Back to the Home Land.

This week I took a much needed trip back to the family homestead, to see the Irish Mammy and a few of the assorted aunties and most importantly, the Great Aunt. It was a quick trip home, only getting home after blagging myself off early in work. (Budget Day and going out for dinner, not two things that generally go hand in hand) One of the best things that I find about going home to visit, especially the last few months, has been all of the beautiful food that has been growing in my parents garden. Everything from the biggest courgettes I've ever seen, to a massive chilli pepper plant in the green house, their garden has absolutely flourished this year.



Growing things is something that I loved as a young child. I had begging my parents for years to grow tomatoes, even to get chickens, as my cousins just across the road had a large green house and garden, with chickens, that was put into my care for two weeks of the summer every year. This was back when Irish summers were long, hot and balmy, and some of my fondest memories are of putting the chickens into the coop at dusk and that distinctive smell of tomato plant leaves as I was watering the green house. I think it was these good memories that gave me my love for natural produce, organic and home grown! However, it was a couple of years until my parents actually did go after and convert some of our garden into a kitchen garden. What started out as one box has steadily grown into three planter boxes, a green house, a hedge grow of pea's and bean's and a large row of raspberry bushes. They even had a sunflower that had forty blooms this year! If that's not a record, I'll be very surprised!

After a very severe rain all morning, the sun came out just in time for me to take some pictures! This particular trip home I got the largest courgette I've ever seen, which was used for pickling, some beautiful beetroot's, which will be used for hummus in a later recipe, some chilli peppers, which have gone into the freezer to be made into chilli oil later on, and some apples which actually came from a patient of Irish Mammy who couldn't pick them himself, which were made very successfully into a crumble.





As much as I would love my own garden in Dublin, it just isn't possible. Having very little space is a huge problem, as is not knowing if you will be living in the same house come June! However, for my birthday, the house mates bought me a little magic bean which I have since planted and is growing happily on my window sill. What it will be, I'm not really sure, but for now, I'm just happy to have a little bit of outdoor inside with me! 

Courgette Pickle

I know what you are thinking.. She's put up two recipes and both are based on courgettes. And you'd be dead right, they are one of my favourite vegtables, from soups to salads to pickles, they taste good no matter what. It also helps that Mam and Dad's garden seems to have the perfect soil for them as they grow so so big. Check out my blog later this week for my haul from their garden, leading to me coming back to Dublin and spending the entire evening in the kitchen!

Pickle is something I've always been on board with, its sweet with a tangy after taste.. I would eat pickles all day if I could. But in the spirit of somewhat saving money and trying something new, I found the biggest courgette that I could from the family garden and brought it back up to Dublin with me. I had gotten the idea from a Jamie Oliver cookbook and also from a forkful video and had decided to put it into play. While it is now a waiting game to see how it turns out, judging simply by what smells were floating around the house as I made it, this will be fucking delicious!

Ingrediants

4 small Courgettes or one really huge one!

500mls of any kind of nice vinegar, I used White Wine vinegar.

150gms Caster Sugar

Garlic

Ginger

Mustard Seeds

Dried Chillis

Salt 

Jug of Iced Water

1. So my first move was to cut up the courgette as thin as possible. Try your best not to slit your fingers open while doing it , I most certainly came close a few times! 
2. Lay the courgette into your tray or bowl, whatever suits and sprinkle with about two tablespoons of salt. Then pour over your iced water and let it sit for about an hour. Relax! Go to the shop, have a bitch with your house mate, plan a trip to London. Everything is possible! (Within the space of an hour, these are genuinely all things I did!)
3. One important thing to do during your hour, and takes five minutes, is to make the actually pickling juice itself! This is simply grating the garlic and ginger and adding the vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds, chillis and your grated items in a saucepan and bringing it up to simmer for about 5 minutes. Leave this to then cool.
4. Next pour out all the water and start to get a little bored. The Forkful recipe says to pat all the slices of courgette very dry with kitchen paper. The Ger method says to this to a few pieces, get distracted and then shove all the slices into the jars! 
5. Then the easiest part, pour the juice into each jar, pop a lid on and put it in the fridge! They will be ready to use within a few hours, but will only get better with time as the vinegar properly infuses into the courgette, making it soft and tangy.

