:: Catherine Fulvio's Meatballs in Spicy Tomato Sauce

Another recipe from Catherine's cookbook today and it's a damn good one, you seriously can't go wrong with homemade spaghetti and meatballs, especially on a day like today!  Can you believe it's already the 1st of September?  This dish would make a perfect little warming supper dish so enjoy!

Meatballs in Spicy Tomato Sauce

Meatballs form the secondi or meat course at the Italian table, while pasta is the primi, so they would not traditionally be served together. That said, they work well together, so if this takes your fancy, allow 400–450g of dried spaghetti to serve four. I also sometimes add 50g freshly grated Parmesan to the meatballs and reduce the salt, yum! Have a bowl of cold water beside you when forming the meatballs to dip your hands into, as keeping your hands moist prevents the meat from sticking when forming the balls.

Serves 6
for the meatballs:
50g fresh breadcrumbs
100ml milk
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
225g minced pork
225g lean minced beef
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp salt
1⁄2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 egg, beaten
extra virgin olive oil 

for the spicy tomato sauce:
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
175ml vegetable stock
500g tinned chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp tomato puree
salt and freshly ground black pepper
pasta, to serve
freshly grated Parmesan, to serve 

To make the meatballs, first soak the breadcrumbs in the milk.
Mix the chopped onion and garlic with the pork and beef. Add the breadcrumbs, oregano, salt and pepper to the meat mixture and mix well. Add in the beaten egg and mix thoroughly. Roll the mixture into small balls.
Heat some oil in a frying pan and add in the meatballs. Fry for approximately 5 minutes, turning occasionally, until browned on all sides. Remove from the heat and set aside.
To make the sauce, heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the chilli and onion and cook on a low heat for 7–10 minutes, until softened. Add the garlic, stock, tinned tomatoes, tomato puree, salt and pepper. Bring to the boil and allow to simmer for 5 minutes. Add the meatballs to the sauce and leave to simmer for 10 minutes to heat through.
Serve with your favourite pasta and sprinkle grated Parmesan on top.

:: Catherine Fulvio's Carpaccio Di Manzo & Win a Copy of Catherine's Italian Kitchen

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to meet Catherine Fulvio and have a quick chat, she mentioned she was filming a new tv series for RTE, but never mentioned the fact that she had a brand new fantastic book hitting book shops this month.  I got a copy from the folks at Gill and MacMillan to flick my way through and it is packed with great Italian recipes and lots of lovely food shots.  I have three copies to give away this week so you can try and grab a copy via twitter, facebook or on the entry form below.  I'll be posting a few of Catherine's recipe here on the blog this week and remember to check out her RTE show Friday's at 8.30pm!

Beef Carpaccio (Carpaccio di manzo)

Of all the delicious things to come out of Harry’s Bar in Venice, including the Bellini cocktail, carpaccio tops the list for me. Generally, carpaccio refers to very thinly sliced raw beef, but nowadays the term is widely used, from swordfish carpaccio to pineapple.

300g fillet steak, cut into wafer-thin slicesextra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
salt and freshly ground black pepper
rocket, to garnish
Parmesan shavings

Spread the slices of steak on a serving platter. Drizzle with olive oil and the lemon juice. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Garnish with rocket, sprinkle over the Parmesan shavings and serve.
It’s possible to buy beef carpaccio precut and prepacked, but I always buy it fresh and ask my butcher to slice the beef. That way, I’m assured of freshness and provenance.

To be in with a chance of getting your hands on a copy of Catherine's book, all you gotta do is answer this simple question.

What is the name of Catherine Fulvio's Cookery School?
A: Ballymaloe Cookery School
B: Ballyknocken House Cookery School
C: Cooks Academy

Your First Name
Your Email Address
Your Answer

Please note that by entering this competition, you will be signing up for The Good Mood Food Blog newsletter, but if you don't wish to subscribe, please put "NS" after your answer. The competition will close on Thursday evening (2nd Sept) at 9.30pm. Only one entry per person please!

:: Wild Blueberry Picking and a Swedish Gooey Chocolate Cake

Unfortunately the last of the Swedish summer hasn't been as kind as I had hoped, with most of my time being spent dodging the rain, it all feels very much like home. However, the bad weather hasn't dampened our spirits and we soldiered on, enjoying one of the more traditional events of any true Swede's summer calendar, the highly regarded Kraftfest! For a foreigner, this can be a fairly strange event to come across, so put simply it's a party where large groups of Swedes don bibs and funny hats to guzzle and suck their way through mountains of Swedish crayfish, interrupted only by traditional kraftfest songs while downing copious amounts of schnapps (which, by the way, tastes like paint stripper!). In fairness to the Swedes they most definitely know how to make the best of the summer.

