I love cooking and I love teaching people how to cook.
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.
Scrambled eggs are something that are normally associated with breakfast
or maybe a quick supper for one when piled onto a toasted piece of sliced pan.
There's no reason however, why this delicious concoction shouldn't be served at dinner.
Perhaps something that may surprise you is that in actual fact,
it can be cooked ahead of time.
The scrambled eggs I'm going to show you are light, creamy and soft
and can be a perfect start to a balanced meal.
When you think about scrambled eggs you think correctly generally speaking,
that it's something you're going to eat straight away.
The minute they come out of the pan and form those lovely soft
creamy curds, you want to eat them straight away with some hot toast or soda bread.
Today I'm going to prepare the scrambled eggs slightly differently.
You can prepare them a little ahead of time, put them to one side,
just keep them at room temperature and then later on, pop them on some
hot toast or grilled bread and so on.
I've cracked some eggs into a bowl.
Season them up with some salt and black pepper.
Beat your eggs pretty well.
As soon as the egg starts to drop off the whisk like that
with no resistance, you're pretty much there.
The next thing I need is a little cream on top of the smoked salmon.
I'm going to bring that to a simmer.
If I cook the smoked salmon too much, it will lose some of its charm.
Just warming it up slightly.
Put a knob of butter into a low-sided pan and add the beaten eggs.
Now with a flat-edged wooden spoon, gently stir the mixture backwards and forwards.
Nothing dramatic happens with scrambled egg for a few moments and that's good.
If it happens very quickly, you're probably cooking it on too high a heat.
There's virtually nothing going on there so far.
My salmon has come to a simmer. That's perfect.
I can turn the heat off under that and take it off the heat completely.
Back to my scrambled eggs.
You can see the way the egg is starting to take shape.
It's starting to cook.
It starts to catch on the bottom but keep lifting that up.
This is pretty much there.
When it's ready, it's ready.
That conventionally is the sort of texture you'd like your scrambled
egg to be if you're going to eat it straight away.
Well that's the way I'd like it. Soft and creamy.
To stop it cooking, straight away we're going to add in our smoked salmon and cream.
You see the way it's taken on a lovely creamy consistency.
I need to take it out of the saucepan straight away.
You could eat that straight away and the joy of that.
That's my scrambled eggs ready.
Now I'm going to grill my bread.
I'm using sourdough bread which has a wonderful slightly bitter taste.
Grilling it this way not only brings out the flavour
but also lends it a wonderful colour and texture.
While that's grilling I'm going to talk about another thing that would
be delicious to serve with these scrambled eggs or
in the scrambled eggs if you wanted to.
That's some mushrooms.
I've got a mixture of lovely Irish mushrooms here which are sometimes
called wild mushrooms but they're cultivated so really exotic mushrooms
is the best way to describe them.
We've sauteed some of them in olive oil, a little butter.
A little bit of garlic if you wish.
Perhaps a few drops of lemon juice, salt and pepper.
These will be delicious just mixed through the scrambled egg
with the cream in the same way the smoked salmon was.
Or today I'm going to scatter some of these over the scrambled egg
and smoked salmon when I put it on the grilled bread.
These have been grilling away and there's smoke.
Unfortunately if you want nice grilled bread, there's going to have to be a little bit of smoke.
It's like if you're grilling a steak.
That's beautiful.
That's a beautiful layer of flavour.
That one is looking beautiful as well.
Grill them on the other side for a little while.
A little patience is required here.
Turn the heat off and take them off.
At this point, this bread is best when it's eaten hot just off the pan.
That lovely just cooked sort of flavour.
At this point I like to put a little butter on or you could
put on a little olive oil.
I'm going to do both just to show you the options.
Another day you might be rubbing them lightly with a cut clove of garlic.
I don't need the garlic today because I've got my chives going on
and that brings in that onion family flavour.
See the way the scrambled egg is still soft and lovely.
The consistency of the scrambled egg is the same as when it came out of the pan.
