Edible Ireland

Beef, Beer and Blue Cheese Pot Pies

by Kristin on November 6, 2014

To celebrate International Stout Day, I’m reposting my updated beef, beer and blue cheese pot pies recipe from my book, Sláinte: The Complete Guide to Irish Craft Beer and Cider. If you like the sound of these pot pies, check out Chapter 8 in the book for more recipes that incorporate craft beer and cider, like beef, chorizo and ale stew, cider-brined pork tenderloins or chocolate porter cake. There’s both eating and drinking in it!

Beef, Beer and Blue Cheese Pot Pies

Serves 4–6

There is nothing wrong with a classic beef and stout stew, but what if you upped the ante on the stout and added some blue cheese too? And what if you capped it with a flaky puff pastry lid and called it a pot pie instead? Now you’re talking.

1kg (2lb) stewing beef (such as shin or cheek), cut into bite-sized pieces
salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons plain flour
rapeseed or olive oil
2 red onions, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves (or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme)
500ml (2 cups) stout
125g (3/4 cup) crumbled blue cheese
1 sheet of ready-rolled puff pastry
1 egg, beaten

Preheat the oven to 130°C.

Put the beef in a large bowl and sprinkle over 1 teaspoon of salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Add the flour and toss the beef in it until it all has a light dusting. Heat some rapeseed or olive oil in a large ovenproof casserole and brown the beef in batches over a medium-high heat, making sure not to crowd the pot or the meat won’t brown properly. Add more oil in between batches if needed. Remove the beef from the pot and set aside.

Add another splash of oil to the pot, then add the onions and carrots along with a pinch of salt so that the onions don’t brown. Cover the pot and cook for 10–15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are soft but not browned. Add the garlic, thyme and a generous seasoning of salt and pepper and cook for 1 or 2 minutes more.

Pour in the stout, scraping up any browned bits that have stuck to the bottom of the pot. Return the beef to the pot and bring up to a lively simmer, then cover and put in the oven for 3–4 hours (or simmer on the stovetop on a low heat with the lid on), stirring a few times. You will know it’s done when the beef easily falls apart when you prod it with a fork and the stout has reduced right down – it’s a pot pie filling, not a stew, so you want it to be nice and thick. Stir in the cheese, then taste it and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

Raise the oven temperature to 190°C. Place one large ovenproof pie dish or individual dishes or ramekins onto a baking tray just in case any filling bubbles up and over the sides, then spoon the stew into the dish(es). Roll out the pastry a little on a lightly floured countertop, then cut to fit the top of the dish. Rub the edges of the dish with a little water or some of the beaten egg to help the pastry stick in place, then place the pastry lid on top. Brush the pastry with the beaten egg (not too much or the pastry won’t rise properly), then cook in the oven for 20–30 minutes, until the pastry has risen and is golden. Allow to stand for 10 minutes before digging in.

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Sláinte: The Complete Guide to Irish Craft Beer and Cider

by Kristin on September 12, 2014

I’ve loved books my whole life. When I was a kid I pestered my mother to take me to the library every week. I studied English in college and for the past 15 years I’ve worked in publishing as an editor. You could even say books are my life now. After reading and working with other people’s words for so many years, I’m still pinching myself that my own book – Sláinte: The Complete Guide to Irish Craft Beer and Cider – is out in the world now. And even though I work with books every day for a living and well know how the publishing process works, it still feels like magic.

And it’s so much fun! I’m usually one of the invisible people who works behind the scenes on books, so it’s been a big change to be the one doing newspaper interviews and photo shoots, chatting on radio shows and carrying around Sharpies in my handbag to sign copies.

But I didn’t do it alone. When my co-author, Caroline Hennessy, and I sat down to write our acknowledgements a few months ago, it really hit me – and humbled me – how many people had helped to make this book happen. And if I had to sum up the whole process of writing Sláinte in one word, that word for me would be generosity.

Going right back to the start of it all, as someone who moved to a new country and built a life from scratch, I’ve always been so grateful for the generosity of friendship people have shown me, be it my very first colleagues in the publishing world who have watched me go from a bumbling intern to a published author, to my neighbours who welcomed us into the small rural community where we live, to all the people I met in the virtual world when I started blogging who quickly turned into true friends in the real world.

