2 Tbsp water
1 (½-in/12-mm) piece fresh ginger, grated
4 oz/113 g sugar
CRÈME ANGLAISE
5 oz/150 ml milk
5 oz/150 ml heavy cream
4 egg yolks
1½ oz/42 g sugar
FOR THE RHUBARB:
Put the rhubarb, water, and ginger in an enamel or stainless-steel saucepan, cover, and cook over a very gentle heat until soft. This should take about 30 minutes. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved. Refrigerate until ready to assemble.
FOR THE CRÈME ANGLAISE:
Heat the milk and cream in a saucepan until just at a boil. Remove from the heat. Whisk the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl until pale and creamy. Gradually add the hot milk to the egg yolk mixture, whisking all the time, until incorporated. Return the mixture to the saucepan and bring to a simmer. Keeping the pan at just a simmer, cook for 3 to 4 minutes or until the mixture has thickened. Refrigerate until cold. Layer the rhubarb and crème anglaise in four to six tall sundae glasses and serve with Ginger Biscuits (here) on the side.
Kinky’s Note:
If you are in a hurry you might prefer to use thick Greek yogurt instead of crème anglaise.
Oeufs à la Neige
(Eggs in Snow)
Ma used to make this for special occasions and I loved it. On reflection, I think it was a very nutritious pudding for growing children and it is also appealing to the eye, as it really does look like eggs in snow or floating islands. (The French have a similar recipe called île flottante or “floating island.”)
The secret for successful meringue is to make sure that not a single drop of egg yolk gets into the mixture and to ensure that your bowl and beaters are perfectly clean and grease-free. I rub a splash of vinegar on a paper towel round the bowl and beaters.
Serves 4
EGGS
4 egg whites (reserve the yolks for the “snow”)
A pinch of salt
7½ oz/214 g sugar
7 oz/210 ml milk
SNOW
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 oz/150 ml heavy cream
4 egg yolks
1½ oz/42 g sugar
FOR THE EGGS:
Using an electric mixer, whisk the egg whites and salt just long enough to see them turn a greenish colour then, still beating, add one-third of the sugar and continue beating for another minute before adding the next third. Beat again and add the rest of the sugar. Now you should beat until it’s as stiff and glossy as can be.
Pour the milk and cream into a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer. Using a tablespoon, scoop spoonfuls of meringue and carefully poach them for a minute or two on both sides in the milk. (Don’t try to do too many at a time, as you need to leave room for the meringue to expand.) Using a slotted spoon, remove the meringue “eggs” and set aside in a serving dish. Reserve the milk and cream mixture.
FOR THE SNOW:
Add the vanilla to the saucepan with the milk and cream and bring to the boil, then remove from the heat. Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar in a bowl until pale and creamy. Slowly pour this into the milk mixture, whisking all the time. Return to a very low heat and stir constantly with a wooden spoon until the sauce thickens and coats the side of the spoon. Do not let it boil. Remove from the heat and pour around, not over, the “eggs” in the serving dish. Chill before serving.
Sticky Toffee Pudding
Serves 6 to 8
PUDDING
2 oz/56 g butter, softened
6 oz/170 g demerara or brown sugar
2 eggs
7½ oz/214 g self-rising flour
2 Tbsp molasses or treacle
1 Tbsp golden or maple syrup
7 oz/200 g pitted dates, chopped
10 oz/295 ml boiling water
1 tsp baking soda
TOFFEE SAUCE
4 oz/120 ml whipping cream
2 oz/56 g butter
2 oz/56 g dark muscovado or dark brown sugar
2 Tbsp molasses or treacle
1 Tbsp maple syrup or golden syrup
FOR THE PUDDING:
Preheat the oven to 400°F/200°C. Grease and flour an 8-inch/20-cm square baking dish or six-to-eight individual muffin pans.
Beat the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs gradually and add a little flour (to stop the mixture from curdling). Add the molasses and syrup and finally fold in the rest of the flour. Add the dates to the boiling water and stir in the baking soda. Add this quickly to the prepared pudding mixture and pour into the baking dish or muffin pans. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the pudding is well risen and springy to the touch.
