Delicious Turnip Gratin w/ Maple Cream & Walnut Crust

by Lou Robbie

Turnips or swedes are a superb reliable Irish winter root vegetable and they grow happily here on the farm.  They are sweet and slightly peppery, crisp when raw and buttery when cooked. They are often overlooked but given a bit of thought and attention turnip can be totally delicious.

This dish is closely based on a recipe by Denis Cotter, chef and owner of the well known Cork restaurant Cafe Paradiso. Cotter has added sweetness with the slow cooked leeks, maple syrup, toasty notes from the walnuts and breadcrumbs and lots of flavour from the herbs. We couldn’t wait to dive into this delicious gratin and neither will you!

Enjoy,

Lou 🙂

Ingredients: makes 6 portions

  • 1 large swede/turnip – 550g approx
  • 2 leeks, halved lengthways and well washed
  • 30g butter, plus extra for greasing
  • 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
  • 2 sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves only
  • 100ml dry white wine or vegetable stock with a dash of cider vinegar
  • 250ml double cream
  • 3 tbsp maple syrup

For the crust: 

  • 8 fresh sage leaves, chopped
  • 1 tbsp chopped chives
  • 50g white bread
  • 50g walnuts
  • 30g butter

Method:

Step 1: Preheat the oven 170ºc fan. Butter an oven dish, approx 9inc x 6inc.

Step 2: Wash and peel the turnip and chop into quarters. Slice the quarters thinly 5mm with a mandolin or sharp knife. Heat a pot of salted water until simmering, add all the sliced turnip and cook for 10 – 15 minutes until soft. Strain and set to one side.

Step 3: Meanwhile, chop the leeks in to 2 cm slices. Melt the butter on a pan and sauté the leeks and chopped garlic until soft then stir through the thyme leaves, wine or stock with vinegar, cream, salt and pepper. Simmer for a further few minutes.

Step 4: To the buttered dish, add a layer of turnip, a layer of creamy leeks and repeat 3 times. Push down and bake in the oven for 30 minutes.

Step 5: To make the crust, blend the bread first, then add the walnuts, sage, chives, salt and pepper blend again, finally add the butter blend again. Scatter the herby breadcrumb on top and bake for a further 10 minutes. Allow to cool for 10 minutes then serve.

This would work as a main dish with some greens and mushy pulses or as a side dish too.

Apple & Spice Oat Cookies- Halloween edition

by Lou Robbie

This is a lovely bake to try with the kids over the Halloween break. Its a one bowl recipe where they can use their hands to mix the ingredients and shape the cookies. We’ve added juicy organic Irish apple and spice to make a delicious tasting cookie. White chocolate and googly eyeballs are optional, but big glasses of milk are a must!

Baking with kids is a great opportunity to talk about the food we eat. I like to tell my young kids where and how food is grown. We talk about sugar cane and how flour comes from wheat, we talk about bees playing their part to pollinate the plants etc. Apples are grown around the world and in orchards in Ireland too.

Happy baking-BOO!

Lou 🙂

Ingredients: makes 12

  • 200g oats 
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon or autumn spice mix **see below
  • 4 tbsp brown sugar
  • 2 tbsp honey
  • 2 eggs, whisked
  • 60g butter at room temperature
  • 1 organic IRISH apple, grated – I leave the skin on

To decorate:

  • 80g white chocolate – melted – optional
  • googly eyes – optional

Method:

**To make your own autumn spice click here

Step 1: Preheat the oven 170ºC fan. Line 2 baking trays with parchment paper.

Step 2: Measure the oats, brown sugar, cinnamon or spice mix, baking powder into a mixing bowl, stir to mix.

Step 3: Next add the butter, eggs, honey, and grate the apple straight into the bowl, skin and all. With clean hands give it a good mix – get the kids to do this part!! Shape into a round in the bowl.

Step 4: Scoop or spoon 12 cookie dough balls onto the baking trays. Push down to flatten and keep in a circle if you can. Bake for 25 mins until golden brown.

Step 5: Drizzle with melted chocolate and add eyeballs if its Halloween.

Roast Pumpkin, Kale & Feta Salad w/ Roast Garlic Dressing

by Lou Robbie

You can have your Pumpkin and Eat it!! Pumpkins are not just for decoration around Halloween they are sweet, earthy and delicious to eat. The skin is edible too, just wash them well and slice into thin wedges. You can make this salad with butternut squash too if you wish, it will be equally delicious.

Salads are not exclusive to the warmer months. We like to serve the pumpkin and roast red onions warm from the oven with shredded kale and crumbled feta. Pomegranate is recommended for colour and pops of sweet and sourness.

