Organico Bantry

It’s the only time of the year I find myself buying crappy sweets and boxes of cheap chocolates to give away – feeling under pressure to play the game. But our kids don’t need more sugar – so I’m going to try amd make a workable list of alternatives…

• Why not give out other little gifts? Pens, pencils, balloons, fake tattoos, stickers – or even tooth brushes!!!
• For home (maybe not so suitable for Trick or Treaters) you can make little ‘Vampire bites’ by slicing apples into thin long slices and spreading nut butter in the middle, with some bleaches almonds as teeth! Any nut butter in the middle makes a tasty healthy snack…
• Mix nuts and chocolate nuts, this will reduce the sugar and the protein in the nuts will balance their blood sugars a little bit more than pure chocolate…
• I’m not a fan of Baby Bells but it is a cheese that is suitable for Trick or Treat…and again, the protein is a good way of balancing the effects of the sugar. So when they all get home with their bags of goodies, it’s no bad thing to have cheese cubes ready to go…
• Fruit is an obvious option, not always well received, but still good to try.
• Small toys…if you can buy a pack of little somethings that can be given out in singles…
• Do you have any old Christmas Crackers lurking anywhere? Or anything else that goes bang!
• Apples dipped in chocolate is better than apples dipped in toffee, as the latter can really damage teeth.
• Even packets of crisps might be a better option than more sweet things! Still junk food but slightly less damaging.
• Better still would be salty nuts, preferably not peanuts but almonds or cashews, and in an ideal world freshly salted/roasted and salted by you so you know the salt is a healthy sea salt and is lightly used without any added MSG. In tiny bags…
• Little juice cartons – again, not a huge amount of difference perhaps between fruit juice and sugar but at least you can limit the other nasty additives in many sweets. If you buy them in packs and only give one out it’s not too expensive.

All other ideas welcome! Happy Halloween everybody – it only comes once a year so lets enjoy it and make the most of the family time together. Don’t be scared to have some fun!!!

This salad is one of the most popular in Organico Cafe. If you are making lunch for friends or bringing a dish to a party this is always a winner! Or make a filling evening meal by adding grilled tofu or a chicken breast.

The dressing
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
1 clove garlic, grated
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
3 tbsp peanut butter
juice of a small lime

For the salad
1 red and 1 yellow pepper, deseeded and cut into small strips
2 spring onions, finely sliced
1 carrot grated
1/3 cucumber, cut down the middle and using a teaspoon scoop out all seeds then slice thinly
bunch of coriander, roughly chop up
2 tbsp sesame seeds

Take 1 Packet of rice noodles, approx 200g, soak in boiling water for 10 mins checking for them to go nice and soft…but you don’t want them to fall apart!

For the dressing, whisk together all the dressing ingredients in a bowl or jug.

For the salad, place all the salad ingredients into a bowl. Pour over the dressing and mix thoroughly to coat everything well. Eat!

Delicious served with cold milk or yoghurt. The granola can be stored in an airtight container for up to a month.

Ingredients:

4tbsp vegetable oil
100ml maple syrup
4tbsp honey
300g rolled oats
200g rye or spelt flakes or just more oats
3tbsp sunflower seeds
4 tbsp sesame seeds
3tbsp pumpkin seeds
100g dried fruit, sultanas, raisins, blueberries… anything you fancy
50g almonds

Heat oven to 150C/fan 130C/gas 2. Mix the oil, maple syrup, honey in a small sauce pan and heat gently, stiring to combine.
Weigh out all the remaining ingredients, except the dried fruit into a big bowl,then add the oil mixture and mix well.
Tip the granola onto two baking sheets and spread evenly. Bake for 15 mins, then mix in the dried fruit and almonds, and bake for 10-15 mins more. Remove and scrape onto a flat tray to cool.

This is a very popular main course in Organico Café. The pancake batter is adapted from Dennis Cotter’s Café Paradiso cook book ‘A Paradiso Year’ and the filling is my own. The pancakes are light and the filling is rich, tasty and nutritious.