FOR THE TOFFEE SAUCE:
While the pudding is cooking, put all the sauce ingredients in a saucepan over a low heat and bring to the boil. Serve the pudding on individual plates with the sauce poured over the top.
Strawberry or Raspberry Ice Cream
Serves 6
17 oz/505 ml whipping cream
1 (14-oz/400-g) can low-fat sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
8 oz/235 ml strawberry or raspberry yogurt
8 oz/227 g strawberries, hulled and sliced, or raspberries
1 Tbsp confectioners’ sugar
Line a 9 by 5-inch/23 by 12-cm loaf tin with cling film. Using an electric mixer or a food processor, beat the cream in a large bowl, add the condensed milk and vanilla, and continue to beat for about 10 minutes, until thick. Fold in the yogurt. Mash the fruit with the sugar and fold through the ice cream mixture. Pour into the loaf tin or a lidded plastic container, such as Tupperware, and freeze until firm. Serve sliced, with fruit to garnish.
Kinky’s Note:
Evaporated milk is unsweetened and is milk which has had about 60 percent of the water removed via evaporation. Condensed milk, usually called sweetened condensed milk, has also had 60 percent of its water removed, but the difference is that sugar has been added. “Unsweetened condensed milk” is a redundant term: it is simply evaporated milk.
VARIATIONS
Substitute chocolate chips and mint extract for the fruit and omit the yogurt. Or try it with broken honeycomb instead of the fruit.
A Matter of Chutzpah
“Now there’s a word, Barry,” O’Reilly said to me, looking up from his book. “Chutzpah. Chutzpah.”
“Never heard of it,” I said from my armchair in the big upstairs lounge. “Is it Irish? What does it mean?”
“It’s Yiddish, I believe,” he said, sipping his Jameson, “and I think here in Ulster we’d say ‘gall,’ or ‘quare brass neck,’ you know, absolute disregard for ordinary conventions. Cheek. Impertinence, but they’re not quite accurate. There’s often a humorous aspect to it.”
I sipped my sherry. “You mean like the time Donal Donnelly let his racing greyhound Bluebird drink a belly full of water before every race to slow her down so the odds on her got longer and longer and then when he wanted her to win he didn’t give her a drink and when she had won and was drug tested nothing showed up?”
“Close,” said O’Reilly, “but I’m not sure it exactly captures the whole flavour. At least not as I understand it.” He rose, walked over to the big bay window, stared out over the rooftops of Ballybucklebo, turned, and as he walked back said, “It’s more like a fellah up on a reckless driving charge who appears an hour late in court and asks the judge’s indulgence because your man had had to walk because on his way to court—he’d crashed his car.”
I chuckled and said, “I see what you mean.”
“Och,” he said, “it’s still not quite right. I think I’ve a better example. From my days as a medical student at Trinity in Dublin.”
As he went to the sideboard to refresh his whiskey, I steeled myself for another (while we were on the subject of foreign words) trek or safari down the labyrinthine byways of his vast memory.
The door opened.
I greeted Kinky’s appearance bearing a loaded tray with the enthusiasm of Baden-Powell for
the forces relieving Mafeking in May 1900. Perhaps we could let the subject of chutzpah drop.
Kinky said, “I did make up a light plate, so.” She pointed and said, “That does be my chicken liver pâté on wheaten bread, and that is my smoked mackerel pâté on melba toast.”
“Thank you, Kinky,” O’Reilly said as she left. “Come on Barry, tuck in.” He loaded a side plate and went back to his chair. I followed suit. The chicken liver pâté simply melted in my mouth.
O’Reilly mumbled through a mouthful of smoked mackerel, “I was telling you about chutzpah…”
Oh well. The snack would make listening a bit easier.
“Did you ever go to watch Ireland play rugby football?” he asked, returning and taking his seat.
“Yes, actually. When I was a student. Back in 1963. Jack Mills and I saw Ireland play England at Lansdowne Road.”
“Begob,” said O’Reilly, “I was at that game too. With Charlie Greer…”
I knew that he and Mister Greer, now a highly reputed neurosurgeon at the Royal Victoria Hospital, had played together in the ’30s representing Ireland. It had been one of the proudest moments of the big man’s life.
