Irish butter

Irish butter is the best one in the world. It tastes like my grandma’s home-made butter. I have been in love with it since the first bite of bread with this butter. The best butter brand is the Kerrygold butter. I was surprised that such a big company offers such tasty and natural products. I have tried other types of butter made by other companies but I have always come back to the Kerrygold butter. It tastes fantastic when it is spread on a piece of bread. It adds a lot of complexity to each bite. It is available in salted and unsalted varieties. That extra flavour is the result of cows in Ireland having a rich grass diet .
Irish cows are very happy animals because grass is fresh the whole year and they spend their entire lives on the pasture.

Butter is made from cream. Cream from around 15 litres of milk goes into making just half a kilo of butter. Around a third of the world’s milk is changed into butter. Ireland is the fourteenth largest producer of butter in the world.

Butter contains vitamins A, D and calcium and, of course, is high calorie.
In the past in Ireland butter was packed into wooden churns and stored in peat bogs, where it would keep well for some length of time. Sometimes forgotten butter turned into creamy cheese, which was often discovered by archaeologists.

Buttermilk is used extensively in traditional Irish cooking. I have found many recipes for traditional Irish food where butter or buttermilk is used . My favourite are apple tart and buttermilk pudding.

Buttermilk Pudding

100 gram of sugar

250 ml of cream

500 ml buttermilk

1 teaspoon of powdered gelatine

1 vanilla pod

Dissolve 1 cup of gelatine in 2 tablespoons of boiling water. Cut the vanilla pod in half. Place it in a pan with sugar and half of the cream. Heat but do not boil. Remove a pan from heat and stir in the gelatine blending well. Remove the vanilla pod, then whisk buttermilk into hot cream. Whip the remaining cream until stiff, then fold it into the hot mixture. Pour into a bowl and chill well.
Serve with a teaspoon of your favourite jam.

The story continues... under the grill exactly

So the chicken died of curiosity. Be careful when you cross the road next time.

 

Grilled chicken with kumara and passionfruit dressing 

 I was too hungry to take a better picture.

Under the grill

The more I cook the less I write, sorry! You are welcome to pop in for a tea instead!

My favourite food magazine, New Zealand’s Cuisine, has a nice short interview column titled Under the grill. I liked the latest issues so much that I decide to answer the questions (almost the same every time) myself. I guess the answers don’t change much with time.

When did you first become interested in food?

There where few episodes in my teenage years smashed by overbearing parents and the lack of groceries – I grew up in a small village far away from everywhere. Then as a history student I got tired of non-illustrated books and began buying colourful magazines. Then I was trying to impress my boyfriend. Maybe the kiwifruit tarte helped him to make a decision of marriage? And with my first job in the kitchen I totally fell in love with cooking. 

What’s your first food memory?

When I was a child food was simple and not so diversified. I was raised in the countryside so I recall milk fresh from the milking, hot and fat, the incredible strawberry jam and bread with butter and sugar only, vanilla sugar and semolina porridge. These are the first. My menu has changed much and often from that time.

What is your ideal party menu?

I rarely cook the same thing twice. I prefer aboundance and a huge choice. I had twice prepared a  party consisted of 25 dishes. Usually I would serve few starters, one main and again the choice of desserts. For the starter a savoury muffin, for the main a simple pasta with a nice sauce and then I have time for several refined desserts! Last time I served pizza muffins, meaty pasta with courgette, vegetarian pasta with broadbean, New Zealand’s lemon snow, roasted peanuts brownie and rhubarb pie.  

Who would be your dream dinner guests?

There are many of them, alive, and they pay us visits every now and then. And for the deads, I guess my three favourite poets, Mieczysław Jastrun, Tadeusz Chudy and Władysław Broniewski. For another party I would certainly invite Gaius Julius Caesar and Octavian Augustus.

What’s your pick of food destinations?

Big eclectic cities like London. This is where I learn most and where cookbooks and resources are easily available. When I travel for food I want to experience it very intensivly. In a big city you can meet not only the region’s cuisine but all of the world. My dream is to visit Melbourne and Singapore.

What’s the worst food crime?

There are many I guess. I particularly hate serving hot dish on a cold plate, carelessly washed lettuce and serving meat reheated or kept for some time under the grill meat. I prefer it straight from the pan!

What is coming next in the food world?

Sharpening the division between fast food and good food. Food prices may drive us towards old methods and skills at homes but shops will be full of junk food. 

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To check what’s on the other side!

Answer yourself!

Irish Soda Bread

When I moved to Ireland, shopping for groceries was the first thing I did. I needed the basic ingredients for my kitchen. I bought tradition Irish bread and flour in a bakery. I wanted to make a home-made cake. After shopping, I baked an apple cake and I was very surprised when I saw the cake after baknig. The cake was huge and tasted a little too much of soda. I didn’t know what had happened because that recipe is without soda. As it turned out, I had bought flour with the addition of soda. I was wondering why the Irish added soda to flour.
The answer was on a wrapping of traditional Irish bread. It was soda bread.

In the book of the history of Irish cuisine I read that Ireland didn’t have a strong tradition of yeast bread making. The use of baking soda as a leavening agent is quick, effective and it produced a much more consistent result than yeast did.

