FOOD: Never mind how the other half lives, you can't beat a modest supper and a cracking crumble, writes Domini Kemp
IF YOU'RE FEELING a bit blue, the last thing you should do is flick through a Martha Stewart magazine. I have a thoughtful Yankee godmother who brings me over a stack of cookery magazines from the good ol' US of A every time she visits the Emerald Isle. I am eternally grateful for her contributions to my already overstuffed box of cookery periodicals, and one of these days I'll get around to ripping out the good recipes and photos and recycling the rest.
The publications from the Martha stable are full of gorgeous food photography and lifestyle shots, which are supposed to provide me with inspiration for artistic genius each week. Clearly, I need to do more reading.
Each page contains handy tips on everything from effortlessly stylish floral arrangements to making the most luscious cream pies known to mankind. There are photos of guests at taco bar parties, sipping on margaritas while lounging on designer furniture dotted around stunning pools. It would make anyone green with envy. I would have thought after her spell in "Camp Cupcake" (the jail she was in), she would have toned down her extravagant ways and that her taste would have at least appeared to be a little more modest. More scratchy wool blankets and roadkill stew, less cashmere throws and lobster salad.
In one of her features, she writes about the luxuries of entertaining and being a guest at the grand homes of America and Europe which she visits. She weighs up the pros and cons of installing a little kitchenette in your guest rooms, so that peckish pals can always make a coffee or quick snack at odd hours when the servants may not be to hand.
I've looked at my "guest quarters". It's where the ironing is done and where the cat hides out when there are noisy kids around trying to play mummy and daddy and use the cat as baby. There are no bells to ding the servants and certainly no kitchenette. Still, one can dream.
As soon as I get some real servants and a little bell, it'll just be a question of time before the floral arrangements and cream pies will be whipped up at every opportunity. In the meantime, you'll have to make do with my modest supper dish and recipe for good old-fashioned crumble.
Pan-fried lemon chicken with celeriac remoulade (serves four)
1 head of celery
1 medium celeriac
200ml crème fraîche or Greek yoghurt
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard
Zest and juice of one lemon
1 tablespoon chopped capers
Handful flat-leaf parsley
Salt and pepper
4 chicken breasts, skin removed
Knob butter
Splash olive oil
Few sprigs thyme
Extra squeeze lemon juice
First, make the remoulade. Slice the celery very thinly. Chop the top and bottom off the celeriac. It should sit still on your board. Chop the skin off, using a knife, removing the skin from top to bottom. Then cut the celeriac into thin slices, and chop these into long, thin strips. Mix with the celery, crème fraîche or yoghurt , both mustards, lemon zest and juice, and capers.
Mix really well and add the parsley and season well. It will keep at this stage, for an hour or two.
Preheat the oven to 160°C, gas mark 3. Slice the chicken breasts in half, horizontally. Place the pieces of breast, one at a time, onto a sheet of cling film and cover with another sheet of cling film. Bash the pieces of chicken flat with a rolling pin, so that you end up with wide, flat and thin chicken breasts.
Heat up the butter and olive oil in a large frying pan and brown the chicken pieces. Season them with plenty of black pepper and then transfer to a roasting tin or other serving dish. When all the breasts have been browned off, add a good splash of water and lemon juice, to de-glaze the frying pan.
Pour this over the chicken along with a few sprigs of thyme, cover loosely with tin foil and cook in the oven for about 5-10 minutes until fully cooked through. Serve with a big spoonful of the remoulade.
Pear and apple crumble
300g flour
150g butter
175g sugar
5 cooking apples, peeled, cored and sliced
5 pears, peeled, cored and sliced
You can always make this crumble topping, even if you don't have the recipe. Just remember "half fat to flour, and a quarter sugar" (if you use 500g flour, you will use 250g butter and 125g sugar).
Preheat the oven to 180°C, gas mark 4. In a food processor, mix the flour, butter and 75g of the sugar. Keep the rest for the filling. Process until the mixture resembles crumbs. You can do this by hand - mix the flour and sugar together, and cut the butter into small pieces. Using your hands, rub the flour and butter lightly together to eventually create a crumb-like mixture. You can do this 24 hours in advance. Just chill and leave it to rest overnight.
Grease a gratin dish, about 20x30cm in size, with a little butter, and layer up the apples and pears with sprinkles of the remaining 100g of sugar. Feel free to add any favourite spices, such as cinnamon, vanilla or star anise. Top with the crumble mixture and bake for about 35-40 minutes, or until the crumble topping is golden brown. Serve with ice cream or sweetened Greek yoghurt. dkemp@irish-times.ie