The Green Apron

I finally remembered to bring my camera in with me to the market last weekend and took a quick run around to get some pictures of what I buy as presents for my family and friends so this post will be heavy on pictures and light on  words.

For Food Gifts I often  make up a wee hamper of non perishables.

Applejuice from Adam of Killowen Orchard which we give with our “Spices for mulled wine” -spices work for applejuice as well.

Chocolates from Chocolate Trish at Wildes Irish Chocolate

Chorizo from Olivier  -“On The Wild Side”

Whole small cheeses from Pete of ” Kilshanny Cheese” .Every April we get him to put away a big Plain cheese  in his cheese house for us . By Christmas its fantastic- almost fudgey textured and sharp on the palate. A whole  cheese doesn’t last long in our house.

And of course Amazing preserves from Us at The Green Apron. I usually give  our Christmas Chutneys and Mustards. Partridge in a Pear Tree Chutney, Apple and Walnut Chutney,Sugar Plum fairy Chutney and our Crunchy Honey Mustard.Katrina also has the cutest Finnish Gingerbread Cookies in all shapes and sizes (also a whole range of Gluten free baking)

Aruns puddings from  Green Saffron look  fantastic  don’t they.Locally roasted award-winning Coffee is available from Ponaire s Coffee house and teas are available from “Teas and Grind” and “Tea4You”Why not pop in a bag of Irish Harvested Seaweed

For Immediate Gratification Gifts Brid has delicious awardwinning pies

Vi makes the yummiest sourdough  Rye Bread and a range of organic cakes and breadsYou can pick up a variety of cheeses from Mairis Cheese shop , Pates, preserved fish, and terrines from Olivier, wines from Country Choice (along with about anything else you can think of.

There are lots of craftspeople selling their pieces  in the market. Local and Handmade Crafts

Here is some of Ruth at Nice Day Designs  fabulous  pieces.

Aileen with her beautiful jewellry Susan ‘s  Nativity scene  and her Crazy camelHandmade hats to keep you warm and stylish this winter

Handcarved wooden pieces

For Body and Bath Gifts

Tobias from Nonin Herbal has a  range of essential oils and a fantastic Rose Avocado Cream for problem skin It smells divine and works brilliantly -I bough some for mom for her birthdayJasmine from Sunvale Soaps has a  great range of homemade and french soaps, salves and creams.

Last year I gave the sisters  each a chicklit book, a bar of Wildes Chocolate and Bath Melts from Sunvale . Ingredients for a  perfect evening.

There are plenty of Plants here for a lovely living present and lots of spring bulbs (get them in fast though)

Heres some of the other fabulous things available at the market Couldnt take enough pictures and get everything in .

Now you can see why almost all my presents come from the Market.

Oops – One last thing . I bought these for everyone last year and am wearing a pair now-invaluable

In the bottle -the complex syrup. In the coffee mug- the easy syrup .Notice the colour difference.

I’ve been trying to make my mid morning coffee a bit more exciting for the last few months. Mostly by adding natural vanilla bean paste and muscovado sugar -with the occasional cinnamon hint. I really don’t like coffee syrups  as they are way too sweet for my palate and a bit artificial flavoured. I keep looking at the bottles in the store going- somedayI really need to make my own.

Today is that day. Instead of filling out a scholarship application,delivering jars or any of the list of tasks given to me by the sister for her wedding I spent the morning playing with Gingerbread Syrup recipes. Procrastinator extraordinaire -thats me.

This morning there was a tweet about someones recipe for making your own gingerbread liquer but since booze in my morning coffee is not an everyday occurance I figured I’d try making a non alcoholic syrup.

I found a bunch of recipes and dismissed them all to make my own.

Here’s the recipe in progress. All recipes in my house get written onto a clean spot on the fridge until we’ve finished tweaking them and then they get committed to paper. Heaven help the helpful person who decides to clean the outside of  my fridge before the recipes are all taken down (Mike periodically takes pictures of the fridge just in case a new fab recipe would dissapear).

Gingerbread Syrup

1Tablespoon cloves

3inches cinnamon stick

125g  Ginger root (I know its that much cos thats what the bag says. but its about 7 good fat inches otherwise)

1/2 nutmeg

2 pt water

1 t ground cinnamon

1 t ground ginger

1/2 t vanilla paste

2 cardamon pods (optional)

2 T mollases or treacle(use less or leave out if you wish)

2 T agave syrup(optional)

2T muscovado sugar Dark

4 T  light brown sugar

Whizz up the gingerroot with the cloves and  cinnamon stick in a food processor(grate the root if you dont have one and just break up the cinnamon stick) I left the skin on the gingerroot as its being filtered out anyway.

