The Supper Club Pop Up Restaurant

Sunday 27th March,
Ormond Wine Bar, Dublin.



On Sunday 27th, Salty Squid was very lucky to attend the first night of a new, monthly, communal eating binge in Dublin. Two very talented and slightly insane chefs undertook the ever more insane task of cooking a 10 course tasting menu for 35 hungry people served by kind, friendly wait staff.

To say the food was amazing would be an understatement. In fact the whole night itself was great. That sing along at the end, was the 11th course! Thank god we have no photos.

Salty Squid cannot even spell the names of what we were served, nor can our limited grammar or below par writing skills describe how good this was. But we can stick up some photos to try give a sense of how great it was. Amazeballs.

Some background: The Supper Club is the brainchild of chefs, Sandy and John. The whole idea is that once a month they will pop up in a different venue, in Dublin city, and cook a load of amazing food. Visit popuprestaurant.ie to book or The Supper Club on facebook for more information on the next one. Spaces are limited.




Goats cheese, Baby Beets, Pistachio, Aged Balsamic, Purslane



John & Sandy



Sweet Corn Veloute, Lyonnaise Onions, Smoked Bacon, Girolles...Sweet Jesus



Wine Glasses, Random People Making Friends, Cake Stand



Dark Chocolate Silk Cake, Honey Combe, Coconut Sorbet



Petit Fours: Bon Bon, Marshmallow, Chocolate Fudge



Braised Veal Brisket, Gnocchi, Gremolata, Capers, Desmond Cheese



Foie Gras, Braised Chicory, Salted Grapes, Golden Raisin



Cod, Clams, Shaved Cauliflower, Baby Gem

An ordinary Saturday

Along with many of Salty Squids' new year resolutions, regularly doing our little blog is lying discarded on the 'failed to keep up' pile along with eating less, frying less and not classing chorizo as a fruit or vegetable. I do hold onto hope that one day I will have a t-shirt that reads ' Chorizo counts towards your five a day'. I think I should stop talking about chorizo about now.

Saturday's Breakfast

Morning time usually comes around early in the day. It heralds a new beginning in which you have 24hrs to eat as much as is possible. Avoid fluids like water which can take up space in your stomach and aim for the healthier drinks, like coffee, wine and coffee. It's important to eat a big breakfast in case you get stuck talking to a chatty neighbour for half and hour where you will find it hard to consume food. Or if like me, it is possible to hang a bunch of grapes from your head and pick at them if you do find your self cornered without a sandwich.

Poached eggs, with harrissa, mushrooms and shrubbery should keep you happy for half an hour or so.

Saturday's Tart

Miss Salty Squid is a dab hand at tarts. And there is nothing better to come home to than a home cooked tart. I have no idea how Miss Salty Squid made this, but I know it involved a lot of Irish veg and cheese.





Ingredients:
For the filling (whatever is most fresh at your local market. I went to the Newmarket market in Dublin 8. Here is what I found): 2 handfuls organic cherry tomatoes (different shapes & colours); purple carrots; purple sprouting broccoli; fresh springs of oregano; 3 sweet potatoes; 175 g Irish Goat Gouda; 250g Quark or Ricotta and Feta would also work); few stripes of good bacon; onion & garlic; salt&pepper; some spices, whatever you have or like.
For the pastry: 100 g frozen butter; 100 g flour; each pinch of salt and nutmeg; a bit of cold water

Make the pastry by adding the nutmeg and salt to the flour and then by rubbing the flour and butter together until they form breadcrumbs. Add a beaten egg and combine using a little water if needed. Rap the pastry in clingfilm and flatten it out, as this will make rolling a whole lot easier. Rest and fridge for and hour before rolling it out and lining your tart mould. Bake blind for 25mins covered with greaseproof and some baking balls.

For the filling sweat off the onions with a bay leaf until soft. Remove the leaf and add the bacon and carrots. Add the peeled chopped sweet potatoes cook until soft. Add the oregano and tomatoes and cook for another few mins. Add the quark and season before pouring the mix into the tart. Arrange the broccoli on top and grate the goats cheese on top and bake for another 30mins.

Hangover Chips with Harissa Mayo

Ingredients: Hangover x 2; organic Irish potatoes x 3 ; an egg yolk; grainy mustard; white wine vinegar, rapeseed oil; Harissa; salt, salt salt and pepper

'Staying in' on a Saturday, simply means it is possible to drink as much as you like, fall asleep where you are sitting and wake up in the morning, cold, sore and with a slipper in your mouth, on the floor. The hard cold floor below the warm snug sofa with cushions and a sofa cat (it's a cat that smells due to some sort of warming bag thing inside it that you can heat up, which means instead of sharing a bed with Salty Squid and the countless number of random, stuffed rejected animals, Sofa Cat lives on the sofa. What the heck am I talking about Sofa Cat for??)

