Potato, Ricotta & Mint Ravioli

I have something to admit… I’m not a massive fan of potatoes! Potatoes, more so than other foodstuff seem to be linked in most minds with Ireland and being Irish, but at most, I would eat them once perhaps twice a week and certainly not every day. I know that they’re versatile from a cooking point of view but I’ve never felt the need to have them as a vital part of every meal. I imagine that it’s partly due to my influence but my children love rice and pasta and many of our meals are based around them.

Having said all this, I do love gratin dauphinoise and I am rather partial to potato gnocchi; a properly cooked roast potato (i.e. crunchy on the outside and fluffy on the inside) is something truly wonderful, but in the main, it is rare that I yearn for potato based dishes.

This is why I find it quite astonishing that I have been dreaming about making these potato and ricotta filled ravioli ever since I first came across the idea leafing through some old recipe books. I was worried that potato and pasta might be a starchy carbohydrate too far and that they would sit heavy on the stomach after consumption… but let me tell you, these were wonderful. They were surprisingly light and incredibly moreish. I found it hugely challenging restraining myself from eating a gargantuan portion all in one go. They were just absolutely delicious!

It has been a while since I made my own pasta and given how easy it is, I berated myself for not doing so more often. Fresh pasta is a different beast to the dried pasta that is so readily available to purchase, but if you are keen to experiment with your own filled pastas such as ravioli and totellini, you need to be able to make your own. The pasta machine I have is nothing fancy… it is one that I picked up fairly cheaply in Argos, but it does the job perfectly, rolling thin sheets of pasta with relatively little effort. You can roll the dough using a rolling pin but having done it, I much prefer the ease of the pasta machine.

There are a couple of tricks involved in producing these ravioli. Firstly, try to roll the pasta as thinly as you can as the last thing you want is to have to eat lots of claggy thick pasta. Secondly, when filling the ravioli and encasing them with the second layer of pasta, try to gently expel as much air as possible as this will prevent them from exploding when cooked in the simmering water. Finally don’t crowd them all in a small saucepan; fill a large saucepan with lightly salted water and bring to the boil, before adding the ravioli. Once you have added the pasta, reduce the heat slightly making sure that the water is still simmering briskly.

I think that the mint in these ravioli and in the butter sauce adds a wonderful freshness to the overall dish, but you could experiment with different herbs. Some sage could work wonderfully, but remember that it has a very strong flavour, so you may need to use less than the amounts that I have specified for the mint.
 

Ingredients:

Filling:
200g Rooster potatoes
250g fresh ricotta
75g freshly grated parmesan
1tblsp finely chopped mint
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Pasta:

400g plain flour (Tipo ‘00’)

Pinch of salt

3 eggs plus 1 egg yolk

Butter sauce:

100g butter

Large handful of coarsely chopped mint
 

Method:

Filling:

1. Preheat oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160/Gas Mark 4.

2. Bake potatoes in oven for 30-40 minutes until cooked through. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes. Hold each potato in a clean tea towel and scoop out the cooked flesh, discarding the skins. Work at a fast pace so that the potatoes don’t cool too quickly. Pass the potato flesh through a potato ricer and stir in the ricotta, parmesan and finely chopped mint. Set aside.

Pasta:

3. Place the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the eggs and mix with your hands to bring everything together to create a soft dough (if required, add a tablespoon or two of water to create a dough that is pliable).

4. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work-surface and knead for about 5 minutes until smooth and it feels silky. Cut dough into 4 to make it easier to pass through the pasta machine.

5. Pass the dough through the pasta machine starting with the widest setting and gradually working your way down to the thinner settings. NOTE: Pass the dough through each setting twice before moving on to the next one. I usually stop at the second last setting.

6. Place generous teaspoonfuls of the filling onto one of the pasta sheets spacing them about 7-8cms apart. Brush around each mound of filling with a little water. Place another sheet of pasta on top and press down around the mounds of filling, encasing each and trying to expel as much air as you press down, to seal the ravioli. Cut around each ravioli, leaving a 1cm border. You can use a knife or cookie cutter to do this. Repeat this process with the remaining two sheets of pasta dough and the rest of the filling.

