Organico Bantry

This is a light, tasty salad that I make variations of all throughout the year, substituting different seasonal vegetables for the broccoli and green beans. It is a great salad to bring to a barbecue, to serve as a starter or to serve along side your main meal with some slight variations. For example, if you increase the amount of mint and leave out the cheese you could serve it with spring lamb, or just leave out the cheese and it is delicious with some baked monkfish or fresh mackerel. Topped with marinated lightly fried tofu it makes a dairy-free, vegetarian and yet high protein meal.

Quinoa, if you are not already familiar with it, is a seed, though it cooks like a grain. It comes from central America and is used as a substitute for bulgur wheat, couscous or rice, though it is a lot more nutritious than any of them. It is has a very high vitamin and mineral content and is a complete protein which means it includes all 9 amino acids. It cooks in 15 minutes, is gluten-free and has a slightly nutty flavour and a very light texture. In Organico Café we use Quinoa in soups, chillies, and burgers as well as in salads.

So – on to the recipe! You can vary the amounts of herbs, or substitute different ones depending on what is available to you, and as for the veggies – later in the summer roast pumpkin or butternut squash works really well as do roasted peppers and tomatoes, so feel free to play around with the ingredients.

A nice salty crumbly cheese makes a good contrast to the Quinoa; I really like St Tola’s soft Goat’s Cheese or a good quality feta cheese. St Tola’s is an Irish cheese from Galway that has a distinct flavour so you can use less of it than you might a milder cheese. If you opt for feta I would avoid the ones packaged in plastic and instead try the Real Olive Stall on Fridays (or come up to Organico – we sell their feta all week round!). Your salad will taste much better.

Recipe

250g Quinoa
1 small head broccoli
150g green beans,
1 bunch radishes,
150g Feta or St Tola’s soft goat’s cheese
150g cherry tomatoes (look for organic or local ones with a good sweet flavour)
½ bunch basil,
½ bunch mint,
½ bunch parsley,
50g each of pumpkin and sunflower seeds,
Tablespoon soya sauce.

Dressing

1 Tbsp pesto,
4 Tbsp olive oil,
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar (Aspall make a very tasty organic one)
Salt and Pepper

Start by placing the Quinoa in a fine sieve and rinsing under running water. Then into a sauce pan adding a cup of water to each cup of Quinoa. Bring to the boil and cook for 5 minutes, then lower heat and cook for a further 5 to 7 minutes. Tip out into a bowl and leave to cool.

Toast the seeds in a dry frying pan on a medium heat for a few minutes. Watch them carefully as the oil in them can burn easily. When they have slightly browned, pour a tablespoon of soya sauce into a bowl and tip the hot seeds into it and mix, then leave to cool.

Cut Broccoli and beans up into bite sized pieces and blanch in boiling water for a few minutes until they have cooked but still have a bite. Drain and rinse under cold water to stop them cooking any further.

Cut up cherry tomatoes and radishes in to quarters.

Chop up basil, mint and parsley. Add 2/3 to the salad and the rest to the dressing jar.

Make dressing by first dissolving the salt in the vinegar in a jam jar, then add the honey and mix in, then add the pesto and olive oil, giving everything a final shake.

To assemble the salad, mix the cooled Quinoa, herbs and vegetables together then add the feta crumbling it in your fingers. Mix in the dressing and finally add toasted seeds on top.

Hi I’m Rachel (the one who you never see because I’m always in the kitchen!) and I would like to share my passion with you for healthy food that tastes great and doesn’t cost the earth. In Organico Café our aim is to provide tasty, healthy food that is really good for you (and to serve it along side indulgent treats to comfort and spoil you). There is a very important link between the food you eat and the way you look and feel. We have always been told that a healthy diet is important but as I discover more about what it means to eat healthily, I realise how different everyone’s interpretations of “a healthy diet” are. There is a confusing amount of information available and a lot of it contradicts itself. So we have decided to try a new approach for this column, writing about natural remedies every 2nd month and giving tasty recipes in between. Along with the recipes we will give some nutritional information on the main ingredients involved. Following Hippocrates’ advice and letting your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food is certainly a recession-proof approach to health!

I have chosen a soup to start with as I think it is essential to a healthy diet – a home made nutritious soup is a complete meal and is very easy to digest. Dried Split Peas are a very good source of cholesterol lowering-fiber, they are also very helpful in managing blood sugar levels as their high fiber content prevents blood sugar rising after meals. They also provide minerals including Iron and magnesium, as well as B vitamins and protein. The fresh herbs change it from a good soup into something special so please don’t skip them! (We will have lots of fresh herbs in the shop from now on – sometimes they can be hard to find). As with all our recipes we recommend the use of organic vegetables and split peas for their higher nutritional quality and taste. The type of stock powder you use is also important, as many use salt as the main flavour which isn’t the healthiest, so look our for Marigold Bouillon or Kallo stock cubes (they both also do a very nice low salt option). In the Café we have found this to be one of our most popular soups with people always asking for the recipe – and it goes down really well with children too!

Spring Sweetcorn Chowder

225g Yellow split peas 2 Cloves of Garlic

2 Tsp Vegetable Marigold bouillon powder 250g Spinach, Kale or Spring Cabbage

2 Tbsp of olive oil 1 Can Sweet corn

1 Bay leaf 2 Leeks, washed and sliced

3 carrots, scrubbed and diced Handful Parsley and Basil or Mint

1 Onion, peeled and diced Salt and pepper

Place the peas in a sieve and rinse well under running water for a few minutes. Place in a large sauce pan and cover with 1.5L cold water, Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes, sometimes they will take longer so just check every 5 minutes until they feel soft. Remove any residue that rises up to the surface with a slotted spoon. Top up with more water if necessary. While the peas are cooking fry the chopped onions, leeks, carrots and bay leaf in olive oil on a medium heat for 10 min’s then add the sweet potato and garlic and cook for another 5 min’s., keeping you eye on it to make sure nothing is sticking. When the peas have cooked for 25 min’s blend with a hand blender, add the cooked veggies to the split peas, remembering to take out the bay leaf at this point, and cook for another 15 min’s. Chop up the greens and add along with the sweet corn to the split peas, cook for a further 5 minutes. Season to taste. Chop the herbs, stir into the soup and serve. If you would like to freeze some portions then just leave out the greens and the herbs and add them later.

Enjoy!

If you are visiting Bantry for the 2009 West Cork Music Festival there have been a few changes in the town since last year…

In terms of eating out, El Gitano’s has changed hands and has opened as Currivan’s, offering both day and night time menus at very reasonable prices. Bantry House is no longer doing evening meals (though they still offer a day-time cafe and a wonderful walk around the gardens – unmissable).

Of course Organico Cafe is still open until about 5pm Monday – Saturday for the Festival Week offering wonderful, mostly vegetarian food, broadband and rgeat coffee and cakes (all possible to take out also). Call 027 55905 to arrange take away.

If you have a free afternoon a visit to Val Manning’s Emporium is really worth it – Val is an expert on Irish cheeses and serves fantastic wines and cheese boards in front of his premesis (to find him just head out the road to Glengarriff for about 5k – he’s on the right in the Ballylickey area so you are going slow anyway, you can’t miss him)

If you feel like a bit of papmering during your visit Anam Chara offer facials, massages and many other treatments from their new premesis on the way up to the Library.

Despite the recesion Bantry is very busy and we hope you will have a fantastic week’s stay here with us.