Put these spices in a big pot with 2 pt water and bring to a rolling boil and boil for about 15 mins until the ginger has lost most of its flavour into the water( pull out a shard of ginger and taste it).

Remove from heat and strain through a  fine sieve, a jellybag or a coffee filter. (If you use a paper coffee filter run some boiling water through it before you use it to get the papery taste off it) . You should have about 1 1/4 pt of liquid .  If less add more water , if more you may have to cook the syrup for longer.

Then add vanilla , ground cinnamon and ginger, mollases, sugar, agave,and the two cardamon pods (you can fish the cardamon out later). I added the ground spices now because they would have been strained out by the coffee filter and I want them in the finished product.

Cook all of this up for about 10 mins, stirring occasionally, until it gets syrupy and starts to coat the back of a spoon. It will boil/foam up so use a big pot.

Remove from heat and  pour into sterilized bottles.

Ready!.

used Agave syrup in the recipe to reduce the  refined sugar load in the  gingerbread syrup but since Im not used to working  with it it Im being sparing and only adding a bit. I may add more next batch.

If you hate Mollases leave it out of the recipe but it really does give a fabulous underlayer to the syrup.

If you don’t have muscovado just use normal brown sugar.

If you hate all brown sugar just use granulated sugar.

Im thinking that next batch I’ll add the rind and juice of an orange to the whizzed spices to make Orange Gingerbread Syrup.

The spices will settle out in the bottle just give it a shake before using.Keep it in the fridge and use within 3 weeks or so.

So first I made this with no brown sugar(to be healthy) and felt it was too bitter, thought I’d over cooked the spices and was going to throw it out. But I found and tried a different easy recipe which made me realise the only problem with my origional was just not enough sugar . Added the sugar and now its fabulous (although now not a bit healthy).

Heres the simple recipe  From Penny Golightly on the Domestic Sluttery blog . Its a nice fast recipe  and with a tasty result but the more complex recipe is well worth the effort as it is a multi-layered joy.

Gingerbread Syrup

• 250ml water
• 150g light brown muscovado sugar
• 1 tablespoon honey (optional)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 whole cloves (optional)

Make it!

• Heat the whole lot gently in a saucepan until all the sugar has dissolved. This will take less than 5 minutes.
• Give it a good stir, remove from the heat and allow to cool.
• Fish out and discard the cloves, if you’re using them, then pour the syrup into a clean jar and cover tightly.

After a long summer break I’ve finally restarted my menu planning each week and thus my posts on my market haul each week. We’ve pretty much been living from our garden for the summer and haven’t needed  any additional market food but since its the end of the season and I’ve cleared my tunnel of tomato plants and the marrows its time to start supplementing .

We picked up some Horse Makerel from Ballycotton Fishmongers.I’d never heard of them before but was assured you cook them the same as makerel they just taste a bit stronger. Alex baked them whole with a  Crunchy Mustard and Lemon Butter. Very yum but, and its a big but, they were very bony and had armored scales all down their sides- I’llask for them skinned and filleted next time. I also picked up some plaice  from the O Driscoll boys.We had those baked in a parsley butter then cooked up the heads and bones for a fish stock which became a really good chowder with the addition of some carrots,corn and marrow (don’t tell the kids but Ive been hiding marrow in everything) and two kippers out of the freezer.

The  Florence fennel,some of the white cabbage and carrots  from Steve the Organic man became a  very tasty salad with some beetroot and oranges to accompany the makerel. ,The cabages were cooked with butter and seasoned -fantastic. The swede and parsnips will give and excellent base for this weekends stew. Joy of joys Steve had some fresh figs I bought six and as you can see had only 2 left for the pictures – I love them so much. Maybe next week Ill buy enough to  actually have enough left to make a vanilla fig tart.

The ABC bread company were the source of the cherry cake. Just like mammy used to make,soooo good.

The mozarella from the  Real Olive Co will go nicely with the end of my cherry tomato crop with a drizzle of basil oil.

Good haul this week.