Organic ingredients are “Better for you and Better for our Planet”.

Lou 🙂

Ingredients: serves 4

  • 1 small pumpkin, chopped deseeded, sliced into wedges
  • 1 medium red onion, sliced into wedges
  • pinch salt/pepper/paprika

For the dressing

  • 1 bulb of garlic – roasted until soft
  • 1 tablespoon light tahini
  • 100ml neutral oil
  • 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
  • salt and pepper

To finish

  • 1/2 pomegranate, deseeded
  • 100g kale, washed, stripped off the stalk & very finely chopped
  • 180g feta- sheep’s cheese feta used here
  • 1/2 tin chickpeas – drained (200g)
  • 2 tablespoons toasted pumpkin seeds

Method:

Step 1: Preheat the oven 180ºC. Prepare the garlic bulb, chop off the top of the bulb to expose the cloves. Put the pumpkin wedges, red onion wedges and garlic bulb on a baking tray. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and a bit of paprika drizzle with oil, rub the veg to coat in the oil and seasoning. Roast veggies for 30 minutes. the garlic may take 10 minutes longer.

Step 2: Add the finely chopped kale to a mixing bowl, drizzle with a small amount of olive oil, season with salt and pepper and massage with your hands to tenderise.

Step 3: To make the dressing add the soft roasted garlic to a small blender along with the tahini, oil, cider vinegar, salt and pepper. Blend until completely smooth. Taste and adjust if needed.

Step 4: Build the salad. Add the kale to a big serving plate, top with the chickpeas, layer on the roast pumpkin, red onion, break over the feta. Roll the pomegranate to loosen the seeds, with a wooden spoon to dislodge the seeds and scatter over the salad. Sprinkle with pumpkin seeds and top with the roast garlic dressing.

Crispy Parsnip Rosti w/ Apple Aioli

by Lou Robbie

Sweet Irish parsnips are plentiful in October. They are a wonderful root vegetable with a distinctive flavour that fills the house when its cooking.

My mother would always serve them mashed with carrots with our Sunday dinner. I don’t remember having them any other way as a child! Now I like to roast, steam or slow cook them to intensify the flavour. Here we’ve swapped the common potato for parsnip in a really tasty rosti. Made even more flavoursome with the punchy apple aioli on the side, you wont regret trying this one.

Lou 🙂

Ingredients: Makes 12 small rosti and a pot of aioli

For the rosti

450g parsnips, peeled and coarsely grated
1 medium white onion, peeled and coarsely grated
1 egg
6 tbsp plain flour
pinch salt and pepper

For the apple aioli
2 apples, peeled, cored and cut into chunks
1 garlic clove, peeled and finely grated
1 tbsp cider vinegar
180ml mild olive oil. salt and pepper

Method:

Step 1: Grate the parsnips and onion and put them in a bowl, squeeze out any excess liquid, and season with salt and pepper. Crack in the egg and spoon in the flour. Mix well with your hands.

Step 2: Make the aioli. Cook the apple in a small pot with a splash of water until soft for 5-10 minutes. Set aside to cool. Then add to a small blender along with the grated garlic, cider vinegar, salt and pepper. Blend again and very slowly pour the oil in to emulsify the sauce. Taste it and adjust if needed.

Step 3: Cook the roti. Warm a non stick frying pan on a medium heat, add some oil to coat the pan. Spoon on 3-4 parsnip mounds and gently push down to flatten. cook for a few minutes on either side until golden. Repeat. Fry in a small bit of butter and then serve alongside the delicious aioli.

Autumn Roast Squash Soup

by Lou Robbie

Autumn squash soup with lots of roast garlic and warming spices. This is a hug in a bowl and we’ve even added a cheese toastie for extra comfort. You can easily swap the butternut squash for Kuri (pumpkin) squash to make an equally delicious bowl of soup.

Roasting the veg first is key to getting in those extra sweet and caramelised notes and we’ve made the prep part easy by just chopping everything in half and loading it on to the roasting tin. We’ve added some lovely sweet Irish carrots, cherry tomatoes from our tunnels and the best of Irish organic onions.

Nutrient dense and perfect for cosy autumn days.

