Recipe: Foil Potato

One of the simplest, but tastiest dish for a cold winter night, but actually also in summer for a BBQ is a foil potato, with some ham, butter and Sour cream on top.

Boil first a big potato for about 20 minutes in a pot,
than remove it, slice it open on one site to make space for the ham and some butter. Wrap it all in foil, than grill for an other 20 minutes in the oven.


Once you remove it from the oven, open it up, and serve with Sour Cream and a bit of parsley, salt to taste.

Its tasty and so easy to prepare.

Hope you like it,
let me know in the comments !

Recipe: Spring Rolls Sauce

There is no Spring Roll, without a sauce to dip in, or in general there should be no chines dish without a dip in a yummy sauce, in my opinion !

Here a simple but delicious recipe how to make your own Sauce.

Ingredients:

1 piece garlic
3 pieces chilli
150 gram white sugar
1 small carrot
2 teaspoon fish sauce
1 1/2 teaspoon corn starch
200 ml water
80 ml balsamic or (red vinegar)


press the garlic through a garlic press, chop the chilli and carrot fine, than add all the ingredients in a pot and bring it to boil, so the sugar dissolve.
Simmer the Sauce for about an other 10 minutes, so the carrot pieces get soft. When you mix in the corn starch, take out 3 teaspoons of the sauce and mix it well in a bowl with the cornstarch.

When you add the cornstarch mix into the pot make sure there are no clumps.


You can enjoy the Sauce warm or let it cool down, it tastes really nice !

Android Application for the Phoenix

Checkout the new Android App I did create for the Phoenix Bar & Restaurant in Clonakilty. If you are interested to get a own customized App for Android or other operations systems drop me an email

Restaurant Review / Fastnet Catch

Checkout my latest review about the Fastnet Catch Restaurant in clonakilty on West Cork Times

I had yummi Fish and Chips

Canard confites - Leg of the duck

It seems to be a family tradition that each time I visit my in laws, or they my little family, that we eat a Duck confit.

A additional tradition since last summer holiday and xmas is that we break the can opener, when trying to pen the quiet stable cans.

Once opened however, the truth goodies are shown, in a huge amount of fat which helps them to stay preserved for at least 6 months.

To checkout the process how the legs are preserved, checkout the wikipedia page

Anyway, once you managed to open the cans you just reheat the legs in a bit of fat and serve them traditionally with some potatoes.

Do not forget to have a good glass of wine with it, traditional French of course a red one !

How to make the prefect fried rice ?

Fried rice is a important side dish when making any Chinese dish.
But how do you get a perfect fried rice ?

I usually wash the rice once, boil it in a pot for approx. 10 Minutes, 1 cup rice, 2 cups water.

When the rice is nearly finished, but still a bit wet, i bring my wok to be pretty hot, and with 2 spoons of oil I stir fry 2 eggs.

Than I remove the eggs from the wok, clean the wok and add another 2 spoons of oil and than stir fry my rice, mixing the eggs and a bit of soy sauce to taste under it.

Thats the magic !

How do you cook your rice ?
Let me know in the comments !

Czech Goulash with Peppers

Here a great recipe I got from my friend Frank,
who wrote it down with the help of his Czech friend. Thanks Frank !

Its a different approach to Irish stew or the Austrian Goulash you have seen earlier on this blog.

Ingredients:

1 kg stewing beef
2 Tbs lard or vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic,mashed
1 Tbs paprika
2 large green peppers, sliced
1 can of tomatoes
1/2 tsp marjoram
3 large potatoes, diced
2 Tbs butter
2 Tbs flour
juice of 1 lemon


Heat the oil on medium-high in a large pot. When quite hot, put in the beef and brown all.
Add the chopped onion and the garlic and fry, stirring occasionally, till almost golden.

Also add the green peppers and fry for another couple of minutes.

Add about 500ml of water, then
mix in marjoram, and the tomatoes.

Season well with salt and freshly ground black
pepper. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce the heat and let simmer till tender, about 1-1/2 hours.

Add the potatoes and cook till tender, about 20 minutes.

To thicken the sauce use some corn or ordinary flour and after add the lemon juice,

Check the seasoning for salt and pepper.

Serve with bread and a green salad.

Happy Valentines

Happy Valentines,

I love this romantic days but what I do not like is to be forced to buy flowers on specific days, my wife would expect anyway to do so.

So all you men out there, why not cooking something sweet for your Sweetheart today,
its so simple !
Love goes through the stomach we say in Austria.

Turkey Curry with Rice

Its about time to get rid of more of that turkey in the freezer, I need to make space for fish which I hopefully will start catching soon of the peer.

Ingredients:
Turkey
Peppers   (yellow, green or red, whatever you like)
Onion
chicken stock
curry powder
salt and pepper


So first I fried a bit the onion and Turkey, and since its a curry you can actually add anything you like in it. In my case i added some peppers, potatoes, and so on. With the chicken stock I top up the curry a bit, and let it boil. This way i cook the potato in the curry. Add curry powder and spices to taste.

Its best served with some rice,
its a nice thing to eat if you made it spicy on a cold winter night.

Enjoy !

Recipe: Liptauer

Quark is the base to this recipe. The Soft cheese Quark is well known by German,Austrian and Swiss people for its freshness, and to make delicious dishes out of it.

