Food & Drink

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Tasty salmon traybake

Buy a whole piece of salmon for this traybake if you’re feeding a family and cut into adult and children-sized portions. It’s cooked in a delicious teriyaki sauce.

Preparation and cooking time

Prep: 10 mins Easy Serves 4

Ingredients

• 4 salmon llets (or a 500g piece to cut up yourself) • 100g green beans, ends trimmed • 1 lemon, cut into wedges • 2 tbsp soy sauce • 1 tbsp honey • 1 tbsp mirin (substitute with

dry sherry or a sweet marsala wine) • 1 garlic clove, crushed • noodles or rice, to serve

Method

STEP 1

* Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. If you have a whole piece of salmon, cut it into four llets. Place a sheet of baking parchment on a baking tray and lay the salmon diagonally across it.

STEP 2

* Cook the beans in boiling water for 1 min and drain. Arrange the beans in piles around the salmon and add the lemon wedges to the baking tray. Mix the soy sauce, honey, mirin and garlic, and pour half of it over the beans and salmon.

STEP 3

* Cook for 15 mins, then pour the rest of the sauce over the salmon. Cook for another 5 mins. Squeeze over the lemon and serve with noodles or rice.

Cheers to Irish Farmhouse Cheese and craft beer

IN Ireland, we’re very lucky to have two complementary industries in farmhouse cheese and craft beer, whose products can be paired together for the simplest of snacks, a delicious meal or a tasting session to wow your senses.

Irish craft beer and farmhouse cheeses are linked by having the very simplest of ingredients which are transformed in the hands of the brewers and the cheesemakers, and through the fermentation process, to give us products which re ect the characters of the makers, the ingredients, and the landscape. It is often said of pairing food and drinks that what grows together goes together and this is most certainly the case with our beers and cheeses here in Ireland. always try and start milder or lighter and work your way up to the stronger avours, so as not to overwhelm your palate. Whether you taste the cheese rst and follow with the beer or vice versa may depend on your own allegiances, but a good idea is to try and have a taste of each separately before combining them, to see in what way the match works in changing the overall avour pro le. Make sure to take a few seconds to savour the avours in your mouth and bring in a little air if possible.

What you serve your cheese with can also have an e ect on the overall match, so think about whether your cheese should be on a light cracker, some brown bread or a wheat biscuit. Before moving on from one pairing to another it is a good idea to cleanse the palate, and a plain dry cracker or some neutral crispy bread does the job well for this.

Cheat Sheet for the perfect matches:

• Light beers such as lagers pair best with milder and soft cheeses • Hoppy beers such as IPAs pair best with fuller avoured goat or sheep’s cheese, or hard cheeses • Malty beers such as red ales pair best with fuller avoured nutty hard cheeses • Dark beers, stouts and porters work well with strong hard cheeses or blues • * Strong beers need very full avoured robust cheeses

Knights and roosters… a Classico tale

THROUGHOUT Tuscany, wine bottles and many a restaurant feature a black rooster, the famed ‘Gallo nero’, a marketing logo for the region’s world famous Chianti Classico ne wines with a ‘history’ that stretches back to the Middle Ages.

As the story goes… Once upon a time, a knight from Siena and a knight from Florence were chosen by their respective cities to race against each other to mark the boundaries of their lands. e race was to start at rst light and in order to be the rst to wake-up they both used what was considered the alarm clock of the time, a rooster. e evening before the race, the Sienese knight treated his white rooster to a sumptuous banquet hoping to please him. e Florentine knight decided not to feed his black rooster at all. e next morning, when rst light gently touched the countryside, only one rooster broke the silence. e black rooster of Florence, desperate for food woke up extra early allowing the biggest advantage to the Florentine knight. e white rooster, still fast asleep, failed in waking up the Sienese knight. e Florentine knight succeeded in marking the boundaries of Florence well into the Chianti area.

Ever since this day, the black rooster has become a well-known symbol for great quality wine and Florentine victory.

Tenuta di Carleone Chianti Classico 2018, Tuscany, Italy

A great example of the region, both classical and expressive. It’s a beautiful translucent ruby in the glass with tints of brick dust to the edges. e fruit is bright and has great acidity, but also that delicious depth of baked plums and spice. A great friend to almost any meal that features salumi, pasta and a hefty slow-cooked joint of meat. Around €27 from good wine shops.

San Felice Il Grigio Riserva 2017

Typical of the style that made Chianti wines world famous. Complex and concentrated, this Riserva is balanced and elegant, it boasts the brooding dark cherry and black tea character typical of the Sangiovese grape, allied to wonderful fresh acidity that makes this such a wonderful style of wine to match Italian cuisine. An authentic Chianti Classico from a top estate. A slightly more a ordable option, again, available at good retailers.