That's because the cream stopped it from cooking and also
it softened the texture slightly.
A little sprinkle of chopped chives.
I've got some sprigs of chervil here.
The chervil will be particularly good with the smoked salmon.
That's that ready to go to the table.
You could describe this as being country cooking if you want to.
It's robust but at the same time it's elegant and not too heavy.
This is the sort of food that I love to eat.
When I'm cooking I sometimes love to bring together the flavours of different cultures.
In this next dish, it's lovely sweet Irish lamb combined with a taste of the Middle East.
These spiced lamb koftas which look like little meatballs,
are juicy, shiny, slightly sticky and they come with
a small kick of chilli heat.
These hazelnuts have been roasting for about 10 minutes in the oven.
I'm going to allow them to cool.
Then we'll peel them, chop them and sprinkle them over our salad
which we're going to serve with the koftas a little bit later.
I've got my sweet minced lamb as I like to describe it.
The important thing to remember when using mince of any description,
whether it's for a lamb burger or a kofta,
is that you need a nice proportion of fat in the mince.
You can see the way my mince is flecked with little bits of fat.
The other thing that's crucially important that the mince has been freshly minced.
The rest of my ingredients. I've got some date syrup.
It's a wonderful thing. It looks a little like treacle.
It's just made literally from dates.
I'm going to add a dessert spoon of that.
That goes in there.
That'll give a distinctive flavour and a lovely glossy sheen
to the koftas when they're cooked.
The other defining ingredient in this recipe is a fantastic thing called zatar.
That was as exotic as Ali Baba a couple of years ago but
now it's widely available.
It's going to give a lovely Middle Eastern flavour.
I love when you take a fabulous Irish ingredient like lamb and
then bring some ingredients in from some other part of the world
to add a little bit of excitement.
A little bit of onion to add sharpness and enrich the flavours.
When you use onion on a grater, it is going to make your eyes tingle a little bit.
See the way it breaks up to a lovely soft paste.
It's really sweet tasting when it's like that. It's fantastic.
Grate in some garlic using a microplane.
This gives a lovely flavoursome puree.
A little chilli as you would expect from that part of the world.
I've left the seeds in because I've got a very mild chilli here.
A pinch of salt and some black pepper.
That's everything in so let's mix it.
Wooden spoon. You could get your hands in if you wanted to.
I don't want to beat it too much because I don't want to compact the meat.
That looks nicely mixed. Not too compact.
What I like to do is to fry off a little of this mixture
before I form it into my little balls, to make sure the seasoning is correct.
It would be a shame to cook it, form them, fry them and
then think I wish I'd put another little bit of salt in there.
A little of the lamb.
You only need to taste a tiny bit.
I can flatten it down so it cooks nice and quickly.
Mmm. It's delicious. Really, really good.
Totally happy with that.
I can now form the little koftas into the shape that I want.
I wouldn't do these the previous day because of the raw onion.
Several hours ahead they'll be fine.
Pop them back into the fridge for cooking later on.
That's my koftas ready.
I'm going to set those aside for now and make my chilli oil.
Chilli oil is a useful garnish, especially so with this meat.
Finely chop some chillies and heat them in some extra virgin olive oil.
Do not boil the oil.
Season with a generous helping of salt and a small sprinkling of sugar.
When the chillies have tenderised strain them.
Using a pestle, push the pulp through the sieve.
This releases more of that spicy chilli flavour.
Add your remaining pulp back into the bowl which may seem a bit odd.
But it adds lovely bits to your oil.
Give it a quick stir and it's ready.
That's our chilli oil ready.
After the break I'm going to cook the lamb koftas and make
an amazingly quick and delicious buttermilk dressing.
Then we're going to get decadent with a luxurious chocolate and caramel mousse.
Before the break I formed my lamb koftas which are
now ready to be fried.
I've also made the first of my dressings, the fiery chilli oil.
To counter balance that heat I'm now going to prepare
a fresh and cooling buttermilk dressing.
