Its ages since we’ve done a recipe, but we tried this last night & just had to share it.

Freekeh is a Middle Eastern staple. A green wheat that has been roasted & cracked, it has the most wonderful nutty flavour.  This recipe adds herbs, preserved lemons and feta to give  a really exotic flavour.

You will need:

1 cup freekeh

3 cups vegetable stock

3 tablespoons pine nuts

1/2 cup currants (or chopped apricots)

1/2 small red onion, finely chopped

A handful of fresh mint, roughly chopped

A handful of fresh parsley, roughly chopped

1 tablespoon preserved lemon, finely chopped

3 tablespoons olive oil

Juice of 1 lemon

100g feta cheese

Cook the freekeh in stock for 20 minutes or until tender and all stock is absorbed.  It should still have a bit of a bite to it when cooked.  Gently dry toast the pine nuts and allow them to cool.  Combine the cooked freekeh, pinenuts, currants, red onion, mint and parsley in a large bowl.

Now make the dressing. In a small jar shake together the preserved lemon, olive oil and lemon juice.  Pour the dressings over the salad.  Mix well and gently fold through the crumbled feta.  Taste and season if necessary (you may not need to add salt as there will already be salt from the stock and the feta cheese).

This is great as a veggie main course or a side salad.  We had it alongside a piece of steamed salmon. Lovely.

Its still not too late to make your own Christmas Pudding. Here’s a recipe from Eunice Power that appeared in the Irish Times Weekend mag a couple of weeks ago. Its for a gluten free pud, but you really wouldn’t tell the difference. www.facebook.com/blastawholefoods

If you don’t fancy making your own, or haven’t got the time, we have some sweet little individual Eunice Power puddings in stock. We’ve also got Eunice’s own Christmas Mincemeat, a lovely Green Tomato Chutney, some Beetroot Relish and a fabulous home made Cranberry Sauce.

Don’t forget that Eunice has a Christmas Cookery demo at Lawlor’s Hotel in Dungarvan next Thursday evening.

Anne made some of these lovely & light little Pecan Puffs for our Alzheimer’s Tea Day yesterday.  Lots of people asked us for this Rachel Allen recipe.

4oz (110g) shelled pecans

4oz (110g) butter, softened

2oz (50g) caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

4oz (110g) plain flour, sifted

1oz (25g) icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 150°C (300°F), Gas mark 2.

Place the Pecans in a food processor and grind until quite fine.  Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl or an electric mixer until soft.  Add the sugar and vanilla extract and heat until the mixture is light and fluffy.

Add the ground pecans and flour and bring together to form a dough. Using your hands, roll the dough into small, marble-sized balls, then flatten slightly using the palm of your hand and place on a baking tray (no need to grease or line).

Bake in the oven for 40 minutes or until they are a very pale golden brown and slightly firm around the edges.

Sift the icing sugar into a shallow bowl or onto a large plate.

Allow the cookies to cool for 2 minutes, then carefully remove them from the tray and, while they are still hot, roll them in the sifted icing sugar.

Leave to cool on a wire rack.

We’ve just become fans of Dalkey Mustard.   As the name suggests, its Irish made & you wouldn’t believe how lovely this is.  It contains just mustard seeds, honey, wine vinegar, spices, sea salt & no nonsense.

Don’t take our word for it though; try uber chef Kevin Dundon’s recipe for Dalkey Mustard Dressing.

This simple recipe for home made sugar free Lemonade was given to us by Sinead Ni Ghealbhain.  It really couldn’t be easier. 

Don’t worry about Xylitol – although it sounds like a nasty artificial sweetener its actually perfectly natural & very low GI.  This makes this recipes suitable for diabetics.

Ingredients

150g Xylitol
150ml Water
Juice of 3 Lemons
500ml of Still or Sparkling water

Method

1. Add the xylitol and 150ml water to a small pan. Dissolve to xylitol in the water, bring the mixture to the boil and simmer for 2-3 minutes. Set aside to cool.

2. When the syrup is cool place it in a large jug with the juice of 3 large lemons.

3. Top up with 500ml of still or sparkling water.

4. Enjoy!

Many thanks to everyone who came to our Bia Blasta Buffet this lunch time, we had an enormous response.  Also a very special thanks to Sinead Ni Ghealbhhain for all her hard work in putting it together.  We still have some of Sinead’s free recipe booklets left if anyone is interested.

Don’t forget we  have Issie from Issie’s Handmade Chocolate and Mic from Mic’s Chilli in store tomorrow (Saturday).  See you on the Square on Sunday at the GIY Dungarvan stand.

I had a great evening on Thursday talking to to a very lively group  from the  women’s circle at the Dungarvan Community Resource Centre.  It was particularly nice to see people tucking into Anne’s home made Chia Cookies.

Chia is the new wonder seed that nutritionist Patrick Holford was talking about on the Late Late Show a couple of weeks ago.  Its packed with protein, vitamins, minerals and Omega 3 oils & is well worth trying to work into your diet.

This recipe is enough to make about 36 cookies:

85g butter, diced plus extra for greasing
280g spelt flour
Pinch of salt
225g caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
2 tbsp toasted Chia seeds

Preheat the oven to 160oc/325of/gas mk3 and lightly grease 2 large baking sheets.

Sift the flour & salt together into a bowl.  Rub in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.  Stir in the caster sugar. Add the egg to the mixture along with the Chia seeds, and mix to form a soft dough.

Roll out the dough thinly on a floured surface & then cut into 36 rounds (or roll into a sausage & slice into rounds) . Transfer the rounds onto the baking sheets. Bake in the preheated oven for approximately 10 minutes until lightly golden & crisp.  Transfer onto a wire rack to cool & then store in an airtight container.

Shrove Tuesday approaches and we have a tried and trusted pancake recipe for you.  You will need:
1 egg, beaten,
200g wheat or spelt flour,
A pinch of salt,
200ml milk,
A small amount of oil for frying.

Beat the egg, add the milk and whisk together.  Then whisk in the sifted flour and salt.  You now have a pancake batter – easy eh?

Lightly oil a frying pan and heat.  Once the pan is good & hot, spoon in just enough batter to coat the base of the pan.  The pancake will only take a couple of minutes to cook.  As the first side begins to cook, you should be able to slide the pancake around.  Once its moving freely, flip it over to cook the second side.  Serve with the traditional lemon juice & sugar, maple syrup or agave syrup.  Don’t worry of the first one doesn’t work – keep going there’s plenty of batter.

If you want a gluten free version, just replace the flour with Doves Gluten Free flour  and a teaspoon of gluten free baking powder.  Add an extra beaten egg and an extra splash of milk as the gluten free version benefits from being a slightly looser mixture.  Follow all other instructions as above.

If you don’t have time to make your own batter we have a lovely Hale & Hearty organic gluten free pancake mix in stock which works really well.