Carrots for the Easter Bunny

The Easter Bunny loves his carrots, so here is a post with our favorite ways to pay tribute to these orange batons of goodness.

Fish specials of the day.

Monkfish with carrot ribbons.

Here, we have confit Caherbeg pork belly with roast carrot and cauliflower with a parsnip purée. It's pure comfort.

Beautiful plaice from O'Connell's with peas and carrots.

Braised Oxtail.

What is your favorite way to enjoy a carrot?

Surf and turf Cork style

Tonight's monk was slowly baked in the oven and served alongside Tom Durcans spiced beef and potato croquette with pickled Ballyhoura mushrooms spinach, celeriac purée and radish

The vegetable that is Kohlrabi

Every week, I get a text message from Dimitri letting me know what vegetables he has available and this week he had kohlrabi or German turnip, it  is  something iv looked at and never really used, it is a member of the cabbage family and has a flavour similar to cabbage heart or that of broccoli.

It is high in vitamin C 62mg per 100g as seen on Wikipedia 

On discussing with chef Michal from Slovakia who loves it how does he enjoy it he simply said raw. 

So I grated it added some of Fenns honey and mustard dressing and a squeeze of lemon juice salt and pepper and served it with cod. 

Add some grated carrot and you have a healthy alternative to coleslaw 

Wild Irish samphire or sea asparagus

It's that time of year again when Michelle pops her head into the kitchen with a surprise and that is samphire or sea asparagus I wait eagerly every year for it asking Michelle every time she pops in with the sea spinach & rock samphire has it grown yet. Today was the day when she surprised me with it so luscious and green giving it a wash I couldn't wait to taste. New staff were puzzled and old staff were excited we all tasted it raw with its crisp exterior and its sea water taste the food of summer had arrived .

As specials were already done this evening I choose to use as a garnish with the cod so i flashed fried it with a drop of olive oil and finished with some of my wild garlic & sea weed butter and places it on top of the crispy skin delicious 

If you are lucky to find a patch of samphire keep it to yourself or even better tell me. It is the most flavoursome of the sea veg and a perfect match to all fish the season is short so enjoy it while you can

Here something to do with your lentils

An easy dish to serve up for a dinner party as a lot of the work can be done hours in advance of service.

•Firstly prep your scallops if not done already by removing elastic like film that runs around the scallop remove the white muscle and set coral aside (keep it if you enjoy it ) refrigerate until needed

•Rinse off your lentils place in a pot with a small handful of dried mushrooms fill with water and cook until soft drain and set aside

• dice up small a leek, carrot, celery & fennel and place in a pot with 25g butter and sauté on a low heat then add 75ml of veg stock and simmer until veg is al Dante

•To put the dish together gently warm a non stick pan place a little but of butter and a drop of olive oil in the pan season your scallops and when the butter froths add your scallops cool for under a minute or until it begins to colour then turn and add some veg and lentils and move about in the pan then squeeze some lemon juice and taste for seasoning & serve on a warm plate with a sprinkle of a herb you enjoy

• VEG CRISPS add some crunch to this dish we use parsnip shaved with a peeler or Jerusalem artichoke sliced fine on a mandolin .

To cook preheat frier to 180c
Pat dry the veg with tissue place in basket and lower with a spoon gently & carefully move them about until the begin to colour once done remove on to a tissue toss in salt and set aside until needed.

Would you like sweet potato with your bread ?

At Fenn's we serve our house made breads, the white soda made with Feirme Úr buttermilk and our brown yeast bread. It is complimentary as a way to introduce you to our food served with Irish creamery butter

Over a chat during lunch with Evin O'Keeffe (evinok.com) she mentioned how in one of her favourite restaurants in the States instead of using butter they had a sweet potato style of butter. It occurred to me not everyone likes butter and possible those who are lactose intolerant may need a tasty substitute.

so off i went i googled a recipe and got as far as they put the sweet potatoes in a microwave in their skins to cook them .... that was enough i wasn't doing it that way when making our basil dressing we roast our garlic with a drizzle of olive oil and seasoning wrap in tin foil and bake in the oven until soft. I took the same approach with the  chopped up sweet potato and a few garlic cloves wrapped and placed in the oven and baked until soft

 

When the flesh had cooled down enough to handle i scraped the flesh from the skin into a bowl and took the garlic from the skins, added some of the green saffron spices and some salt and pepper 

the garlic just melted into the sweet potato mash with the addition of the spices and salt and pepper it was delicious.
when cooking with sweet potato you may notice it has a tendency to go black with the addition of lemon or lime juice this should prevent this from happening. In this dish i used lemon.

  So would you like sweet potato on your bread ?