Paul Flynn’s roasted spiced plums, oatcakes, apple compote and ginger ice cream

The recipe below is one I was walked through by Paul Flynn during our food bloggers’ weekend in Ireland. Paul has been called Ireland’s greatest living chef (“I don’t know who the dead ones are,” he says). As Nico Ladenis’ head chef back in London, he collected a positive galaxy of Michelin stars; and it was a surprise to everybody when he upped sticks and returned to Ireland, eventually settling back in his quiet hometown of Dungarvan to open his own restaurant with his wife Maire.

Spiced plums with apple compote, ginger ice cream and oatcakes
Roasted spiced plums, oatcakes, apple compote and ginger ice cream

That restaurant, the Tannery, has been running for ten years now, and these days also supports a cookery school bristling with technology (Paul says that shortly, you’ll be able to stream video of lessons you’ve participated in over the internet), a rambling kitchen garden, supplying all the restaurant’s vegetables and herbs, that overlooks Paul’s old primary school (coincidentally, also the primary school of Niamh from Eat Like a Girl – there must be something in the water), and the Tannery Townhouse, a pretty little boutique hotel around the corner from the restaurant. We visited the cookery school for a lunch demonstration – there’s nothing like watching a chef like Paul Flynn prepare your dinner to work up the old appetite – the fruits of which we later got to empty down our throats like starving baby birds.

Bloggers bolting bouillabaisse
Bloggers bolting bouillabaisse

I don’t usually get a lot out of cookery lessons; it is annoying to be taught not just how to suck eggs but also how to separate and whisk them when you’ve been doing it for years. Paul’s great, though, tailoring classes to the skills level of his students without an iota of condescension, and I really enjoyed our few hours in the kitchen. Classes vary in length from the five-day, hands-on courses to evening demonstrations where a group can watch as Paul talks them through a three-course meal.

Paul Flynn and bloggers
L-R Signe Johansen, Denise Medrano, me, Paul Flynn, Ailbhe Phelan, Niamh Shields, Aoife Finnegan

The recipe below is for oatcakes with spiced plums, and despite (or perhaps because of) the simplicity of its four elements, it absolutely blew me away on the day. You know those Prince Charles oatcakes from Dutchy Originals? The ones that taste a bit like salty cardboard? These are absolutely nothing like that. Creaming the butter and sugar together until the mixture is white and fluffy, then resting the dough (this is important – it needs to be very firmly chilled) in the fridge for several hours results in an almost shortbread-like texture, with a gloriously nutty flavour from the oats. These little oatcakes are very easy to put together, and the dough, uncooked, freezes very well, so it’s worth making a large batch and taking sticks of the dough out so you can cook some oatcakes fresh whenever you want some. As well as matching effortlessly with these plums, the oatcakes are beyond fabulous with a nice salty cheese. Over to Paul for the recipe (and thanks to Tourism Ireland for the two group photos):

Oatcakes

225g butter
80g sugar
100g flour
200g jumbo oatflakes

Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the flour and oatflakes. Roll into sausage shapes, wrap in clingfilm and rest in the fridge. Cut into 1cm thick discs and place on a baking tray. Bake in 150ºC oven for 15 minutes.

Stem ginger ice-cream

375ml milk
375ml cream
125g egg yolks
125g sugar
6 pieces of stem ginger, chopped

Mix the cream and milk.  Bring to the boil with the ginger.  Whisk the sugar and egg yolks together. Add the boiling milk and cream to the sugar and egg mixture.  Bring back up over a medium heat, stirring all the time until the custard starts to thicken.  Strain and allow to cool and when cold, churn in an ice cream machine.

Apple compote

2 Granny Smith apples, peeled and diced
1 heaped tablespoon golden caster sugar

Bring apples  to the boil with the sugar and stew gently until they start to break down and the juices start to flow. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Spiced roasted plums

Allow 2 per person, cut in half

To make the spiced butter:

100g soft butter
½ tablespoon ground allspice
1 tablespoon golden caster sugar

Combine the butter with the allspice and sugar and roll into a sausage shape and chill.  To serve, cut a thin slice of butter and place on the plums, and place under a hot grill until bubbling.

