WE HAVE MOVED!!

Exciting things have been happening in Mammy’s Kitchen this week.

We have moved!

No not to a new house, but a new address.  So from now on Mammy’s Kitchen can be found at:

http://cookinginmammyskitchen.com

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Ken over at Any Given Food for all his help in setting up, it was very much appreciated 🙂 (if it was down to me the set up would never be done!)

Looking forward to seeing you all at the new place!!

‘Twas The Week After Christmas…

 

‘Twas the week after Christmas and all through the house,

Nothing would fit me not even a blouse.

The cookies I’d nibbled, the eggnog I’d taste,

All the holiday parties had gone to my waist.

When I got on the scales there arose such a number!

When I walked to the store (less a walk than a lumber!)

I’d remember the marvellous meals I’d prepared

The gravies and sauces and beef nicely rared.

The wine and the rum balls, the bread and the cheese

and the way I’d never said “No Thank You” but “Please”

As I dressed myself in my husband’s old shirt

And prepared once again to do battle with dirt

I said to myself as I only can

“You can’t spend a winter disguised as a man!”

So away with the last of the sour cream dip

Get rid of the fruit cake, every cracker and chip

Every last bit of food that I like, must be banished

Till all the additional ounces have vanished.

I won’t have a cookie – not even a lick

I’ll want only to chew on a long celery stick

I won’t have hot biscuits, or white bread, or pie,

I’ll munch on a carrot and quietly cry.

I’m hungry, I’m lonesome, and life is a bore –

But isn’t that what January is for?

Unable to giggle, no longer a riot.

Happy New Year to all and to all a good diet! 

 

My mum gave me this little poem a couple of years ago that she had cut from a newspaper.  Apparently a reader had sent it in but unfortunately it didn’t say who had written it.  Sums up the way a lot of people are feeling after Christmas I think!

Beef Stroganoff

 

I’ve made Beef Stroganoff before using those stir-in packets from the supermarket.  I had always thought it would be a complicated recipe to cook.  It’s not.  This is the first recipe that I tried, from a book called “How to feed your family a healthy, balanced diet with very little money…and hardly any time, even if you have a tiny kitchen, only three saucepans (one with an ill-fitting lid) and no fancy gadgets – unless you count the garlic crusher…” by Gill Holcombe. Yes that IS the title! I bought the book last year sometime when I was browsing in the book shop at The Outlet in Banbridge, Co. Down for just a couple of pounds and have cooked a few recipes from it but so far this one is our favourite.

The book suggests serving with plain boiled rice and salad, but I cooked a small bag of salad potatoes instead and it was delicious.

1kg steak

1 medium onion

250g mushrooms

1 tsp mustard

250ml cream

Butter

Oil

• Heat a little oil in a large pan.  Cut the steak into fine strips and fry for a minute or so to seal the meat on all sides.
• Turn the heat right down and let the steak simmer gently for about 30 minutes.
• Add a lump of butter to the pan and fry the finely chopped onions until soft and golden then add the mushrooms and cook for another 2-3 minutes.
• Sir in the mustard and cream.  Warm through very gently (to stop the cream curdling) for 5-10 minutes.
• Sprinkle with parsley and serve.

New Year baking anyone?

About a month ago, I decided I wasn’t going to buy a load of ready made biscuits and cakes for Christmas.  I was going to make everything myself.  I was going to bake rings around myself and made sure I had enough supplies in to bake for everyone I know. I even bought some lovely Christmas gift bags from Lakeland to present them in.  Friends were to get bags of cookies and my dad was to get a big batch of toffee to go along with his main present. Great idea? In theory, yes.

In reality though, the only baking I got to do was for child #1’s school play as they were having their annual cake sale straight after it.  I didn’t bother taking pictures of anything though as I was going to make more anyway.  Unfortunately that was on the 17th December.  The night that the snow fell.  By the following Monday we had no water (as I mentioned the other day) and it only came back yesterday afternoon.

So now, I have a lot of catching up to do.  New Year baking here we come…

Is The Water Back Yet?

It’s been hard to escape talk about the weather over the last few weeks.  My kids missed a few days of school when the snow first hit as the roads were just too bad to travel on.  When the roads conditions slowly started to improve we returned to school by driving “the long way round” as only the main roads were gritted and we knew they would be safer than travelling on back roads (better to be safe than sorry etc..) To make matters worse we have had no running water in the house since Monday last week and have been relying on filling containers with water from my in-laws whose water supply was relatively unaffected (give or take a couple of days).

When we did eventually start to travel on the road that we would usually use to get to school, we noticed the lake near to our house was completely frozen over and thought I would take a photo of it to feature on the blog before the predicted thaw set in.  What actually happened though was that we got so caught up in preparing for Christmas that we didn’t get around to taking pictures until yesterday.  So when himself drove us down the lake road, we were really disappointed to find that the thaw on the lake had already started so you can just make out a bit of ice near the shore. 

As I type this, the thaw that was promised on the weather reports has well and truly set in yet we still have no water in the house.  Maybe tomorrow…

Turkey and Ham Potato Cakes

Well, Christmas day has come and gone.  This year I was cooking for 8 people – us and both sets of grandparents.  Afraid I wouldn’t have enough food for everyone I ended up cooking far too many vegetables.  Yesterday morning I was faced with a rather large bowl of mashed potatoes, some Christmas ham and a little turkey (a 9lb turkey shared between 8 people doesn’t leave you with much leftovers!) so when the kids got up they had only one thing on their minds for breakfast – Potato Cakes (or spud cakes as they are known as in our house) so I decided to be a little different and incorporate the turkey and ham into the potato mixture. Here’s how I got on…

Quantities are approximate as I just used what I had but should be ok 🙂

1lb cold mashed potatoes

50g Flour

Few slices of turkey and ham

• In a food processor, finely chop your turkey and ham. Then add your mashed potato and flour and mix until it is all combined.
• Shape small amounts of the mash into small potato cakes
• Heat a little oil on a frying pan then fry til golden brown.
• Serve hot and enjoy!