To finish:

7. Bring a large pan of lightly salted water to the boil. Add the ravioli and allow to simmer for 2-3 minutes or until the ravioli start to float to the surface. Remove with a slotted spoon. Toss the ravioli in the mint butter sauce and serve.

Butter sauce:

8. Melt butter in a small saucepan over a low heat. Stir in the coarsely chopped mint and season well.
 

Serves 6-as a main course and more if served as a starter.

Fresh Apricot & Cherry Upside-Down Cake

I absolutely adore fresh cherries and rejoice when they are in season and readily available to buy. I have been playing around with different recipes where cherries might be used and admit that most of my ideas have been variations on the clack forest gateau theme; in other words recipes that marry cherries with chocolate. It is so hard to deviate from this combination, because cherries and chocolate just taste so darn good together. However, in this recipe I have come up with what I think is another winning combination… Cherries and apricots. Going on the premise that Mother Nature is very wise and has arranged it so that foods that are in season at the same time, tend to have an inbuilt natural affinity for each other, I decided to see how cherries and apricots would taste together.
 

I chose to make an upside-down cake for my first experiment and I was delighted with how the cake turned out. Asides from looking very exotic with its stained-glass like exotic looking colours, it tasted absolutely fabulous. I used a fairly standard sponge cake base to which I added some ground almonds to keep everything moist and add a little body. I also added a good splash of Amaretto as I felt that its almond flavour would work well with the stone fruits. Amaretto is one liqueur that I always have around the place because it is so incredibly useful to the home cook and so much nicer to use than almond extracts or flavourings.

 

Preserved or bottled cherries are available to buy and these can be used in many recipes, but when fresh cherries are in season, I love to use them. One of my favourite recipes to make is cherry clafoutis – a sweet Yorkshire pudding-like batter in which cherries are baked. (I have previously given my recipe for this delightful dessert and it was one of the first that I blogged about). Preserved cherries work wonderfully in a clafoutis, but for this cake, You really do need to use fresh cherries.

As the cake bakes, the fruits soften and release some of their juices which caramelise slightly to give an added sweetness which is absolutely delicious. The apricots that I used were slightly tart but the sweetness of the cherries compensated for this and the overall taste was fabulous. In fact, I think it is because of this contrast between the two fruits that this works so well. I really do encourage you to try making it.

 

This cake is wonderful to eat as just a cake, but served still slightly warm, with some lightly whipped cream on the side, it would make a wonderful summer dessert.

Ingredients:

Topping:
50g butter, softened
50g soft brown sugar
6 Apricots, cut in half and stoned

150g cherries, pitted and cut in half

Cake:

175g butter, softened

175g caster sugar

3 large free range eggs

135g self-raising flour, sifted

35g ground almonds

1tblsp Amaretto

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4.

Topping:
2. Grease the inside of a 20cm round spring-form tin with butter and sprinkle the sugar over the base. Arrange the apricots and cherries in the bottom of the tin with the cut-side in the butter and sugar mixture.
Cake:
3. Place the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer, beat together until light and fluffy, gradually beat in the eggs until they are well incorporated. Fold in the self-raising flour and the ground almonds. Finally mix through the Amaretto.
4. Spoon the cake batter over the apricots and cherries and smooth the surface with the back of a spoon. Place the cake tin on a baking tray and bake in the preheated oven for 25-35 minutes until well risen and a golden brown colour.

Serves 6-8.

Waterford Blaa

I love a yieldingly soft bread roll to eat with a homemade burger or my latest fave food; pulled pork! I do love brioche rolls where the slight sweetness and the richness of the bread makes it perfect for stuffing with a variety of fillings whether it be meat burgers, cold meats or salads. So many of the bread rolls available to buy in supermarkets, even those which have in-store bakeries, are tasteless, texturally pappy and although commonly inexpensive enough to buy are ultimately so disappointing. So, yes… brioche is great, but here in Ireland, we have a bread that I also think is absolutely prefect - Waterford Blaa!

 

The blaa is a very soft (but this shouldn’t mean undercooked), slightly chewy white bread roll which is dredged in white flour prior to baking. This results in a crust that is also beautifully soft in texture like the interior of the rolls. It is this softness that makes the blaa perfect for pairing with burgers or hot meats as the juices of the meat are soaked up by the bread making for a truly tasty eating experience. Blaas are sometimes mistaken for baps and whilst there are similarities blaa purists will throw up their hands in horror at the suggestion that the two are interchangeable.