The original soda bread contained nothing more than flour, buttermilk, baking soda and salt. The dough should not be kneaded too much.
I have never liked soda bread because it tastes to me like salt cake.  However, Irish bread is different. It doesn’t taste as normal bread and is heavy and dense. Soda bread is made using either wholemeal or white flour but you can often find bread with the mixture of both types of flour. In some recipes, buttermilk is replaced by yoghurt or even stout.

I am not enthusiastic about soda bread and I don’t eat it every day but in a restaurant I always order soup and soda bread as a starter. Some restaurants bake their own bread and every one tastes different.
I ate the best bread in the north of Ireland.

Below there is a recipe for a traditional version of this bread.

Traditional Irish Soda Bread

1 ½ cups wholemeal flour

1 cup white flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1 – 1 ¼ cups buttermilk

Preheat oven to 280 C and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, combine all dry ingredients and stir together. Add buttermilk and mix with a large spoon (or with your hands, shaping your fingers into a “claw”) until the dough comes together. You might need two tablespoons more or less buttermilk depending on the weather. The dough should be moist, but not so sticky it is very hard to handle.

Shape into a round and place on baking sheet. Cut an X into the top with a sharp knife and bake for about 45 minutes, until dark golden. A toothpick will come out clean.

Cool on a wire rack for about 10 minutes before slicing.

This bread is best served soon after baking with Irish butter.

Guinness -Black Irish Gold

Guinness is called the Black Irish Gold. People sometimes don’t know where Ireland is but they know that Guinness comes form Ireland and means – enjoy.
Guinness is Irish dry stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness. Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759. On 31 December he signed up to a 9,000-year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery at the St. James’s Gate Brewery. When I saw the lease in the Guinness Museum, I began to wonder how beer would taste in the year10759.
Arthur Guinness started selling dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beer to use the term was Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s. Guinness produced ‘only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra, and foreign stout for export’.

Guinness is made from water, barley, hops and brewer’s yeast, and is treated with isinglass finings made from fish air bladders, although Guinness claimed that this material was unlikely to remain in the finished product. This means it is generally deemed unsuitable for a vegetarian or vegan diet. A portion of barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark color and characteristic taste. It is pasteurized and filtered. Despite its reputation as a “meal in a glass”, Guinness only contains 198 kcal per pint (1460 kJ/l), fewer than skimmed milk or other non-light beer.

The reputation as a “meal in a glass” has come from the the fact that in the past one part of the salary paid to workers was in pints of beer. Until these days there are many pubs around the Guinness factory .

Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers have found that “antioxidant compounds in Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruit and vegetables, are responsible for health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”

Guinness ran an advertising campaign under the slogan “Guinness is Good for You” since the 1920s. This slogan stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint. Now this type of advertising of alcoholic drinks is prohibited in Ireland. 

I have also heard that at the beginning of the 20^th century in hospitals pregnant women were given one pint of Guinness per day as protection against anaemia.

Now Guinness is treated as a normal alcoholic drink with all its consequences.

The very good Guinness marketers still make a special atmosphere around this beer.

In Ireland and abroad Guinness is treated as the king of beers. A pint of Guinness should be served in a slightly tulip shaped pint glass, as opposed to the taller European tulip glass or ‘Nonic’ glass, which contains a ridge approx ¾ of the way up the glass. Every bartender needs to be able to pour the “perfect pint” of Guinness.

The “perfect pint” of Guinness is the product of a “double pour”. The waiting time between the first and second pour should take 119.53 seconds. Guinness has promoted this wait with advertising campaigns such as “good things come to those who wait”. Guinness should be served at 6°C while Extra Cold Guinness should be served at 3.5°C.

In the Guinness factory there is a museum where you can see how beer is made. There is exhibition devoted to the history of company. You can watch old advertisements of Guinness. Ain addition, in the Guinness bar you can learn how to pour “the perfect pint” and drink a pint of Black Irish Gold.

Irish chefs have invented many meals with Guinness which are a good lure of tourists. I have discovered the following dishes in Dublin restaurants: Irish stew with Guinness, chicken with Guinness sauce, Guinness soup, Guinness cake and ice cream with Guinness. My favorite is Beef In Guinness.
You will see the recipe is on karott.com

Beef In Guinness

for 4 servings:

1/2 kg Beef, cubed
1/2 cup Flour, seasoned
Oil; for frying
2 Onion; sliced
4 Garlic clove; minced
3 Carrot; sliced
1 tsp Parsley; minced
1/2 tsp Thyme
Salt; to taste
Pepper; to taste
Beef broth
 200 mlGuinness

Dip beef in flour and coat on all sides. Brown in oil, in batches and remove to heat proof pot or casserole. Sauté onions and garlic in same oil and add to beef. Add carrots, parsley and thyme. Season with salt and pepper. Pour enough beef broth to cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes. Lift meat, onions and carrots from pot to serving plate with slotted spoon. Over high heat, reduce sauce to half the original volume. Pour sauce over meat and serve.

Enjoy!!

