Cranberry and Orange Stuffing mmm!

By request, used this recipe at hotel this year with the turkey and ham, it has been popular so i'm sharing it. This stuffing will suit pork, goose, duck and lamb.
Use stale bread 'batch' loaf is best, thankfully food processors crumb it up in seconds.

Recipe
Ingredients.
300gms bread crumbs
75gms diced onion
100gms butter
1 orange Zest and juice
50gms dried cranberries
Handful of chopped fresh sage
Handful of chopped parsley
Salt and pepper

Method
Melt the butter in a medium sized pot, add the onion cook until softened, add the herbs followed by the,cranberries, orange zest and juice, boil for a 2mins to infuse the flavours remove from the heat and stir in the breadcrumbs.taste and season with salt and pepper.

Use this to stuff your bird or wrap in foil and bake seperately.

Irish Soda Farls and versitility

Where food comes from?
Touch.
A good skin on a soda farl is important, my uncle John declared in admiration of  my aunt Grettas baking skill on one of our many mid-day lunch breaks when I was a teenager helping on his farm up on the Largy Rd . The texture and taste of a well made soda is hard to beat, much on a par with the quest for a perfect pizza base. My father would make us an evening snack of  toasted soda well buttered with with  local 'Ailsa Craig' tomatoes and  thinly cut slices Coleraine cheddar on top, the warmth of an summers evening and the juices of the tomato soaked up in well toasted soda rival that Spanish classic 'pan con tomate' with the right melt on the cheese who needed olive oil then with a taste of Ulster on your plate. I was lucky getting to help out on a good few relatives and neighbours farms getting fed at the table or in the field where food takes on another taste altogether.
soda bread needs a lightness of touch and the liquid cut into the flour with a broad bladed knife, soda bread mixes don't need the heavy kneading that yeast breads require and no proving time either,within 20 mins you can have a soda farl  made cooked and ready to eat.
 The Basic Recipe
450gms Self-raising flour
1/2tsp salt
approx 200ml butter milk or (soured milk -a tablespoon of natural yoghurt added to fresh milk)
griddle-pan, heavy bottomed pan/skillet
extra flour for dusting
Method.
put your griddle pan on to heat once hot dust with a pinch of flour this should just brown if it burns reduce the heat a medium or 'fairly hot' heat works best.
Sift the flour into a bowl make a well in the centre add the buttermilk and salt and cut in the flour gradually-using broad strokes until all is combined to a soft dough, a good soda mix will always feel light and alive practise the art and you will develop the sensitivity or 'good hands for baking', job done 2mins tops. Dust your table with a little flour turn your soda bread out on to this and shape into a soda farl, round 2 1/2cm deep. place onto the griddle pan and cook approx 5mins each side, the soda will feel light  in the centre when cooked and have an even sound when tapped.
Leave to cool on a wire rack before cutting,eat fresh with savoury or sweet toppings, older sodas are better fried or toasted.

R.I.P Respects to my Father and Aunt Gretta, uncle John's 97 and still Rocking up the Largy Rd
  

Braised Beef Cheeks, 'Bellingham' blue cheese Mash

You

Recipes come from?
Fireside stories.

The flavours in this beef dish are inspired by one of my uncles who told of his cattle's strange behaviour one autumn many moon's ago.
Whilst bringing in the cows for milking  they had a stagger about them and their reactions were dopey things didn't  look right at all, in all his years he hadn't seen the like of it.Without any further ado the vet was called. The symptoms relayed, he too was puzzled, there was no obvious answer to his knowledge either.The vet arrived straight away and they walked the field where they duly deduced the cattle had been eating the windfalls from some hedgerow apple and plum trees.The case of strange behaviour was closed, the ripe and fermenting fruit + a ruminants four part stomach = a microbrewery on legs, simple enough the cattle got a little tipsey.
thanks uncle Bernie

This dish is for slow cooking, takes about 4hrs in total but is worth the wait, you can do it in the morning or day before as it reheats well.
Ingredients.
4 Pieces of beef shin or 2 Beef cheeks trimmed and cut in half..
1/2 Btl of Dry red wine
1/2 ltr of  fresh pressed Apple juice
 6 Plums
2 Apples cut in quarters
 2 sticks Celery chopped rough
 2 large Carrots.peeled and cut into quarters
 1 medium Onion chopped skin on
Garlic 5 cloves
1/2 red chilli
1Bay leaf
 2 sprigs of Thyme
12 Black peppercorns
50ml Rapeseed Oil for frying
2 tbspns cornflour.
 Pinch of Salt.
1kg potatoes for mashing(roosters)
150gms Bellingham blue cheese or your local blue.
salt&pepper
grated nutmeg
50gms butter
100 ml milk

Method for braising the beef.
Seal the your chosen beef in a hot pan browning well, place the beef in a casserole dish or deep sided oven pan.
Fry the veg in the pan you used for the beef on a medium heat you want to brown them as this will add to the colour of your sauce, then place in the casserole with the beef.
Boil the wine in the pan to cook off the alcohol, add to the beef.
add the apple juice and the rest of the ingredients.
put the lid on  or cover tightly with tinfoil and cook in an oven for approx 2 1/2 hrs until the meat is tender.
to finish.
Remove the beef and carrots, strain the liquid stock into a suitable pot,discard the rest of the vegetables. Skim of any fat from the stock bring to the boil reduce the heat to simmer skimming as necessary. You want to reduce the stock to concentrate the flavours and itensify the colour- creating your sauce, taste as you go, it should be slighty sweet with acidity from the wine. use a little cornflour diluted in water to thicken your sauce.Place the beef and carrots back into the sauce to reheat.

 'Bellingham' blue cheese Mash
Make a  potato mash as you normally would (potatoes peeled &quartered, boiled 20-25 mins drained and mashed seasoned with salt&pepper, a pinch of nutmeg, a good nob of butter and a dribble of milk).
 break  the cheese into small chunks and stir lightly into the mash keeping the pieces intact just before serving. When eating you'll get a rich hit of salty farmyard tang every now and then that contrast with sweetness and heat of the beef and sauce..

I like to eat this with some chilli slices that have been cooked in sugar syrup for that little extra bit of heat.



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