I love Japanese food. In fact, if I had to choose just one nation's cuisine to eat for the rest of my life, I might choose to eat the food of Japan.
Sadly for me, Ireland isn't home to very many Japanese people and as a result, we don't have a huge amount of Japanese restaurants. This means that whenever I happen upon one, I simply have to sample the food.
I'd heard good reports about Kappa-ya in Galway and when I spotted it as I was wandering the streets of the city on Monday, the decision as to where I would eat my lunch was immediately made.
The restaurant looks unassuming from the outside, its only decoration being the Japanese signs hanging in the doorway.
Inside, it's a higgledy-piggledy place crammed with tables, chairs, diners and all sorts of Japanese trinkets. Luckily, I quite like higgledy-piggledy places so this didn't put me off at all.
Several of Galway's resident Japanese were also eating at the restaurant - something I took to be a very good sign.
I decided to have the fish and vegetable tempura served with a side salad. It's quite a basic Japanese dish but done well, it can be extremely satisfying.
So, what was it like? The tempura - a mix of prawns, a white fish that I think was haddock, green beans, red pepper and some sort of squash (butternut was my guess) - was great. The batter was light and melted in the mouth. The fish was perfectly cooked. The prawns were sweet. The vegetables retained a crunch, apart from the squash whose soft texture contrasted nicely with the crisp batter.
All of this sat on top of a bowl of rice and was sprinkled with dashi - a seaweed broth or stock that is fundamental to Japanese cooking.
The salad was a mix of salad leaves and tomatoes with a fresh and spicy dressing.
Overall, the entire meal was simple but a simple success. I'll definitely have to come again.
Especially as I've heard that the chef here creates fabulous feasts on Saturday nights, feasts which include such tempting dishes as tempura of banana with black sesame ice-cream. I really have to try that...
If you've been to Kappa-ya, I'd love to hear your thoughts about it and your suggestions as to what I should eat there next time. Also, if you've been to any Japanese restaurants in Ireland or even further afield that you think I should visit, do let me know about them.
Kappa-ya
4 Middle Street
Galway City
Ireland
I work from home a lot. This means that I don't often have the luxury of going out for lunch. I have to make my own instead.
If I'm lucky (and organised), I'll have leftovers from the previous night's dinner. In which case, all I'll have to do is heat them up, plonk myself on the sofa, choose some trashy afternoon TV show to watch and tuck in.
But, more often than not, we'll have scoffed all of the previous night's dinner and I'll have no option but to create something from the contents of my fridge. Something quick and tasty that will power me through the rest of the afternoon. Something exactly like this:
This quinoa salad with roasted butternut squash, green beans, red onion, chilli, coriander and rocket has a great mix of flavours and textures. There's a bite to the grains and a crunch to the green beans. The chilli lends heat while the rocket and coriander add freshness. Combine this with the soft sweetness of the squash and you couldn't ask for a better lunch
Here's how you make it for two people:
Ingredients:
150g quinoa*
Half of a medium-sized squash, cut into 1cm cubes
Half of a red onion
Half of a red chilli (or more if you like your food hot)
120g green beans, trimmed and cut in half
A handful of fresh rocket
3tbsp of chopped coriander
* This works just as well with other grains such as bulgur wheat, couscous or even rice.
Put the cubes of squash in a roasting tin. Season them with salt and pepper and drizzle with a tablespoon or so of olive oil. Place in an oven at 200 degrees Celsius/390F and cook for approximately 20 minutes or until soft.
Cook the quinoa as you would rice. Place in a saucepan with double the amount of boiling water. Cover the pan and cook for 10 to 15 minutes.
Prepare the rest of the ingredients while the squash and quinoa are cooking.
Soften the onion and the chilli in half a teaspoon of olive oil.
Boil the green beans in salted boiling water for up to four minutes, until they are tender but still retain a bit of crunch.
Mix the onion, chilli and green beans with the cooked quinoa. Add the roasted squash and finally the rocket and coriander.
Find the TV remote control. Choose your favourite programme. Sit back on the sofa and tuck in!
People can be so inspiring, can't they?
This is what I found myself thinking when I spoke to Prannie Rhatigan (great name, right?) a short time ago.