Very belated post this week but we’ve been busy as it’s now planting season.

This week we picked up about 5 kilos of carrots , a bunch  of broccoli heads and a few banana shallots from Steve’s Organic veg stall. The carrots were turned into innumerable carrot sticks and a very tasty carrot harissa salad (carrot, harissa, fresh coriander, olive oil, lemon juice.) The broccoli was turned into a gorgeous broccoli, leek and cheese soup using Comte cheese from Maris cheese shop and served with crusty white bread from the ABC Bread Company. Normally we’d have our own sprouting broccoli but the big freeze seems to have killed ours and everyon elses.

The Rose bottle is actually full of marmalade wine made  by my friend Nancy usingw rose and  the marmalade oranges I got her in January. Tastes like concentrated sangria. Roll on the summer!

I picked up a few bags of Dulse from Olivier from “On The Wild Side”. Being half Northern Irish I love to eat it straight from the packet( as it’s eaten up there -a bit of an acquired taste) but we also use it when cooking lentils and other pulses to remove their flatulent effect (just add a 2” square as you boil the pulses).

Artichokes and fresh pesto came from the Real Olive Co. for lunches this week.

I love the basil soap from Jasmine at Sunvale soaps. It smells so fresh and delicious.

I picked up a couple of courgette/zucchini plants as mine are only being planted now. This will give me courgettes a month earlier. They can go into the tunnel this week.

We picked up a piece of Petes Chili cheese. Pete produces Kilshany Cheese, a gouda type. We love this and all our family celebration feasts feature a full wheel of Pete’s cheese.

And there’s my Lapsang Souchong in the foreground. I ran out on Friday morning so it was an unhappy Saturday breakfast.

The beer was only picked up on the way home from the market I felt they were worth a mention. We picked up a selection that included the Dungarvan Brewing Company’s Helvic Gold which is the finest beer I have had in along time. Fantastically robust and complex. Great to see Irish micro-breweries producing such superior products.

I’ve decided to try and find time to write a weekly post about what Ive picked up each week at the market. Whats in season, whats a new product, something I was given or bartered for or something thats just plain scrummy.This is this weeks haul.

Katrina, from Little Red Hen, is just back from Finland where she spent the last two weeks skiing with her family. She brought me back the triangle of Juustoleipa (bread cheese) neatly packaged with a tub of cloudberrry jam. I’ll fry it up in a bit of butter tomorrow for my breakfast when everyone’s gone to school( Greedy Me). She also brought me back the dried wild mushrooms which will be turned into a  fabulous creamy pasta sauce later in the week.

I picked up my bag of Lapsang Souchon from” Teas and Grind”. Brona and Silas do a  great range of teas and coffees and I really cant live comfortably without my stash of Lapsang.

I got  a bottle of Kalamata Olive oil and a jar of Harissa from Clare at The Real Olive Co.

I like the Kalamata because its so fragrant and green and I’ll be pairing that with some of the wild garlic we’ve got in moms garden to make a pesto.The Harissa is fantastic mixed with cubes of fried potato and some yougurt sort of Patatas Bravas.

This week I picked up a crusty loaf from the ABC bread company for toast and I also picked up an organic rye loaf from Vi at The Sunflower Bakery. The rye will be my breakfast for the week-slathered in raspberry jam.Its so yummy , will hold all week and one slice is enough for breakfast.

Nicole from the Mushroom Company traded me the fresh mushrooms for a cup of hot mulled apple juice. Thal’ll be turned into Cheesey,Creamy Garlic Mushrooms on the ABC  bread toast for  a lunch this week.

The cabbage and Chicons can from Organic Steve who runs Meelick Bay Nursery in Clare.

The chicons wil be dipped in a hot anchovy butter and eaten  with our fingers  as a light supper/ snack.I think that anchovy butter recipe came from Nigella but its so simple and yunmmy.  Just cook up some tinned anchovies in a bit of butter till they disintegrate then dip the individual chicon leaves.I love when the chicons come into season just for this recipe.

The cabbage will be mixed with grated carrot and some thinly sliced leeks and mixed with a  crepe style batter to made Japanese pizzas (okonomiyake). which we will have with Katrinas Red Pepper and Chili relish.This relish really is fantastic all sweet and hot and smokey as she uses smoked paprika in it. We’d run out as we eat so much of it so I traded a jar of raspberry for one. I love bartering.