German speakers all over Ireland lookout for Quark where it could be bought in Supermarkets. I found it in my local store,
and here is a list for all other Shops Ireland wide who got it in Stock.

Today I want to share with you my recipe for a tasty bread spread called Liptauer, which is not only loved by German Speakers.

Ingredients:
200 gram Quark - Soft cheese (from Kilbeg)
1 Onion fine chopped
3 teaspoon paprika powder
1 Table spoon mustard
1 Table spoon carpers
Salt and Pepper
100 gram butter

Let the butter go soft and mix it with a hand mixer so you get little pieces,
add in the other ingredients and mix well. Salt to taste, that's it..

It tastes fantastic on brown bread, or in a sandwich.

Traditionally there are many different ways you can prepare this bread spread, some people add sardines and other ingredients.

Please share your recipe in the comments if you like !

Enjoy

Recycling Lamb leftovers - Lamb spring rolls

You actually not want to wait until spring, I usually always face the same problem when I cook a Lamb tajine:

Leftovers, so this time I did something different, since I had to train a bit how to make proper spring rolls, I used the leftovers as following:

Ingredients:
lamb, cooked and small diced
Sweet and normal potato ( one each)
2-3 spring onions with the green
rice paper
spices to taste ( I put a bit mince sauce and soy sauce in)
Bit of mayonnaise

Mix all the ingredients to a good mass,
than add each rice sheet in very hot water for about 10 seconds. Than fill the paper with some of your mix and fold it.

Serve with dark soy sauce or any sauce of your choice. Enjoy !

Recipe: Butter Steak Pepper Sauce

Thats my own little invention, a delicious steak sauce ready in 5 minutes, with a little help from Levi Roots Reggae Reggae Sauce.


Ingredients:
Reggae Reggae Sauce
Salt / Pepper to taste
100 grams butter
200 ml water
2 soup spoon cornflour
1 glass red wine

Heat water and melt butter in it, mix a bit of the reggae sauce into it, add the red wine and salt/pepper, bring to boil and than mix the cornflour into the sauce to thicken it.

Adjust ingredients to taste,
thats it.

As mentioned, the sauce goes great with steaks, but can be used with any other BBQed food.

How to make crepe – spring roll wrapper

Ingredients

230 gram  flour
80 gram of corn starch
1 egg
1/2 tsp. of salt
200 ml of water (you may have to adjust this depending on the quality of the flour and starch you use)



In a mixing bowl, beat the egg. Add the water and mix.
Add the flour, starch and salt and mix until well blended.

Place the frying pan on the stove and turn on the heat to medium-low.
Pour a part of the batter into the pan, swirling the pan to evenly distribute the batter on the bottom.

Cook the batter until the crepe (it is a crepe, really) pulls away from the sides of the pan (see the photo), about two minutes.

Using a spatula, flip the crepe over and cook the other side for a minute.

Okay, stoves have different settings and temperature and the cooking time of two minutes is relative. How can you tell if the crepe is ready to be flipped over? It is ready when the spatula slides easily underneath. If the crepe wrinkles, that means it is still too wet. If you flip it at this stage, it is still sticky, it’s difficult to flip over and it might crumple and stick in places, as shown on the picture.

It really takes time and effort to make the wrapper yourself, so unless you have plenty time at hand I recommend to buy them at your local Asia store.

Education for cooking in Ireland

I recently spoke to somebody in the Spa about cooking education in Ireland,
and my opinion was there was no proper education here, unlike Austria where we have specialized schools which teach for 3 years the art of cooking (3x3 month course while working in a Hotel/Restaurant)

It happened to be that Fergal McCarthy (Director of the Kinsale College of Further Education) happened to overhear the conversation and so I got now a interesting info to share with you, in case you didn't know as well.

There are specialist courses,here the link to the course.

DeBarra's Gig Listing

Supporting the local economy is also a very important thing I like to do in my spare time.

So here it is, the DeBarra's Gig Listing App for Android.

If you want to find out more about the programmer,
please click about.me/cgraninger

Want to have your own app for your business, email to cgraninger+apps@gmail.com

Do you like this App ? Than please leave a comment.

Recipe: Egg-Rum Cream (Egg nog)

Winter time is egg nog time,
so i show you hear a recipe I modified from a traditional Eastern German (DDR) recipe.

Ingredients
8 eggs
450 ml condensed milk
350 ml rum ( I used Captain Morgan)
1 pack vanilla sugar
250 grams caster sugar (or icing sugar)

Actually this recipe is a kind of 2 in 1 thing,
you can make a egg-rum cream, which is great on Ice cream,
or you make Egg nog, which is a dessert drink.

Separate the egg yolks from the whites, add the sugar and mix well, than also add the vanilla sugar and and condensed milk (Using this milk will give you a longer fridge life)

As a second last step, add slowly and bit by bit the rum.

Once this is all smoothly mixed you need to heat the mix gently in a water bath. In a water bath for the reason that the mix doesnt get hotter than 75 C. So place a bowl in a pot in which is water gently boiling.

Mix throughly and you will see the mix will get a better consistency.

Do so for about 10 minutes with constantly stirring. Than fill the mix in bottles while still warm.

Do NOT fill the bottles to full, otherwise you might have troubles to get the cream out again.

Also, if you do not want to use it as a cream, you need space in the bottle to add some fresh cream.
Shake well, and there you go the cream transforms intro a smooth drink - the egg nog.

Enjoy !