Review: Café Mexicana, Cork

Cafe Mexicana

Carey's Lane, Cork City

I instantly feel better about life upon entering Cork City. My better half lived there while in college and during my many visits I grew to love the rebel city. We headed down just before Christmas to visit Ali's former house mate Aoife and spent the evening at Café Mexicana.

Café Mexicana is located just off Patrick Street, on Carey's Lane in Cork's city centre. It is a vibrant, busy restaurant taking up two stories. It has great decor on both floors which conveys the Mexican feel perfectly. There is plenty of seating available but it would still be advisable to book to avoid disappointment.

For starter I went for the special; Jalapeno Tasters. These are quite simple. Jalapenos sliced, dipped in a light batter, deep fried and served with a garlic sauce. Don't let the simplicity turn you off. They are delicious but are to be avoided if you have an aversion to spicy food. I have no such problem and enjoyed this dish immensely.

Starter: 9/10

For mains we decided on the platter for two between the three of us with a couple of portions of chips and garlic bread. We had an enchilada, a burrito and a chimichanga with various fillings. The platter also contained rice and re-fried beans. Everything was great with the only down point being the re-fried beans. They were a bit bland and under seasoned but the rest of the contents easily made up for this. There was plenty of food here between the three of us and we were contemplating forgoing dessert as we were so full. We soon thought better of that though!

Main Course: 8/10

Being almost completely full, I decided to go for the simplest dessert on the menu. The Azteca is vanilla ice-cream with a rich chocolate sauce and chopped hazelnuts. Simple and delicious while my espresso was also of a high standard.

Dessert: 8/10

We were very well looked after at Café Mexicana. The service was very efficient although there could have been the odd smile thrown in!

Service: 8/10

It is on price that Café Mexicana really stands above the rest. We paid €107 for 1 starter, 1 sharing starter, 1 mains platter for two, 2 portions of chips, 1 portion of garlic bread, 3 desserts, 2 teas, an espresso, half a bottle of red wine and a pitcher of margarita. Great value!

Value: 9/10

Ambiance: 9/10

Overall: 8.5/10 Highly Recommended

Café Mexicana

Carey's Lane

Cork City

(021) 4276433

Lamb's Liver Páte

I'm a big fan of páte! It has become a bit of a Christmas tradition in our house to have it as a starter on Christmas Day with some Melba Toast. I used to just buy páte in the shop but it rarely tastes as strong as I like. One of the best things about making your own is that you can make it as strong (or mild) as you like. This is achieved simply by adjusting the ratio of butter to livers. I start off with a 1:1 ratio and adjust accordingly. More liver gives you a stronger taste while more butter will mellow it out a bit. This makes over a kilo of páte so feel free to halve the ingredients!

550g Lamb's Liver (or whichever liver you prefer)
550g of Salted Butter plus some for cooking
75ml of Irish Whiskey (I used Jameson)
3 cloves of Garlic (very finely chopped)
2 tbsp mixed Herbs (I used thyme, oregano and sage)
Sea Salt and Freshly Ground Pepper
Melted Butter to seal

Notice how I dropped the match into the pan with the fright of almost losing my eyebrows!

1. Clean the livers before cutting away any membrane. Cook over a low heat in plenty of butter until cooked through. Cook over a low heat to avoid a crust forming on the outside. Add to a food processor.

2. Turn up the heat and add the whiskey to the pan. Allow to flame to burn off the alcohol before adding the garlic and herbs. Cook for one minute before scraping everything out of the pan and into the food processor. Add 100g of the butter and puree for a few seconds. Allow to cool for ten minutes.

3. Add the rest of the butter and puree to form a smooth paste. Add salt and pepper to taste. Put in one large or a few small dishes and cover with melted or clarified butter to seal. Serve with melba toast, some fleur de sel and a little chutney. Perfect as a Christmas starter.

Glazed Christmas Ham

The Christmas Ham. The most exciting part of the Christmas build up in our house. It was always cooked on Christmas eve, filling the house with it's beautiful aromas. My Dad would often receive a few slaps for picking at it after it came out of the oven while my brother and I would be trying to persuade my Mam that maybe Rudolf would like some ham for a change, rather than a carrot! To me, it has always been the more enjoyable of the Christmas meats, towering above the turkey in terms of flavour and intrigue, although that has become more balanced now with the switch to free range bronze birds.

There are many ways to cook the ham. My Mam would always boil it in a cider and water mix before glazing and baking. Others like to forgo the boiling altogether, baking it until just cooked before glazing and baking a little more. I like to boil and then bake. I believe it gives a better texture and results in a juicier ham. It is also a lot more forgiving in terms of cooking time. I decided against using cider and instead went for water with plenty of aromatics added. They slowly infuse the ham, giving a deep flavour and hints of spice throughout the meat. My glaze is especially for Christmas with the perfect mix of sweetness and heat with the added hum of rum to tickle the taste buds.

