Scones...you wouldn't believe how simple they are!

I have always had a soft spot for scones, especially the ones my gran makes. I prefer them plain, and like them with either butter or jam and cream.
Up until very recently my enjoyment of scones has been limited to whenever my visiting my gran coincides with her having baked, but the last time I called in I decided to take the bull by the horns and do it myself!
It's so simple - I've made them twice and haven't messed up, and that's saying something!

What you need
1 lb self-raising flour
1/4 lb sugar
pinch of salt
level teaspoon or bit with of baking powder
1/4 lb marg
Milk

How to do it
Stir the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder together in a big bowl. Rub in the marg (kind of sift it all through your fingers lightly, getting in as much air as possible). Add milk to make it into dough (a few dashes - you'll know yourself, you just need it to stick together). Knead (use a decent whack of flour), roll out (on a surface sprinkled with flour), then cut out into scones either with a knife or a scone cutter if you have one.
Bake on a flat tray sprinkled with flour for about 10 minutes at 180 degrees in a fan oven, then turn back to 160 degrees and bake for just over 5 minutes more.

Transfer scones to a wire cooling tray, and, em, enjoy!

Thank you

Thank you very much to Aoife's Friend Jill, for the barbecue sauce from the other side of the world. We'll try it soon, and add it to the growing chart of our demented obsession.

Quick things to learn to make posh food at home.

1) Butterflying meat/chicken breasts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot46Cueod4s

This isn't me, but that's how you do it. If you want to grill or bbq a chicken breast, this is the way to go. Other wise it won't cook evenly, and you'll end up with a disastrous grilled chicken sandwich.

2) Balancing food on top of other food. (presentation)

If you're cooking dinner for someone you want to sleep with, there is an easy way to make yourself appear to be a good cook. Balance the food up on top of itself. Plain white plates, food right in the centre, no sauce splatters. there's books and books of photographs of food. There's no need to spend too long reading up, it's just a question of making sure a) your food looks tidy and b) you've got a few different colours in there.

3) Making flowers out of food:
Tomato rose:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AcwtD9MdCU

Radish rose:
(video with creepily big radishes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0O-tfKgwvg

And that orange thing you see in the butchers!
-Take an orange and a short, sharp knife. Stab the knife into the orange at the equator, at a 45 degree angle. Now do it again, and again, until you have a zig-zag line around the equator.

At this point, if you've been stabbing through to the centre, you should be able to pull the two halves of the orange apart. And you should be able to put one of these two halves in the middle of any huge bowl or platter of anything to make your dinner look like the 1970s. Extra bonus points for putting a glace cherry in the centre.


4) Add booze!

If you're making a sauce, throw in a glass of wine. If you're making chilli, throw in a shot of whiskey or tequila. If you're making a stew, throw in some beer. If you're doing stuff with pork, throw in some cider. Alcohol boils at around 80 degrees, so the alcohol is gone almost instantly, and you get delicious flavourful dinners!

Bread and jam

Nothing like it! Tastes nostalgic (brings you right back to the Ann and Barry days) and good! Use bread recipe posted earlier and bog standard jam. And a bit of butter. Delicious.

Radio

No recipe today, but...
Stay tuned for details of the Life of Miley Radio show - coming soon on Tallaght FM!

I have a few days off work at the moment, and this is doing wonders for examining the world of the daytime. Turns out there's more to the hours between 8 and 6 than computer screens and crumbs in my keyboard.

So time without much money, a slight cold (guinea pig flu)has not led to any new life of miley insight.
So i offer this...meal. I'm not calling it a recipe.

2 slices of toast
2 dessert spoons full of supermarket egg salad
that's it.


(for today's recipe - check out http://www.seasaltwithfood.com/2009/05/hasselback-potatoes.html) I haven't tried it, but it'll feature this weekend.

My newest favourite recipe

I've started to scribble a few easy yet scrumptious recipes down in my diary, so if for some reason a quick dinner is needed wherever I find myself I'll have some good options. All of the diary entries are dead easy to make, inexpensive and taste pretty good too.
My latest addition is risotto, and I'm in love with it! I made risotto for the first time in my life about two months ago, and now I'm almost an expert. The recipe I follow is infinitely easier than all of those other ones that require constant stirring and leave you with a mess as often as a delicious dinner. You can follow the recipe below (which serves four), but feel free to make a few changes and chuck in whatever's in the fridge either - I even made an Irish breakfast risotto recently!

You will need:
25g butter
an onion
150g chicken
200g risotto rice
a teaspoon of fennel seeds
900ml of chicken stock
75g frozen peas
juice and grated rink of about half a lemon
2 tablespoons of double cream (or maybe a little bit more)
50g or so of grated Parmesan
2 tablespoons of chopped mint
salt and pepper

To cook:
Boil the kettle and pre-heat the oven to about 200 degrees. Chuck the butter into a pan. Throw in the chopped onion and the chicken and fry for a couple of minutes. Make up the chicken stock. Add the risotto rice and fennel seeds to the pan of chicken, butter and onion and stir it all about for a minute or so. Add the stock and the peas.
Put that mixture into a casserole dish, put the lid on and cook it for about 20 minutes. Keep an eye on it though - the goal is for the rice to be tender and all the liquid absorbed. When you get to that point you're almost there.
All that's left is to stir in the lemon juice and rind, cream and Parmesan, and add a bit of salt and pepper. Cover it up and leave it sitting for about two minutes, and stir in the mint just before serving. If you're watching what you're eating you might want to add only half of the Parmesan and put the rest on the table so more can be added if needed.

Let me know what other ingredients work for you in this risotto.

Enjoy!

Food Failure

Cooking is all about personal taste and experimentation. Keep trying, and fine tuning, and picking up tricks, and the food you cook will get better. You'll also save money by being happy to cobble together dinners out of seemingly nothing.

However.

Along the way, it's certain that you'll make one or two dishes that will threaten to put you off food for life. Here are some things I put together that would be perhaps best avoided.

Fried Cheese (made when I was 14)
I like cheese. I like fried things. It doesn't take a genius to stick a slice of cheddar ona hot pan, wait for it to turn into black oozing death, and then spoon it up.

Pasta Gaseous
To make Carbonara, mix pasta with raw egg, tiny bit of milk and parmesan.
Put in too much milk to early, and you'll cool down the pasta, and you won't cook the egg, and you'll end up with pasta and raw egg. I farted. A lot.

Underpants Stirfry
To give your stirfry the taste of sweaty underpants, drench in Nam Pla (Fish Sauce) and add some dry sherry. And some vinegar. You can sell this from Japanese vending machines, I hear.

Veal Shank Schnitzel
I used to work in a fairly dodgy restaurant - my Boss was big on cost cutting. He brought in some veal shanks for an attempt at fancy meals. Of course no one was eating veal shanks, so it sat in the walk-in for far longer then was strictly safe. Then, together (and I will take blame here) we stripped off the fatty meat, breaded it, pan fried it, tried some, and nearly vomited. (he still flogged one or two)

Egg and Cheese cake.
I was young. My mam asked me to make lunch for my brothers. I had visions of delicious cheesy omelettes - but thought I'd invent a new way. I took a pyrex pie dish. Filled it with grated cheddar cheese, pushed four holes in it, and broke eggs into the holes. Then I put it in the oven until i had a hard, greasy bright orange disk. yummy.

Duck for six.
The first time i cooked a whole duck, I took it out of the freezer - it looked the same size as a chicken I'd use to feed six people. Into the oven, and it evaporated into a giant puddle of fat. There was no hilarious taste experience, just a learning experience.