SK and I found ourselves strolling through Temple Bar today on our way from the North side of the city back to our usual haunt, the South side. We were hungry, not having eaten since breakfast and walking past the Bad Ass Cafe felt a certain nostalgia for the old times. The old times when your order got shot across the restaurant on the wire system. So in we went in search of good pizza. Tom Doorley last reviewed the Bad Ass in 2004. I fear it may have gone downhill since then. I did not see any mexican fare on the menu and the entire place smelt like a dirty chipper. There was a deep fried fat haze in the air near the kitchen. Everyone around us was eating fried chicken and chips, buffalo wings and other fare. Little wonder on the fat haze then. My memory of the Bad Ass is centered around the superb pizza they used to make, so I ordered one. SK similarly opted for pizza. They were ok, but nothing special. The bases were too doughy for my liking and I got a feeling of damp from them. I like my pizza bases thin and crispy. Then there was the matter of the teenage company nearby. A boy sat with his girlfriend and two other female friends. He had lovely hickey on his neck and his girlfriend was clearly feeling amorous (well, it was Valentine’s day) as she was too love struck to eat (depite the fact that everyone she was with was tucking into something) and kept her hands in her boyfriends crotch for most of the duration of our meal. There was a similarly loved up couple at the table on the other side of us. They tucked into chips and chicken (who says romance isn’t dead?), cokes, and held hands lovingly across the table, occasionally standing up to give each other a meaningful kiss across the table. This at about four o’clock in the afternoon. Get a room! They boyfriend, obviously well used to using the Bad Ass as his hunting ground was overheard giving the girlfriend instructions to the loos. “Through the door and up the stairs.” Just how many ladies has he chickened, chiped and coked in the Bad Ass? Such a sophisticate that he ordered his after dinner coffee (complete with milk). Does this young man know nothing about espresso? He has a lot to learn. Otherwise the Italians will laugh at him. If you are looking for saturday afternoon entertainment involving teenage courtship, this place is great (if not completely nauseating). If soggy pizza bases and hands in crotches are not your thing, give it a miss. The Bad Ass just isn’t what it used to be.
S and I sought comfort food this weekend. Something to do with gale force winds. So, here is the recipe (for his benefit really, because he asked me how I made it), for Laura’s Shepards’ Pie. Completely invented and no recipe followed. Though the onion marmalade is nigella lawson’s idea.
approx 500 grams of lamb pieces
1 large onion
salt, pepper
2 tablespoons of home made onion marmalade
1 tablespoonful of tomato puree
1 stem of rosemary, fresh from the balcony, chopped finely
1 teaspoonful (heaped) of mint sauce
one third of a bottle of white wine approximately
finely chop onion, place in saucepan with olive oil, salt, pepper. sweat.
chop up the lamb pieces into very fine pieces, season with salt and pepper and throw a fistful of flour over it. transfer to sweated onion saucepan and fry.
finely chop the rosemary and add to lamb. stir.
add tomato puree, onion marmalade, mint sauce.
stir until meat is cooked.
when the lamb is cooked, add the wine.
bring to boil and reduce to simmer.
peel 4-5 potatoes. boil.
when boiled, strain them into a colander.
use a colander. failure to use a colander results in soggy potatoes.
in the potato saucepan, add a slice of butter.
add some milk. heat up but do not bring to a boil.
add potatoes back in. mash.
season mash with salt, pepper, (freshly ground, both), one teaspoon of mustard and one teaspoon of mint sauce.
transfer the simmering lamb to an oven proof dish. spread out evenly.
place mashed potatoes on top of the lamb mixture. spread out evenly. a sharp chopping knife is very useful for spreading out evenly.
place in an oven at 180 degrees centigrade (ours is a fan assisted oven) and leave in the oven for approximately 50 minutes.
serve. yum. burning hot though. maybe leave cool for five minutes before serving.
Depressed that the back to school weather didn’t materialise and we are definitely not getting an Indian summer this year, it was time for some comfort food yesterday evening after the torrential rain of the day. The wind was whipping around Dun Laoghaire to such a degree yesterday that a sturdy hook handle umbrella I was using blew inside out. I turned it the right way in again but about twenty steps up the pavement something happened that I have never experienced before. The metal fell out of the umbrella. All of it. Into a neat pile on the pavement. I stopped to pick it up and wondered what to do with the umbrella, thankfully, there is a skip near work that I was able to dispose of it in. I got thoroughly soaked thanks to the disintegration of the umbrella.
So anyway, comfort food.
Chirizo and red pepper pasta bake.
1 red pepper, 1 chirizo sausage
half a packet of bunalun pasta
boil the pasta.
chop the sausage and pasta, throw into a saucepan
fry the pepper and sausage, no need to add oil
when the sausage is cooked (and all the lovely oils are a nice orangey mess at the bottom of a saucepan), throw in two dessert spoons of flour. Stir around for a few minutes to cook the flour. Cooking the flour sounds daft, but you have to stir it around for a few minutes.
Add a little mile. milk. Stir to get all the lumps out of the flour.
Keep adding milk until you think you will have a thin mixture that you think will be enough for all the pasta.
Grate some cheddar and keep stirring the milk and chorizo and pepper mixture.
Bring up to almost a boil and keep stirring until it thickens a bit.
Drain the pasta and stir into the sauce.
Place in an oven proof dish, cover with some grated cheese and put in the 180 degree oven.
Bake while you make a cake.
Make a cake.
100grams of butter, melt over simmering water
2 eggs, medium
100grams of sugar, I used a mixture of demerara and muscavado
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
100 grams flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
while the butter is melting, whisk eggs and sugar together until fluffy and aerated.
mix the butter and vanilla into the sugar and egg mixture
mix in the flour (which is sifted in) and the baking powder.
turn into a greased, floured loaf tin.
retrieve some blueberries and raspberries from the fridge and throw into the cake mixture.
put the cake in the oven and remove the pasta bake.
eat the pasta and bake the cake for about thirty minutes, all ovens vary and just wait until it turns golden and a knife comes out clean from the centre. leave to cool in the tin. then turn onto a plate and leave upside down as all the fruit will have sunk to the bottom of the cake.
Enjoy in uncharacteristic eating fashion – on the couch watching tv rather than the usual at the table. Moan about the weather. Whine about all the rain.