Prannie lives in Sligo and is the author of a wonderful book called 'The Irish Seaweed Kitchen'. With this book, she is hoping to revive the age-old Irish tradition of seaweed harvesting. You may have thought the Japanese were the world's most passionate fans of seaweed but for generations, Irish people used to comb our shorelines for edible seaweeds such as carrageen, sea spaghetti and duileasc.
It was Prannie's father who taught her all she knows about seaweed. He would bring her to the beach to collect seaweed; starting with sleabhac (the traditional Irish name for nori, also known as sloke and laver) after the first frosts of Christmas and continuing throughout the year with alaria, kelp and many other types of seaweed.
She has fond memories of this time. "It was always great fun," she remembers. "Even as kids, there was a tremendous satisfation in careful harvesting, watching the purple-black glistening prize slowly fill the basins. Before the winter evening closed in, we piled back into the car, chugged and bumped up the track to the main road and into the village, where we drew to a halt outside the door of my father's favourite public house; bearers of great treasure. In we trooped and very soon, my father was benignly dispensing little portions in bags to old men in big overcoats who normally huddled over a pint but now became animated at the thought of fresh sleabhac."
However, even when Prannie was a child, the practice of harvesting seaweed was dying away. "By the 1970s, we were among the very few families who harvested from the shore," she says. "I think folk memory still associated it with extreme poverty and the famine."
Her passion for seaweed never abated and she has since become something of an expert in sourcing, identifying, preparing and cooking it. So much of an expert that her family and friends urged her to write this book.
They love my seaweed recipes and kept telling me I should write them down before the knowledge was lost," says Prannie. "So, I finally did."
The result is a book that features 150 recipes covering everything from soup to sushi by way of beetroot and sea lettuce salad and even chocolate and seaweed cake. Most of the recipes are Prannie's own. Others come from her family and friends. And still more come from well-known chefs and cooks such as Darina and Myrtle Allen, Richard Corrigan, Rick Stein and Alice Waters.
But this book is much more than simply a collection of recipes. In it, Prannie captures many of the traditions and folklore associated with seaweed. She tells her readers how the Brehon Laws of the 5th century mention duileasc as a condiment to be served with bread, whey milk and butter (I, for one, would love to try this!). She talks about a survey carried out in Connemara in 1938 which found that the local people ate 32 different types of seaweed.
Prannie also informs her readers about how to source, identify, prepare and store seaweed. She does this because she really wants them to go down to the shoreline and pick some for themselves. "Seaweeds are tasty, healthy and nutritious," she says. "I've always known this but now I really want to pass it on to others. I want everyone to realise just what a living treasure we have on our shores."
She has me convinced. I'm planning to harvest some seaweed the next time we have a new or full moon (the best times to do so, apparently).
Even more excitingly, I'm planning to cook with it. Depending on what type of seaweed I find, I might try seaweed crepes with prawns, laver bread cakes with duileasc or Rick Stein's recipe for black bream steamed over seaweed with a fennel butter sauce.
Yum.
Seriously yum.
If any of you have cooked with seaweed and have any recipes or advice to share, I'd love to hear all about it.
Life has been difficult lately. Like many others here in Ireland, my boyfriend and I have started to worry about money. Our incomes have fallen as prices have risen and we can't help but feel anxious about paying our ever escalating bills.
It's hard to stay positive when faced with money worries. It's hard to stay open to the many possibilities of life when you're focussing on how you're going to pay the mortgage...
There's one thing that always helps me when I find myself overwhelmed by worry, one thing that can always be relied upon to banish all anxious thoughts and instantly make me feel better.
Can you guess that that one thing is? If you know me at all, you are sure to guess correctly. It simply has to be cake.
I found the recipe for these 'Summer Bakewells' in this week's Sunday Times Style section. Created by London's wonderfully-named Lily Vanilli, their sweet citrus-infused pastry, melt-in-the-mouth frangipane and smoooth vanilla buttercream instantly banished all thoughts of woe.
Here are the ingredients and instructions for making 12 of these lovelies. (Don't be put off by how long the list looks: these are actually easy to make.)
