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Rhone Bargeman's Beef

I came across this recipe in Elizabeth David's entertaining book, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, where she calls it Grillade des Mariniers du Rhône, and just had to try it. Quite like the Chou Farci recipe, it takes extremely simple ingredients and prepares them in an idiot-proof manner to produce a most tasty dish. It works really well with lean meat, such as round steak and the often disappointing striploin steaks found in the supermarkets these days. The only change I made to the recipe was to include a pinch of asafoetida to reduce the possible 'windy' effects of so much onion.

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Beef Tagine with Prunes

Tagines are one of Morocco's most famous dishes, and this is maybe the most famous tagine of them all. We tend to think of them in those lovely pots with the conical lids. If you believe the blurb, that's supposed to help the condensation drip back from the sides and not straight back into the pot. However, I've read that the Moroccans cook tagines in more normal pots and transfer to the elaborate pots for serving.

Lovely rich flavours and texture combine to give a memorable meal, particularly suited to the colder months. In Ireland, that means we can eat it all year around! It's a real cinch to make: the very basic preparation is followed by a couple of hours simmering gently on the stove top or in a low oven.

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Coriander Pork

I just love the earthy flavour of coriander seeds. Apparently coriander leaves are the world's must used herb. This recipe combines both in a Stroganoff-type dish. For any North Americans, coriander goes by the name of cilantro.

This dish is really easy to make and with pork filet being such good value, it is not expensive either, especially compared to Beef Stroganoff with its beef filet. Nevertheless, it has an at-least equally sophisticated taste and, with the cream, is rich and filling. If only all such nice dishes were so easy to make.

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The Saga of the Christmas Turkey

This year Anna's farmer brother, John, very kindly offered us one of his hand-reared turkies for the Christmas dinner. Being forewarned that they were on the large side got us thinking about what to do with the bird. We picked up one of the smaller ones, as seen in the picture, but it still weighed in at around 10kg, and came with all the giblets.

We decided there and then to remove the crown and save the legs and wings for future dinners. After dissection, the crown still looked pretty big, so we weighed it and found it to be 4kg: obviously too big for the two of us, so we split it in two. I made about 3.5 litres of very nice turkey stock out of the carcass, of which I froze about 2 litres for future use in soups and the like.

So, read on to see what we did with this magnificent specimen!

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Beef and Guinness Stew

Classic Irish dish for those winter evenings. Sort of an Irish version of the French daube, with our national tipple replacing the red wine. There's nothing at all complicated about this stew and it tastes so good. I urge you to give it a try. There's a slight twist in this recipe, which I based on one in Darina Allen's Simply Delicious 2 book. A spoon of mustard and a small strip of orange peel add complexity and aroma to the dish. You don't have to use Guinness: any stout will do. The only change you need to make is to adjust the amount of sugar: Murphy is a little sweeter and will need less. In fact, Guiness is probably the most bitter of the common stouts, so the amount of sugar in the recipe is an upper limit. I suggest using a heavy flameproof casserole such as Le Creuset and finishing the stew in a low oven, but if you don't have one, you can use a frying pan and a simple ovenproof dish. Failing this you can make the whole dish on top of the stove in a big pot, finishing over a very low heat. If possible, don't use a teflon pan for sealing the meat, as the little bits that stick to the bottom of the pan add great depth to the overall flavour. This dish can be reheated the next day: in fact, many would say the flavour improves overnight.

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