And people were so generous about contributing to the book. As a self-employed freelancer who never has enough hours in the day, I know it’s the same for the craft brewers and cider-makers too. Yet everyone took time out of their busy schedules to talk to us and answer our questions and share their knowledge. And that has been my experience again and again in the food community in Ireland. People are so happy to share, whether it’s their story, such as all the producers who are profiled; or their expertise, like Seáneen Sullivan and Kevin Sheridan, who shared their favourite matches of  beer and cider with food and cheese; or everyone who shared their photographs and recipes with us. It is because of the generosity of all these people that Sláinte is the book it is. Julia Child said it best when she said, ‘People who love to eat are always the best people.’ I would just add ‘and drink’ to that too.

This past year, I have often thought to myself: how did a girl from a small town in Illinois come to write a book all about Irish beer and cider? And for that I have to thank my husband, Matt. He wooed me to Ireland for what was supposed to be a one-year adventure, maybe two, max – and that was in 1999. He’s had a lot of people commiserate with him that it must have been tough work being married to someone who was writing a book all about beer and cider. But seriously, though, I suspect that behind every person who writes a book is someone else who is quietly anchoring the family to keep things ticking along, whether it’s making endless cups of tea and coffee, doing the grocery shopping and making sure the children don’t eat a steady diet of fish fingers and frozen peas, or reading all the bedtime stories for months on end.

But my biggest thank you is for Caroline, my co-author and a dear friend. We didn’t even know each other five years ago, but hardly a day has gone by in the past year where we haven’t talked to each other. We also co-founded the Irish Food Bloggers Association back in 2011, and at this point I think it’s fair to say that we make a pretty good team. There’s no one else I would rather have written this book with.

But now it’s all about YOU, the reader. We set out to write the kind of book that we wanted to read when we started exploring craft beer and cider a few years ago, when information in an Irish context was hard to come by. We’ve covered everything from how beer and cider are made to their history in Ireland, how to taste and savour them, how to match them with food and cheese and even how to cook with them, so there is something for everyone in this book. I hope you enjoy reading it and working your way through it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Sláinte!

Want to buy a copy? You probably won’t find a better deal than kennys.ie, which is offering it at €15.07 plus free shipping anywhere in the world. Or look for it in all good bookshops as well as good off-licences around the country.

We also run the Craft Beer Ireland website — follow us on Twitter or Facebook to keep up with all the news on craft beer and cider in Ireland.

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Postcards from Ireland #13

by Kristin on May 16, 2014

Inishowen, County Donegal

You can see more of my photos on Instagram as edibleireland.

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Traditional Irish Recipes for Paddy’s Day

by Kristin on March 17, 2014

Here’s the thing. Contrary to popular belief, we are not all having corned beef and cabbage for dinner in Ireland today. If you want to make something traditional that people really do eat, on all days of the year, try one of these dishes instead. Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Duit!

Irish soda bread — don’t forget to put a cross on top to let the fairies out.

Beef and Irish stout stew — there’s both eating and drinking in it.

Dublin coddle - the capital’s namesake dish of bacon, sausages and spuds; what’s not to love?

Colcannon - Did you ever eat colcannon, made from lovely pickled cream? / With the greens and scallions mingled like a picture in a dream.

Apple and blackberry crumble — a good old-fashioned crumble is one of Ireland’s best-loved desserts.

* And remember too: it’s Paddy, not Patty!

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It All Started with the Dark Arts

by Kristin on February 4, 2014

It all started with the Dark Arts.

I was at the first Inishfood festival in 2011, freezing in a marquee on a cold March night in Donegal, when I was given a cup of Dark Arts as part of a beer-tasting event. Having never been much of a fan of Guinness, my first thought was Ugh, stout. But then I figured that I might as well try it; it had already been put in my hand, after all.

Instead of the metallic tang of Guinness, I tasted roasted coffee. I took another sip, and tasted chocolate. Cue Green Eggs and Ham–style revelation: Say! I do like stout! I’ve been making up for lost time ever since. Oh hello, Leann Folláin, Knockmealdown Porter and White Gypsy Imperial Stout, where have you been all my life?