I've got some yogurt, beautiful unsweetened yogurt.
Then an unusual ingredient to use in a sauce or a dressing in this part
of the world, buttermilk.
We're all used to using buttermilk in soda bread because that's the essential thing.
Add in your buttermilk and grate in a little garlic.
Yogurt is one of the most difficult ingredients to season.
When you taste it you get confused between your mouth and your mind
between the acidity in the yogurt.
You're not sure if you're tasting salt or if you're tasting acidity.
A little pepper.
Then I'm going to give it a little mix.
Is that not the simplest, quickest, easiest dressing you've ever seen?
It's just a creamy consistency like that.
That's perfect. Now back to our koftas.
Get my pan on heating. A nice heavy cast iron pan.
A little olive oil.
I don't need too much because there's a little bit of fat
in the koftas and that's going to be released and
that will help to grease the pan as well.
You can see my pan is nice and hot. That is really important.
Don't overfill the frying pan.
Better to do them in two batches than to overfill the pan and bring the
temperature of the pan down too much and have them stewing on you.
Let's give them a little shake.
I'm going to leave them alone, even though I've been shaking them.
I don't want to shake them too much because I do want a lovely slight
caramelisation or colour to build up on the outside.
While they are frying I'm going to keep a close eye on them.
I'm going to just deal with my hazelnuts.
We roasted them in the oven for about 10 minutes to
increase the flavour and also to help us to remove the skins.
I don't bother putting them into a tea-towel.
I just take them in my hand and give them a good rub.
I'll put them into that bowl and look at my koftas.
Turning them over.
The date syrup is what gives them the lovely rich colour.
Turn the heat down nice and low. We want them to cook through.
I'm going to serve these family style.
I've got a beautiful big dish here.
You can do individual plates if you want to.
Lay down a bed of fragrant rocket leaves and drizzle over the buttermilk dressing.
Already this is starting to look like something that might taste quite nice.
Next are the koftas.
You can see the lovely syrupy glaze that's been formed by the date syrup.
That's what gives them that lustrous shine.
The colour of those is just perfect.
Hazelnuts. A gentle but thorough sprinkle.
A little of our chilli oil and some chilli pieces.
They sort of stain the yogurt dressing and the salad.
Don't overdo it with the chilli. It's all about a balance of flavours.
A little bit of spiky heat being tempered by the roast of the hazelnut
and the sweetness of the meat.
The only final thing I'm going to do is I'm going to put
a pinch of cumin on.
I have some cumin which I roasted already and I have ground.
Think of the cumin the way you think of a final sprinkling of salt.
That's it.
Lovely flavours, textures, colours,
different food cultures all on one plate.
I think this is just lovely.
Chocolate is almost universally popular but it's also an ingredient
that needs to be carefully handled as it can be temperamental.
Don't let that put you off as a good chocolate pudding is really magical.
This chocolate and caramel mousse is rich as you'd expect
but the texture and flavour are enhanced by the addition
of the burnt sugar caramel, making it perhaps a more grown-up dessert.
This is a fairly labour intensive finale to a meal but
it can be made a day or two ahead which helps you to get organised.
There are hundreds of different recipes for chocolate mousse
and almost everybody has their own favourite one.
I have a favourite and it's this one which is a chocolate and caramel mousse.
To start the mousse I'm melting the chocolate with a little bit of butter.
I'm using normal Irish salty butter.
You could use unsalted butter if you want.
I find in the case of chocolate mousse, the salty Irish butter
which I love brings out the flavour of the chocolate a little bit more.
The other thing we need to get going is our caramel.
Add water to the sugar and place it over a gentle heat.
The key here is to ensure that the sugar dissolves
before the water comes to the boil.
That makes it less likely for you to have crystals in the caramel.
I stir it a few times while it's coming up to the boil,
just to encourage the sugar to dissolve.
The next stage is to prepare my eggs.
I'm going to put my egg yolks into one bowl and my egg whites into another.
The better the quality your eggs are, the more delicious the mousse is going to be.
