“You aren’t man enough to cook a crab soufflé.”

Idly flicking through the Lidl ‘Luxury for All” brochure, I noticed that they were selling their excellent West Cork crab meat as part of their all-encompassing benevolence. I read this out to the assemblage and eldest daughter asked what I would cook with it. “Crab cakes with chili sauce would be nice.” came my reply.

Goading daughter: “Pahhh, what a cop-out. Do something adventurous. Do a crab soufflé. That is…, if you are able to.” 

Manly father: “I’ve never cooked a soufflé before. I understand they can be tricky.”

Goading daughter: “You aren’t man enough to cook a crab soufflé.”

That was it, of course. Like a crab to a barnacle on a piece of string, I rose to the bait. I undertook to cook West Cork Crab Soufflé with Toast and Mixed Leaf Salad. How do I let myself be backed into these things?

Getting cold feet? Time for Venison and Winter Vegetable Stew

What do you do? The Wicklow Hunter’s youngest brother calls to the office and leaves a sack. He tells me that it’s a gift from the brother. “All legal ‘an all” he assures me. I thank him profusely and check the contents. YES! It’s another venison leg, from a pretty young deer by the looks of it. This gets me thinking. 

Cottage pie controversy – Call in the engineers!

My recent fish pie with waves post has inadvertently reignited an old controversy. Not the lamb v beef cottage / shepherds pie polemic but something I had not foreseen. It started pretty innocuously. At work, Matt started out being quite complementary about my wavy topped fish pie. This led to a discussion about the right toppings for different pies. The conversation moved around the office but agreement was not reached. I now need to make a stand and draw up the definitive set of rules. 

A sense of plaice.

“God, Conor you’re very funny. I was reading that post you did about, what was it? last night. How do you come up with your ideas for the blog. It’s about food isn’t it? That one last week, what was it? God, it was so funny. How do you think of the things you say, like, eh, eh, eh. What was it about again? You know the one you did. It was so funny… God, yeah, etc. etc. etc ad nauseam.”

Your New Year diet – Over half a ton of muesli.

The Wife has her uses. Some time ago, our friends Dave and Maria gave us a recipe for muesli that they, in turn, had got from some health nut down in Australia. At first, it seemed a lot of trouble to make and I would not have fitted the category of health nut. However, it was pretty tasty and the Wife decided to make it again. And again. And again. And again. You get the picture. In fact, over the nineteen years since we first made it, we have enjoyed this for our breakfast most days. That got me thinking…