Fast forward a few years and that light bulb moment has evolved into a full-blown love of craft beer, especially beer and food matching. Come Friday night, you’ll likely find me sitting at the kitchen table with my husband, sharing a beer and swapping notes on the taste and aroma – is that grapefruit? toffee? McVitie’s biscuit? – and debating how well it matches up with whatever we’re having for dinner that night, be it chicken fajitas and an IPA, homemade pizza and a lager or a stout and a brownie for dessert.

It also doesn’t hurt that my very good friend Caroline just so happens to be married to a brewer who makes some of the best beer in the country. I’m a cookbook editor and Caroline is a journalist, so when we’d get together we’d talk about beer, and books, and it wasn’t long before we started talking about doing a book of our own.

And now, from that first dubious sip three years ago, we’re writing a book about beer!

I’m thrilled to announce that Caroline Hennessy and I are co-authoring The Complete Guide to Irish Craft Beer and Cider, to be published by New Island in the autumn. My hope is that it will be the kind of book I wish I’d had when I first started exploring the world of craft beer, covering everything from the basics of how beer and cider are made to profiles of the people and stories behind the microbreweries that are fuelling Ireland’s craft beer revolution, all the way through to tips on matching beer and cider with food and Irish farmhouse cheese and recipes that incorporate craft brews.

In the meantime, we’ve launched a new website, Craft Beer Ireland, where we’ll be keeping our fingers on the pulse of all things craft beer and cider. You can also follow along there on Facebook and Twitter. I’m writing a beer of the month column for Georgina Campbell’s Ireland Guide ezine, so be sure to check in there too.

It’s an exciting time for craft beer and cider in Ireland, and I’m so excited to be a part of it. Sláinte!

(And if all this has got you curious about craft beer, get down to the Alltech International Craft Brews & Food Fair in Dublin this weekend or the Franciscan Well Cask & Winter Ale Festival in Cork from 14–16 February.)

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Irish Cookbooks 2013

by Kristin on November 27, 2013

When you look at the Irish cookbooks that have been published this year, three words come to mind: from the heart. From the sweeping celebration of Irish food and artisan food producers in Chapter One: An Irish Food Story to the celebration of family and home in Apron Strings, many of the authors have poured their hearts onto these pages.

This has been a good year for food bloggers, with three new blog-to-book authors (Fiona Dillon, Rosanne Hewitt-Cromwell and Nessa Robins), while the original blogging superstar, Donal Skehan, has just published his fourth book and Lilly Higgins has brought out her second. Meanwhile, several other bloggers have signed deals and are hard at work on their forthcoming books.

This year also saw a noticeable shift towards self-publishing. Extreme Greens, From Lynda’s Table, Relish BBQ and Buon Appetito are all top-quality books that hold their own against the ones from the traditional publishers, and in fact even use some of the same professional photographers, stylists and editors. I think we’ll be seeing more and more cookbook authors taking this route in the years to come.

Either way, there’s never been a better time to be a home cook.

Apron Strings: Recipes from a Family Kitchen by Nessa Robins

I like to think of Apron Strings as a modern day Mrs Beeton, with thrifty tips for running a household, advice for expecting mothers, recipes for children’s birthday parties, a home nurse chapter (Nessa’s background is in nursing) and a chapter on keeping hens, making jam, composting and foraging. It’s obvious that these recipes are treasured family heirlooms (Nessa’s introduction to her gingerbread and scone recipes literally had me in tears) as well as what Nessa feeds her family on a daily basis. It’s lovely to think that just as Nessa’s contentment in the kitchen comes from her mother, her own children will have many happy memories of food and cooking and times spent around the kitchen table as a family. And of course now they have her cookbook to cherish too. To know Nessa is to marvel at her boundless energy and unflagging cheerfulness. How does she do it, you wonder, and with four kids besides? To read her book is to wish you could pull up a chair at her table. Having her recipes is the next best thing.

Recipes to try: White onion, potato and chorizo soup; chicken in an herby white wine sauce; baked sausages with a spicy tomato sauce; beef, potato and wild garlic lasagna; brown sugar and cinnamon scones; caramel and hazelnut shortbread squares; gingerbread; homemade cold remedy; carrageen moss pudding; blackberry vodka.

