I've been doing both for 30 years.
To cook well, it helps if you love and value food
as that is where it all starts.
My approach to cooking is simple and not new.
Use the best ingredients you can, get organised and follow the recipe.
That way you'll be sure to get wonderful results.
The term broth can have negative connotations.
Images of watery vegetable stock certainly spring to mind.
I love how a simple broth can with the addition of
carefully chosen ingredients, be transformed into a most elegant dish
that combines both humbleness and sophistication.
My pumpkin, tomato, leek and fennel broth has chicken stock
as a key ingredient, although you could use vegetable stock.
Either way, the quality of the stock will determine how delicious the broth tastes.
Pumpkin is a wonderful vegetable and it's a big family.
There are loads and loads of different types, different shapes, different sizes.
The one I like to cook with most is this one called red kuri or Japanese pumpkin.
Also Uchiki Kuri is the name for it.
I've got some already here that I've peeled the outer skin off.
I'm just going to chop it.
You can see that it needs quite forceful chopping.
The other ingredients here, I've got my fennel seeds which
I've toasted on a dry frying pan until the aroma starts to
rise up out of the pan.
Then I ground them coarsely.
The next ingredient is garlic.
Just with the back of your knife, skin still on, press it.
You should be able to peel off the papery skin quite easily.
Add a little salt for grip.
Give to a quick chop and crush the garlic.
The reason you crush the garlic is so that it melts invisibly into the dish.
See how it just blends to a beautiful paste like that.
I have the first three ingredients ready to go.
Pumpkin, fennel seeds and garlic.
We're going to need a fairly low heat.
A nice heavy bottom saucepan.
Olive oil is the fat of choice here. You could use butter.
Olive oil pairs very nicely with these vegetables.
Pop in the first of our vegetables. Our pumpkin.
My lovely crushed garlic paste and the fennel seeds.
Give those a stir. Get them coated in the oil.
Don't leave them just sitting there dry.
Whenever you're sweating, it's a low heat to create a steamy atmosphere.
A little bit of extra insulation in the form of butter wrapper,
parchment or greaseproof paper lid is a good idea.
It sounds really old-fashioned but it really works.
While that's sweating, the rest of my vegetables.
I have my leeks prepared.
They're thinly sliced and I've given those a good rinse.
Potatoes I need to dice. This is a rustic soup.
I'm cutting the vegetables reasonably big.
The other vital ingredient in the soup is tomato.
Depending on what time of year it is and how ripe fresh tomatoes
are available to you, that will determine which tomatoes you use.
I only use fresh tomatoes for this soup if they are super bursting ripe.
Failing that, I will use tinned tomatoes unapologetically.
Tinned or bottled tomatoes can be a fantastic product
because they're picked when they're at their prime
and canned, tinned, bottled, to hold in the flavour.
Our pumpkin has been sweating away so by now it should be nice and tender.
Next comes the easy part.
Just throw everything in. Tomatoes, potatoes and leeks.
Season with salt and pepper.
That's going to cook for another few minutes.
I'm going to make some parsley pesto to serve with the broth.
Food processor is ideal for this.
Pop in the parsley.
It looks like too much parsley to begin with but it blends down
to a lovely green richness. Add some pine nuts.
A little of our crushed garlic.
Crushed in the normal way.
Season with salt and blitz.
Carefully add your olive oil. Extra virgin ideally.
Keep pouring until you've achieved the desired consistency.
Let's have a look.
See the consistency I'm looking for. Just a dropping consistency.
The beauty about parsley pesto is it keeps really well.
It will keep in your fridge for a month with none of the
crankiness of the basil pesto.
Finally the parmesan. You can fold it in.
I just very quickly buzz it in with my machine.
That's going to be really nice. A little blob in on top of the broth.
Let's just see if we are ready to add in our stock,
which I think we should be by now.
Our vegetables have been sweating.
See that lovely steam in there. You've trapped the steam in the pot.
