Bacon Wrapped Haddock with Jerusalem Artichokes | You've Got Meal!

From a farmers market lover point of view I don’t really like winter – the veggies are scarce, they don’t have the same taste and it’s cold (that has nothing to do with farmers market, I just hate cold). But sometimes, even this harsh time of the year, you can get pleasantly surprised by some not so popular veggies, in this case Jerusalem artichokes. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this (half frozen) lady selling them in the market – in this area they’re called by their German name: topinambur. 

Jerusalem artichoke has nothing to do with the city or with an artichoke, instead its most common relative is the daisy. The parts you eat are the tubers, and the taste brings notes of sweet, sunflower seeds, slightly earthy, nutty. We used them in this dish as a substitute for spuds, even if Jerusalem artichoke have little to none starch. Both the fish and the veggies are Jamie Oliver inspired – I find that when you are trying to find clean, simple, dishes that hold distinctive flavors, The Naked Chef is the man for the job.

For the Jerusalem artichokes: 

• 600-700 grams of the tubers, 
• 2-3garlic cloves, 
• 4-5 bay leaves, 
• salt, pepper, 
• olive oil, 
• red wine vinegar. 

For the fish: 

• 500 grams of haddock fillets, 
• a dozen strips of smoked bacon, 
• 2 tbs. of finely chopped fresh rosemary, 
• the zest of 1 lemon, 
• pepper. 

You can easily cook both the fish and the veggie at the same time. 

1. Start of by cleaning the Jerusalem artichokes – either by thoroughly washing them or by peeling them. 
2. In 50 ml of olive oil, on medium heat, pop the tubers and the bay leaves in and cook them until golden on all sides – keep an eye on these bad boys as they can easily burn. 
3. Next, add 40 ml of the vinegar in the pan with some salt and pepper, toss around to mix. 
4. Cover with a lid and cook until you can easily skewer the artichokes with a fork. 
5. 5 minutes before being done pop the garlic in the pan.

1. In order to cook the fish, place some bacon strips, slightly overlapped on each other on the working surface. 
2. Place the fish in the middle of the bacon and sprinkle some rosemary, lemon zest and pepper on top. I didn’t add salt as the bacon was quite salty, adjust accordingly to your meat. 
3. Close the bacon on top of the fish and cook in a couple tbs. of olive oil on both sides, for a minute each. 
4. Next, place the fish in the oven for 10 minutes – you might need more if the fish is thicker. 
5. Garnish  with some chopped chives.

While cooking this dish I realized that these Jerusalem artichokes go really well with two flavors: smoke (thus the bacon) and nuts. For the last one I decided to make a simple dressing that would compliment both the fish and the tubers: 300 grams of 10% fat Greek yogurt, the juice of half a lemon, 50 grams of roughly chopped walnuts, 1 crushed clove of garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, some saffron threads that have been kept in a tbs. of warm water. Mix all the ingredients and create a great sauce that can be use a lot of your fish dishes or even as a great companion for some baked potatoes.

In the end, what can I say? The fish was the great, the Jerusalem artichokes were good (I love my spuds and I’m not going to replace them). Definitely going to try and bring this ingredient to some other dishes, maybe some that will require boiling/steaming them. 

 Enjoy,

Christmas Cake Recipe: Buttery and Sticky Orange Cake | You've Got Meal!

Nice and simple recipe for buttery and moist cake with oranges and poppy seeds. Perfect Christmas or holiday cake with minimum effort.

This cake recipe is inspired by the classic Lemon Drizzle Cake. Oranges are great this time of the year and I wanted to take as much advantage as I could of their full flavor. It is as buttery as lemon drizzle cake, of course it uses oranges instead of lemons and, to take it to the next level, you add a delicious sticky orange syrup on top and some drunken orange slices.

For the cake/ sponge:

• 200 g butter
• 200 g powder sugar
• 3 eggs
• 300 g flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 50 g poppy seeds
• 200 ml milk
• 150 ml orange juice

Method:

1. In a bowl, beat the butter (at room temperature) with the powder sugar. I did it with a hand mixer.
2. Add the eggs and mix some more.
3. In a different bowl mix the dry ingredients: flour + baking powder + poppy seeds
4. Incorporate the flour mixture into the eggs and butter mixture.
5. Add the milk and the juice to the bowl and mix.
6. Line a round cake tin with detachable bottom with baking sheet (both the bottom and the sides).
7. Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake in a preheated oven, medium heat, for 30 minutes.

Syrup:

• 300 ml orange juice
• 200 g granulated sugar
• the zest from 1 orange
• 1 cinnamon stick

Method:

1. Put all the ingredients in a sauce pan.
2. Bring it to a simmer.
3. Let it simmer for at least 10 minutes, until it gets thicker. Beware that the syrup gets thicker when it gets cold.

For the oranges on top:

1. Heat up some rum (around 100 ml) in a sauce pan. No need for it to boil, just make it really hot.
2. Cut 2 oranges in slices. Try to remove as much white skin as you can while doing it.
3. Put the orange slices in the hot rum and let them soak and absorb the alcohol for 50-60 minutes.

To put the cake together:

1. While both the cake and syrup are warm, make tiny holes in the cake with a fork on all the surface and pour the syrup on top. 
2. The syrup will be absorbed and the cake will be soooo moist.
3. You can reserve some syrup for extra flavor for each slice. The syrup is also amazing cold, so don't worry.
4. When the cake is slightly colder and you have removed it from the tin, take the orange slices out of the rum and place them on top of the cake as desired.
5. Optional, sprinkle some powder sugar on top.