For the pastry:
250g flour, plus extra for dusting
50g icing sugar
125g cold butter, cut into cubes
1 large egg, beaten
Zest of 1 orange
A splash of milk
For the coulis:
200g frozen mixed berries
50g caster sugar
50ml water
For the frangipane:
85g unsalted butter at room temperature
85g golden caster sugar
85g ground almonds
Zest of 1 oraange
1 egg
For the vanilla buttercream:
55g unsalted butter at room temperature
250 icing sugar
4 tbsp ground almonds
125ml double cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Toasted flaked almonds and berries to decorate
Make the pastry. I made mine in a food processor, combining the sugar and the flour, whizzing in the butter, adding the egg and the zest and then the milk until I had a dough. If you don't have a food processor, all you have to do is sieve the flour and sugar into a bowl and rub in the butter until you get a fine, crumb-like mixture. Add the egg, zest and milk and work it into a ball.
Flour the ball lightly. Wrap it in clingfilm and refridgerate for 30 mins.
Make the coulis by placing the fruit, sugar and water in a heavy-bottomed pan. Bring it to the boil, stirring continously. Reduce the heat and simmer until it has thickened. Leave to cool.
Make the frangipane by beating all of the ingredients together until they are smooth. Spoon into a piping bag. (Don't worry if you don't have one. You can also use a spoon.)
Make the buttercream by beating the butter for 5 mins. Add the sugar, ground almonds and half the cream and beat slowly until incorporated. Add the rest of the cream graduallly and finally add the vanilla extract to taste. Beat well for 3 mins or so or until smooth and light.
Heat the oven to 190C/Gas Mark 5/370F.
Roll out the pastry and cut into rounds to fit a cupcake pan. Press into place. (As you can see, my attempt was a bit of a patchwork affair.)
Spoon in some coulis.
Pipe in the frangipane (spoon it in if you don't have a piping bag).
Top with flaked almonds and bake for 25 to 30 mins.
Allow to cool then pipe with the buttercream and top with the berry of your choice.
Regulars at Dingle Farmers' Market: I'll be tweaking this recipe a little and these cakes will be making an appearance on my stall. This means that you too will be able to banish your woes while indulging in decadent cakes!
Ugh.
Isn't there anything else to eat?
I've lost count of the times I've heard this reaction when I've told people we're having aubergines for dinner (if you're scrunching up your nose and wondering what aubergines are, you probably call them eggplant). It seems as though this plant - often served up brown and mushy - isn't the most loved in the veggie patch.
I'm on a mission to change this. I've got several aubergine recipes which have become hugely popular in my house and if you try them, I'm sure they will restore this vegetable to its rightful place up near the top of your list of favourite foods.
I'm sharing the first of those with you today. It's adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi's fantastic cookbook of Middle Eastern inspired recipes 'Plenty'.
Serves 4
Ingredients:
2 large and long aubergines
80ml olive oil
1 and a half tsp lemon thyme leaves, plus a few whole sprigs to garnish (I often substitute ordinary thyme here)
Dried pomegranate seeds (the original recipe asks for 1 whole pomegranate but when I couldn't find any in the shops, these were just as good. Crunchy too.)
Salt and black pepper
1 small bunch of coriander (about 10 sprigs)
1 small bunch of basil (about 10 sprigs)
Half of a red chilli
2 tbsp olive oil
140ml buttermilk
100g Greek yoghurt
1 and a half tbsp olive oil
1 small garlic clove, crushed
Pinch of salt
Preheat the oven to 200 C/Gas Mark 6/400 F.
Cut the aubergines in half lengthways.
Use a small, sharp knife to make three or four parallel incisions in the cut side of each aubergine half, without cutting through to the skin. Repeat at a 45-degree angle to get a diamond shape pattern.
Place the aubergine halves, cut side up, on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Brush them with olive oil. Keep on brushing until all of the oil has been absorbed.
Sprinkle with the thyme leaves and some salt and pepper.
Roast for 35-40 minutes, by which point the flesh should be soft and nicely browned.
While the aubergines are in the oven, pluck the leaves from the coriander and basil, chop the chilli roughly and place in a food processor. Slowly add the olive oil until you've got what resembles a spicy pesto. (If you don't have a food processor, you could chop the chilli into smaller dice and crush the pesto in a pestle and mortar.)
Next, you need to make the sauce. Whisk the buttermilk, yoghurt, crushed garlic, olive oil and salt together. Taste for seasoning.
Now, it's just a question of assembly. Spoon plenty of the buttermilk mixture over the aubergine halves. Sprinkle the pesto and pomegranate seeds over the top.
Serve this with crusty white bread, pitta or rice.
Taste this once and you'll never say 'ugh' to aubergines again. That's a promise.