Potatoes slice thickly, skins on. Cover in salt, pepper, oil, herbs or spices or whatever you feel. Put onto a baking tray and place on the bottom shelf in a cold oven. Turn the oven up full and wait.

Or you can mix the egg yolk, vinegar and mustard together and the slowly add the rapeseed oil, whisking all the time while you wait. Finish with Harissa and some seasoning.

After this we had three pizzas. I recommend you do the same.

Portuguese inspired Pineapple Cake

Blame it on one rainy and restless Sunday afternoon. When there is really nothing else left to do than heating up the oven, putting together a simple cake recipe and waiting until the sweet smell of a holiday oozes of of the kitchen. Despite the other half's this month's resolutions ("No more cakes, please...!", as if anybody would feel like this anyway), yep, this was a prefect day for a cake.




Pineapple Cake
(Tessa's Kiros recipe from the "Piri Piri Starfish" cookbook)

Ingredients:
350g caster (fine) sugar; 1 fresh pineapple, or 1 canned, drained; 4 eggs, separated; 200g unsalted butter; 200g cake flour (00); 1 tsp baking powder

Heat your oven up to 180 degrees and grease and flour gently a 12 x 4 inch loaf tin.

Make caramel, by mixing 115g of the sugar with couple of teaspoons of water in a non-stick sauce pan. Heat up until sugar melts and swirl the pan around (don't stir otherwise sugar will crystallize). When the sugar turns golden brown and starts to burn, pour carefully into the tin and let it cool down.

Arrange about 10 pineapple rings (drained) over the base of the tin, overlapping.
Whip the egg whites into peaks, and mix the butter with the rest of sugar until it's creamy.
Add the yolks, beat well and then sift in the flour. Fold in the egg whites.

Spoon the mixture into the tin, and bake for 55 minutes to 1 hour until the top if puffy and golden. Take out and let it cool, then loosen the sides with a knife and turn upside down. Voilá!

Year Of The Rabbit

The year of the Rabbit. What in gods name does that mean? I have images of giant rabbits taking over the world, stomping building to rubble with their huge feet, shooting lasers from their eyes, pretty much wreaking havoc and being a general pain, which, to a lot of farmers is what the normal, smaller, non-laser shooting rabbits are anyways. I have no idea what the 'Year of the Rabbit' holds fur us, sorry, I mean for us, but an educated guess would leave me to believe that we will all grow a shoe size or two and our hearing will improve. And we will probably be non too fond of Elmer Fudd.

Right now you are probably wondering what all this has to do with food and our tapas entry? The answer as always Dear reader, is nothing.

Sweet and Sour Sauce

Ingredients: 1/2 cup brown sugar; 1-2 tbsp Ketchup; 1-2 tbsp light soy sauce; 1/2 cup pineapple juice (fresh or canned); 1/4 tsp salt; 1/4 cup Chinese Shaoxing wine (or dry Sherry); 1/4 cup Chinese rice vinegar (or Cider vinegar); 2 tsp corn flour, dissolved in 2 tbsp water

Mix all ingredients together in a small sauce pan and bring to boil. Reduce heat and add the corn flour, stirring well. Keep simmering until the sauce thickens. Use hot or allow to cool down. So simple the Karate Kid could.... oh wait that was Japan right?

Green Beans with Sweet and Sour Pork

Ingredients: 200g pork mince; handful of green beans, blanched and halved; 1 x onion chopped; 1 x clove garlic, sliced, 3tbsp home made sweet and sour sauce; some Chinese 5 spice; Szechuan pepper, Chili powder

Heat your pan and add the onion and garlic and colour on a high heat. Add the pork mince and brown, then add the spices and a splash of rice vinegar or white wine vinegar or whatever you have. Add the blanched green beans, and continue to cook for another minute, add the sweet and sour sauce and stir. Continue to cook on a high heat for another minute, allowing the sauce to caramelise and get sticky on the pan. Serve. Love you long time.

Duck pancakes

Ingredients: 1 x duck leg; Szechuan peppercorns, Chinese 5 spice; 1/2 cup Oyster Sauce; 1/2 cucumber, thinly sliced into batons; Pak Choi, cooked before hand

The night before, marinate the duck leg with about 10 Szechuan peppercorns, some Chinese 5 spice and Oyster Sauce. Remove from the fridge 30mins before cooking. Preheat the oven to about 130, add the duck and cook for about an hour, basting from time to time. Make sure the duck is nice and tender before removing, it may take longer.

Once cooled, flake the meat from the bone. Lay out your spring roll paper and fill each with some duck, cucumber, pak choi and season. Roll up the pancakes and the dip into a mixture of Chinese 5 spice, Oyster Sauce and Chili powder. Bake in a preheated oven at 180c for 20mins

until crisp and sticky. You BIG American!

