I’m a bit of a food festival junkie. There is something wonderful about discovering new tastes and foods with the enthusiastic people who produce them there to guide you and other food lovers around you to share the excitement. I’ve never been to one without coming away with something new to try and a mad desire to get into the kitchen and cook.

I’m heading off the Waterford today to catch the “Slice of Waterford” event at Terre Madre, the Slow Food conference and festival that has been on there all week. It’a pity though that the Farmer’s Market, which with practically every small food producer in Ireland in town for the week should be a particularly good one,  is scheduled for Sunday - when most of Waterford will either be in Dublin or stuck to the TV watching their team lose to play Kilkenny at Croke Park.

I missed the Festival of World Cultures in Dun Laoghaire this year, to my great regret, because last year it was a  terrific day out, easily one of the most enjoyable festivals I’ve ever attended. The food market was wonderful, colourful, lively and with such a perfusion of smells hanging in the air that it would have almost been possible to come away without eating and still feel well fed.

The big new taste for me there was Muhammara, a Syrian dish made with red pepper and walnuts, which is a bit like a sweet and spicy hummus. This sauce is a slight variation on that, mainly leaving out breadcrumbs and adding in some onion but also changing the proportions of things a bit. It takes no time to make and is a really good partner for pork.

The pork I used is cured pork loin, which is reduced in Lidl at the moment to €4.59 for about a pound weight.

I’d looked at this several times before I first bought it, not really sure what to do with it. The first time I followed the package instructions and roast it, but it was a bit dry and uninteresting.

Since then I’ve taken to slicing it while raw and grilling the slices in a George Foreman grill and it comes out very nicely.

I get about 9 fairly thin slices from the cut, which is enough for generous portions for three people.

The sauce is made using Lidl’s jars of roast red peppers, which come in a sweet and sour vinegar. These are really good and cost 1.79 for a large jar.

Red Pepper & Walnut Sauce

• 2 peppers from the jar (they are quite large)
• 1 tablespoon of the liquid from the pepper jar
• 1 small onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• I red chili
• 60-70g Walnuts (about 1/3 bag of Lidl Walnuts)
• Juice of quarter a lemon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• Olive Oil

Heat some olive oil in a pan. Add the roughly chopped onion and fry on a high heat until they are browned and soft - I like to get them a little charred. Reduce the heat and add the chopped garlic and chili, seeds included. Continue to fry for about 2-3 mins, making sure not to burn the garlic.

Remove the onion mix from the pan, turn the heat up again and add the walnuts to the pan, without any extra oil. Toss them in the pan until they are beginning to brown.

Put everything into a blender and whizz until well mixed. It’s a fairly thick sauce and you don’t need it to be perfectly smooth. Put in a saucepan and heat, or in a bowl to heat in the microwave.

Serve hot with the grilled pork, garnished with a few slices of pepper.

That amount of ingredients will give you more sauce than you need, which is a very good thing.

Put the left overs into a container with a good tight lid and it will keep in the fridge for several days, getting more delicious by the day and tasting just as good cold as it does hot. It makes a very tasty dip, a lovely addition to a salad and is yummy simply spread on bread.

It is also a great dressing for cold meat - chicken, pork or even beef. A good portion of that would be perfect for a hearty ‘picnic’ in the car on the way to a big match.

Tags: Pepper, Pork, Recipes, Walnuts
Posted in Low carb, Recipes | 4 Comments »

About 20 minutes before RTE arrived yesterday, they called me up and said “We think it might be good to film you cooking.” YIKES!

I had easily the least well stocked fridge I’ve had in months, no time to shop or defrost anything and no idea what I could possibly cook.  When I calmed down I realised all I could do was work backwards - look at what was there and then figure out what to make with that.

I had chocolate, cream, walnuts and mascarpone. Ok then, I’d make a chocolaty, walnutty…something.

I don’t know how the TV chefs do it, because I can tell you I didn’t find it one bit easy to cook with a great big camera in the kitchen. I was just thankful that, in the absence of taste-a-vision, it didn’t really matter how it turned out.

In the end they turned out fine, were eaten and enjoyed and will henceforth be known as RTE Cakes.

It’s a type of dessert I make fairly often, because it’s quick, can be made in advance and if you take some time to dress it up nicely can look quite impressive.

50g Walnuts
4 squares JD Gross Ecuador chocolate
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 oz butter
125g (half a tub) Lidl Mascarpone
50 mls cream
2 dessert spoons of castor sugar (or equivalent Splenda)
Raspberries

1. Make the nut base

Spread the walnuts on a baking tray with about a third of the butter and put into a medium oven for 5-10 mins, or until the nuts are getting slightly brown. Stir them well to coat with the butter about half way through.

Put the toasted nuts with one dessert spoon of sugar in a bowl and crush very finely. You can use a pestle and morter to do this, I use a stick blender, but you’ll need a high sided bowl or the nuts go everywhere.

2. Make the chocolate topping

Put the chocolate, cream and the rest of the butter in a microwaveable dish and microwave for about 30 seconds, until the chocolate has just melted. Mix until it is completely smooth.

Beat together the mascarpone, vanilla and the remainder of the sugar. Add the chocolate to this and beat together.

3. Assemble

To assemble the cups, divide the crushed walnuts between 4 cake cases* and press down firmly. Top with the chocolate mascarpone mixture. Then put into the fridge for at least 3-4 hours - overnight is also fine.

4. Serve

To serve, peel off the cake cases, surround with raspberries (or make a coulis if you are feeling more creative), top with cream and grate over a little chocolate.

* You can use paper cake cases, but I use silicon ones that are available in Dunnes at €4 for 12.

This isn’t the cheapest dessert you’ll ever have, but it tastes like it costs multiples of what it actual does. Here’s what it cost me.

Cost: Walnuts 50c; Chocolate 60c; Mascaprone 75c; Raspberries €1.00; sundry cupboard items 20c.
Total: €3.05 or just over 75c per portion.

The walnuts, chocolate and mascarpone are all from Lidl, but the raspberries were bought from a local grower and are a truly superior raspberry and exceptional value at €2.50 for a big punnet. If you live near Kilkenny, or are visting for the Art’s Festival, take yourself out to Purcell’s in Dunmore, on the road to Castlecomer, and get yourself some of these beauties.

Tags: Chocolate, Recipes, RTE, Walnuts
Posted in Chocolate, Recipes | 5 Comments »