Oops. Careful.
Just got away with that.
Whisk your egg yolks for about 10 minutes but don't wander off
and forget about your caramel.
This is at a crucial stage in the saucepan.
The sugar and water is starting to caramelise.
This is the stage that if you'd left your wooden spoon in there
you'd be tempted to stir it. That would be a fiasco.
The cold spoon would block the caramel.
Swirl the pan to and fro gently.
Conventionally the colour that's in there now,
that is pretty much the colour of a normal caramel sauce.
Here we want a burnt caramel.
With the sugar, we burn it to get a bit of bitterness in there so
it just isn't an onslaught of sweetness.
It's the lovely caramel flavour as well.
You need to be a little bit brave with this.
See where we are now. That's what I'm after.
That really dark. The deepest chestnut colour.
You see a different smoke starting to come out of the pan.
Have your water ready, to stop it cooking.
A slightly volcanic explosion.
You see what happens.
You get two different consistencies.
The water we've just poured on almost sits on top of the caramel.
Don't be temped to stir it.
Swirl it like that.
Because we're making a mousse, we need to cook the caramel further until it's thick.
I think it's there at this stage.
Yeah, the drops are falling off the spoon more slowly.
The caramel has become thicker.
If you leave it there for a moment you'll see the finest
thread of caramel just starting to develop.
Straight away with the machine running, onto the egg yolks.
Pour it onto the side of the bowl, not onto the whisk.
If you pour it onto the whisk it will shoot around the side
of the bowl and stick there.
When you get the caramel onto the egg yolks you can take a sigh of relief.
That's the dangerous part over.
Turn the machine back on and we'll let it whisk for about 10 minutes.
My mousse has been beating for about 10 minutes and it's ready.
This has developed into a beautiful rich, creamy, quite thick mousse.
In this case, it's one of those mousses that if you make a
figure of 8, it holds the figure of 8.
The smell of the caramel is really rich and delicious.
Now I'm ready to fold in my chocolate.
We melted the chocolate and butter together nice and gently.
It's come together into a lovely smooth mass like that. Perfect.
A little vanilla extract.
Extract rather than essence so that we get that lovely pure flavour.
Mix the two together and you'll see the most beautiful combinations
of colours when we swirl the dark brown chocolate into the paler caramel.
It's chocolate and caramel heaven.
This moment when you get that fabulous swirls.
Make sure all of the chocolate has been blended into the caramel
so you get the single colour before you fold in the egg whites.
It just takes a little bit of work but it's fun work.
That's lovely.
Now we have a lovely single colour there.
The final thing we need to do is add in our egg whites.
When I'm folding egg whites into a heavy mixture like this,
I like to take a portion of the egg white first and
just stir it in and that softens the mixture in preparation for
the bigger volume of the egg white.
This requires some robust arm work.
Once the first amount of egg white has been incorporated,
you're ready to add the rest.
Continue to fold in until every last drop has been absorbed.
This takes a moment or two because I don't want to have any
of the unmixed bits of egg whites visible in the finished mousse.
It just doesn't taste nice and it doesn't look good.
Every now and then I like to give the bowl a 360 degree round around the edge.
That's it.
You see the way it's almost sticky looking.
That's exactly the consistency I want. That's ready.
Into my serving bowl.
I'm using a rather old-fashioned dish.
You don't end up with a lot of mousse but this is very rich.
So small portions.
That's that. Put it into the fridge until it gets nice and firm.
I'll just do one single serving.
A spoon of the mousse.
I don't get any way cheffy about this. Just drop a spoon like that.
Then pour on the cream.
Not too much.
A little extra caramel sauce.
Then if you wish, a few raspberries.
Rich, delicious, easy to make ahead of time.
Full of really valuable techniques from the point of view of learning
about making caramel, about making an egg mousse,
about folding them in.
It's a rich, delicious, no holds barred chocolate caramel experience.
I hope you enjoy it.
: Tracey Carr, RTE 2015.