After a concerted campaign by local producers the Waterford Blaa was awarded Protected Geographical Indication Status by the European Commission, which means that only blaas made in a specific area are entitled to be called blaa. Historically the breads were made in Waterford, Wexford and parts of Kilkenny, but now they are primarily associated with Waterford - hence the name.

 

I think that it’s great that the quality of so many traditional foods is being recognised and championed. In many ways our culinary heritage says so much about who we are as a nation. It’s all too easy to be clichéd and think that Irish food begins and ends with the potato. Yes, the old spud had a key part to play in our history, but our dairy products are second to none; our beef is unbeatable (to mention just a couple of examples) and thankfully, we now seem to be developing a truly vibrant modern food culture which is very much rooted in local communities using locally sourced ingredients and produce.
 

Ingredients:

500g strong white flour
10g active dried fast-action yeast (I used Doves Farm)

10g caster sugar

10g salt (preferably fine sea-salt)

300ml lukewarm water

Extra flour for dredging
 

Method:

1. Place the flour in a large mixing bowl and add the yeast and caster sugar to one side and the slat to the other. Make a well in the centre and add the water gradually mixing with your hands to form a soft dough which comes together easily.

2. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for ten minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic and springs back when poked. Place into a lightly oiled clean bowl, cover with cling film and leave somewhere warm to rise for 60 minutes until doubled in size.
3. Remove the dough from the bowl and knock back to remove the air from the dough. Divide the dough into 8 pieced and form each one into a ball. Place the balls onto a baking tray dusted with flour and dredge with some flour. Cover and leave to rise for 45 minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 210C/Fan Oven 190 C/Gas Mark 6.5. Just before placing in the oven, dredge the blaas with some more flour. Bake in the oven for 17-20 minutes.

Serves 4.

Black Forest Pavlova with Fresh Cherries

Food is like anything else and is susceptible to the fashions and fads of a particular era. When I was a young child in the 1970s, the height of sophistication, in culinary terms, was a meal consisting of a starter of prawn cocktail, steak diane for main course and black forest gateau for dessert. Due to their popularity, there wasn’t a restaurant menu in the land that didn’t seem to have at least one of these dishes on it. The reason for this is very simple – these dishes tasted wonderful! Well… they did; when cooked with love and attention to detail, but as with many things in life, their very popularity was their downfall and, particularly in the case of black forest gateau, inferior mass produced versions were bought into restaurant kitchens and served up to diners in an effort to maximise profits and cut back on the effort involved in actually making them in-house.

The black forest gateau began to fall out of favour and became to be seen as something a little kitsch and vulgar. In my opinion, this is an awful shame, because at its core, it is an absolute classic on the taste front! Chocolate, cherries, cream and kirsch… yum! These are flavours that were just meant to go together and when treated with love and an understanding of the flavour balances at play, they are heavenly.

 

I was thinking about food fashions recently and lamenting the fact that so many of the old favourites are now deemed unsophisticated and people regularly scoff at them.

Cherries are in season at the moment and whilst not the cheapest of fruits to buy, they are a lovely treat every now and again. I absolutely love them. Fresh cherries bear absolutely no resemblance to the tiny sugary orbs known as glacé cherries which are used in baking, most especially the fruit cakes that I love to bake at Christmas time. Fresh cherries, when ripe are unlike any other fruit – there is something so decadent about them and their rich and rounded fruity flavour tastes divine. I always think there is an air of naughtiness about them and they possess a definite air of hedonism.

Armed with a large bag of ripe cherries, I decided to start playing with the basic black forest gateau flavour combinations. I have been experimenting with mousses and tarts and pies and cakes and will post some photos and recipes for the dishes that I have been working on in the near future, but for the time being here is my recipe for Black Forest Pavlova.

The pavlova base for this is chocolate flavoured courtesy of some added cocoa powder and some chocolate chunks folded into the basic meringue mixture. I have topped the pavlova with some cream lightly flavoured with kirsch and a load of fresh cherries which I had great fun pitting with my newly acquired cherry pitter (every home should have one). Oh…and because I could, I also drizzled some melted dark chocolate over everything to give an added chocolate hit.