Stir fried crispy Tofu with Choy Sum, Enoki mushrooms and other Asian sounding weird things

Ingredients: 100g tofu, chopped up however you want; 50g Choy Sum; pickled ginger; 1 x onion chopped; garlic sliced, some chopped chili; bunch of coriander; Enoki mushrooms; Chinese 5 spice; Szechuan pepper; sesame oil; soy sauce

Freeze your tofu the night before, then defrost a bit before it's needed (great tip from a Chinese friend!), this helps it keep it's shape and bite, not that there is much bite to tofu. I should probably lay my cards on the table here and say my love for tofu and soy related products is non-existent since the discovery of a rare breed of humans that frequent the cafe and order soy lattes, de-caf-soya-cappa's (what the sweet mother of fu** is that!??) and have an air of arse about themselves. But that's a blog entry for another day.

Heat some oil in a pan and fry the tofu. To help hide the taste and texture add some onion and garlic and pickled ginger. Next add the spices and peppers, followed by the Chinese cabbage and mushrooms. Add some soy sauce and chili after a min or two and continue to cook. Add the coriander and sesame oil. Stir and serve. Five dollar!!

On the stereo

Pitchfork 500 album on shuffle

In the glass
Arthur Metz, Reisling, Alsace, 2009

King Pie The Almighty Pie-y-One Of Pie Town - Pie

It was a cold dark evening and I wanted pie. Lots of pie. Really lots of pie. So much pie in fact, that if King Pie The Almighty Pie-y-One Of Pie Town came to visit even He would think there was a lot of pie here. Sadly however, King Pie The Almighty Pie-y-One Of Pie Town doesn't exist. And neither does Pie Town. Bollox anyway.

For this pie, now named King Pie The Almighty Pie-y-One Of Pie Town - Pie. There are, there is, no there are lots of ingredients but do feel free to use less and make a lesser pie. If that's how you are going to show your respect to the late King, then fine, you lesser pie lover.

You will need: 1 x pack of puff pastry; 1 x squash, peeled and chopped, 2 x Sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks; bunch of kale; bunch of spinach; mushrooms chopped, maybe 500g, or maybe not; 300g goats cheese, I used Ryefield from Sheridans; 500g of walnuts roasted; few cloves of garlic; some spices, I used hot smoked Paprika, cayenne pepper, ground ciniminimaoninm.

Preheat your oven to 180c and roast the Squash, which was mixed with the ground cinionmoninim, and on the same tray roast the sweet spuds which have been mixed with cayenne pepper and paprika. Add some whole cloves of garlic too. Give them all a good season and a drizzle with some oil. Rub the spices into them and the roast until cooked. The sweet spuds will prob cook a bit quicker. Remove when cooked and blitz.

At the same time, roast your walnuts for about 10mins. Remove and set aside.

While the above are roasting, fry off your mushrooms with some rosemary, season well and set aside. In the same pan fry off the kale, season it and set aside. Still using the same pan fry off the spinach for about 30secs, remove and squeeze out the excess liquid.

Mix the spinach, kale, half of the walnuts, slightly crushed and some of the goats cheese together with the pureed veg. Taste and season if needed.

Next, roll out your pastry to fit your dish. Line the bottom with the roast veg mix, followed by a layer of mushrooms. Top with the rest of the goats cheese and bake at 180c until brown gooey and golden. About 10 before the end add the rest of the walnuts. It's nice to add some sliced chili also.

No tapas, but still, we have to eat...

Ratatouille with Chorizo-Butter-stuffed-Chicken

Not exactly a tapas post, but a post none the less. And we managed to get chorizo in there somewhere too! On a cold Sunday with a fridge full of veg, a sort of made up ratatouille was born. Simply sweat off your onion, celery and garlic until soft. Add your tomato paste, fresh tomatoes, chopped veg, whatever you have, we added some courgettes, mushrooms, and roasted aubergine (halve an aubergine, score the flesh, season and rub in some oil and roast alongside some garlic cloves. When done, simply scrape the flesh from the skin into the ratatouille). Add some chicken stock, bay leaves, thyme and rosemary. Cook gentle for about an hour.

We had it with champ, simply add some sliced spring onion to your mash. If you want to you can stuff a chicken breast with chorizo butter and roast it.







Chocolate Sponge Cake
(filled with with blackcurrant cream)

Salty Squid is partial to some sweet spongy cakeness. Not always, but sometimes. This cake was made by creaming equal parts butter and sugar (I used 125g) until pale and fluffy, like a ghost-sock. Add an egg, fold in 125g of self raising flour, sifted and about 60g of melted dark chocolate. Bake at 180 for about 20mins and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Slice in half and fill with cream, or if you want you can add some nice homemade jam to your cream and a little bit of Kirsch. A short but sweet post.