Grated Carrot Salad

My sister is visiting us from Kansas so I've been too busy to cook. But I always have time to make grated carrot salad. It is the perfect salad for crazy days. I've been making it for years.
Grated Carrot Salad
per person
1 carrot
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp olive oil
salt and pepper

Peal and grate the carrots. Dry roast the mustards seeds in a hot pan until the seeds start to pop. Pour the hot seeds on top of the carrots. Add the vinegar, oil salt and pepper. Mix and eat right away.

I like to make this salad with mustard seeds, but sometimes I make a peanut or Asian version.
For peanut salad replace the mustard seeds with warm peanuts (and olive oil with peanut oil). For Asian salad replace the mustard seeds with toasted sesame seeds, olive oil with sesame oil and salt for soy sauce. Anyway you make it grated carrots can be made into a very tasty salad.

Wild Garlic Pesto, Mackerel and Prawns

I've been cooking with wild garlic all week using it like garlic or green onions. The wild garlic has a lighter and less sharp taste which I found really easy to cook with. So I have three recipes to share.
Wild Garlic Pesto
Makes about 1 cup
5 or 6 whole wild garlic (bulb and leaves) or 1 clove garlic and 6 green onions
1 cup of basil (leaves and stems)
1/4 cup of roasted sunflower seeds
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
2-3 Tbs olive oil
salt, pepper, hot pepper to taste

Blend everything slowing adding the olive oil until 95% smooth.

Enjoy raw on fresh bread, on pizza, in tomato soup or mixed with pasta. We did.

Wild Garlic BBQ Mackerel
for 4 small fish 2 med 1 large
4 fresh Mackerel
20 fresh wild garlic leaves
1/2 lemon cut into slices
salt

Wash the mackerel and stuff each one with whole garlic leaves, lemon and salt. Wrap the extra garlic leaves around outside of the fish. BBQ for 10 min turning once or until the meat is white and flaky.
Shawn's Garlic Prawns
4 as a starter 2 as a main
1 pound of prawns (cleaned)
3 cloves of wild garlic or 1 normal
1 Tbs olive oil
salt and pepper

Mash the garlic into the oil. Add salt and pepper to taste (hot pepper anyone??). Fry or BBQ until pink.

Shawn really knows his prawns. These are so buttery (but with no butter).

Gathering Wild Irish Garlic

Our talented ecologist friend (Shawn) very kindly took us to into the woods to look for wild Irish garlic. The woods were full and we gathered a whole bag.
We found two different kinds of garlic on our hunt. The one on the left (it looks like a white bluebell) is called Three Cornered Garlic or Allium triquetrum. It is not native to Ireland, it has a nice round bulb and thin long leaves. On the right(and top photo) is Ramson's or Allium ursinum. This is a native Irish garlic. It's bulb is longer and thinner than the Three Cornered Garlic and its leaves are wider.

The top garlic is Ramson's and the round bottom ones are Three Cornered Garlic. The bulbs are a bit small (they will be bigger in a few weeks, but the whole plant can be eaten. My next post with have a recipe for both.

Chocolate Coconut Pie

When I was a child if my mother did not know what to make for dinner, there was one cookbook which always had the answer. More-with-Less complied by Doris Janzen Longacre is a master price of thoughtful Mennonite cooking. The recipes come from Mennonites all over the world but my heart alway jumps when I read towns like Newton, Hesston and Hillsboro Kansas. I only wish the cook at my college opened her copy more offten!

Last year my mother and I had more fram fresh milk and eggs than we knew what to do with so we started to make a Coconut-Custard Pie from More-with-less. We changed the recipe a bit using butter not maragirne and adding chocolate. It has become a new family fav.
Chocolate Coconut Pie
makes one pie
4 eggs
6 Tbs butter(unsalted)
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup coco powder
2 cups milk
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup coconut

Pop everthing but the cocnut into a blender and blend. Then add the coconut and blend a few seconds. Pour everything into a pie pan. It may still look like a mess but pie will settle in the oven and make its own crust.

Bake for 50-60 min at 350f or 175c. The pie will still have some wiggle. Cool and chil in the frig for a few hours. ( You can eat it right away, but I think its better cold.)

Creamy custered with a rich chocolate crust and crispy coconut top. Yummy!

