The Best Mashed Potato

Having Irish family means accepting that sometimes stereotypes are real. Potatoes for instance, I cannot remember a time when I didn’t know how to roast, mash and bake them. Sometimes you just have to embrace the fact that your mum says things in a funny way, and that potato famine jokes are hilarious.

Potatoes make any meal homely, they add a safety that is hard to beat, and it’s pretty gosh darn hard to mess them up. Just avoid the green ones.

This is one of my favorite potato recipes (others include potato farles, herb-de-provence roasted potatoes and rosemary and potato pizza) it is ridiculously simple and pairs with so many foods. This time, for example, I had a burger and some green beans that needed using up; eat while enviously watching SJP and her wonderful wardrobe in Sex and the City on a Friday night and drowning in gravy.

The Best Mashed Potato – Serves 2

Ingredients
1 Brown onion
2 Garlic Cloves
2 Small potatoes
2 Knobs of butter
Dash of Milk

Recipe

Peel onion and garlic. Slice onion in half.Grill or roast them until they are tender, you should be able to smell them.
I grill them under a high setting for about 20 minutes turning occasionally to ensure they don’t catch on fire. If you are doing a Sunday roast chuck them in with the meat and take them out about 20 minutes before you are ready to mash; this method yields incredible results.

After 20 minutes under the grill remove onions & garlic.

Roughly peel and chop potatoes into chunks and boil in salted water until tender.

Once the onion and garlic are cool chop both finely – this is easy as they are both falling apart anyway, I find it easiest to just squeeze the garlic out of it’s skin straight into the drained potatoes.

Drain the cooked potatoes and add the chopped onions and garlic, mash roughly. Add the butter to the roughly mashed mix and mash some more. Add a dash of milk, no more than a quarter of a cups worth per two potatoes and mash until creamy. Plate and season with pepper.

So Easy!

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Super Simple Sticky Toffee Pudding

This is just the most simple thing you may ever make. I feel like this pudding actually gives back more than you put in, the saint of puddings if you will, it’s there for you when you need it most. With the weather the way it is now though (30 degrees in Adelaide!) this probably isn’t what you are day dreaming about eating, but trust me on this.

This should be on man vs. food, it is ridiculously rich; in a good way. I like to coat mine in custard, but then I’ll pretty much coat anything in custard; I may or may not have eaten the remaining custard on its own the next day. Heated of course.

I am looking into buying a digital SLR camera, if you have any suggestions of brands let me know!

Nigella’s Easy Sticky Toffee Pudding

Ingredients – Pudding

• 100g dark muscovado sugar
• 175g self-raising flour
• 125ml full-fat milk
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 50g unsalted butter, melted
• 200g chopped, rolled dates, I would suggest dicing these really finely as they soften more whilst smaller.

Ingredients – Sauce

• 200g dark muscovado sugar
• Approx. 25g unsalted butter in little blobs
• 500ml boiling water

Recipe

Serves: 6-8.

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C and butter a 11/2-litre capacity pudding dish.
2. Combine the 100g dark muscovado sugar with the flour in a large bowl. Pour the milk into a measuring jug, beat in the egg, vanilla and melted butter and then pour this mixture over the sugar and flour, stirring – just with a wooden spoon – to combine. Fold in the dates then scrape into the prepared pudding dish. Don’t worry if it doesn’t look very full: it will do by the time it cooks.
3. Sprinkle over the 200g dark muscovado sugar and dot with the butter. Pour over the boiling water (yes really!) and transfer to the oven. Set the timer for 45 minutes, though you might find the pudding needs 5 or 10 minutes more. The top of the pudding should be springy and spongy when it’s cooked; underneath, the butter, dark muscovado sugar and boiling water will have turned into a rich, sticky sauce. Serve with vanilla ice cream, crème fraîche, double or single cream as you wish.

Apple and Raspberry Crumble

Sorry totally took an unexpected one week breather from life, similar to the breather from the gym that I’ve taken; not sure when that one is ending though. Life is starting again today, that’s happening. I’m sure the unwillingness to do much is stemming from the fact I 100% have to get an injection next week; when I have to get them life seems to get put on hold and I become completely lethargic with refusal to do anything hard. If anyone knows good ways to overcome phobias that would be simply amazing!

I made this last week and it has sat on my laptop pretty much finished apart from the recipe down at the bottom. Pretty darn lazy I think.

Crumble was made for living in the moment, crumble and shots. Can they be combined? I think I’ll have to try. This crumble is delicious and jammy. Mega comfort food that tastes slightly more grown-up than your standard home-grown apple crumble because of the brandy. Have a shot of brandy on the side; live a little. Does anyone do shots of brandy? Is that a nanna thing?

Adapted from Jamie Olivers Great Britain cookbook

Ingredients
6 Medium Apples Peeled, cored and sliced into 10 (use a mix of apples)
100 grams of brown sugar
giant slug of brandy
1 nutmeg for grating
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
100 grams of Raspberries
Juice of one Orange

Crumble Topping
75 grams of Butter, chilled and cut into small cubes
100 grams of Plain Flour
100g of Demera Sugar
Zest of one Orange (perhaps the one you juiced before; zest it first though)

How-to-make-this:
Pre-heat oven to 180C/350F.
Cut each Apple roughly into about 10 pieces; they should be slightly larger than bite-size. Put the pieces into a large heavy bottomed pan over a medium heat. Add the brown sugar and cinnamon, grate over some nutmeg and add a good swig of brandy. Like a lot of brandy, you are making the sauce with this stuff!Cover with lid and stew for 5 minutes, or until fruit has started to soften. Remove lid and cook for another 5 minutes or so, until the sauce has thickened up a bit. When it’s good simply stir in the raspberries (or any soft berries of your liking; Jamie used blackberries) and take off the heat.

In a clean bowl, make your crumble topping by quickly rubbing the butter into the flour and sugar until you have fine crumbs – you can do this in a food processor, but I think it tastes better by hand – clean hand that is. Grate zest over and mix in carefully and set aside.

Pour the stewed fruit into an oven-proof dish and add the orange juice over the top, sprinkle over the crumble topping and put in hot oven for 50 minutes. Or until topping is lovely and golden. The smell that will fill your house is amazing. Serve warm with a good scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.