One of the other very exciting things I've had the chance to try my hand at is wild blueberry picking! Over 60% of Sweden is covered by rich forests which are literally teaming with low lying bushes covered in little blue dots throughout late summer. Like any good Irish fella, I never pass on the chance of free food, so as soon as I heard about these little babies, we were in the car and deep in the woods in record time.

One of the things I learned early on about Sweden is that everything has a system, and blueberry picking is no different, they have these fantastic rectangular boxes with a handle and little prongs to pick the berries, which makes it as simple as running it through the bushes, to pick up generous handfuls bursting with goodness! We are still working our way through the huge amount we picked, making American style blueberry muffins and a delicious blueberry créme brulee, but this was one of the desserts which perfectly complimented the little berries.

Swedish Gooey Chocolate Cake

If you're looking for a gooey chocolate fix, you've come to the right place. This cake is perfect for a quick dessert using ingredients you probably already have in your store cupboard. To be perfectly honest, it tastes so good on its own it can just as easily be served without the cream and the berries! I have witnessed the picking apart of a cake just like this straight out of the oven by a hungry group of young ladies. It was similar to a scene from a David Attenborough documentary - believe me, they didn't need the frills!

Serves 8
100g butter
200g sugar
2 eggs
70g flour
3 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the topping:
500ml of double cream
150g of blueberries and raspberries

Preheat the oven to 175oC. Grease and flour a cake tin 24cm in diameter with a removable base and set aside.
Melt the butter in a saucepan. Remove the saucepan from the heat. Add the sugar and the egg and mix well.
Add in the rest of the ingredients and mix until combined. Pour into the greased cake tin and place in the oven for 20 minutes. The cake won't rise dramatically but you should be left with a set top and gooey middle! Allow to cool while you whip the cream until it become stiff.
When you're ready to serve, spoon generous dollops of whipped cream on top and then decorate with blueberries and raspberries.

:: A Swedish Lunch: Roast Tomatoes with Mozzarella and Red Onion and Cucumber and Fennel Lentil Salad

I've been packing a fair bit of travel in this summer and I'm fairly sure with the amount of airmiles that have wracked up, I'm doing the environment no favours! This week is no different I'm back in Sweden for a bit of work and to fully soak up all the best a Swedish summer has to offer! One of my favourite things about Sweden in the summer is the beautiful still lakes with their picturesque jetties. This week I finally got my first swim of the summer in and despite always being slightly worried about what lurks at the bottom of those murky waters, I can report that the water was beautiful. All that swimming in lakes can make a cook like myself hungry, so we decided to sample what the Swedes do best, the Smorgasbord!

One of my favourite places to eat in Gothenburg is the Gunnebo Coffee House and Restaurant which is situated on the grounds of one of Sweden's most beautiful neoclassical estates, just south of the city. The buffet style lunch is made with all organic ingredients and always has something interesting and healthy to offer. During the summer months the kitchen uses fruit and vegetables from the huge gardens outside, which I find very exciting to walk through! The day we were there amongst the fantastic choice of dishes there was a cabbage salad, cucumber and fennel lentil salad, herbed pork fillet, boiled cumin potatoes, roast salmon with a creamy sauce, and Roast tomatoes with Goats cheese and red onion. We assembled our plates with fairly hefty portions, a handful of the chunky homemade bread and headed outdoors to pick our way through it. There is something fairly special about eating fresh and healthy food outdoors on a warm summer day that just makes everything taste all the better! For now, as the Swedes say "hej då"!

Roast Tomatoes with Goats cheese and Red Onion

This is a super way to make the most of the last of the summer tomatoes! This method brings out the fantastic natural sweetness and is perfection in every bite. You can prepare these ahead of time and serve them at room temperature.

Serves 4
4 tomatoes, cut in half
1 goats cheese log, cut in slices
1 red onion, sliced in half moons
A good glug of olive oil
A generous pinch of sea salt and ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200oC/Gas Mark 6.
Arrange the tomato halves on a baking tray and top each on with a few slices of red onion and then place a slice of cheese on top.
Drizzle each tomato with a little olive oil and season with sea salt and ground black pepper.
Place in the oven to cook for 35 minutes or until the the tomatoes are soft and tender. Serve warm or cold.