St Stephen’s Day Muffins – Christmas Cookalong Part Two

Finally, here is my second post for the Irish Foodies Christmas Cookalong (I’m blaming the weather for the delay on this post – well we’re blaming it for everything else so why not?!) For my second recipe I chose St Stephen’s Day muffins from Rachel Allen’s Bake.  Himself LOVES Christmas pudding but sadly for him, Christmas pudding does not like him very much (by his own admission it “kills him”) so a couple of years ago I tried these out with some pudding that was left over and it went down a treat. 

What you need:

1 egg

75ml milk

25g butter

2 tbsp sherry, whiskey or brandy

125g leftover Christmas pudding broken into lumps

125g plain flour

1tsp baking powder

½tsp mixed spice

75g caster sugar

• Pre heat the oven to 180ºc, line your chosen muffin tin with paper cases (I usually get about 6 muffins with these quantities)
• Whisk the egg in a bowl, then add the milk, melted butter, alcohol and the pieces of Christmas pudding.
• Sift the flour, baking powder and mixed spice into another bowl.  Add the caster sugar and mix well.  Make a well in the centre, add the wet ingredients and mix together until a soft lumpy batter forms.
• Spoon the mixture into the paper cases and bake in the oven for 20-25 mins for large muffins, 15-20 mins for buns and 10-15 mins for mini muffins.
• Allow to cool on a wire rack then dust with icing sugar to serve.

Captain’s Stew

 

This recipe for Captain’s Stew is from The Scandinavian Cookbook by Trina Hahnemann that I reviewed recently.  If you follow the chapters in the book then technically it’s a March recipe but since we are once again feeling the cold here I decided a stew was exactly what we needed to warm ourselves up again for dinner yesterday.

What you need:

4 tbsp olive oil

1kg diced beef

1.5 ltres water

2kg potatoes, peeled and diced

1 onion finely chopped

4 bay leaves

1 tbsp whole peppercorns

1 tbsp sea salt

50g butter

salt & pepper

Heat the oil in a large saucepan and, when medium-hot add the beef and fry until lightly browned.  Add the water and bring gradually to the boil, skimming any froth from the surface (this will take about 5 minutes)

Add the potatoes, onion, bay leaves, peppercorns and salt.  Simmer for 1½ hours or until the meat is very tender and falls apart easily – you may need to cook it for a further 30 minutes.

Stir in the butter.  Use a balloon whisk to mash the potatoes and meat together – though note that the stew has to remain lumpy.*

Season with salt & freshly ground pepper (if needed)

*I didn’t mash the potatoes and meat together as my potatoes were quite fluffy any way and this would have turned them into mush!

Christmas Cookalong Part One – Dark Chocolate and Hazelnut Semi Freddo

Well the first Friday of December has been and gone and that means only one thing – the Irish Foodies monthly cookalong.  This month’s theme was of course Christmas (well how could it be anything else?) and rather than cook an elaborate dinner, I decided to do a dessert and a bit of baking instead.

So the first recipe I decided on for the cookalong was Dark Chocolate & Hazelnut Semi Freddo from Rachel Allen’s Home Cooking book.  Although (technically) its not actually cooking, this is one of the desserts I made last year to follow Christmas dinner.  Instead of freezing in a loaf tin as suggested, I lined a pudding bowl to give it a more Christmassy shape.

I was lucky to get the picture above as about 5 seconds after it was taken, child#2 somehow managed to knock the plate off the table sending it crashing to the floor!

Dark Chocolate & Hazelnut Semi Freddo

What you need:

3 eggs, separated

150g caster sugar

500ml cream

100g dark chocolate finely chopped

100g chopped hazelnuts

What you do:

• Line the base of a loaf tin with parchment or cling film, leaving the excess hanging out over the edges.
• Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until pale and fluffy.
• In a second bowl, whip the cream until it forms soft peaks.
• Finally, in another (spotlessly clean) bowl, whisk the egg whites (with a clean whisk) until they form firm peaks.
• Gently fold the whipped cream into the egg yolk mixture then carefully fold in the egg whites.
• Sprinkle a third of the chopped chocolate & hazelnuts evenly into the base of the prepared tin.  Pour half of the semifreddo mixture over the chocolate, followed by the next third of the chocolate.  Finally, pour over the remaining semifreddo and top with the remaining chocolate. Cover with the excess hanging parchment or cling film and freeze for at least 6 hours until solid.
• Once it is set, carefully remove the semifreddo from the tin by turning upside down onto a plate and remove the parchment/clingfilm and cut into slices.

The Start of a Christmas Tradition…

When child #1 was born, we spent our first Christmas as a family living in a small rented flat while we were waiting for our own house to be built so we only had a tiny Argos Christmas tree as we didn’t have a lot of space.  So for our 2nd Christmas we splashed out and bought a larger tree, decorations and lights but what I also did was buy one decoration for the tree that was just for her and that was the start of our little Christmas tradition.