Rhubarb Stew or Khoresht Reevaas

It is spring here and Irish rhubarb has hit the shops. All winter I have been waiting to make Khoresht Reevaas or Rhubarb Stew. In April I posted a recipe for Khoresh Baddemjaan (Eggplant Stew). This stew is almost the same, just make with rhubarb not eggplant.
Rhubarb Stew or Khoresht Reevaas
severs 4
1 chopped onion
1 tsp oil
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 cup of stewing meat (lamb or beef)
1/4 cup yellow split lentils
1 tsp tomato paste
1 dried lime
salt, pepper, hot pepper
1 tsp mint
1 tsp parlsey
3 stalks rhubarb

In a pot over med heat brown the onion in the oil and turmeric. Add the stewing meat and seal. Add the yellow lentils. Cover with water and bring to the boil. Stir in the tomato paste, drop in the dried lime*, salt, pepper, herbs and hot pepper if you like. Its a good idea to cut the lime in half. Put on the lowest heat and let stew 2 to 8 hours. Just make sure it doesn't dry out.
*Note if you do not have dried lime and or you don't like sour then you can leave out the dried lime as the rhubarb is sour.

Cut the rhubarb in 1 1/2 inch sticks. Drop into the stew for the last 5 min, so they soften but don't turn into a string mess.
I've made this stew 2 times this month, 1 beef and 1 lamb. It has a light fresh taste which is perfect for spring. We had our with rice.

French Breakfast Radish

Look what I pulled up! It was a French breakfast radish and very sweet and crisp.
I have to wait a few days until more are ready to harvest. Then I will have a recipe to share.

Homemade Bagels

I only make bagels about once a year and I'm not really sure why I don't make them more often. I guess it could be the added step of boiling. It is a shame because making your own bagels is fun and when using my stand-by 'Shawn Dough' recipe easy too.

Homemade Bagels
make 4 large or 6 med sized bagels
3 cups of flour (1 cup can be whole wheat)
1 beaten egg + water to make a cup
1 tsp yeast
1/8 tsp salt

Into to bread machine on the dough setting. When using whole wheat sometime you will need to add a bit more water (1 tsp- 1 Tbs) just take look and add more if its dry.
Or
Make the dough by hand, mix, kneed and rise.
(If you don't know how to than maybe start off with my Step-by-Step Pizza Dough)

4 Steps to Shaping the Bagels
After the dough has doubled in size it is time to shape.
1. Roll the dough into 4 or 6 equal balls. Let rest for 10 min.
2. Using the back of a wooden spoon or your thumb made a whole in the center of each ball.
3. Spin the balls around your fingers to make the whole bigger.
4. Flatten the balls with the back of your hand, so they look like bagels.
*Note you may need to repeat step 3 and 4 a few times to get the right size.

Give the bagels a bath in boiling salted water. I do 1 min on each side.
Some people add baking soda or other crazy things to the water to get "New York Bagels".

Drain the bagels on a cookie sheet and top while still wet.
I made onion, poppyseed and sunflower wasabi.

Once the bagels are dry, bake in a preheated oven (400f) on a cookie sheet for 30 min or until the bagels are brown.

Homegrown Mushrooms

Last month we got a mushroom growing kit. It is just a small bag of veg compost and mushrooms spores but after some time spent under our sofa we have picked 5 mushrooms and there are more on the way. We paid 8e for the kit so it is not cheaper to grown your own, but it is way more fun and loads taster.

Left mushrooms from the store. Right homegrown mushrooms.

The homegrown mushrooms are whiter and harder.

I fried a mix of the two kinds of mushrooms in salty Irish butter and fresh thyme.

Saffron Chicken or Joojeh Kabab

I guess you can't really call a whole oven roasted chicken a kabab? But this saffron marinade tastes great whether it is on a chicken kabab in Iran or a whole bird (or fish) in my Irish kitchen.
Saffron Chicken or Joojeh Kabab
Marinade for 2 small chickens, 8 kababs or a whole salmon
3 med onions
1 juice of a lemon
1 pinch of saffron
1 Tbs olive oil
1 Tbs salt
1 tsp pepper
My mother-in-law would powder the saffron with sugar, but I'm lazy and have a food processor.
Peal and quarter the onions. Pop into a blender or food processor with the saffron and salt. Blend, stopping to push the onions down from time to time. Add the lemon juice, oil and pepper and blend some more. Marinade the chicken in the fridge for a few hours. *Note if you are using a whole chicken or fish make sure you spread some inside too.
If you made kababs then pop them on the grill and enjoy in no time (or more like 10-12 min). My small Irish chickens cooked covered for 2 1/2 hours at gas mark 9 (500f), but thats because my new oven doesn't get hot. 375f-400f should be fine if your oven is working, but if your chickens are larger then give them more time. The best part about roasting your chicken is that you get eat all the lovely golden juices. We had ours with rice.