Tag Archives: Irish recipes

Potato and Parsnip Gratin

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Every St. Patrick’s Day I like to do a special Irish meal as a nod to my ancestry. There is so much to the Irish cuisine with the variety available. I have never had corned beef, well that’s Irish American, not Irish and I don’t cook with cabbage really as I don’t like it. I would always be horrified when people couldn’t wait for the boiled corned beef and cabbage. But to each their own. I found a recipe on the BBC for a Potato and Parsnip Gratin. Of course I played around with it!

While beef, corned or otherwise, isn’t an Irish tradition, bacon or ham is. I hoped to do a pork loin on the grill but I couldn’t find one so I settled for pork chops to grill. I marinated the pork in olive oil with lemon, thyme and garlic. I am not a fan of time changes but at least it is now light enough to see the grill! I am so ready for the sun to come back up north.

Technique for Potato and Parsnip Gratin

This is an easy and delicious dish to throw together. It goes faster if you have a mandolin to slice the veg. I couldn’t find mine, not sure where we put it after we moved. I’ve no doubt it was right in front of me but couldn’t see the wood for the trees!

Preheat the oven to 350F/175C. Prep all the ingredients before layering. As I was only doing three ramekins, I only needed one medium sized potato. The best thing about this recipe is that it is easy to scale up or down depending on how many people you need to feed. To keep this recipe low FODMAP friendly, I used scallions/spring onions but use whatever onions you would like.

Start layering with the potatoes, then the parsnips. Add a bit of cream, scallion/spring onion, thyme and season with sea salt and ground pepper. Grate the jarlsberg over the ingredients. I added more after taking the photo and I wanted all that cheesy goodness.

Keep repeating the layers until you are at the top of the ramekin. Finish with a layer of potato before grating the cheese to cover the potato. Place the ramekins onto a baking sheet and cover with tin foil. Place into the oven. Bake for about an hour. At that point pierce the potatoes with a knife. If soft, remove the tin foil to brown the cheese. Serve with the sliced pork and garden peas.

We love doing roasted potatoes and parsnips, potato and parsnip mash, and this will be something we make more often. It’s easy and has lots of flavour. An elegant comfort food.

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Potato and Parsnip Gratin

A lovely Irish dish with cream and cheese.

Course Main Course
Cuisine Irish
Keyword Potato and Parsnip Gratin
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Servings 3
Author Our Growing Paynes

Ingredients

  • 1 medium sized potato, thinly sliced
  • 1 scallion/spring onion, chopped
  • 1/2 large parsnip, thinly sliced
  • 3 sprigs of fresh thyme
  • 1/2-1 cup heavy cream 4-8oz
  • 1 cup freshly grated jarlsberg
  • sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350F/175C

  2. Thinly slice the potato and parsnip. Grate the jarlsberg and remove the thyme leaves from the stems.

  3. In the ramekins, layer the potatoes in the bottom and add the parsnips, scallions/green and thyme. Pour a bit of cream over the layer and season with some sea salt and pepper. Grate the jarlsberg cheese over until it covers the layer. Repeat this until it is near the top. Finish with a layer of potato and cover with the cheese.

  4. Place the ramekins onto a baking sheet and cover with tin foil. Bake for about an hour. Test with a knife to make sure the potatoes are soft. Bake uncovered until the cheese is golden brown. Serve immediately.

Irish Apple Cake

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Usually when our anniversary rolls round we are up to our ears in some house project.  If we were smart we’d do a trip or something fun like we did a few years ago.  But then again the list won’t take care of itself!

A big project is to redo the wrap around porch which means pulling up boards and lay new ones down as we go.  When most of it was done it was time to get in a skip to get the trash removed.  Silly me, I thought we could work on our foyer and walk in closet.  Might as well fill the skip up!

What was I thinking?  Granted it will cross two more projects off the list.  But we’re tired!  In the days leading up to our anniversary my husband took a few days off to make a dent in the projects.  When our anniversary rolled round we hit a wall where my husband had to handle things as I was unable to.  I felt guilty!  So I thought I should bake him a treat.  It was the least I could do.

Given that we went apple picking and we have a ton of apples I had to pick something that would use some up.  I have a great book called “Irish Traditional Cooking” by Darina Allen.  In it is a recipe for Irish Apple Cake.  I mostly followed it.

Preheat the oven to 350F/175C.

Irish apple cake 4 2015

In a medium sized bowl add 2 cups of flour, 1/3 tsp baking powder, and 8 T of butter.  You want the butter at room temperature so you can blend the ingredients.  With a pastry fork or your hands work the ingredients together until it looks like breadcrumbs or small beads.

Irish apple cake 1 2015

Mix in half a cup of sugar then add one beaten egg.