Blazing Salads 2 by Lorraine Fitzmaurice

Raised on macrobiotic cooking, Lorraine Fitzmaurice and her siblings had quite an unusual upbringing when it came to food in Ireland in the 1970s. But far from being a passing fad, healthy, wholesome, whole food eating has become a lifelong passion, which saw them open the popular Blazing Salads deli in Dublin in 2000. In this, their second cookbook, Lorraine shares more of the quick, easy and healthy ‘real food’ recipes that have become their trademark.

Recipes to try: Avocado pico de gallo salad; chickpea, red onion and chilli salad; quinoa with roasted ratatouille vegetables and fresh basil; Mediterranean vegetable and feta turnovers; sweet potato and carrot bhajis; Moroccan minestrone; vegetable Wellington with onion gravy; summer leek tart; almond and raspberry fingers; plum cobber with flaked almonds.

Chapter One: An Irish Food Story by Ross Lewis

Magnificent. Stunning. Breathtaking. Incomparable. Epic. This is a book that will be talked about in superlatives. It painstakingly documents some of the recipes at Ross Lewis’s Michelin-starred Chapter One, one of Ireland’s best restaurants — make no mistake, this is aspirational cooking even for the most serious home cooks. It also reads like a love letter to Irish artisan food producers, who are held in the very highest esteem, which is reflected in their beautiful portraits by photographer to the stars, Barry McCall. Ross Lewis takes their produce and elevates it to its highest expression of itself. It’s a book to inspire and savour and will stand the test of time as a beautifully crafted snapshot of Irish food at this time. It is not only the jewel in the crown of all the books published this year, but is surely the finest cookbook ever published in Ireland.

Recipes to try: These recipes are not for the faint of heart. Ross Lewis says straight out that “the home cook, no matter how talented or determined, is not blessed with a hardworking and talented brigade of chefs as I am, so it will be difficult to reproduce many of the recipes in full in a domestic kitchen. However … most of the dishes can be broken down to simpler versions or perhaps just two or three elements from a recipe.” Having said all that, the spiced chestnut soup with hazelnut cream and white truffle; winter pickled vegetable salad; Dublin Bay prawn, smoked bacon and basil spring roll; braised top rib of prime Hereford beef and Skerries new potatoes with buttermilk and Savoy cabbage, rich red wine and shallot sauce; carrageen set West Cork cream pudding with Pat Clarke strawberries and fresh yoghurt mousse, soda bread sugar biscuits and Irish apple balsamic vinegar meringues; hot Valrhona Guanaja chocolate soufflé; and soda bread and Demerara sugar biscuits in chocolate with smoked sea salt caught this home cook’s eye.

Extreme Greens by Sally McKenna

Seaweed has been in the spotlight more and more recently. Did you know that seaweed has twice as much vitamin C as orange juice,  50 times the amount of iron as spinach and is 10 times higher in calcium than cow’s milk? That it can be used as a fertilizer, a medicine and a food? And that’s just for starters. By the time you’ve finished reading this book, you’ll wonder if there’s anything seaweed can’t do. Sally McKenna (of McKennas’ Guides fame) became enchanted with seaweed while exploring secret watery nooks in her kayak around the coast of West Cork, and her enthusiasm is infectious (take one of her foraging tours and see for yourself — highly recommended!). With 80 recipes, a guide to how to forage for your own seaweeds and even instructions on how to make your own natural beauty products with seaweeds, this is an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to incorporate this magical food into their life, and with dried seaweeds now commonly available in health food shops around Ireland, there’s no reason not to.

Recipes to try: Mussel, coconut and kelp soup; seaweed and chilli popcorn; spaghetti and sea spaghetti with a tomato fennel sauce; seafood crumble with dillisk; sea grass and garlic butter; seaweed sausage rolls; kelp and sour cherry scones; dillisk and stout brown soda bread; sea grass blaa; chocolate, hazelnut and nori ice cream.

Food for Friends by Edward Hayden

Life provides plenty of opportunities to push the boat out a little bit in the kitchen, an