Slowly softening very slightly. Add in my stock.
You could make this with water or vegetable stock if you want
but chicken stock is going to give you the most flavoursome broth.
Also because we have tomatoes, the tiniest pinch of sugar.
Lid back on, up to a simmer and then simmer it very gently.
That's going to take about 15-20 minutes.
As soon as they're tender, that's ready to go.
I'd be happy to have this on a warm autumn evening or
on a chilly winter's day when the wind is howling outside.
Just like that, perfect.
Or with a little blob of parsley pesto like that.
Lovely, nourishing, delicious. Simple.
Bacon and cabbage.
Three words that inspire dread or desire,
depending on previous experience.
Let's face it, we've probably all eaten a tough piece of bacon
and horribly overcooked cabbage.
But trust me, cooked properly this is a superb dish.
Particularly so when highly flavoured champ and verdant, vibrant
parsley sauce are served alongside.
It's time to restore what is probably regarded as our national dish, to its proper place.
Something to be really proud of.
As always, use the best ingredients you can and ensure that the
bacon you buy is quality assured Irish bacon and not some imposter.
The provenance of what we eat is really important.
I'm using a piece of loin of bacon today.
Green bacon as unsmoked bacon is curiously called in Ireland.
When I'm buying a piece of bacon I like to make sure there's a nice bit of fat.
I also personally prefer it when the rind has been left on.
That's a really lovely piece of bacon.
I don't soak this overnight in cold water.
I just put it into a saucepan where it's covered with cold water.
That's it. Cold water, no salt and pop it on.
We're going to leave that to boil for about 10 minutes with the lid on.
One of the nicest things I think, to have with a piece of boiled bacon
is some sort of mash potato.
I've got my potatoes in here. I like to cook them in their skins.
Cold water, a good pinch of salt.
On the heat and bring it up to the boil.
I can go ahead and make my parsley sauce.
We're going to make a little bit of roux with some butter and flour.
That's going to thicken the sauce.
We're going to need milk.
I like to just infuse the milk with a little onion and carrot and thyme and bay leaf.
You don't have to do this but it brings an extra layer of flavour
which just adds extra to the sauce.
We start off by melting the butter in a saucepan.
Then we're going to add the flour.
I'm going to cook this on a gentle heat for 3 minutes.
I want to make sure that the raw taste has been removed from the flour
and that the sauce won't taste floury at the end.
Add in the flour and then stir it in.
This is a classic French roux.
It's used for thickening savoury sauces.
Mix it in.
That's looking exactly the way I expect it to look.
Add in my milk. Strain out those vegetables.
Try not to make a mess.
Remove the wooden spoon and replace it with a whisk.
A whisk is far more effective at breaking down the lumps.
Nothing happens for a moment or two.
We need to bring it to the boil and not until it comes to a boil
will it thicken to its full potential.
The ratio of flour and butter to milk is really important.
That's what's going to give us a sauce that's neither too thin nor too thick.
That's thickened up nicely. It's not too thick.
You don't want it stodgy.
I'm going to pull that off the heat.
Traditional parsley sauce would be just that with lots of chopped parsley.
I'm going to put a little bit mustard and cheddar cheese in.
I'm using creamy mustard but you can use powdered mustard if you prefer.
Next add some freshly grated cheddar cheese.
Give it a good brisk whisk.
That's really lovely. It's really shiny.
I'm happy with the consistency of it.
Let's face it, parsley sauce if it's too thick,
if it's lumpy, if it's not served nice and hot can be fairly torturous.
But when it's smooth, creamy in consistency, full of parsley,
full of flavour, it's a really fantastic timeless thing.
The mustard and cheese contain plenty of salt so I'm just going
to season it with some black pepper.
I'm not going to put the parsley in until just before I'm going to serve it.
Then the parsley will be vibrant in colour and flavour.
There's a lot going on here and there's more to come.
After the break we're going to cook the cabbage,
prepare the creamy mustard mash and serve up the bacon.
