For those of you who aren’t familiar with Donal Skehan, he has a great biography over on his food blog. He first came to my attention with his original and excellently titled food blog thegoodmoodfoodblog.com alas it is no longer with us but the ethos behind that original blog is still very much alive on donalskehan.com

His first cook book, “Good Mood Food”, is a great read that reminds me of the early Jamie Oliver cookbooks with it’s direct and easy to follow style. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to give his second book, Kitchen Hero, a review as yet but based on what I’ve seen in the TV show, I’m sure it will be every bit the match for the recipes and tips of the first.

As cooking shows go, Donal’s personality and enthusiasm shines through, there is no doubting that he loves food, loves to cook and most important loves to share that knowledge with others. His recipes are very accessible and any I’ve made, I’ve enjoyed both the results and the preparation.

The thing that really makes this show for me though is the attention to detail, I can’t remember the last time I saw a cookery show where we actually saw the cook washing their hands, not to mention washing them after handling raw meat. I know it’s basic hygiene and I know most people do it automatically, but I really hate the way so many shows seem to take hygiene for granted! Good on you Donal for keeping it real!

Image via Wikipedia

So, what’s next for Not Junk Food?

Well, I had mentioned before that I wanted to do some posts on food hygiene and nutrition but I’m not going to launch into those just yet, part of the reason is that I haven’t even started writing those posts yet, what with the job hunting taking up so much of my focus for the last while and because these can be VERY boring topics if not treated well. So rather than rush into it and risk boring my tiny audience to tears I’m going to work on making those posts as easy to read and digest as possible.

When this site started originally I was posting at least 4 times a week, more recently that has dropped to 2-4 posts a week. This gave me a little extra time to improve the quality of what I was writing, by allowing me to do more research and editing, some of those cooking method posts were like chapters of a book on their first draft and that’s just not cricket. People either don’t read longer posts or lose interest halfway through. I really believe that having an understanding of these basic methods has improved my cooking immensely and I wanted to pass those details along to as many people as possible hence the extra effort.

For the future I intend to continue this trend of lower quantity, higher quality. So here’s the plan, I’m going to commit to publishing a recipe and at least one other post every week, for the foreseeable future.

What a great example of the Fast food industry helping to raise awareness about Diabetes

So the American Food ad industry thinks proposed new guidelines for advertising to children are too restrictive, I reckon that means they just need to be a little tighter then

I’d love a set of these, Parmesan pencils great idea but I wonder if the cheese is any good?

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I was lucky enough to be offered an Amazon voucher to spend as I liked and I had several items on my wishlist just waiting for such an opportunity. George also had a lot of items on his wishlist, so there was much debating as to who could get what. Happily, my work came through with another voucher as a little thank you, so I was able to treat both of us!

Ever since George spent some time working in Eden in Temple Bar, he’s been hankering after their cookbook so that he could replicate the dishes at home more accurately, so that was an easy choice for both of us. Next up was baking supplies – I’ve been trying to bake more often, and to do decent batches of stuff so that it will last for more than a couple of days. Space is at a premium in the kitchen, so a set of stackable cooling racks seemed like a great idea, and it was joined by a set of springform tins, so that I can finally make Grannymar’s Infamous Chocolate Cake.

It’s become a bit of a tradition for me to make jelly shots for any parties we throw, and ever since I discovered Jelly Shot Test Kitchen Blog, my ideas have been getting more ambitious! A set of silicone jelly moulds will ensure that the next jellies I make will be a little more adventurous than basic jelly shots.

Our final choice was a joint one and an easy decision to make. We’ve both been lusting after a gorgeous book by Niki Segnit, called “The Flavour Thesaurus” for a long time now. It’s an incredibly useful book that details what flavours and ingredients go best together, which means that if you suddenly find yourself with excess of an ingredient you can find classic or less well known matches for it without having to experiment yourself.

Now it’s your turn! Tell us what you would choose if the Fairy Hobmother granted your wish. Is there a cookbook you’ve been meaning to buy for ages, a piece of equipment that your kitchen is sorely lacking or even something that you’ve wanted to treat yourself to for a while?

Leave a comment below telling us what you’d wish for and it might come true! The Fairy Hobmother will be inspecting all wishes left here before midnight (GMT) on Sunday 14th August, and it could be your wish that gets granted! [Open to residents of Ireland & UK only]

So are the billboard guys trying to tell us something?

Until recently, I have been a bit of a picky eater, that has changed in the last few years and I’m getting to the point where there is very little I won’t taste. It’s something that I’ve tried writing a post about in the past but I’ve never been happy with the results. Now, I don’t have to thanks to Slice of Feist, who have summed it up far better than I could.

