Meet Cully&Sully

Everyone’s favourite producers of chilled hot pots, soups, pies and desserts, Cully&Sully were in the Westbury Hotel in Dublin last night to meet some of the Irish Food Bloggers and to launch a fantastic new competition – Chef Factor.

The evening kicked off with demonstration from Ivan, often referred to as the “&” in Cully&Sully – he’s the main development chef for the company. Over copious free beers, Ivan cooked a delicious lamb dish with couscous, white turnip & multi-coloured chard served with Bearnaise sauce, while dispensing numerous chef tips along the way to the eager crowd. Once the dish was served up for us to taste, it was time for Elaine (the “.com” in cullyandsully.com, as I nicknamed her) to show off the promo videos that had been made for the competition.

Both Cully & Sully grew up around Irish food powerhouses (Ballymaloe & The Granary Store), so it was natural that they were gourmands from a young age. Their upbringing has strongly influenced their business, as the entire range of products is free from artificial colours & flavourings and also preservatives – or as Cully puts it, “The only things you’ll find in our products are the things you’ll find in your Granny’s kitchen”. Talking to them after the launch last night, it was clear that this philosophy runs to their core, as they were eager to discuss any dishes and restaurants the food bloggers could recommend.

Cully&Sully’s Chef Factor is about giving someone a once in a life time opportunity to pursue a culinary career or get involved in making their own good food. They are also hoping to raise some awareness for Cork Simon Community throughout the competition as they are approaching their 40th anniversary and now as much as ever, are in need of support.

The winner of Chef Factor will get to attend the 12-week cookery course in Ballymaloe worth €12,000 (session starting January 2011) along with receiving everything they need to become Ireland’s next great chef: the course, a uniform, a set of knives, accommodation while they train followed by 2 weeks with Cully&Sully to learn about the business and have some craic!

If you want to support someone who has entered Cully&Sully’s Cheffactor, you just have to ‘Like’ their entry to vote for them! Voting opens on the the 25th of October and only Votes on Cheffactor.ie count. They will also be giving away a number of Cully&Sully’s coveted hampers to voters at the final!

The 12-week course at Ballymaloe is highly respected and much sought after, and in their own words:

Our 12-week Certificate Course is aimed at anyone with a passionate interest in food. Some of our students use it as a springboard to becoming a professional chef (literally, hundreds of former students are now running their own restaurants or catering companies) – others to provide themselves with a marketable skill (for instance, cooking for private parties) – and a third group to maximise the pleasure they get from cooking at home. There’s no one age group (we have students who have just left school, others who are happily retired) and no particular level of experience (some are absolute beginners, others already accomplished).

So it’s time to get your thinking caps on and decide what dish you want to enter! Entering is easy, you simply have to upload a photo of YOU with your speciality dish. To garnish, put the words Cully&Sully somewhere in your snap. Then tell them a little bit about your dish and in 100 words or less why YOU deserve to be in the final!

A new burger joint where the customers really do set the menu, what a fantastic idea and if your idea sells well you could be eating for free. It’s a far cry from this place…

An interesting article talking about food miles. I still think that it’s better to buy as much locally grown produce before resorting to food that has travelled half the world. Freshness trumps all in my opinion.

Chocolate and booze, what a classic mix, now available in this ice-cream recipe, thanks to Kieran Murphy for sharing the link.

Is it too early to be talking about what I want for Christmas? Meh, I don’t think it matters anyway as I don’t think even Santa would spring for these cookbooks for me. Check out the price tag before you say you’ll buy them for me

Frittata Chistorra

Ingredients;

1 Handful of fresh herbs (parsley, oregano, thyme) finely chopped
2 x onions, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, finely diced
1 stick of celery, finely diced
1 x sweet pepper, finely sliced
Approx. 20cm Chistorra finely sliced (substitute other dried meat if unavailable)
4 x eggs
30g Pecorino cheese, grated
30g goat’s Gouda cheese, grated
30g Red Leicester cheese, sliced

Serves 2

Get your frying pan on to a medium high heat with a little olive oil. Add the onions and fry them gently for ten to fifteen minutes or until they begin to caramelise.

While you wait, beat your eggs well, trying to incorporate as much air as possible, add in the grated cheeses as well as the fresh herbs and beat some more.

