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WELL, THE WEATHER is always changeable at this time of the year, that is certain, but what’s lovely to see is that it’s getting brighter, and at least we can all enjoy the ‘grand stretch’.
This St Patrick’s weekend offers us all a chance to catch up with loved ones, serve nice dishes and enjoy some well-earned downtime. You can’t fill the table with just savoury dishes, though, meals on a bank holiday weekend also need to feature some sweet treats. And this is where we come in today.
Jonny Murphy, aka The Hungry Hooker, has given us some fantastic recipes from his brand new book ‘Bakes and Wee Treats’.
Jonny used to be a professional rugby player, but after an injury led to his retirement, he jumped straight into his other passion, baking, moving back home to his native Co Down. His Nanny Mamie taught him about baking as a boy, and they picked up where they left off, with his grandad as Chief Taste Tester.
Because of their influence, the recipes in the new book are decidedly traditional and easy to make, including the classic Potato Farls below. They’re a reflection of the old favourites Jonny had as a kid. He is thrilled to share these recipes with you today so that you can make them too and serve them to your own loved ones…
Ingredients
450g leftover cooked mashed potatoes (still warm, if possible)
60g butter
1 tsp salt
120g self-raising flour, sifted, plus extra for dusting
Method
Place the leftover mashed potato in a bowl. Ideally, you want the mash to be slightly warm, so the butter combines well.
Add the butter and salt, then give this a good mash until it’s fully combined and smooth.
Gradually add the flour to the mash, mixing well between each addition until it is all combined.
Turn the mixture out onto a lightly floured surface and gently bring it together into a ball.
Pat it down into a flat circle, about 1cm thick.
Lightly dust the top with flour, then cut it into quarters.
Heat a griddle or dry frying pan over a medium heat, then get your farls onto the pan, floured sides down. Dust the tops with a bit more flour, then cook for about 5–6 minutes on each side until they form a nice crust.
Remove from the pan and allow to cool on a wire rack. These are very soft and delicate when fresh, so you can allow them to firm up a little.
You can have these immediately with some butter plastered over them, but be prepared for it to run down your chin. You can also toast them later.
The best way to serve them is fried in the pan along with a big fry-up. The only question is, which sauce: red or brown?
Or, if we’re getting really fancy, what about some of that Ballymaloe Relish?
This will always be a classic in our house. When I was younger, I convinced myself these were only for ‘big people’, but oh boy was I wrong. That unmistakable flavour of almonds is such a great accompaniment to a cuppa – and we all love a cuppa.
SERVES 8
Ingredients
For the shortcrust pastry
225g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
150g unsalted butter, chilled and cubed
25g icing sugar
1 large egg, beaten
For the filling
85g unsalted butter, softened
85g caster sugar
½ tsp almond essence
3 eggs, beaten
55g ground almonds
55g self-raising flour
3–4 tbsp Raspberry Jam
For the topping
300g icing sugar
½ tsp almond essence
small amount of cold water, as needed
pink food colouring
Method
Preheat the oven to 160°C fan/180°C/gas 4.
Make the shortcrust pastry by adding the flour and butter to a food processor. Blitz until they resemble breadcrumbs. You can also do this in a bowl and use your fingertips to work the butter into the flour.
Add the icing sugar and blitz, then gradually add the beaten egg while blitzing. It will come together and form a nice dough.
Turn the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and knead lightly to bring it together into a ball.
Roll it out into a circle about 5mm thick and pop it into a 23cm (9in) fluted tart tin. Use a little bit of the excess pastry to push the pastry into the edges of your tin (this will help you avoid ripping the main pastry shell).
Cover with some greaseproof paper and fill with baking beans.
Bake for 15 minutes, then remove the paper and baking beans. Trim any excess pastry and bake for another 10 minutes before removing and allowing to cool fully.
For the filling, beat the butter in a large bowl until pale and fluffy. Add the caster sugar and beat until it’s fully combined. Add the almond essence along with the eggs and beat to combine.
Finally, add the ground almonds and self-raising flour, and combine well.
Spread a layer of raspberry jam on top of the cooled pastry shell and gently spoon the filling mixture on top of this.
