Foraging ← WholeMeal

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

Mar

25

2013

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 ...

Nettle And Wild Garlic Quiche

Apr

24

2012

There’s a lot of mystery surrounding pastry and as someone who’s never been much of a baker I have admit I find the topic a bit intimidating. A big problem for me has been consistency: while the basic ratio for shortcrust pastry is a 2:1 mix of flour to fat I always found myself having ...

Nettle Soup

Apr

12

2012

As you may have noticed it’s nettle season at the moment but this time, unlike last year, I lazily bought mine in the Temple Bar Farmers Market instead of foraging them myself. Although there are lots of similar recipes around for this soup I thought I’d post my one because rather than the usual thickening ...

Beef, Stout, Hazelnuts, Wild Mushrooms, Potato Three Ways 5

Oct

24

2011

Bord Bia is running a competition where you have to create a meal that you would cook for a foreign friend if they were coming to visit and explain the thought process involved. The idea is to show Irish produce at its best so I’ve chosen mainly common staples along with a few foraged ingredients ...

Samphire

Jul

3

2011

I was in Kish Fish yesterday buying some red mullet for lunch and I noticed that they were also selling samphire which is a big favourite of mine. Unfortunately, it was priced at a quite outrageous €15/kg but since you only need about 100g for two people I didn’t mind too much and with a ...

Nettle Gnocchi With Cream And Pancetta Sauce

Apr

21

2011

Another trip to the Phoenix Park to get more wild garlic also yielded a great haul of nettles, far more than I got last time so I had to figure a way of using them up; I was reminded of a lovely meal I had in Croatia a few years back that featured nettle gnocchi ...

Nettle And Wild Garlic Risotto With Horseradish 3

Apr

10

2011

After such a long and harsh winter it’s nice to see that spring is finally here, the days have got longer and the bitter cold of the past few months finally seems to have passed; the hungry gap of March is over and there’s lots of great vegetables starting to come into season. Something I’ve ...