For the glaze:

1 tbsp Golden Syrup

3 tbsp Demerara Sugar

2 tsp Dijon Mustard

2 tbsp Rum (Captain Morgan's works well)

Mix together well.

Instructions:

1. Ask your butcher whether your ham needs to be soaked overnight or not. Sometimes it is necessary to remove the salt. If it is required, put the ham into a large pot and cover with cold water. Allow to soak for 24 hours, changing the water at least twice. Discard the soaking water.

2. After discarding the soaking water, add enough fresh water to cover the ham into the pot. Add some juniper berries, coriander seeds, peppercorns, and bay leaves and put over a medium heat until it comes to the boil. Remove any scum that forms on the surface.

3. Reduce the heat and allow to simmer for about 15-20 minutes per pound (about 35 minutes per kilo), topping up with boiling water if necessary. Continue to remove any scum that forms.

4. Remove from the pot (you can keep the water for cooking beans/cabbage or to add to the gravy) and cut away the strings. Remove the skin with a sharp knife but leave a good layer of fat on the meat. Cut a criss cross pattern into the fat, being careful not to cut into the flesh. Pour over half the glaze and spread it out evenly over the top of the ham with a pastry brush or the back of a spoon. Place a single clove into each of the cross sections of the cuts in the fat before placing on a baking tray and putting into a 180 degree preheated oven for 20-30 minutes. Cover with the remaining glaze halfway through. 

5. Remove from the oven, put on a plate and cover with tin foil. Allow to rest for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Roast Potatoes

Possibly my favourite part of every Sunday dinner, Christmas will be no different. The roast spud is the almost mystical part of the meal that only grandmothers seem to be able to get right. I recently realised that this may be because they used copious amounts of fat, surely the one stipulation for a great roastie. The choice of fat is a very personal thing. Goose or duck fat seems to be the default for Christmas, while the fat from a roasting chicken is favoured for the average Sunday meal. Those who are more health conscious tend to go for olive oil while butter is still favoured by many. I have recently switched from goose fat to lard. Try it, you won't regret it! Jamie Oliver's trick of gently pushing down on the potatoes with a masher halfway through cooking ensures a spectacular crust and is well worth the 30 seconds of extra effort.

Instructions

1. Put a few heaped tablespoons of lard (or your chosen fat) in a roasting pan and put into a 190 degree oven.

2. Use your favourite roasting potatoes, for most that will probably be Roosters. Peel the potatoes and cut them into evenly sized pieces, leaving small potatoes whole. Put them into a large pot and cover with cold water, add plenty of salt and a bay leaf and bring to the boil.

3. Once the water comes to the boil, cook for ten minutes before draining well in a colander. Move the potatoes around a bit in the colander to fluff up the edges. remove the roasting dish from the oven and carefully pour the potatoes in. Season well before turning the potatoes around in the fat to ensure all the surfaces are covered. Put back into the oven and cook for 25 minutes.

4. Remove the dish from the oven and, with a potato masher, gently push down on the potatoes to break them open a little. Don't push down too hard, the idea is to just increase the surface area of the potato to get it extra crispy. Turn the potatoes once more in the oil and put back into the oven for another 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and serve immediately. 

Kedgeree

It's Christmas Eve. The thoughts of the food mountain you're going to consume tomorrow lingers in your mind. What to have today? You don't want the bother of cooking a big meal but you need something substantial for the boozey night ahead (or is it only in my house that Christmas Eve is a session?!). Let me present to you the humble Kedgeree.

The Kedgeree is a traditional British dish from colonial India but it works great at anytime of the day (or night) and can also be used as a base for using up leftover meats and fish the next day. Feel free to be a bit more generous with the fish. I was purposely stingy here but you could easily double the amount for a more pronounced smokey flavour. The curry paste is very nontraditional but I find that it adds a great deal to the flavour with minimum effort. I would also serve with some finely chopped coriander but this proved impossible to get hold of in Newbridge on the day!

Serves 4

250g Basmati Rice (well rinsed)
4 Eggs
275g Undyed Smoked Haddock
Milk
2 Bay Leaves
3 tbsp Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
1 Large Onion (finely chopped)
1 clove of Garlic (finely chopped)
2 tsp Curry Powder
1 tsp Ground Turmeric
1 tsp Thai Green Curry Paste
handful of Frozen Peas (defrosted) 
Sea Salt and Freshly Ground Pepper

1. Put plenty of boiling water into a saucepan and add one bay leaf, a little salt and the rice. Bring back to the boil and cook for 12 minutes, adding the eggs to the saucepan for the final 6-7 minutes. Drain the rice and eggs and leave to run under cold water for a few minutes until cold. Discard the bay leaf. Peel and chop the eggs into quarters.