To follow this classic Irish dish, we'll create an exotic dessert from the Middle East.
Our lovely loin of Irish bacon is cooking away,
the parsley sauce is almost ready and our potatoes are on boiling.
The perfect vegetable to serve with this is cabbage.
It's such an under-valued vegetable.
I love as many of the dark outside leaves as possible
along with the more blanched inner leaves.
Start off by removing the darker outside leaves.
Chop them off at the base.
I think it tastes best when it's a combination of the dark and white.
That's that. We'll remove the stalks from those in a moment.
Then quarter the cabbage and that fantastic sound you get when you do that.
You've got quarters.
Cut out that hard core. That does not make good eating.
With cabbage you should always cut against the grain.
This ensures that it will be finely chopped and you won't
get any big pieces of stalk.
I think that's going to be plenty for us to go with our bacon and mash potatoes.
However, let's not forget the lovely dark outer leaves.
I like to cut out the thick rib. That's tough when it's cooked.
As many of these as possible and then you get that balance
of the blanched inner heart and the darker outer leaves.
That's when cabbage tastes best.
Rinse the cabbage under the cold tap, strain it and set it aside.
Your cabbage is the very last thing to be cooked.
Once your bacon has come to the boil, a somewhat unsightly foam rises to the surface.
At this point discard the cooking water and replace it with fresh cold water.
Now return to the heat and continue to boil until it's fully cooked.
The time it takes will depend upon the size of the loin.
The potatoes are cooked and ready for peeling.
My knife pierced through them, no resistance whatsoever.
Before I start to peel the potatoes, I've just put my scallions and milk on to heat.
When I peel and mash the potatoes I want to put in boiling milk.
That's really important.
If you put cold milk in you're likely to get a gluey mash.
I've got some potatoes which have been boiled in their skins.
Boiling them in their skins helps to keep in the flavour.
Once peeled I pass them through my vegetable ricer.
This makes sure there will be absolutely no lumps in the mash.
That's all my potato pushed through. It's like a mini work-out.
As well as making something that's going to be good to eat.
Scrape all of that off.
I've got this lovely steaming hot, nearly like potato vermicelli.
I need to immediately get my boiling milk in here.
Pour in slightly less than you think.
Get in as much of that lovely green scallion as you can.
Add your milk gradually.
You don't want to add it all at once and end up with a potato soup.
Add a good knob of butter and season to taste.
That's basically a lovely soft scallion champ.
I love it when it's that soft and that comforting.
I'm just going to put a little bit of mustard in which is going to
pair brilliantly with the bacon.
Careful here. It's hot stuff.
Maybe quarter of a teaspoon.
Fold that in. Get it well mixed in.
That's perfect. Really, really lovely.
That'll be great with the bacon.
With about 5 minutes to go, transfer the cabbage into a
large pot of boiling water.
Season with salt and leave it to cook for about 5 minutes.
As soon as it is ready, transfer it into a serving dish.
Lastly, add the parsley to the sauce and it's ready to serve.
Before I serve it, I like to just cut off a little of the rind.
It's so easy then. It's just a matter of carving straight down.
No bones or anything in your way.
This would be lovely to eat at any time of year.
The sort of food I like to eat all year round.
But it would be great to have something like this on St. Patrick's Day.
Gather your friends around and celebrate some of the best things about Irish food.
Cakes are a joy or at least they should be.
It's a pity that some cake is forgettable when made with inferior ingredients
sometimes left sitting in a chilly fridge, which yields a brute of a thing.
But well made with good ingredients, cakes do what they are intended to do
which is to give pleasure.
The yogurt and lemon cake I'm going to make can be served
as a dessert and it's particularly good when something as full of
flavour as a salad of dates and oranges, which reflects its
Middle Eastern origin, is served alongside.
I've got my egg yolks in here in a bowl and I'm going to add in my
caster sugar and just a little vanilla extract.
