It's been seven hours and forty days, since I last wrote a blog.

I work every day and sleep all night, since I had no time.

Since I've been busy, sorting out my mac book pro,

But now it's back,

I can start again,

'Cause nothing compares to apple,
Nothing compares to apple.

So, there you are.

Now, at last, I can talk about intelligence, and how, I think I might have a little bit.

Unlike Sir Jonny, who. as head of design at the world's biggest company, could not be bothered to make a white wine proof mac book pro!

So, with my new, dry, apple ready, and continuing the Irish theme, I'm going to talk about clever cooking.

As you know we make truffled goats cheese butter at East Lodge, but I wanted to make some of my own butter, from scratch, just to see what is was like.

And I was bored.

Quite easy actually, just over whipped cream.

In fact, any idiot, including me, can do it.

So, what happens is, after whipping the cream, it will split, and leave you with the butter, and also some buttermilk.

After seasoning the butter with Maldon sea salt, and patting it to remove any remaining buttermilk, it was ready to be served.

Which was great, but after thinking about it, wondered what to do with the milk.

Well, well, well!

I thought!

How about soda bread.

I've never actually made it before, but I knew it needed either yoghurt of buttermilk, and as the proud owner of some, thought I'd put it to good use.

It's so easy as well.

Plain flour, some salt, sugar, bicarb and buttermilk.

No boring kneading, just mix to a wet dough, pop in the oven, and job done.

We served it on Saturday night with some of our smoked salmon and a Guinness gel, as a surprise course, to our chef's table guests.

And it really was good, but, you know, most things with warm bread and freshly churned butter are pretty good!

So, there you are, clever cooking.

Here's another example.

It's one of our lunch menu dishes, that saves on washing up, keeps all the flavours together, and is a perfect restaurant dish for cooking a la minute.

A perfect way to cook fish, it keeps it moist, makes a sauce and warms the veg!

We use salmon at the moment, but any fish will do. And by preparing some green vegetables, blanching turned new potatoes, and chopping herbs, it's all ready to be finished when called away.

So, poach the fish, then remove, and keep warm.
Reduce the poaching liquor and add the blanched vegetables.  We also add some sliced tiger prawn tails, but scallops or caviar would be a nice addition.
Finished with a good amount of butter, a drop or two of lemon juice,  and there you go.






A nice, intelligent fish dish, proving that there are, just a few, clever chefs out there!



Not too sure about these two though!



Right that's it.

Next time I'm going to tell you about how my new bread knife is making me put on weight, and if this new mac book pro is red wine proof!

And how a full English breakfast has made it on to the East Lodge Spring tasting menu.