2. Meanwhile put the haddock into a pan and cover with milk. Add the other bay leaf and bring to a light simmer. Poach the fish for about 6-10 minutes until it flakes.Remove from the milk, remove the skin and flake the fish into chunks.

3. Heat the oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the onion and garlic. Season and stir well. Cook for 5-7 minutes until soft but not coloured. Add the curry powder, turmeric and curry paste. Stir well and allow to cook for a further two minutes. Add the cold rice, stir well to coat and continue to cook until the rice heats up, stir frequently to avoid burning. Add the fish and egg and fold into the rice. Add the peas and cook for 5-6 minutes over a low heat, stirring gently every so often. 

Christmas Turkey

It's the most important part of Christmas dinner. The part that (usually) mother's slave over for hours on end. When I think back to any childhood Christmas, the two things that always stand out are the turkey and, of course, the presents! The smell of it roasting evokes warm memories of great family celebrations and playing in a sea of new toys strewn all over the kitchen floor. It does however also divide opinion. It has been labelled dry, flavourless and boring and in some families has been scrapped for a "tastier" Christmas meal. 

The flavour of a turkey, or any meet for that matter, can be directly linked to the life which the animal led. The commercially produced animals have little space to move and so cannot develop the deeper flavour of their free range or organic cousins. A traditional breed of turkey can also guarantee flavour and the meet tends to be a little browner than a regular bird.

Regardless of the type of bird, the most important thing about cooking turkey is: DO NOT OVERCOOK IT! Buy a thermometer, it will be your best friend and not just for Christmas. The turkey is done when the internal temperature reaches 73 degress celcius (an organic turkey can be removed at 65 degrees). That could happen a matter of hours before you are used to taking the turkey out of the oven and once not overcooked it should keep its moisture much better. Resting is also extremely important to allow the juices to redistribute evenly throughout the turkey, 40 minutes to an hour is perfect.

There is much debate on how best to cook the turkey. Some like to cook it upside down, some like to stuff under the skin while some like to put it in a big foil tent. All of this falls a distinct second to cooking time. Once it's not overcooked everything else is secondary. I do like to stuff under the skin of the bird and, because I use a free-range/organic bronze turkey which cooks in about half the time of a conventional bird, I don't bother with a foil tent.

My grandmother's trick of putting a pound of sausages into the cavity of the turkey may sound strange but does produce the greatest sausages known to mankind. We are probably the only family that eat sausages with our Christmas dinner!

I would like to extend a massive thank you to David at Termonfeckin Delicious for supplying me with a Bronze Turkey in August!

Instructions

(free range or organic bronze turkey):

1. Take the turkey out of the fridge at least 1 hour before cooking and remove any giblets from the cavity. Season the cavity with plenty of salt and pepper.

2. Run your hands under the skin of the turkey, lifting it a little from the meat. Stuff all of this with your stuffing, trying to be relatively even.

3. Grease a large roasting tin and add thyme stalks, a sliced onion, 2 whole cloves of garlic, a chopped carrot, a bay leaf and plenty of seasoning. This will add lots of flavour to your gravy.

4. Place your turkey on top of the veg and put approx. 1 lb of sausages in its cavity. Pour 4 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil all over the top/legs of the turkey and season generously with salt and pepper.

5. Put into a pre-heated 170 degree (fan) oven and allow to cook for 2 hrs and 30 minutes (15lb) before checking the thigh with a thermometer. If your turkey is smaller, check it a few minutes earlier. If it’s not cooked just put it back in the oven and check at 5-10 minute intervals.

6. Remove from the oven and carefully lift the turkey onto a large plate/serving dish. Loosely cover with 3-4 layers of aluminium foil. Allow to rest for 40-45 minutes while you make the gravy.

For a standard commercial turkey the recommended cooking time is often quoted as 35 to 40 minutes per KG and should be cooked under a foil tent to avoid it drying out too much. You can take the foil off for the final hour to give a crispy skin. Basting the turkey with the pan juices every hour or so will also help to keep the bird moist.

Recipes for great gravy, stuffing, roasties, veg and ham are all coming over the next couple of weeks.

Pete's Perfect Portion 13

Roast Pork with Crackling Sandwich - Poulet Bonne Femme, Avoca, Rathcoole

Last Thursday I found myself in Newcastle, Co. Dublin around lunch time. I had been thinking of getting something to eat in the village and then it clicked with me; Avoca is just two minutes away! I'm a big fan of Poulet Bonne Femme. Their roast chicken sandwich has been my favourite lunch time treat for as long as I care to remember but this time.....this time I went for the pork. This is the sandwich dreams are made from. Succulent pork, crispy crackling, fresh bread, butter, mayo, Dijon mustard and a few mixed leaves. Perfect.