Lou 🙂

Ingredients: makes 4 generous portions

Method:

  • Preheat the oven: 180ºC.
  • Step 1: Prepare the veg: Chop the squash in half and scoop out the seeds. Wash and chop the carrots in half, slice the top off the bulb of garlic, peel and half the onions. Wash the tomatoes. Put all the veg on a baking tray.
  • Step 2: Sprinkle with paprika, cumin, salt and drizzle in oil. Roast in the oven for 40 -50 minutes, test everything is cooked by piercing with a sharp knife.
  • Step 3: Put all the cooked veg into a powerful blender along with hot stock. Blend and then add to a pot with the coconut milk, gently heat through on the hob and serve.

Some cool drone footage, and my thoughts on food waste…

by Kenneth Keavey

First, I want to show you something: Darragh Wynne from the charity Goal Ireland was here a few weeks back and invited me to talk for a video, if you want to learn a little bit more about and see some cool drone footage of our farm (and even catch a glimpse of George and Florence check this video out.

George and Florence are happy pigs, they couldn’t actually have a better life, I really don’t think they could. Not only do they get to roam around nearly 2 acres of old and newly established forests, they have a dry straw lined shed to sleep in and probably best of all they get fed waste organic veg once a day. They are as happy as two pigs in muck could be. 

But they fit into this story very well, as they are the last step in our grandly termed food waste reduction strategy, we don’t have a formal document or anything like that, but we do have a belief system around food waste. 

So here is a crazy fact, one third of all food produced on the planet is wasted.  The area required to produce that food is 16 million km2, which is roughly an area the same size as Russia, which is a very big place. 

We all know we need to take urgent steps to reduce our impact on the planet, no surprise there, and as we pass yet another mind boggling climate record with September being the warmest month ever by a long way, that action is critical. 

So wouldn’t it be an amazing if we could cut the land used for agriculture by 16 million square kilometers and instead grow forestry? Of course, it would. 

But where is all this wasted food coming from? Well, that is where I will tell you the second part of my story, last week we took a delivery of carrots, we weren’t very pleased with these carrots, they were Irish, they were organic, but they were massive, and I mean they were big but we got our heads together and figured out how we could prevent them ending up in the bin. 

So, we set about trying to use them to sell them, to make sure we wasted as little as possible. There is one thing I can absolutely guarantee had these carrots landed at the door of a supermarket they would have been rejected, sent back, or wasted. 

Herein lies one of our bugbears, supermarkets insisting without remorse on unforgiving specifications and when produce does not meet them refusing to sell it or accept it. We have been there many moons ago, once upon a time having supplied supermarkets.  In the growing season we have had this year, produce may come out maybe a little smaller or bigger or twisted or forked and that in our view is the beauty of nature.  We wont grade out twisted parsnips, or forked carrots. 

Of course, there is still the possibility that produce will not meet our quality requirements, and this is where we do have a very well-defined system and we put a fair amount of effort into it to make it work. 

Maciek our quality manager has done amazing work creating his “Rescue boxes” each week these boxes are filled with “Class II” produce.  If we can’t use the produce in the rescue boxes our team get it, and if it is unusable it ends up in one of two places, actually one of three places! 

It either A. Goes to one of our three compost bays, or B. go to George’s belly or C. goes to Florence’s belly! 

(Interesting fact: We have to make two separate piles of food when feeding the pigs because Florence always bullies George and tries to keep all the food for herself!) 

So that is the end of the story for this week, just know you are supporting a little business that manages in our own way to keep the food waste mountain from growing at least on our watch and continues to step by small step help build a better food system. 

You are making it possible, thank you. 

Kenneth

PS Darragh Wynne from the charity Goal Ireland was here a few weeks back and invited me to talk for a video, if you want to learn a little bit more about and see some cool drone footage of our farm (and even catch a glimpse of George and Florence check this video out.

Spicy Beetroot Crepe (dosa)

by Lou Robbie

Blushing beautiful beetroot so vibrant and sweet. They are a nutritional powerhouse, good for your heart and blood and gut. We’ve increased the nutrient value by adding some wholesome ingredients to make these delicious dosas. Eat them as they are, add a sandwich filling with roast veggies or eat along side a spiced dahl. My kids called them pink wraps and thats a good description too.

I love to steam all my beets and then use them in various ways like roasting with balmasic vinegar for a salad, slicing to eat in a sandwich, grated to add to chocolate muffins etc.

How do you like to cook with beetroot?

Lou 🙂

PS – it may not be an authentic dosa recipe but it is really tasty all the same.