To put the dish together, spoon some of the compote onto the oatcakes, and top with plum halves. Serve with a dollop of ginger ice cream.

Blogging from Ballymaloe

“…And we got to spend an afternoon with Darina Allen at Ballymaloe,” I said to some Irish friends back here in the UK, on my return from our bloggers’ pootle around the foodier bits of Cork and Waterford. Frequently, Irish eyes are held to be smiling. On this occasion, they all rolled back in their respective skulls with envy.

Darina Allen
Darina Allen

“Darina Allen? She’s the only person whose recipes I use! Em…apart from yours, of course, so,” said one friend, upon which she immediately started fiddling with her beer. “You are so lucky,” said another. “I would kill to spend an afternoon with Darina Allen.”

Her husband (English), shuffled away from her nervously on his bottom. “Who’s Darina Allen?”

This comes under the class of questions that you should never ask an Irish person if you do not wish to be scoffed at vigorously. “You know your woman Delia Smith? Like that, but good. And organic. And without the football and the shite food,” said one angry Irishwoman. “She is only the whole reason that Irish food is any good these days. And you know that pot-roast you like? And the raspberry roulade? And all the stuff from that big white book in the kitchen? I can’t believe you don’t know who she is.”

“Jaysus,” agreed Irish friend #1.

Steps at the Ballymaloe student cottages
Steps at the Ballymaloe student cottages

Darina is, in fact, the dynamic force behind the world-renowned Ballymaloe cookery school, set in the middle of its own 100-acre organic farm and gardens. She’s head of the country’s slow food movement, is currently very deeply involved in a project to get farmers’ markets embedded in Irish shopping culture, is the author of a vast number of cookery books, and, alongside teaching at the cookery school, works as a TV presenter and newspaper columnist. She might well be the most energetic person I have ever met – our meeting at Midleton farmers’ market resulted in an impromptu whistlestop tour of the market, followed by sublime pizzas at the Ballymaloe cookery school’s Saturday Pizza Kitchen (a business idea totally out of left-field but typically popular and successful), and a long tour of the gardens and farm. At all stages in the day, Darina was multitasking. Collecting firewood as we walked around the gardens; shouting encouragement and advice to gardening staff; swiping invisible motes of dust off pristine teaching kitchens; making sure the egg incubators were working properly; poking at piles of rotting seaweed composting down for the farm’s potatoes; discussing lists of the very few ingredients, like flour, which need to be ordered in because the farm can’t produce enough for the school, with a chef jogging alongside us; picking wet walnuts; checking the locks on the greenhouses: all I was doing was following her around, taking pictures and making notes, and it was enough to leave me breathless, exhausted and craving a glass of something strong with ice in.

It was all rather brilliant. I left wanting to take up Darina as my new exercise regime.

Utensils
In the teaching kitchen

There’s so much emphasis at Ballymaloe on the time and effort it takes to raise food properly. Cookery students  “adopt” a fertilised chicken egg and watch the egg’s progression from potential scramble to chick to hen. Their first task at the school is to plant seeds (a large part of the grounds is given over to student vegetable plots) which grow into vegetables over their time at the school. Food raised with care and respect costs time and money; there are good reasons why you should be deeply suspicious of a £4 supermarket chicken. There is solar panelling (“Much more effective than they thought it would be, because of the reflections from the sea,” crowed Darina), rainwater collection, all that seaweed being used as a fertiliser (“We do not use cow muck from cows we do not raise ourselves. Who knows what they have been eating and what drugs they have ingested?”), a refusal to take up Government grants which might impact on the way things are done here, and more ethical responsibility in the stewardship of the land than you can shake a stick at. (Don’t, by the way. Darina will take it from you and use it for firewood in the bread oven.)