Serve with a mixed green salad and a combination of grated fresh courgette and carrots dressed with light lemon juice and olive oil dressing.

Pancakes:
120g fine maize meal
80g spelt flour
Pinch smoked paprika
Black pepper
Large pinch salt
3 eggs
450mls milk
Olive oil

Method:
Sift flours, spices and salt together into a bowl. Whisk the eggs in a jug, add the milk, then whisk them into the flour to get a smooth pouring batter. Heat a frying pan, preferable a crepe pan but if not then a good non stick one will do (I just treated myself to a great ‘healthy’ non-stick pan from the CookShop in Bantry – it’s a great addition to the kitchen). Brush with olive oil and pour a ladle of the mix into the pan, swirl around to evenly coat the pan and cook for a minute or two before flipping over for the same time on the other side. This batter will make approx 12 pancakes (you won’t need that many but it leaves room for a few trial runs!!) The quantities for the filling are rough as you can use more of any of the ingredients that you like or you simply have more of!

Filling:
1 medium butternut squash, peeled, deseeded and diced
1 big onion, sliced
Olive oil, for roasting
200g to 250g feta cheese
small bunch fresh sage, chopped finely
70g butter
Salt & Pepper

Toss the squash and onion in oil and roast on 200 degrees until soft approx 25 minutes (you can leave the oven on as you will be using it again to reheat the filled pancakes). Melt the butter and add the chopped sage, heat through for a few minutes. Crumble the feta into the squash, adding the sage but keeping back a little of the butter to brush over the pancakes. Season after tasting the filling as the feta can be very salty.

Assemble:
Divide the filling roughly into 6 in the bowl. Spoon 1/6 of the mix into the pancakes, spread it out across in a sausage shape and roll up. Brush the tops with the rest of the Sage Butter and place in the oven (medium heat) on a baking tray on a sheet of parchment paper for 10 minutes. Serve when piping hot!

(sauce makes enough for 2 or 3…. I think!)

Use a pasta of your choice, I use Biona Spelt spaghetti or tagliatelle but penne will work too. This recipe is delicious with really fresh local courgettes!

1 small onion, chopped
2 tblsp olive oil
salt and pepper
1 clove garlic, more if you like more….
4 or 5 small courgettes, sliced on the diagonal
Bunch fresh thyme, taking leaves off the stalks
Bunch of parsley, chopped
1/2 Small tub of creme fraiche, 100mls approx
Zest and juice of 1 small lemon… an organic or at least unwaxed one
Some freshly grated Parmesan or Manchego
and if you want to make it richer 75g soft goats cheese

Method
Heat olive oil and cook onion for 5 mins until soft with a pinch of salt and some pepper.
Put the pasta on to cook with lots of hot water and a pinch of salt.
Then add the garlic to the onions and cook for a few more minutes, before adding courgettes and thyme. Cook for a few minutes until courgettes are soft then take off the heat and add the lemon juice, zest, creme fraishe and parsley.
Drain the pasta when its cooked and add to the sauce, stir, adding the grated cheese (and the goats cheese if your using it) and enjoy!

It’s really easy to make a nourishing soothing drink from Carrageen Moss. It makes a jelly-like thick drink which, when you add lots of honey and lemon juice, tastes pretty OK and really feels like its doing you good. I personally use the dried seaweed you buy in most healthfood shops – but if you are very keen you can harvest it yourself in Ireland!

What you need:

Carrageen Moss – a good handful of the dried seaweed (about 5 grams)
1 Organic un-waxed lemon
1 Teaspoon manuka honey or local honey per person
1 pint cold water (preferably spring water or filtered water)

Juice your lemon. Put the carrageen moss into a medium stainless steel pan, add water to cover, add the shell of the lemon if it is organic, and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the lemon juice. To serve, strain into a large mug and add honey to taste. keep the pan near the stove and heat up more as needed.

