Pour in a thin layer of oil and add the broccoli.
Char on both sides, around 1 minute each side.
If the florets are quite large, break off the heads and leaves from the thick central stalk. Reserve and keep warm.
For the wild garlic, blanch the garlic in heavily salted, boiling water for 45 seconds. Reserve and keep warm.
For the hollandaise, add all the ingredients to a small saucepan and place over a low heat.
Continuously whisk the pan until the butter has melted and the sauce has the consistency of custard, around 4 minutes. Correct the seasoning if necessary.
To plate, place most of the broccoli in a crescent shape on the outside of the place; lay over two of the garlic stems on the broccoli; place the salsify and alexanders down the length of the crescent; place the other two garlic stems in a circle opposite the crescent; lay the remaining broccoli inside the circle; drizzle over the hollandaise sauce and sprinkle over the buckwheat.

55 days ago Short URL Comments

Recipes

Alexanders/Broccoli/Buckwheat/Foraging/Hollandaise/Vegetarian/Wild Garlic

Feb

Modernist Cauliflower Cheese

Ever since I read about the famous Mac & Cheese in Modernist Cuisine I’ve wanted to apply it to the classic dish cauliflower Mornay. Their recipe helps solve a problem that plagues all béchamel based cheese sauces, namely, the starch and milk are not sufficiently good emulsifiers to allow you to add large amounts of cheese without the resulting sauce splitting.

The way round this is to use an emulsifying salt like sodium citrate to create a stable emulsion that doesn’t break when heated; the extra cheese acts as a thickener meaning there’s no need for any roux (and it’s notoriously bad flavour release), and not as much milk is required either so the cheese doesn’t get horribly diluted.

My take on the recipe is an amalgam of the one from the Modernist Cuisine book and the simplified version on their website. I chose to use iota carrageenan, which apparently improves mouthfeel, as I had bought some before discovering it could be omitted with little detriment to the final product. I also upped the liquid content slightly as I wanted the sauce to be a bit thinner so it would coat the cauliflower thoroughly.

The second time I made this I used my Thermomix and just threw all the cheese in one go before blitzing at full speed for two minutes; it worked perfectly but when using an immersion blender it was specifically stated to add the cheese gradually so I’m not sure if my trick would work there too.

Modernist Cauliflower Cheese

Serves: 2

Ingredients:

400g cauliflower florets
250g milk
2.5g salt
2.5g Worcestershire sauce
6.25g sodium citrate
1.13g iota carrageenan (optional)
125g Comte, grated
53g cheddar, grated

Method:

Seal the cauliflower florets in a single layer in a vacuum bag.
Place in a temperature controlled water bath at 85.5°C for 45 minutes.
Meanwhile, bring the milk to a simmer and whisk in the salt, sodium citrate and iota carrageenan.
Using an immersion blender, blend in the cheese gradually into the simmering pan and blitz until the cheese is completely melted and incorporated into the sauce.
Place the cooked cauliflower into roasting dish and pour over the cheese sauce.
Mix the ingredients thorough and place under a grill for around 5-10 minutes to brown the top. Serve immediately.

82 days ago Short URL Comments

Recipes

Cauliflower/Cheese/Modernist/Sous Vide

Feb

Socca, Mushrooms, Parsnip, Smoked Bacon

It may be a week late for Pancake Tuesday but I’ve actually been meaning to try these crepes from Southern France for a long time. Originally a peasant dish originating in Genoa comprising just chickpea flour, olive oil and water, I first read about them in the Balthazar cookbook (you can even see my copy in the background of the picture below).

Naturally, given the treatment they gave that other Italian staple, polenta, the authors weren’t content to stick to such an austere ingredient list and instead supplement their batter with white flour, cream and eggs. Unfortunately I didn’t have any cream so I just substituted water and rather than olive oil I made an executive decision and used melted butter instead.

In its raw state the batter actually tastes somewhat unpleasant, almost vegetal, but once cooked there’s a lovely, subtle nuttiness and a slightly crispier texture than you get with standard wheat only versions. I tried to keep the pancakes as thin as possible out of personal preference but I think traditionally they would be a bit heftier and usually finished in the oven. I apologise to any socca purists in advance for all these bastardisations!

For the stuffing, I thought it would be interesting to eschew a more conventional cream sauce and use a thin puree of roasted parsnip instead and it worked really well. The main thing to worry about here is excessive sweetness from the caramelised vegetables so a good shot of cider vinegar at the end gives some acidity to counteract that.

You might also notice the process for cooking the mushrooms seems quite convoluted and while I’ve discussed this before I’ve laid out the rationale in more detailed form on Stack Exchange too.

