FOOD: DOMINI KEMPpresents chocolate brownies with a twist and coffee ice-cream to serve up with them
A FEW WEEKS AGO, I was banging on about finding a good pit-stop between Dublin and Cork, and inadvertently referred to Cashel House Hotel in Galway. Apologies, but the Cashel Palace Hotel was the place I meant to recommend, and I have since been told Café Hans, also in Cashel, is great too, although shut on Mondays. Anyway, apologies to all concerned.
The previously mentioned Cashel House Hotel is indeed a lovely spot, but nowhere near the N7. So, besides the fact that my geography is deplorable, along with my ability to remember names, it is safe to say that all of the above rock (Rock of Cashel, geddit?).
Speaking of even fancier pit-stops, Garrett Byrne’s Campagne restaurant in Kilkenny city is somewhere I’ve been dying to go for ages and now I can safely say it was worth the detour. Byrne used to be head chef in Chapter One, under the talented Ross Lewis, and his food has always been hearty and delicious, with a good dose of elegance.
Paul Flynn asked me to do a demo in his Tannery Cookery School in Dungarvan, Co Waterford, so I used the journey to eat in both the Tannery and Campagne on the way home. The hubbie very kindly accompanied me for the weekend, only because of the promise of dinner in the Tannery and lunch in Campagne. To justify his presence, he offered to pop in during the demo (in case I ran out of steam) and impart his top 10 “cheese on toast recipes”, which, sadly, we never got round to.
A lovely crowd of good amateur cooks showed up, bright and early, ready to be dazzled. I, in turn, hoped to enthral them with my cooking skills and fantastic jokes. The facilities in the cookery school are absolutely gorgeous and, lucky for me, Paul was my assistant for the day. All was going swimmingly – the crowd didn’t seem hostile, the sun was shining, and later on that day, Ireland was to be victorious in her quest for rugby greatness.
I was blabbing on when suddenly I looked down at the chopping board and realised I had made a botched attempt to amputate my finger. Luckily, Paul was at hand with the first-aid kit and blue plasters.
All this drama happened within the first 10 minutes of my Dungarvan debut and although the finger healed pretty quickly, my ego and puce-red face took a few hours to calm down. Things settled after that, and despite hating to cook anything sweet, I churned out these two dishes, which worked out well.
Cheesecake brownies always seem like a typical Yankee dessert, and hence a bit OTT. But these ain’t bad, and the flavour of the coffee ice-cream is bang on. All in all, a good combo.
Chocolate cheesecake brownies makes 12-16
Adapted from a recipe by Stephan Franz
200g pecans
225g pack cream cheese
60g caster sugar
1 tbsp plain flour
1 egg yolk
200g plain flour, sieved
5 large eggs
450g caster sugar
200g dark chocolate, chopped
300g unsalted butter, at room temperature
Glaze
85g unsalted butter
100ml water
250g dark chocolate, finely chopped
Heat an oven to 170 degrees/gas four. Toast the pecan nuts for a few minutes on a baking tray in the oven, and then chop them up roughly. Grease a 28cm x 23cm x 4cm grease-proof cake tin, or roasting tin, and line the bottom with baking paper.
Mix the cream cheese, caster sugar, one tablespoon of plain flour and one egg yolk together with a whisk and then cover with cling film and chill. Mix the nuts with the 200g plain flour. Whisk the eggs (your five large eggs should measure about 300ml) and sugar with an electric beater until they are pale and thick, which should take at least five minutes.
Melt the 200g of chocolate over a bowl of barely simmering water and then add in knobs of the butter. Mix well. Fold the chocolate mix into the beaten eggs and then quickly fold in the flour and nuts. Pour into the tin, and then, using two teaspoons, drop knobs of the cream cheese mix in rows. Once you have done that, you can pat them down, so that they sink.
Ideally, you could do this with a piping bag, but piping bags are a pain to use for such a small job, so I don’t bother.
Bake for at least 40 minutes. They look a bit pale, rather than a dark chocolate colour, but once a skewer comes out reasonably clean, remove the tin from the oven and allow them to cool.
Make the glaze by bringing the butter and water to the boil, then pouring it on top of the chocolate. Stir gently, slowly incorporating the liquid, and it should form a nice sheen. Once cool enough to spread, ice the brownies, then slice and serve them.
Coffee ice-cream
600ml milk
75g coarsely ground coffee
5 egg yolks
125g sugar
400ml cream
4 tbsp Tia Maria
Heat up the milk and coffee. Bring up to the boil, then remove it from the heat and leave to infuse for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, whisk the egg yolks and sugar until they are pale and thick. Put a glass bowl in the freezer. Strain the milk and coffee mixture through muslin and back into a clean saucepan. Whisk in the egg and sugar mix and stir gently over a low heat to make a coffee custard. Don’t cook the bejaysus out of this. You want it to thicken slightly, not turn into scrambled eggs. Pour into the chilled bowl and whisk in the cream and Tia Maria. Keep stirring until it gets cold and then either freeze in a plastic container or else use an ice-cream machine.
See also www.itsa.ie