Once the onions have started to caramelise add in the garlic and fry for about a minute before adding the celery and continuing to fry gently for about five minutes. At this point you want to add the sweet pepper and fry for about a minute more, before pouring the egg mix over and stirring well. You will need to be quick doing this as the egg will start to cook as soon as it hits the pan. I use a plastic whisk to keep everything moving as I add the eggs and try to make sure that all the ingredients are evenly distributed around the pan.

Now leave this mixture to cook in the pan until you see the eggs start to cook at the very edge of the pan. Now, quickly add the sliced Chistorra over the top of the frittata and crumble the Red Leicester cheese over as well.

Place under a preheated grill and continue to cook until the centre of the frittata has solidified and the cheese has just started to brown at the edges. Divide the Frittata into slices just like you would a pizza and serve with a small side salad.

It’s a really strange thing I’ve noticed but most meat eaters don’t really think about the meat they eat terribly much, in fact from talking to vegetarians I know and have known over the years it is clear to me that they actually think more about the meat us meat eaters eat than most of us do.

For a lot of us the most we think about meat is will I have beef, lamb, chicken or pork for my lunch/dinner? Most of us make our way around the supermarket and pick up our nice pre-packaged cuts without ever wondering how long it is since this mooed/clucked/snorted etc. Really how many of us actually look closely at the cut before we put it in our trolley and take it home? How many of us even look at the label to see where it came from?

It’s a bit crazy especially when you come to realise that one of the key differences in the meals you eat at home and the meals you eat in a restaurant is the quality of the ingredients. Not all meat is created equal, just like some cuts taste better than others some animals just taste better. This is usually in my experience to do with the way they are reared and the way that they are butchered.

A well butchered cut of meat can make an impact as dramatic to a meal as the addition of seasoning and sometimes even more so. That’s why I’m constantly on the search for a better butcher. Every so often I try a new butcher and for a while I find good value or better cuts but then almost as soon as I get comfortable with a butcher, the quality or value or both just start to drop off, so I end up varying which butcher I use just to keep them on their toes.

The Market Butcher

When we visited Taste of Dublin, one of the many brochures that I picked up at the event was one for The Market Butcher it was only later I realised that their shop is just up the road from me, so I popped in one day and picked up some steaks for dinner, let’s just say that they were among the finest I have ever tasted.

Since then, I’ve been a regular customer and I’ve seen no difference in quality, every cut I’ve tried has been superb. It’s great for me because we are local but they do accept orders on-line and even offer free delivery for larger orders.

The range on offer is huge and the pricing is competitive with the supermarkets while giving much better quality and to top off, all their beef, chicken, lamb and pork is Irish. I haven’t tried the other more exotic options yet, so I haven’t asked about the origins but the staff have never been anything other than exceptionally helpful so I have no doubt they will be happy to answer any questions from customers.

Give them a try – I cannot recommend the fillet steak highly enough – I’m confident you won’t be disappointed.

Rice Krispie Squares

Ingredients;

5 oz butter, chopped into chunks
5 Mars bars, chopped into roughly 1cm slices
5 mugs of Rice Krispies
500g Chocolate (mix of dark & milk)

Line a large baking tin with overlapping pieces of clingfilm, ensuring that all parts of the interior are covered.

Place the butter and sliced Mars bars in a large Pyrex (glass) bowl and place this into a suitably-sized saucepan (the bowl should not touch the bottom, and leave space for 2 inches of water). Bring the water to a strong simmer and melt the butter & Mars bars, stirring occasionally. Once it has all melted, stir continuously until the the melted butter is absorbed into the rest – be patient, it will “come together” eventually.

Lift the bowl off the saucepan and add in 5 mugfuls of Rice Krispies. Stir this well, but gently, until all the Rice Krispies are coated and no lumps of the melted mixture remain. Pour / spoon into your baking tin and gently smooth out until even.

Wash your Pyrex bowl, dry and place back on the saucepan of water. Break up the chocolate into the bowl and melt over simmering water. Once melted and smooth, pour over the Rice Krispies. It’s best to use a soft spatula so that you can scrape out as much of the chocolate as possible. Tip the baking tray back and forward until the base layer is evenly covered.

Cover with a tea towel and leave in a cool place to set (varies from 2 – 24 hours, dependent on season/temperature). Do NOT refrigerate as this will make the Rice Krispie layer go soggy.

Cut with a sharp knife and store in an air tight container (old biscuit tins are perfect), will keep for up to 7 days – but I bet they won’t last that long!