Socca, Mushrooms, Smoked Bacon, Parsnips

Serves: 2

Ingredients:
For the pancake batter
150g chickpea flour
50g white flour
5g salt
1 egg
600ml water
30g butter, melted

For the filling
Grape seed oil
250g parsnips, chopped, woody cores removed
200ml milk
30g butter
Salt
400g large mushrooms, roughly chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
3 sprigs thyme
75g smoked bacon, diced
2.5g Worcestershire sauce
5ml cider vinegar

Method:

For the pancake batter, pour the flour and salt into a bowl.
Whisk the egg and water together and pour slowly into the flour, whisking constantly to form a batter and prevent lumps forming.
Leave the batter to rest for at least 1 hour.
Meanwhile, for the filling, preheat the oven to 190°C.
Place the parsnips in a roasting tray and coat with oil.
Roast the parsnips in the oven for 20-25 minutes until golden and starting to caramelise.
When done, place the parsnips in a blender with the milk and butter and process to a loose, smooth puree (add more milk if necessary, you want it to have the consistency of a béchamel sauce).
Add the mushrooms to a pan over a medium heat with some salt and water and cover.
Allow to cook for around five minutes, until the mushrooms have released a lot of water.
Drain the mushrooms, reserving the released mushroom water, and clean and dry the pan before returning it to a high heat.
When the pan is very hot, pour some oil and add the mushrooms, bacon and thyme, stirring occasionally.
When the bacon and mushrooms are nicely browned, around 3-4 minutes, take off the heat.
Add the garlic and stir constantly so it doesn’t burn for around two minutes.
Return the pan to a high heat and deglaze the pan with the reserved mushroom water and Worcestershire sauce.
When most of the liquid has evaporated, add the parsnip puree and mix thoroughly.
Add the cider vinegar and adjust the seasoning if required.
Preheat the oven to 150°C and whisk the melted butter into the batter.
Heat a small non-stick frying pan until very hot and then turn the heat down to medium.
Lightly grease with oil and then ladle in enough batter to coat the base of the pan thinly (approximately 30-40ml), tilting the pan so the mixture spreads evenly.
Cook over a moderate heat for 1-2 minutes or until the batter looks dry on the top and begins to brown at the edges.
Flip the pancake over with a spatula and cook the second side for another 1-2 minutes.
Repeat these steps until you have 6 pancakes.
Place a line of the mushroom filling down the centre a pancake and fold into a roll.
Repeat for the other pancakes and place in the rolls in a tray in the oven to reheat (the pancakes will have gone cold) for a few minutes.
Divide between two plates and serve with a green salad.

89 days ago Short URL Comments

Recipes

Crepes/French/Mushrooms

Jan

Pho Viet

Ever since Ho Sen in Temple Bar closed down a few years ago there had been no exclusively Vietnamese restaurant in Dublin and, of the various pan-Asian offerings in the city, only Saba served the famous Vietnamese soup pho (Neon were selling something labelled as such but they’ve since, correctly, rebranded it as Thai Beef Noodle Soup).

This has all changed with the opening of Pho Viet on Parnell Street (there’s also another new place called Aobaba on Capel Street), which aside from serving many different versions of pho also has various Vietnamese rice and noodle dishes. While the main reason we were there was for the soup we also ordered a starter of banh xeo, a sort of savoury pancake made with rice flour and stuffed with prawns, beansprouts and pork, and it was outstanding.

The main varieties of the restaurant’s pho are defined by the types of beef each contain and are basically various combination of thinly sliced rare beef, meatballs, flank steak and brisket. Something to note about Vietnamese meatballs is that they have quite a strange texture as they are made from a pounded meat paste thus making them completely solid; this can take a bit of getting used to.

Even though I didn’t order any there were still some of these meatballs in my soup: I’m pretty sure the waiter made a mistake but I didn’t really mind because the pale, clear broth is the real focus here and it was fantastic, not overly beefy but wonderfully fragrant. The portion size is very generous too and at €6.90 a go it’s great value. We both left stuffed and for two starters, two mains and free tea the whole meal came in at under €25 including tip. As I said, great value.

129 days ago Short URL Comments

Reviews

Asian/Vietnamese

Jan

Freekeh, Beetroot, Kale, Pomegranate, Walnut

This recipe started life with a Georgian dish of aubergines stuffed with a spicy walnut paste I made a while back; it was quite good although I wasn’t too keen on the amount of vinegar but it did give me an idea for a sauce to go with an Ottolenghi style salad. I also wanted to include some sort of grain but not quinoa since I’ve used that a fair bit recently.

I was initially thinking of using bulgur and was going to burn an aubergine and stir its finely chopped flesh in to give a nice smoky flavour; however, aubergines aren’t great at this time of year so I decided to use a smoked form of wheat from the Middle East called freekah instead. This is where I ran into a bit of a problem though: it’s very difficult to find here in Dublin.

After a bit of Googling I was still no closer to finding a source so I decided it was worth a shot getting in touch with the guys behind Brother Hubbard on Capel Street through Twitter given they’re big fans of Ottolenghi too. Sure enough within minutes I had a reply with the generous offer to sell me some of their own stock as they’d trouble finding it themselves and had to get it through a wholesaler. I thought that was a lovely touch and I’m really grateful to Garrett for sorting me out when I distracted him in the middle of a heaving service on a Saturday afternoon.

