Recipe Inspiration – Walnut Risotto with Sous Vide Pigeon Breast

This happens to me most weeks. I wonder what I’m going to cook for the Wife and myself on the weekend. I usually get my ideas by perving the windows of butcher shops and fishmongers.  I’ve even been asked to leave one butcher’s shop when I explained, in response to his “What can I get you?” that I was “just looking”. This approach works most of the time but, like any creative process one can’t time the arrival of ideas to coincide with the warming of the saucepans. A couple of weeks back, I had done my window gazing, I had thumbed the couple of yards of cookery books that live in my ‘blog room’ and even spent some time Googling everything from cheese sandwiches to filet mignon. Then I had a look through the Irish Food Bloggers page on Facebook. 

The Truth about Fillet Steak with Porcini and Pepper Sauce

“Oh what a tangled web we weave. When first we practice to deceive.
– Sir Walter Scott”

 

You are a liar, Sir! You know who you are and I’m calling you out on it. I hope your ears are reddened by being caught out in such a pathetic attempt at misdirection. I didn’t buy it at the time and I’m not buying it now. 

Butterflied Leg of Lamb. The DIY Walkthrough.

DIY. Now there’s a subject that we men like to treat as our own. If there is a shelf to be put up or a picture to be hung, I’m your man. Your man, as long as you aren’t a perfectionist. So what if the shelf slopes slightly to the right and the picture hangs just a little down on the left? Perfection is boring. When I was a bit younger, I managed to saw through the corner of our kitchen table while preparing a plank for the garden shed. That self-build garden shed was another story altogether. To my credit, I have never driven a nail into a water pipe. Though to balance that I have managed to screw straight into a live wire while hanging a picture hook. In short, with most DIY, you should really do it yourself. Don’t let me near it.  But, when it comes to DIYing a Butterflied Leg of Lamb with Lemon, Thyme and Garlic, look no further – I really am your man.

Thai Thigh – Low Low Is The Way To Go.

When it comes to cooking chicken on the barbecue, low and slow is the way to go. Here in Ireland,  we tend to only have a decent spell of what any reasonable person might call summer every four years or so. When a period of sunshine arrives, we tend to go a bit crazy. Sallow fleshed white men don ‘summer’ shorts (and little else), repair to the garden and swill vast quantities of cheap lager. They then do the only bit of ‘cooking’ they are capable of handling – the botulism fest known as the ‘barbecue’. 

STOP THIEF! – There go my photos again, and again, and again…

A while back, I posted about my photos being stolen by some bad at heart stinkwads. I thought that the bit of naming and shaming might put an end to this degenerate practice. Boy, oh boy was I naive. The ones with the bad breath and no budget for photos or soap have been at it again. Wait ’til you see the list of vermin who have been stealing my photos. I will concentrate on just two of my images so you can get a feel for the extent of the duplicity and wrongdoing going on in the world.

LMAO at Falling Standards and 35 mm Fish Cakes

I look at lots of blogs where the photography is taken using either iPhone or Android. There is no difference, I hear, between a well, considered, correctly composed, nicely lit photo and something “…that the phone can do.” This depresses me. It depresses me on two fronts. Firstly, I have spent a few years now, working hard, in my spare time, to improve my photography skills. It would appear that I have been wasting my time. The phone can do it. Secondly, I have been using my blog as an outlet for my creative side. This is supposed to help keep me calm and to allow me be nice to everybody. I’m failing on that front too. While I’m at it, there is a third niggle and I must get it out there. 

Irish Bloggers Beware – Horseradish can make more than your eyes water.

Take pity on the poor Irish blogger. We are a simple lot. We are not used to being regulated. Many of us have been happy to purloin images from around the Internet for our own use, not knowing nor bothered that those images, and the revenue rights appended, are owned by others. The Irish Bloggers group on Facebook has been doing a deal to educate us of late. However, our situation has been made much worse with the news that The Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland has brought us within their compass. Now we have to be upfront when we post for profit. No more can we secretly trouser a few quid and say that we love those gravy granules. We have to say clearly and unequivocally that we are in receipt of funds for saying the glorious things about those hateful globs of granulated gunge. 

Sous Vide Beef Burger – I’ve Seen The Light

After a winter of being cooped up in the kitchen, I checked the weather forecast and saw that it would be dry and bright. Having spent the dark winter days trying to time my cooking to coincide with the available light, I decided that I would prepare the food and cook outdoors. My plan was to do some beef burgers. I wanted to take advantage of the warm afternoon. So, I donned a t-shirt and headed outdoors.

Praise the Lord – It’s Spiced Shoulder of Spring Lamb with Flatbreads.

Spring is a bit of a cures. It certainly is a bane if you happen to be a lamb. Easter, that very Christian celebration loomed very early this year and the vast bulk of the youthful sheep population trembled in fear. They were in fear because every God-fearing family in Christendom must have a leg of lamb on the table on Easter Sunday. The little darlings went to meet their maker leaving the butchers of Christendom scratching their heads, wondering how they were going to offload the rest of the beast. Easter is now a distant memory but the butchers of Ireland still have to do something with the spring lambs that have been arriving as nature intended, even if that’s too late for a very early Easter celebration. Their arrival made even later by a very late start to spring weather.

Beef Wellington – What Did The Brits Ever Do For Us Anyway?

When it comes to the United Kingdom, we Irish have “history”.  Many of us spend our time looking backwards into the mists of time to support our own inferiority complexes. Others of us have raw, recent pain with which to live. We have a long and complex relationship with our nearest neighbour (if you don’t count the Isle of Man) and one would expect many of us to be pretty happy about the prospect of Great Britain exiting the European Union. Or, in more tabloid terms “BREXIT”.