Cucumber and Fennel, Lentil Salad

I think lentils are by far one of the most underused pulses. They are like the black sheep of the legume family, with many people having never even cooked them before. However that all has to change, they are full of health benefits, and just as quick as pasta to cook so no excuses! They go great with lots of different dishes but they go great here as a tasty little salad!

Serves 4
1 cucumber, cut in chunky diagonal slices
150g of green lentils
A good handful of fennel fronds, roughly chopped
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
2 tablespoons of olive oil
A generous pinch of sea salt and ground black pepper

Rinse the lentils in cold water drain and place in a pot. Cover them with plenty of water and bring to the boil, cooking for 15 minutes or until tender. Drain and set aside to cool.
In a large bowl whisk together the lemon juice and olive oil. Add in the fennel fronds, cucumber slices, and cooled lentils.
Season with sea salt and ground black pepper and serve!

:: Baked Peaches with Vanilla Sugar

We arrived in Cannes for a holiday last week, I came armed with a copy of Elizabeth David's French country cooking and Sofie my girlfriend with a copy of "The Notebook" (yes the soppy love story, the big screen version of which she has seen way too many times to count), so as you can imagine we have fairly different agendas on this summer holiday! I think it's always important to have a sniff around the local food market as a way of getting your bearings when you first arrive at a new place. It's been something that is engrained on my mind from an early age after hours of traipsing behind my parents on every family holiday, my dad busy comparing prices to the fruit and veg at home, while my mom being a bit more practical would be eyeing up a nice piece of meat for dinner. Needless to say it didn't take me very long to tire of reading by the pool and after a long drive the wrong way into Cannes and a fight with the GPS who I thought might be more interesting if we changed the language to French, we discovered the most beautiful French food market.

The Marché Forville is a massive covered market specialising in fruit, vegetables, fish and flowers and takes place every day except Monday's when it becomes the home to a spectacular antique market. The place literally crawls with activity. Big beefy stall holders eyeing up potential customers and of course the many well endowed Cote D'azur ladies, savvy French shoppers in the know, picking up up pieces of fish to inspect every inch of it, bronzed grannies beating their way through the crowds filling those distinctly French wheely bags to the brim with the best the market has to offer and then of course the tourists who like ourselves are busy snapping photos and taking it all in. You can't leave a place like this without a paper bag heavy with the summers finest fruit.

Baked Peaches with Vanilla Sugar

Stoned summer fruits are whack bang in season at the moment and there are lots and lots of different recipes you can use to make the most of them, however I think keeping things simple brings out the natural juicy flavours and leaves you with far less washing up to do. A win win situation I think you'll agree! If you can't get vanilla sugar you can quite easily make a homemade batch by popping a vanilla pod in a jar filled with caster sugar. Or alternatively just use caster sugar and a splash of good quality vanilla extract.

Serves 4
8 peaches, halved with stones removed
3 tablespoons of vanilla sugar
2 tablespoons of water
Vanilla ice cream to serve

Preheat the oven to 200oC/Gas Mark 6.
Arrange the peaches in a non stick baking tray and sprinkle over the water.
Dust each peach with a little of the vanilla sugar until each one is nicely coated.
Place the peaches into the oven for around an hour or until the fruit is tender when pierced with a knife.
Serve the peaches with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream.

:: My Perfect Scrambled Eggs with Chilli Jam

Ok so I'm kind of playing catch up at the moment and unfortunately when things get busy the blog is what suffers. Here is a piece I wrote for my column in the Cork News on the last day of shooting the photography for the new cookbook last week.

It was been an absolute pleasure to have been able to see the whole process of creating a cookbook from start to finish.
Over the last few months I have been over and back to London for meetings three times but haven’t actually had the chance to experience the London lifestyle or see anything much of interest. However this all changed last weekend, when we immersed ourselves in all the foodie sights and sounds with visits to Brixton Market, Portobello Market, Spitalfield Market, all nicely rounded off by a lunch in both Jamie Oliver’s restaurant Fifteen on Saturday and the highly praised River Café on Sunday. Both meals were absolutely delicious, however I felt Jamie’s place was definitely better value, with hearty dishes full of flavour which left you satisfyingly stuffed! I started with a savoury homecured Bresola and Beetroot salad full of earthy flavour and for mains a really rustic dish of Italian Sausage and green lentils. Don’t get me wrong our meal at the River Café was stunning, with a mouth watering menu, and beautiful surroundings with an air of Mediterranean elegance which probably can’t be matched anywhere else in London, I just felt it was a little pricey for the lunchtime trade. I had a delicious main course of summer Lamb and roast seasonal vegetables which was beautifully cooked. It really is one of those places that as someone with an interest in food, I think you just have to visit for the experience, and I am glad I did!