Carefully smooth it out and pop it into the oven at 160 °C fan/180 °C/gas 4 for about 35–40 minutes, or until the frangipane filling is firm and golden. Allow to cool fully before removing from the tin.
For the topping, mix the icing sugar and almond essence with a small amount of water until you get the desired spreadable consistency. Spread enough over the tart to cover, but hold a little back.
Mix this with a few drops of pink food colouring until you get your desired colour. Pop the pink icing into a piping bag and drizzle lines across the top of the tart.
Drag a cocktail stick or skewer across the pink stripes to create a feathered effect. Allow the icing to firm up slightly before slicing.
Ingredients
30 digestive biscuits
30 marshmallows, chopped 30 glacé cherries or 150–200g milk chocolate (or half milk and half white chocolate)
1 x 397g tin of condensed milk about 100g desiccated coconut, for sprinkling
Method
Blitz the digestives in a food processor until finely ground, or you can go old school and use a rolling pin and a ziplock bag. Place in a large bowl.
Boil the kettle and pour out a mug of hot water. Dip a pair of scissors or a knife into the hot water and use to chop the marshmallows in half. The hot water stops everything getting sticky.
Add to the bowl along with the digestive crumbs and mix well.
Do the same with the glacé cherries, if using.
Alternatively, chop up the chocolate and throw it in.
Pour in the tin of condensed milk and mix with a wooden spoon until well combined and there are no dry bits left.
Cut a large sheet of kitchen foil and lay it on your work surface.
Sprinkle half of the desiccated coconut over the foil.
Take half of the mixture and drop it into the desiccated coconut, then roll it into a thick sausage shape. I’ll always say the thicker, the better, but it’s all down to preference. Once it’s nicely rolled and completely covered in desiccated coconut, wrap it up tightly in the kitchen foil.
Repeat with the other half of the mixture and desiccated coconut.
Leave to set for about 30 minutes. You can pop them into the fridge, but I much prefer them moist and squidgy.
Unwrap and chop each log into about 15 thick slices, then try what is one of the greatest gifts Northern Ireland has given to the world – more iconic and better than Georgie Best, Alex Higgins and Rory McIlroy combined!
They’ll keep for up to 4–5 days in a sealed container.
Jonny Murphy, aka The Hungry Hooker’s new book, Bakes and wee treats is out now, published by Penguin. For more, see The Hungry Hooker on Instagram.
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We could just keep digging up Tom Mc Feely’s house until we’re out of debt
fair play to the plumber…dont know if I would have been as honest !
Mortage cleared in a bag…tempting.
Yeah you gotten wonder did anybody else find anything and keep quite. Did he forget he had it under there or what?
Maybe bertie set the precedent in memory loss..28k winnings and couldnt remember its name…dunno about you steve..but I,d know what it had for breakfast that morning..
The 60 k was only resting under my floorboards, doesn’t all this money mean he basically lied at his bankruptcy hearing?
Nigel the fact that Feely was an ex-PIRA hunger striker may have had some bearing on his conscience.
Lied his arse off.
Maybe the plumber knew who he wad dealing with.
It is great the way they say its government debt when its the little people and children who are not even born yet debt .shame on the politicians
You’d be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life..
Brian
you think he has a concience? Maybe he hid that as well!
Those charts should be sandblasted into Bertie Aherne’s face.
Er has anyone noticed we’ve quadrupled our debt in 5 years
“Why Ireland is Buried under Debt”
The ECB is responsible for the Eurozone area and banking regulation. The ECB failed to regulate banks. The Commodities Futures Modernization Act 2000 (USA) and the repeal of the Glas Stegall Act 1999 (USA) legalized dodgy banking practices. Larry Summers & Timothy Geithner (USA) ensured these practices were exported to other regions including the Eurozone via the W.T.O. Financial Services Negotiations 1). Result: an inter-connected world of dodgy banker paper, seruritization of people’s homes, re-selling of mortgages many times over (re-hypothecation), CDO’s etc etc. A race between banks for short term profit exposing home owners to risk as the banks took more and more risk driving up house prices creating the property bubble which burst. Result: negative equity & complete collapse in the construction industry-which is needed.
