Who said a cat and a dog can't be friends!?!?

Bar Italia

Beautiful lunch date with Mr.C. Second time in Bar Italia- last time was 2 years ago, but it seemed like it was only a few months ago. My great memory let me down though and I happened to order the same thing that I ordered last time- some wild mushroom, Italian, homemade egg fettuccine. The smell of it when it came to the table though, phrowarrrrrrrrr!! Smelly or what, worse than a sweaty man coming from an hour's run :P

Lunch didn't really come at a cheap price though, even when we ordered off the lunch menu. 2 starters and 2 mains for 40 euro. Thanks Mr.C :-*

2 bruchettas, a spicy salami, rocket pizza and my smelly socked wild mushroom fetty. 

The bruchettas- nothing compares to those tomatoes in there, isn't that right?? :P The starter came tastefully on a plate- with 2 olives on top of a basil leaf. Drizzled with 'superior category' extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar made it that extra special. The toasted bread, rubbed with garlic- pretty strong, luckily we both are immune to the smell :P was the perfect accompaniment to the fresh tomatoes, which had freshly torn basil leaves mixed into them. 

Mr.C's pizza was delicious. For the first time I think Mr.C had picked the better dish out of the two of us! The pizza base was so good, I was eating his leftover crusts! At one stage he had eaten the whole slice of the pizza including the crust, and I was like, where's the crust!... My pasta was just not to my taste buds liking, nor my nose's. Sticking to my usual button, shitake, enoki mushrooms from now on, wild- no good!

Who else is having lobster on their menu?

Who else but the other Lee's! Seafood- well lobster tail bonanza has hit the cards on some one else's menu bar ours. Here's what was on the menu for them that night...

Lobster ginger and scallion

Kai Lan

Fresh fruit salad... Pineapple craving now.. Pineappleeeeeeeeeeeeeee...

Mr. McC is quite the little chef himself! Called over to their house the other night and he was in the kitchen making the dinner. Vegetable chow mein, which looked pretty good! Looking forward to trying his seafood night :P

What's Amsterdam famous for??... Nam Kee!!

Some great bites that were well visited in Amsterdam's little Chinatown. Oh Nam Kee, you were one great eat. Your roast pork belly and aubgerines in black bean sauce are worth just the plane ticket over- something that was seriously considered as a suggestion for a one day trip to Amsterdam!

Here's some pictures from some terrific food that made us fat!

Nam Kee

Some Dutch place we happened to stumble upon- all we wanted was a coffee!!

Mango yoghurt cake- tasty, and disgusting expensive English perfume tea afternoon treat

Seafood Saturday

...Oh and I better put up what was on the menu on Saturday.. Since our trip down to the West, the lobster seafood craving had stayed in that little pea cell in my brain. :) And I made sure I passed it on to Mr.C :) An early trip to Howth on Saturday morning proved to be well worth it :) 3 lobster tails, a bag of mussells *them from Wrights*, another handful of mussells, 12-15 Dublin bay prawns and 6 crab claws *these from Dorans*, all came to a total of 27ish euro. Now if that ain't a bargain, what is!

No only hard job was not the cooking but the cleaning of the fecking mussels- don't think I'll be getting them again in a hurry, due to cleaning! But then I did have my cleaner handy :) They were such a pain in the ass to clean. Had to soak them in salty water for a few hours to get rid of all the grit and sand in them- didn't fancy sand in my mouth from mussels again :P Then had to pull the 'hair' thing out of them, then a good old scrub, and all under cold water :( My poor hands were freezing, but then I had help from a good ole pair of hands ;)

Cleaner of the year award goes to... nah won't give that award out yet :P still needs to be earned :P

I've never cooked seafood before, so first time, and since my mango cake was a disaster it was a good thing the meal wasn't that bad or else I think I'd be considering hanging up my cooking pots and pans.

Lobster with ginger and scallion- I think I overcooked them a bit :( No complaints from Mr. C though :) Bless his taste buds :)

Dublin bay prawns with a soya chili garlic dip- Enjoyed the soya dip very much! Should of brought more prawns! Some of them were a bit small but all good.

Salt and chili crab claws- I think I smashed them too much before cooking them that there were some small shells in nearly every mouth full. Didn't fancy them. I think next time I'll just get the top of the claw and make a garlic butter sauce to go with them, the crab claws we got this time was the actual claw leg.

T Thai style mussels- Mussels cooked in coconut broth infused in lemongrass, shallots, white wine and some chili. Very different to what we've been eating- cream and white wine. Mr. C ate them all but I think he did say he prefers the cream and white wine :( Stab to the heart- nearly made me give up on cooking all together :P

All cleaned and ready to cook!

Rome wasn't built in a day..

and either were my baking skills :*( Total disappointment this weekend. I've never really baked a cake so bad that it had to be thrown out, ok so there was the odd cake e.g New York style cheesecake, which, I don't know what went wrong with it. It doesn't matter if you follow the recipe down to the teeth, because if it ain't gonna happen, it ain't gonna happen!


The lovely yummy mango, 4 from Tesco at 1 euro something each, brought from green and matured till yellowy red :) Delighted with the way they riped so well :) So what do you do with 4 mangoes :) Hmmm maybe not everyone's first choice, but for me, it had to be fresh cream mango cake! The whole baking process went well, my usual cleaning assistant became my sous chef- well actually it was more like my 'all you have to do is weigh my ingredients for me' kind of chef :) Job well done!