I'm going to beat this to quite a stiff mousse.
It doesn't take very long but this is the base of the cake.
Whisk the mixture until it is a thick mousse-like consistence like this.
Add some flour. Sift it to get extra lightness.
I've got lovely thick Greek style yogurt here.
Pop this in.
There's a sweet/sour flavour from this cake.
Lemon zest. You could replace the lemon with orange.
I don't see why some pink grapefruit wouldn't be lovely.
Now the juice.
Catch the pips.
Just fold the ingredients together nice and lightly.
Cutting down through the middle of the bowl,
folding over, a 90 degree turn.
See the way it's starting to look like a batter.
Anything I haven't folded in properly already will be folded in when
I add in the rest of the egg white.
Perfect like that. Soft and wobbly but at the same time stiff.
Plop in a little to start off.
Stir that in with reasonable care.
The first portion of eggwhite prepares the mixture for the arrival of the bulk of it.
A lovely foam of eggwhite.
The reason why this cake doesn't hold its shape and height when it rises
is because there's very little flour in the cake proportionate to other ingredients.
What you don't want is to end up with any eggwhite which hasn't been cloaked by the mousse.
That traps in the flavour and eggwhite just cooked on its own
just tastes rubbery. It doesn't taste good at all.
That's really nice.
We just pop the whole thing in there like that.
Scrape everything out so as not to lose any at all.
That goes into our preheated oven.
We need to cook this for 45-50 minutes at 180 degrees.
My cake is out of the oven.
It falls slightly as always happens with this cake.
It's a very simple looking thing but with a beautiful texture.
I'm going to make a little salad of oranges and dates and mint to go with this.
This makes an absolutely perfect accompaniment.
I've got some lovely oranges which I've begun to segment.
I need to add more oranges to that and a few more bits and pieces.
Nice bright shiny oranges.
If blood oranges are in season, feel free to add some of those.
I want to add some of the zest to my segmented oranges.
The zest is where the intensity of flavour is going to come from.
Half your orange and squeeze in the juice.
Use a sieve to catch the pips.
To segment the orange, begin by slicing off both ends so the
flesh is just visible.
Using a sharp knife, cut along the white line of the pith
making sure you don't leave any of that pith attached to the flesh.
Saw your knife along until all of the rind and pith have been removed.
If you've missed any bits just cut them off at the end.
Now get the individual segments out.
The first one is always the trickiest.
Make a cut along both of the inner sides of the segment and it
should slide out with ease.
After the first one is removed, cut in towards the centre of the
orange and then just push.
Each section should come away cleanly.
It's that simple. Cut and push.
Once all of the pieces are removed, squeeze what's left behind to extract
the very last drop of juice.
The other ingredients I need to put in here, I've got a little
orange blossom water and this adds a lovely scent to the oranges.
It sort of transports you to a different part of the world.
Be careful with these scented waters.
Too much and you don't know whether you're eating something or having a bath.
The other thing I want to put in here are lovely dates.
These are lovely fat medjool dates.
There are lots of varieties of dates like there are
lots of varieties of potatoes and tomatoes.
These medjool dates are really beautiful and meaty.
Really delicious and quite sweet.
Cut around the date like that.
Just prize it apart and discard the stone.
I've got a few more of those here which I had ready to go.
Add sugar if necessary.
The amount will depend on the sweetness of the oranges.
Chop up some mint leaves and scatter them into the bowl.
Gentle little turn like that.
It's starting to look really lovely at this stage.
Lovely vibrant green, the colour of the orange and the lovely
mahogany colour of the dates.
Into a nice serving dish.
Just slide it in like that.
We might do more arranging in a moment.
That's pretty much that.
The final thing that I like to do then is to just dust
the yogurt cake with a little icing sugar.
We have the balance of the citrus fruit and the meaty juicy dates
with the lovely texture of the cake.
Really, really super sweet.
: Tracey Carr, RTE 2015.