Ballymaloe gardens
Ballymaloe gardens

Because much of the food produced here is not being sold, but being used for teaching purposes, plenty of produce is made in the old-fashioned ways, exempt from EU legislation about temperature control, hairnets and bleach. So you’ll find a breezy barn whose ceiling is packed with hooks from which charcuterie dangles, a shed for cheesemaking with big fermentation tanks alongside cloth-wrapped cheeses stacked on the wooden shelves, and garlic drying in the sun.

Greenhouse
One of the cavernous greenhouses - parsley, lettuce, marigold for salads, tomatoes.

Darina and the rest of the staff at the cookery school have done the seemingly impossible – turned traditional, ethical, methods of raising, marketing and cooking food into something that’s not so much a business as a movement that seems to be sweeping through Ireland. Ballymaloe is still one of the most respected places to train as a professional chef, but also runs short courses and afternoon demonstrations for amateurs – which I mean in the word’s strictest sense of those who are passionate – in food. If you’re the short-course holiday type, I can’t think of a lovelier or more inspiring place to spend your time.

Saturday pizza
Saturday pizza from Philip Dennhardt, one of the school's tutors and winner of our group's "Chef we would most like to abduct" prize.
Darina in one of the teaching kitchens
Darina testing the day's output - a gluten-free bread for a class of coeliacs - in one of the teaching kitchens
Borage
Borage
Ballymaloe chickens
Some of the farm's chickens, enjoying a dust bath.
Gourds
Gourds from the farm, ready for Halloween.
Herbaceous borders
Herbaceous borders, which provide flowers in season for the school and restaurant.

A weekend in Ireland

The recession has hit hard in Ireland. For the country’s food businesses, it’s been a double-edged sword; some restaurants are now choosing to open seasonally, or for only part of the week, and you can’t help but notice the closed shops as you drive through the small towns.

Kinsale harbour

But closures aren’t the whole of the story. Markets and local producers are winning shoppers away from the supermarkets with some superb produce and giddily good pricing, while also weaning the restaurant business off reliance on wholesalers; most of the menus you’ll see are packed to the gills with meat, fish and vegetables sourced from only a few miles around. Innovation in food, from special Saturday pizza kitchens, to Irish-Indian spice blenders and microbreweries specialising in the kinds of real ale that knock Guinness into a cocked hat, are under every mossy stone you overturn – and they’re drawing in the punters. And best of all, you remember all that stuff you’ve heard about Ireland being an expensive place to visit? Not true any more. This is a perfect time to visit the island; you’ll holiday like a king, and while you’re doing it, you’ll be supporting an admirable local food economy which really deserves a few of your vacation Euros.

McGrath butchers, Lismore
The McGrath family in Lismore has been farming for ten generations, and in butchery for four. They supply many local restaurants and markets with their own grass-fed Aberdeen Angus and Hereford Cross, as well as running a traditional shop on Lismore high street.

I was in Cork and Waterford for three nights as a guest of Tourism Ireland, who have done all the work for you if you fancy planning a gourmet trip to the country, with the very informative foodie bit of their website. The schedule they’d worked out with the brilliant Niamh from Eat Like A Girl had five food bloggers churning up the countryside in a minibus, speeding (I mean that literally; Paddy, our driver, was in a constant hurry to get back to his wife) from market to museum to butcher to cookery school to farm to…kayak in an exhaustive tour of what the two counties have to offer. I can heartily recommend kayaking through Cork’s two main city channels at sunset if you’re in the mood to burn off some of what you’ve eaten; Jim and Barry from Atlantic Sea Kayaking put even the most nervous of us at our ease – and nobody got wet.

Paddy in the kitchen
Paddy, our much-put-upon driver, breaks for Mikado biscuits and Barry's tea in Mary McGrath's kitchen while we tour the abattoir.