This is rich; this is sweet; this is deliciously unctuous… all the things a good dessert should be!

Ingredients:

4 large egg whites
215g caster sugar
2tsp cornflour
20g cocoa powder
1 tsp white wine vinegar

30g chocolate chips or chocolate cut into small chunks

To finish:
250ml single cream, whipped

2tsp kirsch or other cherry flavoured brandy

200g pitted fresh cherries

100g dark chocolate, melted
 

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 150C/Fan Oven 130C/Gas Mark 2. Line a large baking sheet with some non-stick baking parchment and set aside.

2. Place the egg whites in a scrupulously clean mixing bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer, beat together to the soft peak stage. Gradually add the caster sugar, mixing well after each addition to create a glossy meringue.

3. Sift in the cornflour and cocoa powder and fold into the meringue using a large metal spoon. Finally, mix in the vinegar and fold through the chocolate chips.

4. Pile the mixture onto the parchment lined baking tray, and using the back of a metal spoon spread out into a circle about 20cms in diameter. I always try to create an almost bowl shaped circle so that the fruit is easier contained in the baked pavlova. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 75 minutes. Switch off the oven and allow the pavlova to cool completely in the oven before removing.

To finish:

5. Place the pavlova on your serving plate/cake stand. Mix the kirsch through the whipped cream and pile onto the centre of the pavlova. Pile the cherries on top of the cream and finally drizzle the melted chocolate over everything.
 

Serves 6-8.
 

Raspberry Thumbprint Cookies

I always love to have a few home baked biscuits in the tin; something nice and sweet to enjoy with a cup of tea after the long and busy days that seem to make up my life. This is my treat to myself and the moment of the day that I always look forward to.

I love reading through my many cookbooks and make mental lists of recipes that I want to try in the future. Because I am quite a confident cook and really enjoy the whole cooking and baking processes, I regularly adapt recipes that I come across and try to put my own stamp on them. I have talked before about the trend towards new and wacky flavour combinations in cooking; and whilst I do think it is important to push culinary boundaries, there are times when some things are just too ridiculous to consider making – and you just yearn for some good old honest cooking with no fancy frills or artifice. A particular pet hate of mine is food that looks amazing but tastes of little or nothing. To my mind these dishes fail, because although food has to look inviting to eat, it must also taste wonderful… because otherwise, what’s the point?

 

Anyway, I was recently thinking about some of the first things that I ever baked and I recalled the jam thumbprint cookies that I loved so much as a child. It is years since I made them, but I was so glad that I recently did. They tasted wonderful. The biscuit is short and sweet with a lovely hint of vanilla which goes so well with the raspberry jam. As I was eating these, I decided that raspberry jam has to be the most wonderful preserve that there is. There is something about the preserving process that accentuates the raspberry flavour and makes your taste buds sing.

There’s nothing more to say about these biscuits – they taste fab, are incredibly easy to make and are something that you can definitely get the children to help with; they just love creating the thumbprints and splodging the jam in.

The one thing that I would recommend is using a good jam, one with a high fruit content because this will make all the difference to the finished product.

Ingredients:

100g butter, softened
85g caster sugar
1 egg yolk

1tsp vanilla extract

115g plain flour

¼ tsp baking powder

30g ground almonds

2tblsp raspberry jam
 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 150C/Fan Oven 130C/Gas Mark 2. Line a large baking tray with some non-stick baking parchment and set aside.

2. Place the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer, beat together until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolk and vanilla extract and mix through again.

3. Sift the plain flour and baking powder together and fold into the creamed mixture along with the ground almonds.

4. Take tablespoonfuls of the mixture and gently roll them into balls in the palm of your hands (you should get 16-18) and place them on the lined baking sheet, spacing them about 5cms apart. Slightly flatten each ball of dough and using your thumb or the bottom of a wooden spoon make a small indentation in each. Fill the indentation with a little splodge of raspberry jam (about half a teaspoonful). Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes approximately until a pale golden colour. Allow to cool on trays and then serve!

Makes 16-18 cookies.