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an irish food blog
This is a great store cupboard dish. Excellent for a lazy supper, it would also make a cool starter if you’re entertaining. Make a sauce by heating 1 tbsp clear honey and adding 1 tbsp of grain mustard. Season with a little salt & pepper. Make some well-seasoned mash or champ and top with a couple of pieces of fried Clonakilty black pudding. Drizzle a little sauce over the dish.
Excuse the rubbish photos! I found these shots from a fantastic birthday lunch my wife and I had in “Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud” last year. RPG (unfortunate initials!) is mecca for many Irish foodies. It is Ireland’s only Michelin 2-star restaurant and is located in Dublin’s swanky Merrion Hotel.
Myself and The Wife arrived at the Merrion and were ushered into RPG’s lounge. We ordered a couple of glasses of white wine while we looked over the lunch menu. We were personally welcomed to the restaurant by front-of-house manager Stephane Robin which was a great start to the meal. A lot of people imagine RPG is incredibly stuffy, but it’s actually very friendly and relaxed.
After squinting at the blurred photo I took of the menu, I recall we started with “Roast Quail with Apple Polenta & Verjus” and “Terrine of Foie Gras & Smoked Eel, Salad of Vegetables, Soy & Maple Dressing“. Both dishes were excellent, but I seem to remember the flavour of the smoked eel overpowered the more delicate flavour of the foie gras.
Mains were a resounding success; I had “Fillet of Venison with Roast Salsify, Spinach & Morel Jus” and The Wife was happy with her “Fillet of Atlantic Cod cooked ‘A la plancha’ with petits pois à la Française“. Desserts (pictured) were “Roast Pineapple, Mint Sabayon & Pineapple Sorbet” and “Chocolate & Coconut Tian with Coconut Sorbet“; both delicious, but the tian made me think “Michelin star Bounty” …
Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud
21 Upper Merrion Street, Dublin 2.
Recently I was clearing some of the pictures on my mobile phone and came across this (blurred) photo of the Arbutus lunch menu I took last March. It left me feeling nostalgic and not a little hungry.
I regret not getting any photos of our lunch now. I started the meal with “Braised pigs head with potato puree & caramelized onions“, followed by “Saddle of rabbit with shoulder cottage pie & roast onions“. The pigs head was served as a warm terrine, very tasty but with an unusual texture. The rabbit dish was delicious; I loved the quirky ‘cottage pie’ made from the darker shoulder meat. Herself ordered the “Salad of fresh sheeps ricotta, roast squash & hazelnuts” followed by “Caillettes of pork with carrots & potato puree“. The ‘Caillettes’ are described on the menu as ‘old fashioned meatballs’; tasty and very substantial. The ricotta salad was also delicious with some interesting textures. We finished the meal with a zingy lemon tart for me, and a nougat ice-cream for her. Very impressive.
I’ll get photos next time!
Verdict: 9/10
Pizza is big business in Ireland. Domino’s, Four Star, Pizza Hut, Little Caesar’s. It’s an oft-quoted fact that the Tallaght branch of Domino’s is their busiest outlet in the world. All too easy to believe. While I’m partial to the odd takeaway, I’m really getting into making my own.
It is time-consuming but all I can tell you is that when you taste the results you’ll realise that your own home-made pizza is a million miles from takeaway. It’s great to have control over the ingredients as takeaway pizza is loaded with sugar and salt. You can also get creative with some good quality toppings: salamis, proscuitto, artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes, rocket …
If you’re planning a pizza cookoff, take a trip to Lidl or Aldi. They have some excellent pizza toppings at great prices: mozzarella, parmesan, salamis, chorizo etc. The photo below contains products all bought from Lidl.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t actually need any specialised pizza-making equipment, such as pizza stones. Certainly you can obtain a crisper crust using such gadgets, but can achieve great results with a simple pre-heated baking sheet.
If, like me, you tend to over-research these things you’ll find there there’s a raging debate between pizza lovers about whether the tomato sauce on a pizza should be cooked or not. Myself, I’m firmly in the cooked camp. This is because I like a rich, piquant, fully-flavoured sauce. Don’t listen to the gastronerds.
Happy cooking.
