Haloumi Salad

Seeing as how Ireland is simply blessed with fantastic weather salads are an essential summer dish. Well ok not really the weather, but salads are a delicious dish. It's just a pity many of the famous ones have meat in them. I'm tired of reading menus and just about letting myself salivate to discover that the dish is covered in parma ham or other bits of pig or poultry.

This salad, however, is Mediterranean inspired dish, using haloumi and sharon fruits. Due to my political leanings my sharon fruits are sourced from South Africa and not Israel.

Ingredients

1 block haloumi cheese

Spinach leaves

Peti Pois

1 whole sharon fruit

On a chopping board dice your haloumi into half inch cubes. On a lightly oiled frying pan fry till golden on all sides. Meanwhile in a pot boil your peas. On a chopping board peel and chop your sharon fruit into bite sized chunks

Arrange the salad leaves in a bowl add your cooked peas, haloumi and sharon fruit.

Dressing

3parts good olive oil

1part balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

Generously dress your salad. This salad serves 1 for a good meal, 2 for a light snack

Potato Farls

Potato Farls are a really easy, comforting treat. They originate in Northern Ireland, but this recipe is best found made in a traditional kitchen than in any restaurant so unless you make them yourself you're likely never to taste good potato farl. They're nutritious enough, but certainly not low in fat. I stole this original idea from a great Irish celebrity chef, Darina Allen. Though my recipe has a few adjustments, fewer eggs and a little more flower. I don't like the farls when they taste too much like french toast so I reduce the amount of eggs towards said purpose. Farls are pretty quick to make, the longest part of the process being boiling the potatoes

Ingredients

4 large floury potatoes, boiled till easily mashable

Cream flour

1 egg

Salt and Pepper

Real Butter

Boil and peel your potatoes.

In a large bowl mash your potatoes, while still hot, with a 3 or four cubes of butter. Crack in one egg add in about 4 heaped tablespoons of flour. Mash the mixture together. Season the mixture with a small amount of salt and a good deal of cracked pepper. Continue to mix the mixture with your hands, if the mixture isnt yet pliable add in a tablespoon more flour.

When the mixture is still soft but is now manageable tip it out on to a well floured cutting board. Flatten the potato dough into a large circular shape. Flour and season the top. Cut four triangular wedges. If the wedges do not lift easily then the dough needs a small bit more flour.

In a pan melt some butter and oil. Take a cut triangle of the potato dough and fry on both sides until golden. Serve with lots of butter. Season with black pepper

This feeds four for brunch or two depending on how heavy you find them. I personally eat two when the mood strikes me :)

If you are cooking these for a non veggie they are meant to be really good with maple syrup and bacon :)

Vegetarian Wontons

After my first attempt at making pot stickers I encountered a problem, pot stickers stick. Duh!

However I have no intention of fiddling with delicate wontons and eating, well, flattened burst wontons when I spent ages making them pretty.

So these wontons deviate from tradition in that they are steamed in a bamboo steamer and then fried in a small pan.

There are no gram guides for this recipe as the amount you need depends on the amount of wontons you want to make. I personally like to make a huge batch of filling and leave it in the fridge for a few (2 at most) days, making wontons for myself or my family as they are needed

Ingredients

Chinese cabbage (finely sliced) ( i use about half a cabbage head)

carrot (finely grated) ( i use about one whole carrot)

Firm tofu (about 350g) mashed

Pepper to taste

Soy sauce

Sake

Ginger (grated finely)

Garlic (finely chopped)

Wonton Wrappers

Add your cabbage, carrot, ginger and garlic to a bowl and toss together to make sure the ingredients are spread evenly together throughout the bowl. Add your mashed tofu and mix well again. Add a good glug of soy sauce, there should be a small amount of sauce swimming in the bottom of the bowl. Mix the soy sauce in well with the dry ingredients. Add a tablespoon of sake. Season with one or two turns of a pepper mill.

On a dry surface take your wonton wrapper. I use frozen ones and they serve adequately. Make sure the wontons you choose are suitable for frying. Place a good tea spoon of filling in the center of the wrapper making sure that there is cabbage, carrot and tofu in each wonton. Brush the edges of the wonton with water and pinch the edges closed around the

filling. I find that lifting the edges up and pinching them down works best. Make sure your wonton is firmly closed. Repeat the procedure for as many wontons as you want

In a wok heat about a cup of water. Place your bamboo steamer with a cabbage leaf in the steamer (to prevent the wontons sticking) over the water. Make sure that the water doesn't go dry and burn your steamer, or that the water isn't so high that it bubbles in through the steamer rack.

Place three wontons, or as many as will fit, in your steamer and steam for 2 minutes or until the wontons become a translucent brown.

Once they are steamed carefully place them on a hot frying pan which is generously oiled, but the oil should not come up the sides of the wonton. They should not stick.

Once the bottoms of the wontons are crispy serve with sweet chili dip or with ginger soy sauce

Hello

Seeing as the world is full of this blogging business I said I'd give it a go.

The main reason behind the blog is to promote some tasty veggie food, because so much of the veggie food out there on the net is, well, disgusting.

Because one can't just talk about food all day I might add into the mix a dash of ranting about Harry Potter and other fantastical children's books. The blog may be seasoned with some political rantings, which I fear might ruin the taste of this blogging dish so I hope to keep them balanced :)