The other main focus of the salad is beetroot and I was delighted to find both the golden and candy stripe varieties in Fallon & Byrne because it’s incredibly rare for them to stock either never mind both; I left the striped versions raw, as they lose their lovely colour when cooked, and roasted the rest.

Other than that, aside from the kale and a few Middle Eastern herbs like dill and mint added at the end, there’s also a final sprinkling of some pomegranate seeds: another nod to the Georgian dish which inspired me as they’re the traditional garnish.

Freekeh, Beetroot, Kale, Pomegranate, Walnut

Serves: 2

Ingredients:
For the walnut sauce
75g walnuts
30ml olive oil
2.5g coriander seeds, ground
2.5g fenugreek seeds, ground
200g Greek style yoghurt
10ml pomegranate molasses
½ clove garlic, crushed
5g paprika
Salt

For the freekeh salad
2 medium golden beetroot
2 medium red beetroot
Olive oil
1 medium candy stripe beetroot, sliced thinly with a mandolin
150g freekah
300ml vegetable stock
75g kale, shredded (middle stalk removed)
15g mint
15g dill
5g cumin
½ pomegranate, seeds only

Method:

For the walnut sauce, preheat the oven to 180°C and then toast the walnuts for 10 minutes.
Remove the nuts and, reserving a few for garnish, place, along with all the other ingredients for the sauce, in a blender.
Process until a fairly smooth puree. Check the seasoning and correct if necessary.
For the freekah salad, cover the golden and red beetroot with oil and season with salt.
Wrap the beets individually in tinfoil and roast in the oven with the walnuts for an hour until tender.
Remove the beets from the foil and rub off the skin. Reserve and keep warm.
Place the freekah and vegetable stock in a pot with some salt.
Bring to the boil and then place on pot a low heat and cover.
Cook for 20 minutes and then remove from the heat and leave to steam for 10 minutes.
Over a medium heat, pour some oil into a frying pan and add the kale with a splash of water.
Sauté until the kale has softened, around 5-7 minutes.
Add the freekah, kale, mint, dill and cumin to a large bowl and mix thoroughly.
Divide the mixture between two plates.
Pour over the walnut sauce.
Quarter the roasted beets and arrange on top of the freekah and sauce.
Dot the candy striped beetroot slices around the salad.
Sprinkle over the pomegranate seeds and reserved walnuts and serve.

136 days ago Short URL 2 Comments

Uncategorized

Beetroot/Freekeh/Ottolenghi/Pomegranate/Vegetarian/Walnut

Dec

Jamie’s Italian

I’d normally be very wary of dining in chain restaurants and although it seems like Jamie Oliver wants to do the right thing in his ventures I was still somewhat sceptical when we booked a table for my dad’s sixtieth birthday. There was a large group of us (sixteen in total) so we only had a limited menu to choose with three courses and a glass prosecco costing a quite reasonable €40 a head. We also had to give everyone’s selections in advance during the reservation process but I think that’s fair enough for such a big booking at Christmas time.

The only choices for starters we either vegetarian or meat platters of antipasti and I think everyone went for the latter: it was a pretty standard selection of cheese, prosciutto and salami (including a particularly nice fennel one) but the highlight by far was the mozzarella which, Toonsbridge excepted, was the best mozzarella I’ve ever had in Ireland. The most surprising thing for me was even though it was imported and presumably a few days old it tasted so fresh and creamy, a testament to the quality of the restaurant’s sourcing.

My main of porchetta stuffed with salami and raisins in a vin santo sauce was also excellent. While there were supposed to be some truffles in there too I couldn’t really taste any; it was probably for the best as the long braised pork (twenty hours apparently) didn’t need any other distracting flavours. The only other option I got to try was the spatchcocked chicken with tomato, caper and olive sauce and it was fine but not a patch on the porchetta.

The only misstep of the night was my dessert, I’d ordered the fruit tiramisu which just didn’t work: if you’re going to mess with a classic dish it really has to be a complete reimagining or at least a big improvement and this was neither. Much better was the panna cotta with winter berries, a deceptively simple dish that is often horribly interpreted by restaurants here. Menu envy aside, the meal finished with a tray of mince pies rather unusually made with filo pastry but unlike the tiramisu it was a far more successful experiment.

Service throughout was exemplary, it’s not easy to cater for such large groups especially ones with an 18-month-old child and even though my parents were half an hour late the staff kept everything moving along brilliantly. We even had the table for a good hour and a half after we’d finished our food when a lot of places would be putting you under pressure so they could turn the table. All in all, a very impressive operation that meant my initial trepidation was clearly unfounded.

156 days ago Short URL Comments

Reviews

Italian/Review