One of the places I had been looking forward to eating at was Rosie’s Café Deli at Brixton market run by Rosie Lovell, after receiving her saucily titled book “Spooning with Rosie” as a birthday present from my pal Aoife N earlier this year. Her writing style is fantastic which makes the book not only full of quirky recipes but also a compelling read. The café is full of home comfort and for a quick Saturday morning breakfast we gobbled down a cheese toastie with real cheese and tomato and these amazing scrambled eggs with Chilli Jam which I have I have officially decided is now the only way to serve scrambled eggs. Click on the link below for my recipe for chilli jam which appeared on the blog a year or two ago!

My Perfect Scrambled Eggs with Chilli Jam
The perfect scrambled eggs are most definitely down to personal taste, for me they have to be creamy so that they slide smoothly off the back of a wooden spoon. The eggs will continue to cook after you remove them from the heat so I think the key is to err on the side of them being underdone rather than ending up with chunky rubbery scrambled eggs.

Serves 1

2 large free range eggs
Sea salt and ground black pepper
2 slices of ciabatta toast to serve
2 tablespoons of chilli jam to serve

In a small non stick saucepan, whisk the eggs until they are slightly frothy.
Place the pan over a low heat and allow them to warm through. With a wooden spoon keep the mix on the move, making sure not to let it catch on the sides too much.
Cook until you have creamy scrambled eggs.
Serve the eggs on toasted ciabatta with a good dollop of chilli jam and season with a little sea salt and ground black pepper.

:: Go Nuts Nutella Whoopie Pies!

I very excited to tell you I am in London!!! For the next two weeks we are shooting the photos of the recipes for my new book which is going to out in March 2011. To say I am excited is probably a total understatement because for me this is the most interesting part of producing a cook book. The first time around for Good Mood Food I was a totally unorganised mess, when it came to planning the photography, I was coaxed along the way by my lovely Aunt Erica who did the majority of food styling, but this time around it's all rolled nicely into two weeks. It also helps that this time I have a far better idea of what I'm doing! My kit has been upgraded and I have a set work pattern which hopefully by this time two weeks will have held up long enough to have provided me with all the photos required! I'll try and stick up a few posts about the whole process if I can- for now enjoy these very cute whoopie pies which look very pretty indeed! :)

Go Nuts Nutella Whoopie Pies!

By dropping the cocoa powder from the original whoopie recipe and substituting flour you get left with really beautiful plain whoopie discs. As a filling I use a combination of nutella and smooth peanut butter but you could also use the chocolate frosting from the cupcake recipe.

Makes 16 whoopie pies
120g/4oz butter
190g/6 ½ oz caster sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
345g/12oz of plain flour
5g/1 tsp of baking powder
5ml/1 tsp of vanilla extract
250ml/8 ½ fl oz of buttermilk

For the filling:
80g of smooth peanut butter
80g of nutella

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350oF/Gas Mark 4 and line two baking sheets.
Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl.
In another bowl, using an electric whisk, cream the sugar and the butter until pale and fluffy. Add in the eggs gradually, mixing well to combine.
Add the vanilla extract to the buttermilk and, alternating with the dry ingredients, add to the bowl, mixing until everything is combined and you are left with a thick batter.
Spoon rounded teaspoons of the batter onto lined baking sheets, allowing space for them to spread while cooking. Place in the oven for approximately 15 minutes or until the tops have puffed up and spring back when lightly pressed.
When they are cooked, remove the mini pie halves from the baking sheets with a metal spatula and place on wire rack to cool.
Once cooled, spread a teaspoon of the nutella on the flat side of 16 of the pie halves. Spread a teaspoon of peanut butter on the remaining 16 pie halves and sandwich together with the nutella pies.
These little pies are heavy going so make sure to serve with a glass of cold milk.