2 Problems: a) unemployment & tax collapse and b) bailout of the banks. Both a) & b) caused the figures above along with c) no spending by people in massive negative equity just about ‘hanging on’.
The ECB (Trichet) forced Ireland to bail out Anglo Irish Bank which was not systemically important in order to get Deutche Bank’s & BNP Paribas money back.
The ECB did not ask Latvia to bail out “Latvijas KrajBanka” (LKB) which was allowed to go bankrupt in 2011 because there was no German money in it. The ECB still allowed Latvia to join the Euro (JAN2014) commending their low debt rate.
The massive debt spiral then increased as taxes are increased to fund the debt but because of a collapse in disposable income spending collapses, tax revenues decline, and unemployment costs increase.
1) http://m.vice.com/en_uk/read/larry-summers-and-the-secret-end-game-memo
All of those banking deregulations are still in place, most of the too big to fails have gotten bigger and are taking worse risks than before.
This disasterous level of debt is the result of policies persued by Fianna Fail while in government,they then rewarded themselves with massive pensions that they themselves approved under the benchmarking scam of public funds,150.000 euro per year pension for the rest of his life,thats the bill that Berti has left the Irish taxpayers for ruining this country.
Did it forget the huge Pension Liability that the State has? (And I presume on the assets side, it ignored the state’s oil resources since it intends to just give it away).
But the graph says Mmm – pie! It has to be good, right? Pie is ALWAYS good!?
Pye. 3.14192839444444 etc
Any chance of a quid pro quo with the troika for sticking to their 3.1bn target?
Yes. The quid pro quo is the government gets e700;000;00.00 so that the public section pension stream is not interrupted by , perish the thought!, shortage of funds. It’s all good fir those on the government teat, bad for everybody else, particularly those not even born yet.
Yes Margaret the state only looks after itself and its employees , forgets the rest ,,
So after 5 years of Austerity – we are worse off , and the govt still do as they are told – to get the rotten German and Irish capitalists their money back
”While in 2007 our liabilities were made up primarily of short-term debt and bonds, that type of liability is much less of the overall pie now as we can’t access funding from the normal lending markets in the way we used to.”
-
- Is this because of the rating agencies who have no credibility anyway
”the American corporate ratings agencies, which “downgraded” Greece to “junk”. These same agencies gave triple-A ratings to billions of dollars in so-called sub-prime mortgage securities and so precipitated the economic collapse in 2008.”
the whole thing is a monopoly game played by the big capitalists and the Plebs put up with it .
But there is no getting away from fact – that Germany rules this country .
.
who rates the rating agencies?
We do, we do.
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do, we do….
“government’s liabilities ” you mean the ‘Irish people’s liabilities’ since the last government turned the banks debts into sovereign debts that landed the people of Ireland with the debts. Governments come and go, the current instalment of chancers will give way to another bunch in a couple of years and the merry-go-round will continue, one thing that won’t change is the fact that, unlike the parasite politicians, the debts are not going to go away with big fat tax payer funded pensions. Those debts are there for your kids and your grandkids to pay for long into the future. They will be paying back debts that they had nothing to do with whilst the ones who actually caused the disaster in the first place are sat back laughing their heads off as the quaff champagne in sunnier climes and safe in the knowledge that in the republic of no accountability they are untouchable.
Just wondering what we are supposed to do with this information, other than cry that is?
ps: Ireland Debt Clock is way behind (http://www.financedublin.com/debtclock.php)!!
€208 billion in debt quick someone send the government a PIP number. They need it.
Yet people still shout for no more austerity,staggering level of debt for such a small country and we don’t even have military spending to blame this on.
Now this is very good info for the shiners The other shower f’cd the country & the present shower have just added more debt & put us. In the biggest rescission 20 years .
Who in gods name is going to save us .
“The Council wants the government to perform a €3.1 billion adjustment in the Budget next month but as we know that is the subject of much wrangling among the coalition partners.”
Surely this is the main part of the story rather than the graph.
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