Meatloaf and crispy pork and pak choi

As a treat for myself on my birthday a few weeks ago, I went to the Ballymore Inn for lunch. It is by a long shot, my favourite restaurant, or to give it it's proper classification..gastropub. They keep things simple, seasonal and everything is always perfectly cooked. This dish was no exception.
I didn't order a starter or a dessert, just this dish, and it was an inspired idea! It meant that nothing interfered with the gorgeous textures and flavours of the dish. I have tried in the past to extract the recipe from the waiting staff, or even a clue to the main ingredients in the sauce, but it never works! I didn't even try it this time. I did, instead spend a week or two trying out a few different versions of it, to see if I could even come close.
The one I settled on is not really hitting the flavours, but I stopped with this one, as I am quite happy with it.

First, you need a pork fillet, trimmed. 1 fillet serves 4 in this recipe. It's best to ask your butcher to trim the pork, but Super Valu have good deals on pork fillet at the moment, so you could try your hand at it. This video is a good demonstration of how to do that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFVYcfyd_S8

Then you need to get your hands on some pak choi.  This is fairly easy to get hold of at the moment, I got some in Super Valu on a 2 for 1 deal last week and I was delighted to see it was grown in Ireland. 1 pak choi per two people for this recipe.

So, first, slice the trimmed pork into slices no thicker than 1/2 cm. Toss the slices in seasoned flour.
Fry off the pork in batches in a pan with a couple of tablespoons of sunflower oil on a high heat for a minute on each side. Make sure it is cooked through, then leave the cooked pieces aside while you put on the noodles to cook (these only take a minute or two.) I used the medium egg noodles as they have a bit more body than the fine rice ones.  It is best to cook the pork a few pieces at a time, because if you crowd the pan, the pork will not crisp up on the outside and will stew.

Chop the pak choi in half, separating the leafy bit from the crunchy white part. Chop the white piece into wedges, four or six depending on how big the pak choi is. Leave the leaves whole.
(The white part needs no more than 2 minutes to cook and the green part no more than 30 secs to 1 minute.)

Now put the pork and white pak choi back in the pan with a couple of drops of sesame oil, a good dash of soy sauce, and a small squeeze of honey. After one minute add the leaves and only allow to barely heat, try not to wilt them too much and turn off the heat. Toss the cooked noodles into the pork and pak choi and serve.
If you have a nice Chinese dipping sauce, you could serve it on the side, but this dish is so yummy. And it is quicker than ordering Chinese!!

The next recipe is not quicker than Chinese, but it is a truly scrummy dish.
I got the recipe from the Good Food channel website, a real little gem for great recipes.

Meatloaf

Ingredients

600g minced beef
200g minced pork
200g bacon bits, fried until cooked
300g soft white bread cubed
1 egg
150 ml milk
1/2 t ground nutmeg
1/2 each salt and pepper
1/2 dried oregano
1 t dijon mustard
A good T of fresh chopped parsley

Beat the egg and mix with the milk and pour over the milk and let it soak up the liquid. Then mash the bread until it is mushy.
Add all the remaining ingredients and use your hands to mix together.
Grease 2 small loaf tins and fill with the mixture.
You can freeze one at this point. One loaf tin serves 4.

Cook for 50 minutes at 180c  or until cooked through. (There will be pink flecks in the meatloaf from the bacon so don't panic!)

Serve with mash and gravy and peas or beans, or anything you want really!
This makes a lovely sandwich the next day, sliced cold and with a bit of Ballymaloe relish. (Apologies for the APALLING photo!!)

The chunky white pieces are the bread, you can blitz it in the food processor if you want it less rustic, but I quite like the texture of the large pieces.

This is a really good value meal and the kids LOVE it.

See ya soon!!

Cakes and more cakes!

I always love baking cakes. The only problematic part of this however is that I like eating them even more!  I wouldn't be crazy for sweets or chocolate, but I do love baked goods.
As far as chocolate cake is concerned, it is hard to find a good recipe. To get the mix of moistness without it being too squidgy is a tough needle to thread. I have a couple of good go-to recipes and they work for what I need them to do, but really as far as cake goes I prefer a more exotic offering.

Of late I have been getting a few requests for some party cakes, decorated and piped. The pictures are below. I loved making them but they are time consuming and can be costly. I can really see how wedding cakes and fancy birthday cakes are so expensive.

I discovered a cake supplies shop in Kildare and also a couple of good websites where you can get all the equipment, decorations and sugar paste icing. The correct paraphernalia is most definitely the secret to success!
The website incidentally is jane-asher.co.uk.

All the cakes are iced with a layer of marzipan and sugar paste icing first. You roll that out like pastry. In fact, that sugar paste stuff is like a mixture between pastry and playdough. I can be tricky to manage. Not to mention sticky!

I also bought little stencil cutters for lettering which give a lovely finish and you can glitz them up with edible glitter before putting them on the cake which really adds a bit of fun, but they are an absolute curse to work with! I thought I had semi proficient fine motor skills until I tried this, but I was very ham-fisted doing this. Definitely a job for the more patient cook!

The first one here is a christening cake I made for my nephew Jack.

It was a lot of fun to make this cake, I had a bit of help from Robyn, despite my very high stress levels! Was not a very therapeutic excercise!
We bought the little baby model and made the pea pods from sugar paste. They were not difficult to make at all and were a great tool for hiding the uneven edges!!!
I was at the christening so could taste the result and it wasn't bad at all, if I do say so!
The lettering was piped, and I was relieved it worked out, lettering in icing is my biggest worry. It is not good to make a mistake, it's hard to fix cleanly. Although I am sure there is some professional out there that will correct me!

Next up, was the Gingerbread Man-eating giant Cupcake Cookie Monster (to use his full title!)

I bought a cake tin in the shape of a giant cupcake that I could use for birthday parties. It is well and truly earned it's keep, I have used it many times now.
The idea came after I had made a series of small cupcakes in the shape of a cookie monster type character for a birthday party.
The giant cupcake was for a haloween party so we added the gruesome detail of the poor sacrificial gingerbread man.

These were just little cupcakes covered in chocolate icing and rolled in vermicelli. The eyes are black and white ready to roll icing and the cookies are shop-bought choc chip cookies.

The Gulliver version ....

The recipe I used was Darina Allen's Yoghurt cake from the Ballymaloe cookery course book. It is all mixed in the food processor and is really moist.

The ingredients are

1 small carton of yoghurt
 Then using the carton as a measure...

1 carton of caster sugar
1 carton of sunflower oil
3 cartons of plain white flour
4 organic eggs
1 t baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence.

Whizz together and pour into a well buttered and lined tin. (I just buttered the cupcake tin and it was fine.)

Bake at 180 for about 45 mins until a skewer comes out clean.
For the cupcake mould I had to double the ingredients, but I had a little over so I made 6 buns out of the remainder.

 Robyn actually made this cake almost exclusively by herself. I was only performing a dogsbody type function, you know cleaning up!

It turned out well and it kept great. It was still moist three and four days later. I'd say it'd be gorgeous as a sandwich cake filled with whipped cream and strawberries.

Some other recent creations are :

The lettering on these last two were all glittery but it didn't come out very well in the photos.

Talk to you all soon x