A short interview with one of the chefs I admire most, Heston Blumenthal

Finally, someone puts a figure on what obesity is costing this country. I wonder how much it would cost to teach the entire country some cooking skills? How much (if anything) could that save the economy?

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The short version of this story is because I was morbidly obese and deep frying was one of the reasons that I had become (and remained) that way. The long version goes a bit more like this…

When we first got our deep fryer it was a fabulous tool – every so often, we’d have chips with our dinner or onion rings or some battered fish etc. This is back in the days when I was first starting to cook “properly” from scratch. It was really handy just to be able to fire something in there to go with whatever I was cooking from scratch.

That was part of the problem though, it was too easy, too convenient. What’s for dinner tonight? Fish and chips? Chicken, chips and onion rings? Steak and chips? you get the idea and what was even worse was that we were using frozen chips, onion rings etc. We weren’t even cutting our own potatoes not to mention cooking from scratch for more than half our meal but that was OK cause at least we were cooking something from scratch!?

In truth, that would be fine if we were only doing it occasionally, but it started to become multiple times a week. All because of the convenience and the easy excuse “I’m too tired to cook after a long day in the office”. And then there was the smell of chipper throughout our entire home. It became easy to use the same excuse to leave the cleaning of the fryer and changing of the oil until the weekend.

Eventually we came to our senses and we said that we would put the fryer away in the back of one of the cupboards and try to eat “proper food” for 2 weeks. Thankfully, about 6 months later we discovered the fryer in the back of the same press and it wasn’t a pretty reunion, as soon as I lifted the lid and got the smell from inside I gagged and I knew deep fried food had returned to it’s proper place in my diet as a treat every once in a while.

Have I ever regretted it? On occasions, when I see a nice piece of cod in the fish monger or when we visited Fifteen Amsterdam on holidays and tasted deep fried Zucchini for the first time, oh and that time experimenting with Gnocchi before service in a restaurant kitchen and someone threw the little pillows of heaven in and crisped the outside, they were divine!

Overall though I don’t regret getting rid of our deep fryer, we both lost weight and are healthier as a result

Deepfried Zuchini Flower, Buffalo Mozz, Salad of Faro and Pea Shoots

Amsterdam is a city that both myself and Elly love, we got engaged there and have had some fantastic breaks there over the years. Every time we visit, we seem to find more and more things to do. Not least of these is the food. On our recent trip we ate in all sorts of locations, Restaurants, Cafes, street vendors you name it. we sampled cuisines as diverse as Argentine, Italian, Greek, French, Egyptian, euro organic and Chinese. I really couldn’t say a bad word about the food or the service we received in any of these places. Prices were reasonable and reflected the meals served very well.

Potato Gnocchi with Gorgonzola

We did have one negative experience on the morning we decided to get breakfast in a touristy cafe, you know the type of place big menu with everything from an English breakfast through to pancakes and waffles. We sat for 10 minutes while staff member after staff member walked passed ignoring us until we got up, pushed our way past the staff blocking the exit (while having a chat) and went across the street and had breakfast elsewhere. The service staff really didn’t care about their customers at all, they didn’t even apologise or bother to ask why we were leaving, I almost went back to look for the manager, but I was on holiday so why bother with the stress and frustration, the staff have to take their lead from somewhere, right?

Perfectly rare steak

Copenhagen was chosen as a destination because Primus, a band that I have been a fan of most of my life, were playing their first European tour in over a decade and we missed out on the tickets for the Amsterdam gig as they sold out in minutes. Apart from that, the “best restaurant in the world” Nemo is located there, so there has to be a knock-on effect on all the restaurants in the city, right?

Maybe it was the lack of familiarity with the city but we didn’t find it as easy to locate restaurants as we do in Amsterdam, with a notable exception of a fantastic little cafe/restaurant we stumbled on, which was filled with organic, vegetarian and vegan foods as well as meat dishes for us omnivores. What really made this place for me, was that  you could see pots of fresh herbs growing all over the place and a lot of the vegetables were actually grown within walking distance and were literally harvested to order for whatever dish was being prepared.

Ireland has a fantastic reputation abroad as a food producer, particularly so when it comes to artisan products, but would you describe Ireland as a destination for a food tourist? Could we eat our way out of the current “trouble”?

This is the question being posed to the panel at “For Food’s Sake III”, a regular bi-monthly evening of food talk and tastings. I’ve missed the previous events but will be there with bells on this time and I’m really looking forward to an interesting discussion about this large and growing part of the tourism and food industries in this country.