“Not much of a match. Scoreless draw, but we got our own back next year we beat them eighteen to five at Twickenham in England.” His grin was feral. I suspected that O’Reilly, like many of the international rugby-watching fraternity be they Irish, Welsh, Scottish, or French, not only supported his own country in the Five Nations Championship, but was also a member of the ABE club. Anybody But England.
I refrained from referring to his other outing to see the supporters off on the ferry to Scotland and his forgetting to get off the boat, but I’ve told you that story already. Instead I said, “Fingal, I think we were discussing the meaning of…”
“Chutzpah. That’s right.” He beamed then said, “I believe I saw a prime example.” His eyes took on that dreamy look they always held when he recalled the past. “It was 1935,” he said. “Ireland was playing Scotland at Lansdowne Road. Not far from where my parents lived. Back then I had three close friends. You know Sir Donald Cromie and Charlie Greer.”
“I should do,” I said. “They both taught me.”
O’Reilly’s voice softened. I detected a tinge of melancholy. “I wish you’d been able to meet the fourth musketeer, Bob Beresford from near Conlig. He was my best friend.” O’Reilly shook his shaggy head. “Bloody war.”
I knew better than to try to pry into his wartime experiences.
O’Reilly sighed. “But that was later. Back in the ’30s Bob was a typical medical student, full of beans, loved a bit of craic, and had little respect for authority.” O’Reilly nodded at my glass. “Another?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“Suit yourself. One thing about watching rugby matches, us students always had a few pints before the game and it was a point of honour not to miss the kick-off which was always at two-thirty in those days. We drank in Davy Byrne’s pub on Duke Street. Timing was everything. You could walk it from there to the rugby pitch in half an hour. So that meant leaving the pub at five to two.”
I really was trying to pay attention, but what in the name of the wee man had any of this to do with a definition or an example of chutzpah?
“Now,” said O’Reilly. “I am coming to the point.…”
Regular readers will know that Kinky Kincaid has the sight, and sometimes I wondered about O’Reilly. He had, it seemed, just read my mind.
“Byrne’s was, as a contempoary jazz musician would have said, jumping. Wall-to-wall people and the craic was ninety. Suddenly Charlie Greer says, ‘Holy Moses. It’s ten past two. We’re going to miss the kick-off.’ He and Cromie and I leapt to our feet. ‘Come on, Bob.’ You’d have thought Bob Beresford was Drake at Plymouth Ho in 1588 finishing his game of bowls before sailing off to the fight the Spanish Armada. ‘Take your time,’ says he. ‘We’ve pints to finish, my car’s outside, and it’s only a seven-minute drive. We’ll be there in no time.’”
“But,” I said, “was it easier to get parking back then? When Jack Mills and I drove down we had to walk for miles after we’d left the car.”
“Same in the thirties. My immediate thought was that we could park in my parents’ drive but Bob would hear nothing of it. ‘Just leave it to me.’ We all piled into his car at quarter past two. The traffic wasn’t bad on the main road, but it was slow going getting along Lansdowne through the throng of spectators heading for the turnstiles. Just outside them, Bob stops the car and says, ‘Everyone out,’ and proceeds to get out himself, even leaving the engine running.”
My eyes must have widened. “Sounds daft to me,” I said.
“Seemed daft to us too,” said O’Reilly, “but we assumed Bob knew what he was doing. Between the jigs and the reels of it we got out, saw the kick-off, watched the match, and returned. No car.”
“You do surprise me, Fingal,” I said.
“Not as much as Bob surprised us. ‘Come on,’ says he and we followed as he marched straight to the nearest Garda Síochána station and up to the desk.”
“To report a stolen car, no doubt.”
“Exactly,” said O’Reilly, “but the result wasn’t what we expected.”
“Go on.”