If you’re in the country, it’s really worth your while making use of the refrigerator in your hotel room, packing a coolbag in your suitcase and shopping for some market produce while you’re there. Stand-outs which you can transport quite easily include the smoked fish, especially Frank Hederman’s exceptional product from the Bevelly Smokehouse. We bumped into Frank himself twice, once at the English Market in Cork, where Kay Harte from the Farmgate Café and restaurant took the time to give us a market tour, and once at the lovely little farmers’ market in Midleton. In the winter, try his buttery-smooth smoked mackerel; Frank says the fish don’t eat over the winter and stop producing stomach acid, which results in a much less acid flesh in the fish as a whole. However it’s done, I’ve never sampled a better smoked mackerel. If you can’t get to Cork, Frank also supplies Selfridges in London with his silky smoked salmon and some other smoked products.

Frank Hederman
Frank Hederman gives an impromptu salmon demonstration at the English Market in Cork

Spiced beef is a Cork favourite. The shipping lanes which used to pass through Cork at the height of the British Empire (you can learn more about this at the city’s wonderful butter museum, where we saw a 1000-year-old chunk of bog butter preserved in a case) injected the city’s traditional cuisine with flavours not seen in the rest of the country. Paul Coughlan at the English Market is making spiced beef to his family’s old recipe, (“We use cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, pepper…and some secrets”) , brined in a wet spice mix, poached, then rolled in a dry mix. Thin slivers are terrific as a charcuterie with drinks; in Cork it’s very popular at Christmas, and again, it’ll travel well in your suitcase.

O'Reilly's, English Market, Cork
Honeycomb tripe being weighed out at O'Reilly's in the English Market

Local soda breads are available all over the country, from the very dark brown kind made with molasses to the pale golden kind, sometimes spiked with caraway seeds. There’s not as much in the way of yeasted artisanal bakery here as you might find in other countries, soda bread having such an important role in Irish food tradition, but we found some very good breads at the markets we visited, all the better for being made in small batches. And the sausages – we enjoyed some from Catherine O’Mahoney at the English Market, who is a third-generation butcher – along with black and white pudding for breakfast, are a local necessity. Braver souls should head for O’Reilly’s in the English Market to sample driheen, a very traditional beef-blood sausage flavoured with tansy. It’s traditionally served with tripe in a bechamel; O’Reilly’s is one of the last places in the country that still makes and sells what’s becoming a fast-vanishing local speciality. Driheen and tripe are also served at the Farmgate café in the market, which I’ll expand on in a later post.

Declan Ryan
Declan Ryan from the Arbutus Bakery in Cork at Midleton Farmers Market

We saw lots of soft farm cheeses; these won’t travel so well, but can make a lovely picnic if you’re foraging for lunch at a market. Desmond and Gabriel are two hard cheeses from the West Cork Natural Cheese Company, and are sold all over; they’ve a Parmesan-like tang to them, and are well worth bringing home with you. Most places selling the cheeses should let you try a nibble before you buy. I also stocked up with some spice mixes from Green Saffron, an Irish food success story who blend a dizzying array of spice mixtures, and a few packets of the house blends from the tiny Cork Coffee Roasters.

Cormac O'Dwyer, Dungarvan Brewing Company
Cormac O'Dwyer, head brewer at the Dungarvan Brewing Company. Microbrew is still a very minority way to do business in Ireland, and Cormac's beers are a fine thing indeed.

There was much more to the weekend’s gorging than you’ll want to read at one sitting, so I’ll follow this up later with a post touching on some of the restaurants we ate at, some of the cookery demonstrations we enjoyed, and some of the hotels we stayed in. Many thanks especially to Niamh “Eat Like A Girl” Shields, Sarah and Aoife from Tourism Ireland, and Denise “Wine Sleuth” Medrano, Ailbhe “Simply Splendiferous” Phelan and Signe “Scandilicious” Johansen for being among the best company I’ve ever had the pleasure to spend a weekend with. I’m off to fry up some white pudding.

Cork Coffee Roasters
Signe and Aoife grab a much-needed mug of Morning Growler at the Cork Coffee Roasters.