The event is taking place in The Sugar Club this Thursday 28 July at 7 pm and full details can be found here. I’ll be there barring any disasters, so please feel free to say hello if you decide to come along.

I opened it wondering was it the results I’ve been waiting on? Sure enough, there they are, my results for all my hard work over the year. Whether it was by accident or design I really would like to thank whoever packed the envelope, cause the first thing I saw after I realised it was my results was “Awarded”. Never before has one word given such relief!

Not only that, but 8 out of the 12 subjects were distinctions with the rest being merits, so to say that I’m thrilled about the result would be an understatement, I’m walking on air at the moment.

Now to find the job that will take me the next step in my new career.

Poached Egg

Ingredients;

1 egg
4 tablespoons of distilled malt vinegar
Water

Place a saucepan on a high heat and add about 2 inches deep of water to it. Add the vinegar and bring to the boil.

While the water is heating, crack the egg into a small bowl. And set your timer for 3 minutes.

Once the water has come to the boil reduce the heat so the water remains just below boiling point.

With a slotted spoon, stir the water to create a vortex in the centre of the saucepan, then quickly pour the egg into the centre of the vortex and start your timer.

Once the 3 minutes are up, use the slotted spoon to remove and drain the now poached egg and serve – for example on a slice of ham on toast, garnished with balsamic vinegar and some dry herbs.

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It all started last January. I had a bit of a dose of Gastroenteritis that thankfully cleared up quickly. Shortly after that I started to have other almost random, gastric problems. Without getting into too much detail (suffice it to say, that it was not pleasant for me or anyone in the vicinity) this went on for 3 months of trips to the doctor, days missed in college, tests in James hospital, until the doctor announces that through process of elimination there are 2 possible causes of my symptoms, Lactose Intolerance or Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

There was some discussion about IBS because there was no way (as I explained to my doctor) the universe could be this cruel to me. But that discussion came to an end pretty quickly when “invasive procedures” were mentioned and I began a 2 week lactose free diet the very next day.

I was so convinced that the universe could not be this cruel that I stopped at the shop on the way home and spend about €5 on chocolate, Sausage rolls and chocolate milk. You see where I’m going here. I was going to prove that doctor wrong and not need to do the lactose free diet because I had digested the equivalent of a cow’s worth of dairy and been fine…

a short while later…

Stomach cramps

While running for the nearest toilet\: “oh god, oh god, oh god Nooooo, I’m going to have to do this damn dairy free thing!”

And skip forward to my sudden realisation that the universe can be a bit of a dick!

I guess the best thing that happened to me while doing the 2 weeks without dairy in my diet was having someone who has lived with lactose intolerance to talk to. Not just about good options to use instead of milk, butter etc. But also because they understand more than most just how much food contains dairy in one form or another and how much this can limit your options when eating out, or at other events.

It was amazing how quickly the symptoms that had ruled my life for 3 months cleared up and disappeared just by removing dairy from my diet. I’ve discovered since that by not taking milk in my breakfast, tea or coffee I can handle small amounts of dairy used in cooking, not enough that I would think about eating a Pizza slice, but enough to know that if something was cooked with butter then I shouldn’t feel too much discomfort.

I was toying with the idea that I would occasionally take the discomfort hit for a good meal or the occasional treat, when I remembered a conversation I had a few years ago with one of Elly’s co-workers who was lactose intolerant. It was just after he had downed a steak with garlic butter. I was curious about why he would risk the dairy, would it not make him ill?

Turns out, he had taken a pill at the beginning of the meal, a lactase supplement (lactase is what allows us to digest dairy), which meant he could eat pretty much anything for about an hour after that. It wasn’t something that he did for every meal, it’s less hassle and more cost-effective to simply not eat dairy most of the time but at least he had the option to eat dairy every now and again as a treat or when eating out.

So, I went and did a bit of research online and found that I hadn’t dreamt this up and that I could buy a lactase supplement from Amazon. (Unfortunately, pharmacies in Ireland don’t stock adult lactase tablets.) I did and I’m happy to say that Kirkland’s “Fast Acting Lactase” tablets really work for me, I just take one with my first bite of dairy and I have no discomfort. If I’m eating for more than an hour I simply take an extra tablet and I’m good for another hour.

It means that while I can (and will) learn to cook lactose free food for myself and adjusting what I eat to make up for the lost nutrients, I still have the option, if I’m eating away from home, to pop a tablet and not have to worry about the possible downside.