“Bob describes the make and number plates to a big sergeant behind a desk. Your man’s face, which had looked like a heiffer looking over a hedge, splits into a great grin. ‘Hold the lights,’ he says. ‘Hold the feckin’ lights. This is your lucky day, sir. We have a motor car exactly matching that description in the station car park round the back. Some buck eejit must have wanted a ride to the game. It was reported about an hour and half ago on Lansdowne Road, unoccupied and with its engine running. A constable brought it back here.”
“Talk about luck,” I said.
“No,” said O’Reilly, “we were talking about chutzpah. I think I’ve made my point.”
It wasn’t until I’d stopped laughing that he said, “Bob had some paperwork to do, then we collected, the motor and headed back to Davy Byrne’s. We had to celebrate, you see…”
“Your friend Bob’s chutzpah?”
O’Reilly shook his head, “Nah,” he said, “although it was fun. The big thing was that Ireland had beaten Scotland, twelve to five.”
Cakes AND Biscuits
Cheese Straws
Makes 16
½ package frozen puff pastry, about 8 oz/227 g thawed
Mustard, preferably Dijon
7 oz/200 g strong cheddar cheese or Parmesan cheese, grated
1 egg, beaten
Preheat the oven to 375°F/190°C. Roll out the pastry to make an 6 by 8-inch/15 by 20-cm rectangle and spread half with mustard. Sprinkle the cheese over the mustard half and bring the other half of the pastry over the cheese. Now seal with the rolling pin and roll out again to about 6 inches/15 cm. Cut into 16 to 20 strips about 6 inches /15cm in length and twist at each end. Place on a baking sheet lined with cooking parchment and refrigerate for about half an hour, then brush with egg and bake for about 10 minutes until puffy and golden.
Dark Guinness Cake
with Jameson Cream Icing
Serves 12 or more
9 oz/265 ml Guinness
8 oz/227 g unsalted butter
14 oz/400 g superfine sugar
3 oz/85 g unsweetened cocoa powder
4½ oz/127 g sour cream
2 eggs
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
10 oz/284 g all-purpose flour
2½ tsp baking soda
Cream Topping (recipe follows)
Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C. Line a 9-inch/23-cm springform pan with parchment paper and grease and flour it.
Pour the Guinness into a large saucepan, add the butter, and melt gently. Now remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the sugar and cocoa. Beat the sour cream, eggs, and vanilla together and pour into the batter. Finally, sift the flour and baking soda and whisk them in, then pour the batter into the baking tin.
Bake for about 40 minutes, until risen and springy to the touch. Allow the cake to cool in the tin for a few minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Now decorate the cake by spreading the cream topping over it so it looks like a properly poured pint of Guinness with a great head on it.
Cream Topping
8 oz/227 g cream cheese, softened
4 oz/113 g confectioners’ sugar
4½ oz/135 ml whipping cream
1 Tbsp Jameson’s whiskey or extra-strong black coffee
Using an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese and sugar together. Then beat in the cream and, if you are like himself, a little John Jameson Irish whiskey. My friend Flo Bishop, the councillor’s wife, tells me it’s very good made with a good shot of Bailey’s Irish Cream.
Now all you have to do is decorate the cake so it looks like a properly poured pint of Guinness with a great head on it. This is quite a large cake and a little goes a long way, so it would serve about 12 people.
VARIATION
Dark Guinness Layer Cake. This is a variation of the preceding recipe and will make two large loaves. It is great for a party and can be prepared well in advance.
Preheat the oven and make the batter as above. Grease two 9 by 5-inch/23 by 12-cm loaf tins, line them with parchment paper, and grease the parchment.
Divide the cake batter into the loaf tins and bake for about 35 minutes. Allow to cool slightly, then lift from the tins by grasping the parchment and set on a wire rack to cool completely. Make the Cream Topping recipe using about 2 ounces/60 ml extra cream, so it will be a little less stiff than needed for the Guinness cake above. Remove the parchment from the loaves and slice each loaf horizontally into three layers. Reline the tins with fresh parchment or tin foil and proceed to layer the cake and the cream topping in the tins, finishing with a layer of cream topping. Place in the refrigerator to firm up slightly. Remove from the tins, decorate with grated chocolate, and cut in slices to serve.
An Irish Country Cookbook Page 14