You can also add sage leaves or thyme leaves – sage is good for sore throats and thyme for chesty coughs.

Drink as often as you need to – 3 to 4 mugs a day while you are feeling under the weather always works for me!

There are lots of ways of making pancakes and I like all of them, but sometimes I just want the pancakes my mother made. This recipe is pretty close, although I use Spelt flour instead of the wholemeal pastry flour she would have had. These pancakes are thin (though not as thin as Crepes) and you roll them and eat them with your fingers all sticky with lemon, honey or maple syrup. Of course you can use jam, argave syrup, or even sugar, and some people like adding bananas and berries…and the milk can be switched for soy milk or rice milk if you prefer.

Ingredients:

Enough for 4 people as a light brunch

250g Spelt Flour (a mixture of white and brown is nice) with a nice pinch of sea salt
2 organic eggs, lightly beaten
600mls approx organic milk

Lightly whisk the spelt flour in a bowl to get rid of lumps, then add the eggs into the middle of the flour and whisk in. Add the milk slowly. Try to whisk out as many lumps as you can but don’t worry too much – if you can let the mixture sit for about half an hour the lumps will mostly have gone.

For frying: a little sunflower oil and a little butter

To serve: at least some runny honey and a fresh lemon cut into quarters.

The first pancake is always a bit of a mess, it’s really for telling you how much mixture you need for your frying pan and how much oil. You want a thin coating, under a ladle full for a normal size pan, and you want to cook it lightly until it lifts off the pan at the edges (a couple of minutes at most). Keep them warm and keep cooking until you have used up the batter!

These pancakes can also be used as a main meal served with vegetables in a cheesy white sauce for example… you can make them a little thicker and keep them in a warm oven filled and rolled until ready to eat. Enjoy! Hannah Dare

This drink is a favourite nearly year-round in Organico Cafe. It’s nice and easy to make at home so why not give it a try! We adopted the recipe from the Leon recipe book (thanks guys!).

Ingredients
200 mls Lemon Juice, 50g Ginger, 1 big bunch fresh Rosemary
5 Tbsp Local Honey (use Manuka Honey if you are feeling a cold coming on)
(this makes a syrup you can keep in your fridge for a week or more)

Heat the juice, ginger and rosemary, stirring in the honey after 20 minutes and turn off the heat. Let cool completely, then poor into a sterilised bottle (you can leave all the bits in there – it gets yummier every day!).

To make a mug of Cold Buster use 4 tablespoons of the syrup and top up with boiling water and extra honey if desired.

I’d like to start a new section of the website devoted to Simple Meal Ideas, meaning not quite recipes but more inspiration to help you decide what to eat at those times when you just can’t think! I’m planning to invite customers and friends to add theirs also so we all get to share each others’ tasty, quick and easy meals.

Tonight I made a warm Puy lentil rice salad with caramelised onions and loads of herbs, with veggies and feta cheese. The veggies could be roasted (for example peppers, aubergine, onions, courgette) or sauted (leeks, kale, cherry tomatoes and butternut squash) or any combination you have to hand – it’s nice if they are juicy and seasonal. If you wanted to dress it up you could make an aubergine gratin in a rich tomato sauce…it goes really well with the lentils and rice. You could leave out the feta then.

For the lentils and rice I cooked 1 cup of brown rice (with 2 cups of water in a pan with a lid for 35 minutes) and 1/2 a cup of puy lentils (in lots of water until al dente) and mixed them together with some caramelised onion (4 small red onions with a little oil over a low heat for 20 minutes). You drain the lentils before mixing them, and the rice should be cooked through. Then add a few handfuls of chopped parsley and corriander, a glug of olive oil, a little balsamic and lots of soya sauce and pepper.

Serve with a generous amount of crumbeld feta. The salad is great the next day also, just check the seasoning. Enjoy! By Hannah