I hope you will find the result as rewarding as I did. I took some slices to work the next day and everybody loved it, they were surprised how much beautiful orange taste it had. I also want to mention that the cake is at its best when it is served after it had been refrigerated for 2-3 hours.

Happy December,

Vegetable Stir Fry with Crispy Pork | You've Got Meal!

We are posting the recipe knowing that it might mean the beginning of the end for a lot of Chinese take away restaurants. Yes, people, YOUVEGOTMEAL is showing you how they make it so you can just do it yourself. Well, us and a lot of other people online, but why would you listen to renowned chefs? Now, modesty and everything behind us let’s get cracking.

For the vegetables you will need : 

• 1 red bell pepper, 
• 2 medium carrots, 
• 1 medium onion, 
• 1 thumb sized ginger, 
• 1 tbs. of five spice, 
• 1 medium hot chili, 
• 2 tbs. of dark sugar, 
• 1-2 tbs. fish sauce, 
• 2-3 tbs. soy sauce, pepper, peanut or sesame oil. 

For the meat : 

• 150 grams of pork (we had some meat from a shoulder cut that we cleaned the fat from), 
• salt, 
• pepper, 
• vegetable oil, 
• 100 grams of corn starch.

As per usual, a couple of notes before starting this dish. The title does  say crispy pork, but you can choose to just add the meat to the veggies in the stir fry and be done with it. I honestly think that cooking it separately and keeping the crunch factor brings a more special note to the whole dish.

The way we did this was by making the pork 1^st because it was a little more time consuming (compared to a stir fry, not a lot of things aren’t). Cut the meat into equal strips, and this is important because when you are dealing with quick cooking you want everything to be done at the same time and not have pieces of the same meal differently cooked. Next, season the pork with salt and pepper – easy on the salt. Run the meat through the corn starch, making sure the strips are well coated. Shake off any excess starch (it will burn badly in the oil) and cook the meat in a heavy base pan in which you have heated some vegetable oil to the blazing hot point. Cook for 3 minutes on each side or until it gets a golden color. Remove the meat from the oil onto some paper towels.  

Next, cut the pepper and carrots in sticks making sure they all have the same size. Slice the onion julienne style, clean and grate the ginger, slice the chili. Heat a couple tbs. of oil in your wok and fry the all the cut vegetables for 1 minute, until the carrots barely start softening. Next pop in the sugar, 5 spice and some grinded pepper and mix everything for another minute, making sure the vegetables are covered in the sugar and spice.  Add the soy and fish sauce, coat the veggies for another 30 seconds and remove from heat. You can add the meat to the vegetables at this point, but keep in mind that it you won’t get the same crispy outcome.

Serve the meat and the vegetables on top of some basmati rice, sprinkle some more soy sauce on top if needed.

Enjoy,

Irish Soda Bread- Simple Homemade Healthy Bread Recipe | You've Got Meal!

I just love the smell of freshly baked bread in our house. It makes a house feel a lot more well… homey. And fluffy. And pretty much like you never want to leave – just think of the gingerbread house in the Hansel and Gretel story. No wonder those two went right in, must have smelled amazing.  

   

But I’m not here to tell you of classic story or to present you our flat’s dramatic transformation into a gingerbread house. Instead, I’m going to do something better and tell you about our awesome Irish soda bread recipe. This is one of the easiest ways to try and level up your baking skill.

I mean, we’re only talking about 

• 500 grams of flour (half wheat, half rye), 
• 1tbs. of baking powder, 
• 1 tsp. of salt, 
• 400 grams of buttermilk, 
• 75 grams of rye flakes, 
• 50 grams of flax seeds and 
• the same amount of pumpkin seeds.

A couple of things here: the classic Irish soda bread makes use of the chemical reaction between the baking powder and the butter milk to kick things up. The kind of flour you add, seeds, raisins or butter – these things are pretty much optional, go nuts over it. 

But, if you browse some other recipes on this blog (a wise course of action that would be), you’ll see that we like to keep some dishes close to the original, and this one deserves to be like that. The thing we went for was a super healthy, full of fibers, rich in taste bread, that could rock next to some fresh cream or garlic paste. 

Be careful here, the bread will be in its top shape for a max of 24 hours, make sure you enjoy it in that period of time. The more you wait, the harder it will get and the more intense the flavor of baking powder will get.

The making of the bread itself is as easy as finding a bar in Dublin (see what I did there?). Mix the flour, salt, baking powder, the rye flakes and the seeds. Make a well in the center of the flour and pour in the buttermilk.

Use your well floured hands to mix everything together, until you make a rather gooey dough. As a comparison to pasta dough, for example, the Irish bread dough is runnier. You can’t work the dough for very long, just create a ball shape, flour it and, with a knife, make an incision on top of the bread, so the center will cook at the same pace as the sides . 

We just put that on top of some aluminum foils in order to cook it, but feel free to use your fancy baking equipment. Pop the bread in the preheated oven at 170 C and cook until you see the bread getting a dark brown color in the middle (around 40  minutes). 

In order to make sure, stick a clean, dry skewer in the center of the loaf. If it comes back out clean, the bread is done. Now, enjoy the freshly-baked-bread smell and the view, because it is a wonderful, rustic looking bread that you made. Just look at the photos!

Enjoy,