Irish breakfast

My first meeting with truly Irish cuisine was when I started working as a breakfast chef.  I was very surprised when I saw the menu. There were ten meals to choose but only two were healthy and light. I was scared.  The head chef showed me Full Irish Breakfast. There was a plate with fat and fried food, even tomatoes were baked. I was really surprised. I know, in Poland we serve heavy breakfast but with a wide selection of vegetables and fruit. Irish breakfast is not only heavy but also unhealthy.  After the first day in that restaurant, I understood why so many Irish people are so obese.

Irish breakfast is the result of famine in Ireland. Farmers normally ate only one warm meal a day in the morning before work. Breakfast rich in fat and calories was a source of energy until the evening, when they returned home to eat an evening meal.

The traditional Irish breakfast consists of  some components which are fried in  deep fat  or baked in the oven. Traditionally the most common ingredients are

fried or grilled bacon, also referred to as "rashers" or "slices", baked beans,

black or white pudding, fried mushrooms, sausages, fried or grilled  tomatoes and hash browns. Eggs, fried, poached, or scrambled are very important ingredients of this breakfast.  Full Irish breakfast may be accompanied by  strong Irish Breakfast tea such as Barry's Tea, Lyons Tea, or Bewley's, and it is always served with milk. Fried potato bread, or toast, is often served as an alternative to brown soda bread or French toast.

This meal is very fat and high-calorie - not least because in recent times, there has been a variety of mutations, such as the vegetarian version. Juice and porridge are also not traditional for this type of breakfast. They have been served since the 1950s of the twentieth century. Due to the relatively time-consuming procedure for preparing breakfast, in recent years the fast food version has become  very popular: a roll (which looks like a small French stick) filled with the selected components of the traditional Full Irish Breakfast. This sandwich can be purchased at many bars, grocery shops and petrol stations.

In restaurants, pubs, cafés, bars or even petrol stations you can find Full Irish Breakfast. However, in travel guidebooks or on postcards from Ireland you can see pictures with other Irish Breakfast – a plate full of oysters served with a glass of Guinness. So, I have looked for this type of breakfast in restaurants and pubs but I have never found it. The Irish have a great sense of humor and a good knowledge of marketing strategy.

The English influence on the Polish cuisine -English luncheon meat

As a child I thought how good English cuisine was . Somebody might be very surprised now. I know but you need to know that when I was 5 years old there was martial law in Poland. Groceries were completely empty. My grandfather sometimes brought English biscuits and a can of English luncheon meat. I loved English luncheon meat. I was sometimes angry when my granddad didn’t bring a can of English luncheon meat. I was a child then and the adjective “English” means “luxury” for me.

That year at Christmas we got a food parcel from our family. They live abroad. Among rice, sugar, cans of meat and sweets I found English tea. The box of tea became the best Christmas gift for me. I was very young and I don’t remember the political situation in Poland but I remember empty shops and long queues for food and “English delicious”. 

 

During my whole childhood I thought that England had the best food in the world. Until I discovered that English luncheon meat is made ​​in Poland. However, I still like it but after this discovery my love to England got weaker.

There was no love lost between me and English cuisine when I met true Englishmen. When I was in high school, my town was visited by cultural delegations from England. My parents hosted two women of this delegation. One day they prepared a real English dinner for my family. That was the worst meal I have ever tried.

Two years ago I was in Great Britain and I tried English food, but it did not convince me. I still think that English cuisine isn’t good. I am wondering why one Polish company named grocery products English. I was looking for the influence of English cuisine on Polish cuisine, but I didn’t find it. In the past Great Britain was far away from Poland. Before the twentieth century Poland didn’t have any political or economical influence from England. In the twentieth century Great Britain was a place to which political emigrants from Poland moved. Maybe the adjective English in the names of food as an expression of opposition to the authorities and a symbol of freedom? 

I don’t know, but English luncheon meat means freedom for me. I had cans of this food in my backpack during multi-day trekking travels. I can eat it hot and cold, with bread and alone. It is always very tasty. Now when I sometimes miss Polish sausage and ham, I eat English luncheon meat and all my childhood comes back to me.

This is last post about   influence on Polish cuisine. I plan two new series about Irish and also Polish regional cuisine.

Influence on Polish cuisine  - Japanese herring - śledź po japońsku

Influence on Polish cuisnie -  Knuckle of pork in Bavaria - Golonka po Bawarsku 

Influence on Polish cuisnie -  Beef Strogonow

The Hungarian influence on the Polish cuisine - Leczo

The Czech influence on the Polish cuisine -Bohemian dumplings

The Jews influence on the Polish cuisine - Szlajmzupe

The Turkish influence on the Polish cuisine - Coffee

The Lithuanian influence on the Polish cuisine - Bigos

The Austrian influence on the Polish cuisine - Vienna Schnitzel

The Greek influence on the Polish cuisine - Greek Salad 

The Ukrainian influence on the Polish cuisine - Ukrainian borscht

The Tatar influence on the Polish cuisine - Tatar sauce

The Italian influence on the Polish cuisine - Faworki

The influence of French cuisine on Polish cuisine -"Mizeria"