Irish apple cake 2 2015

You will need 1/2 to 2/3 cup of milk.  Gradually add a little bit of milk at a time until the dough is soft and incorporated.  This dough will be a pain to work with as it is wet and sticky.  Flour your hands and rolling pin to work with it.

Irish apple cake 3 2015

Grease a 9″ spring form pan.  Roll out half of the dough and place it in the bottom of the pan.

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There is a good chance you’ll have to patch holes with this so don’t be discouraged.  Press the dough up the sides a bit.  Slice a couple of apples and layer them round the middle.  Sprinkle brown sugar over the apples.

Irish apple cake 6 2015

Roll out the rest of the dough and place over the apples.  Brush with a beaten egg.

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Bake for 40 minutes or so until the dough is cooked and a nice golden colour.

Irish apple cake 8 2015

Good luck waiting until this cools.  Slice and serve.

Irish apple cake 10 2015

My husband did appreciate this with a cup of tea when he got a chance to take a break and sit for awhile.  🙂

Roast Lamb and Mint Cream Sauce

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Hallo, hallo, hallo.  Been awhile since I’ve sat down and typed something other than tax figures.  It’s been crazy working a lot of hours plus I hurt my hip again so an equal amount of hours have been spent horizontal.  Boy, does that get boring!  I thought I’d complete the injuring myself by slicing my thumb.  Does that make me a real chef now?  I’m hoping my streak of self-inflicted bad luck is at an end.

But this is all peanuts compared to how yesterday went.  It ended with my sister being in a terrible accident while skiing.  Now she will be all right but she has a good 6-8 weeks to heal.  And quite frankly it could have gone in a direction that she wouldn’t be with us anymore.  So we are counting our lucky stars she will be fine in the long run.

It struck me how closely we skate to the edge.  It doesn’t take much.  Which brings me to the way the day started.  In our town it’s against the law to use skateboards, bicycles, and scooters on the sidewalk.  Common sense on why but we’re stuck with the young guys whizzing about.  I came out of a shop yesterday and almost got hit by a guy flying on a scooter.  As I was thinking that it would really hurt if he knocked me down I see him go flying over the bonnet of a car.  The driver was completely shocked, there wasn’t any way she would have seen him.  Luckily she wasn’t going very fast as she just turned onto that road.  Then he’s complaining about it being the third time being hit!  But he wasn’t hurt.  This is what drives me crazy.  My sister isn’t rash, uses common sense and gets badly hurt.  The idiot who is rash, does dumb things, and gets hits repeatedly brushes off and goes about his way.  There are times where it’s hard to not think life is grossly unfair.

Definitely looking for the luck of the Irish this week. It was just my husband and me for St Patrick’s Day and I wanted to make a special meal in honour of it.  Which means no corned beef and cabbage!  You’d think that is the only Irish food given the way social media lit up with corned beef and cabbage.  And I really don’t like that particular dish so I decided to roast lamb.  I took my inspiration from the cookbook The Irish Isle by Sharon O’Connor.  Her recipe is called Noisettes of Lambe with Sorrel-Mint Cream Sauce.  I chose this before I found out sorrel is impossible to find so I had to adjust a bit.

I found a lovely piece of lamb to roast.

Roast Lamb Mint Cream Sauce 1 2015

Pre heat the oven to 425F/220C.  In a skillet heat up a few tablespoons of olive oil.  Season the lamb with sea salt and pepper.  Sear all sides of the lamb.  In the roasting pan add a few sprigs of rosemary, a tablespoon of olive oil, and a few splashes of dry white wine.

Roast Lamb Mint Cream Sauce 2 2015

Roast until it is medium rare or until you achieve the desired doneness.  Meanwhile in the skillet add about 3/4 cup of chopped onion.  Let the onion soften a bit then add a 1/3 cup of the dry white wine, a tablespoon of dry vermouth, and a cup of homemade chicken stock.  Bring to a simmer and start reducing.  Take a handful of fresh mint and chiffonade into thin strips.  Add to the sauce.

Roast Lamb Mint Cream Sauce 4 2015 Roast Lamb Mint Cream Sauce 5 2015

Allow the sauce to reduce by a third to a half.  Once the lamb is finished have it rest for about 10 minutes.  Just before the dinner is to be served add about 1/3 cup of heavy cream and the drippings from the roasted lamb to the sauce.

Roast Lamb Mint Cream Sauce 6 2015

Slice the lamb and serve with the sauce.  As a treat for my husband I sauteed Brussels sprouts and roasted potatoes to go with the lamb.

Roast Lamb Mint Cream Sauce 7 2015

What a crazy week but we are so grateful that my sister will recover and for all the nuttiness that can happen in life that is the most important bit.