And thats it! I'll post again once I've tried and tested, even with a recipe using them, but for now, I'm giving them their time for the vinegar and courgette to become best friends and soon, the best burger/hot dog topping will be mine! 

Courgette and Pea Soup (Family Dinner Style)

Soup is possibly one of the easiest things I can think of to make and coming into winter and long cold nights, I figured the perfect way to kill boredom on a day off was to make family dinner. This involves an incredible amount of food for five girls, lots and lots of wine and of course, Annie's Cuban rum to get cracked out at about four in the morning!

So, how did I decide on pea and courgette? I looked in my fridge, saw we had two courgettes and what house doesn't have a bag of frozen peas in the bottom of the freezer somewhere! So lets get started.

Soundtrack

Before anything, what I think is most important to cooking is the soundtrack. Whether it is a favourite band, the chatter of your family or just simply your own thoughts, its always nice to document!

For Courgette and Pea Soup, I listened to Hozier's EP called Take Me to Church. When I say I replayed and replayed and REPLAYED I'm not lying. Great things to come from this man, for sure! 

Ingredients

Two Courgettes, any size

• About 300gs of frozen peas
• An onion, or in my case, two left over halves from previous nights cooking
• One clove of garlic (or two, if you are like my friends and obsessed with it)
• Some olive oil (extra virgin by default for my taste)
• A vegtable stock cube

1. So step number one is to cut up all your onions into little pieces while trying to not do the same to your fingers. For this, size isn't a huge issue as everything will be blended up together later. Likewise with the garlic, unequal size is fine! Don't worry if you garlic slips out of your hands and onto the ground outside. Nobody's perfect, give that bad boy a wash and get chopping! (Personal experience)
2. Next put your pot on medium heat  (on an electric cooker, I tend to go for a good four) and pour a nice amount of oil in. I always text my oil by putting a small piece of onion or garlic in and using that as my judge as to when to put everything else in.
3. Fry your onions and garlic til soft. This should smell pretty damm amazing.
4. Cut up your courgettes into quaters, while admiring the fact that I'm colouring coding my chopping boards. (We have one, green for veg, green for fish, green for meat.    Very health and safety concious!) 
5. Throw the courgette quaters into the pot with the nicely coloured onions. Mix it around a bit and wait for the courgettes to become soft. 
6. Now is a great time to own a measuring jug. If, like me, you still haven't bought one, use your kettle! Measuring out 600mls of water and boil that up. (just a bit over the .5 litre part) 
7. Pop your stock cube into a mug while waiting for kettle to boil and stir up your cooking pot
8. Pour your boiling water into your mug. Something I learnt while doing this was to always make sure to check the mug is big enough BEFORE you start to pour in the boiling water! It's the little things that help! 
9. Pour your peas into the pot and follow straight up with the water with the melted stock cube in.
10. Bring this up to the boil and then let simmer for about ten or fifteen minutes.Taste and then season as much as you think needed, but a good bit of cracked black pepper always helps! 

Its then time to make friends with your blender. Now here at home we have two, a Smoothie Maker type blender that I've had for years or a new Handheld one. Now recently myself and the Smoothie Maker had a bit of a row while making beetroot hummus and have been finding pink chickpeas all over the kitchen since then. So I went with the Handheld this time. However, word of warning, soup is HOT. Blending hot soup with a Handheld will end up in some splashing. And burning. And wishing you went with the old friend Smoothie Maker.

And that's it! I toasted some gluten free wraps that I had cut up into squares under the grill and used these as croutons and then a bit of goats cheese for those of us who can have dairy (sorry Annie!) and TA DA! 

Finished product, complete with instagram filter, thanks to Guapa, the Spanish. 

So that's literally it. As easy as wel... Soup!