Oh what went wrong ! ? Ok apart from my lack of cake decorating skills, and I cannot blame my 'sous chef'- :P even though that thought did pop across a little pea sized brain cell! But was quickly removed by the 'don't even think about blaming TUCC' remark! ... I have no idea- maybe it was a bad recipe that I followed ?? Oh and of course the 'cream'. One word of advice to all cooks- NEVER GO NEAR ELMEA CREAM NO MATTER HOW DESPERATE YOU ARE. Absolutely rotten invention.

Bad bad bad stuff!! How was I to know. Damn you Rathfarnham for running out of the 'normal cream' that I usually by.

Hong Kong arriving in Dublin !?

Only 0.01% true! Don't think Dublin could ever compare to Hong Kong- yes I know, I have to stay true to my heart! But as word of mouth would have it, and it's one of the most effective marketing tools I have to say, and I'm so glad this time it has benefited my tummy :), a Chinese style bakery has made it to the Dublin city centre. Who would have thought! After many years of waiting, after many trips to China towns abroad just to get one of them Chinese style buns, after many flights that have brought those buns back- Canada, Hong Kong, London and Amsterdam, all we need is a drive into the city centre.

Ok so it's not really like your typical Chinese Hong Kong bakery but I don't think I'll complain at this stage of many years of waiting. It's base is in a Chinese restaurant, Fans. It's not your typical Chinese people's let's go there to have dinner, but more adjusted to the taste buds to the likes of chicken curries and beef black beans. So I couldn't help but be a bit weary when hearing about it. I walked into the restaurant, first time in there in my 20 odd years living in Dublin, place was very darky playing musical Chinese music in the background without a customer in sight- apparently they were very busy, lunch period, but that had just finished. They had a little section cut off in the restaurant just for the cakes and breadss. Everything was laid out on the table for your choosing, some had plastic covers covering them and others tin foil. It ranged from sausage breads to coconut breads to egg tarts to wife cakes to chocolate triangle cakes. Not a bad selection. Did make me wonder about the freshness of them though seeing as there was a good few of them on the table and it was already 3.30pm! Got 10 breads and cakes in total costing 10 euro. Pretty good value to me. Couldn't resist but have one in the car on the way home, opening the cardboard box, the smell of yummy breads! Chose the sausage bread, and a tad bit disappointed- it didn't taste as fresh and dough as soft as the ones you get in Hong Kong :( Made me think about my thought earlier about them not selling the day before and an attempt to shift them away the next day! Still give it a 7 out of 10 though because the thought of a Chinese bakery selling fresh breads in Dublin makes me smile :)

Wednesday night dinners in Ikea

On a budget, got feck all money, want a better deal than McDonalds euro saver meal... Go to Ikea !! Following on the menu on Wednesdays for only 1.50 !! Meatballs, chips, gravy and some of that lingon berry sauce.. Yum Yum Yum.. Oh and I got a pea aswell :)

The beautiful fruits of the sea

What a fab few days away in the West of Ireland. First time there, but definitely won't be the last. Amazing food, great scenery, amazing 'Thailand style' beaches and crappy back roads that gave me such a sore neck!  So what was my favourite meal during those few days? Hard to choose and I'm going to have to go for 2 meals instead of 1!

The first meal we had in O'Connors Seafood Restaurant was a thumb and a half up! The other thumb was lost to the starter I had, tiger prawns with chili and garlic. I think I was kinda hoping of getting a yummy Dublin Bay prawn sort of thing and was so caught up in my little world of I want a Dublin Bay prawn that when I saw the word prawn on the menu I went straight for it :P Prawn came very big and crunchy but lacked in flavour.. Wish I had opted for the mussels like Mr. C. They were a beaut, and some managed to swim their way into my mouth!

For mains, well since we were in a seafood restaurant we kind of HAD to order some lobster! There was no will we or won't we, it was pretty much a case of some lobster! I ordered it grilled, it came grilled in some buttery sauce. Mr. C ordered it boiled- thought we'd try the 2 different ways of cooking, and it came with 2 dipping sauces. One was a marie rose sort of job and the other was some mayo? It was delicious, could of had 2 each :P

Second meal of my choice was the meal we had in Ocean Restaurant, the restaurant in the hotel. I started off with mussels- learning from the mistake from the previous night of not ordering them, and pork belly with scallops as a main. For dessert I picked the lemon tart which was absolutely yummy yummy. It had a great lemon tangy taste to it and the pastry was fab! The desserts in the restaurant were so good, we had to go back the following night after an Indian, just to get them again!

Mr. C had the soup of the day- veggie, chicken and parma ham thing, and a selection of homemade icecreams.

Accompanying the meal was potato gratin and some veggies. (someone was so hungry they didn't wait for me to take my pictures!!)

The meal was absolutely gorgeous, so filling as well. Only fault, or 2, mussels had some sand in some of them, yucky, and the scallops were a tad bit too under cooked for my liking. Otherwise, I'd defo go there again and order the exact same thing.


Now no exaggeration, but the breakfast we got in the hotel- The Maritime, was super duper yummy yummy. One of the best hotel breakfasts I've had. Soooooooo good! The croissants were so big and fresh and yummy! And the black pudding, must have been the clonakilty :)

It was one BIG breakfast to get definitely get us going on the road!

One place maybe give a miss...........

 

Let's just say they weren't very nice!! Not that we wanted a kebab as a midnight snack, but I wanted some 7UP and that was the only shop open- shops down west close early! We went in, asked for the can, Mr. C gave his hard earned 50 euro note to the man behind the counter, saying sorry but he hadn't anything smaller, the man was getting going to give Mr. C his change when the other man beside him said something in their language- pretty much I'm guessing don't give it to them, la la la obviously because he didn't want to give us his change! So your man basically says sorry, no 7UP tonight love! . .  HMPH!