Ingredients: makes 4

  • 75g oats
  • 100g chickpea flour (gram flour)
  • 1 small cooked beetroot– steamed is best (125g)
  • 1 teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger
  • 1 small green chilli, finely chopped
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon salt 
  • 150ml-200ml water as needed 
  • oil to cook

Method:

  • Step 1: To a powerful blender add all the ingredients apart from the water. Blend the ingredients and add the water a little at a time to make a batter. The consistency of the batter is really important it should be pourable like crepe batter.
  • Step 2: Heat a frying pan on a medium heat. Drizzle with oil and carefully wipe with kitchen paper to coat the pan.
  • Step 3: Add a ladle of the batter to the pan, use the back of the ladle to thin out the batter and form a round shape. Cook on a low heat for a few minutes then use a spatula to carefully flip over and cook for a further minute. Repeat.
  • Enjoy

Date and Peanut Butter Bark

by Lou Robbie

We are huge fans of easy homemade snacks and it doesn’t get easier than this! Just 3 ingredients plus sea salt if you have it! Make it with 100% organic ingredients and it can be vegan too if you like! It takes just 5 minutes to make and a wee while to set. This has been a viral sensation recently and we can see why. It really ticks all the boxes with toffee notes from the dates, creamy peanut butter and glorious chocolate to finish.

We feel its best stored in the freezer, just chop off a chunk as needed. Find all of the best organic ingredients needed in our groceries.

Enjoy this one, as always let us know if you try it.

Lou 🙂

Ingredients: makes enough for 16 big pieces

Method:

  • Step 1: Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Open the dates and lay flat on the parchment paper, make a rectangle shape with them. Lay another piece of parchment paper on top and push down with a rolling pin or glass to flatten.
  • Step 2: Spread the peanut butter all over the dates. Use a pallet knife if you have one.
  • Step 3: Melt the chocolate in a bowl over simmering water or in the microwave. Pour over the peanut butter and smooth over with a pallet knife. Sprinkle with sea salt if you like.
  • Step 4: Put the tray in the freezer to set for at least 1 hour. Chop the bark into pieces of shards. Store the pieces in a box in the fridge or freezer for 1 week.

Pickled Courgette & Carrot

by Lou Robbie

Homemade pickles are lovely to make. This is a great one if your a beginner. It doesn’t make a massive amount just enough to get you started on your pickling journey. Pickles are sweet and sour and go great with sharp cheese or deep rich tomato sauces or slow cooked bean stews. It adds a pop of zing and excitement!

Pickling is a great way to preserve vegetables for the winter, this pickle will keep for up to 1 month in the fridge. It’s also a nice gift for a friend.

Grab your peeler and give this a go!

Lou 🙂

Ingredients: makes 1 large jar or 2 small

  • 1 small courgette, washed
  • 3 small carrots, washed
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 200ml apple cider vinegar
  • 45g brown sugar 
  • 1 tsp turmeric 
  • 1 bay leaf 
  • 2 tsp mustard seeds 
  • cold water to top up if needed 

Method:

Step 1: Using a peeler, peel lengthways to make ribbons with the courgette and the carrots. When you get to the point where the vegetable is tricky to peel you can stop and use these bits for soup. Put all the courgette and carrot ribbons into a sterilised jar.

Step 2: Make the pickle liquid. Add the vinegar, sugar, turmeric, mustard seeds, bay leaf to a small pot. Warm on the hob until the sugar has dissolved. Set aside to cool. Once cool pour into the jar. If the liquid does not cover the vegetables add some water. Seal the jar and store in the fridge for 3-4 weeks.

Baked Chocolate & Banana Oats

by Lou Robbie

Warm baked oats on an autumn morning are a real treat. We’ve added chocolate for extra indulgence and they are just lovely with baked bananas and sticky dates.

Porridge oats are a great start to the day, they are a great source of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. We love to add chopped dates to add fibre and natural sweetness.

My kids just love these baked oat pot and top them with yoghurt for an extra serving of protein.

Let us know if you try them.

Lou 🙂

Ingredients: makes 3 pots – or 1 small loaf

  • 100g oats
  • 2 tablespoon cocoa powder
  • 7 dates – 50g – pitted and chopped
  • 1 banana plus extra to finish
  • 100ml milk of choice
  • 1 egg
  • 1 flat tsp baking powder
  • 50g chocolate, chopped 
  • Slice banana 

Method:

  • Step 1: Preheat the oven. Put 3 ceramic pots on a baking tray. Or use a lined and greased loaf tin.
  • Step 2: To a blender add the oats, cocoa powder, dates, 1 banana, milk, egg, baking powder. Blend until smooth.
  • Step 3: Add a spoon of the mix to each pot, then top with half the chopped chocolate. Spoon the rest on top and sprinkle the remaining chocolate and a slice of banana to each pot. Bake for 20 minutes.
  • Enjoy warm.