General Chat Thread II

thesandeman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122520255#Comment_122520255

🤣 Every day is a school day.

the beer revolu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122520150#Comment_122520150

Yes. Red.

pigtail33

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122520616#Comment_122520616

It reminds my of my time on Erasums in France back in the late 90s. Some Spanish students introduced us to it and it's known as Calimocho. It's supposed to be equal quantities of good quality wine and coke, but being students, we used the cheapest of both we could get our hands on and usually a lot more wine than coke. I shudder at the thoughts of it now.

the beer revolu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122527923#Comment_122527923

Ah, no worse than alcopops and some of the so called, "ciders". Also, people mix coke with spirits without a second thought!

Dial Hard

Bought what I thought were individual sticks of butter in the supermarket in Spain at the weekend, only to discover they were actually fresh yeast (much to the amusement of my friends). Anyway, I brought them home with me and will soon be commencing the Great Big Fresh Yeast Pizza Dough Experiment.

thesandeman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122533012#Comment_122533012

Same happened to me with milk. I nearly puked after taking a huge slug of buttermilk out of the carton 🤮🤣.

oscarBravo

Mmm, buttermilk.

thesandeman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122533498#Comment_122533498

Lovely for soda bread and pancakes but not when you've three quarters of a pint down your gullet before your taste buds wake up.

oscarBravo

I had a buttermilk and lemon Cornetto in Germany once. I've been craving one since.

the beer revolu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122534677#Comment_122534677

I have memories of a fantastic lemon Cornetto decades ago in Germany. Thought it was frozen yoghurt, though.

Having said that, buttermilk, nowadays, is essentially yoghurt (cultured milk) and not the leftover liquid after churning butter.

L1011

There something wrong with this recipe, right?

https://www.irishtimes.com/food/recipes/2024/08/17/creamy-mushroom-and-slow-roast-garlic-sauce/

It couldn't serve 20 for a starter; but its come out much darker than the photo; and it also feels a bit, well, lacking. Could have been stronger on any specific flavour.

Dave_The_Sheep

• Since it's paywalled, I'll copy it here:

Preheat the oven to 140 degrees. Place one large sheet of tinfoil on an oven tray.

Slice the mushrooms into quarters and place in the centre of the tinfoil. Peel the onions, remove the ends and slice in half. Add the halved onions to the tinfoil beside the mushrooms, along with the whole head of garlic.

Pull up each side of the tinfoil then drizzle the olive oil over the mushrooms, onions and garlic and season well with sea salt.

Fold two opposite sides of the tin foil to the middle so the edges meet. Fold one edge over the other, then fold up the remaining two sides to create a sealed parcel.

Place in the oven and cook at 140 degrees for two hours.

Remove from the oven and open the tinfoil carefully. Using a serrated knife, carefully remove the base of the garlic bulb and squeeze out the roasted garlic pulp into a blender. Add the mushrooms, onions and all juices from the tinfoil to the blender. Add the cream, crème fraîche, soy sauce and lemon juice and blend. Check the seasoning and adjust with sea salt.

Spoon the sauce into a jar. It can be stored in the fridge for a few days.

Reheat in a small pot when cooking your pasta, adding a splash of cream and a little pasta water if needed, to loosen the sauce slightly.

400g chestnut mushrooms
3 small brown onions
1 whole head garlic
8tbs olive oil
Sea salt
150ml cream
100g crème fraîche
4tbs soy sauce
Juice of one lemon

I suspect someone added a 0 to the serving figure, for the record.

L1011

It would be two immense servings, it does serve six I'd say

I did use an actual head of garlic and didn't so the clove/head confusion that I'm sure ruins lots of garlic heavy recipes when people don't realise and just use one clove.

The roasting bit smelled great, the final meal just a bit bland

Black Sheep

Posting this here, as it may be of interest to some people (It's also in the beer form).

The Big Grill 2024, Herbert Park…

We went for the late slot yesterday, and spent four hours there, from 4pm to 8pm.

Entry was straightforward, no real queue to speak of. QR code scanned off the phone, and we got wristbands with drinks tokens, and lanyards for the Rancho Relaxo access we paid extra for.

Rancho Relaxo

Rancho Relaxo was a separate area, with long tables, some covered, some uncovered, and a private bar selling 1661 cocktails, wine and O'Hara's Beers (Session IPA and stout). Although it was a dry evening, with a lot of people in the main festival just sitting on the ground, we did tend to end up drifting back here to sit down properly. The main advantage of Rancho Relaxo was undoubtedly the upgraded toilets, which were genuinely in great nick. Not sure what you'd call them, they weren't permanent but they were a significant step-up from portaloos, and very clean.

Whether or not Rancho Relaxo was worth it is kind of a subjective thing… If on a budget then the obvious answer is "no", but the women in the group we were with reckoned it was worth it for the toilets alone. The 2 drinks per head included soften the blow of the extra cost somewhat.

Drinks

Looking at receipts from my phone, it looks like I paid 7 and 7.50 per pint. Everything was in plastic, as you'd expect.

There were about a half dozen craft beer stalls.. White Hag, O Brother, Carlow, Sullivan's, Trouble Brewing, Rascals and Wicklow Wolf. A few cider producers, Schweppes, Jameson, Neighbourhood wines, Madri and a few random things like Kinsale Mead.

Trouble Brewing seemed to have sold out of a lot of stuff by the time we go there, as had White Hag (Atlantean, for example), but I had several pints of Elevation from Wicklow Wolf, and was happy enough.

Never had to queue for a drink.

Food

Nothing is included in your ticket, people seem to struggle every year with this fact, but … yep… You pay entry and your ticket doesn't get you any food. It is what it is.

You're eating off paper plates, with wooden cutlery, and people are either standing or sitting on the grass, or on some benches or in Rancho Relaxo.

In cost terms, it's not restaurant pricing, take-away or eat in, it's lower, but it's not inconsiderable. I ate 5-6 dishes, and they ranged between 7.50 and 12.50.

Off the top of my head:-

Achara (Thai BBQ), 7.50 for a Northern Thai spiced sausage with a really really good green salsa. Bao and excellent iberico pork skewers from Hang Dai. A slow-cooked lamb flatbread from Reyna that was a bit disappointing. Flank-steak, salsa and slaw from celebrity Texan smoker / BBQ outfit Leroy and Lewis (Over seasoned, IMO, but tasty). Beef ribs from Bah 33, these were 12.50 but for those who equate size with value for money, probably the most substantial of anything I got, and really good. The Bah 33 guys aren't the darlings of the Irish food scene the way others are, but don't sleep on them if you're into smoked foods, they are amazing.

In terms of food quality… Some good dishes, some so-so. I'm not sure what people expect, but this is clearly outdoorsy/food truck fare, and I think most vendors did a good job of judging what they could deliver in a reasonable manner. Usually a dish was 2 elements, 3 at most. The reality is, being outdoors, it's piping hot when it's plated up, but within 30 seconds it's tepid. That's the nature of the beast.

An issue in previous years was that some places ran out of food, or queues were inordinately long. I did queue for a couple of minutes, here and there, but generally food was moving quickly.

A few places had sold out of things I wanted, but in general there was enough choice left over, and I did go at the tail end of the festival.

My buddy was disappointed Leroy and Lewis has sold all their smoked stuff, but again, we were just too late going along. They had obviously got some big cuts of bavette and chucked that on the grill to have something to serve still.

People have said, in a previous years, that if you are really into grilling/smoking, this isn't a festival for you, but I think that's a bit unfair. I shot the **** with several of the chefs and chatted away. Not sure what people expect, but it found it interesting to just walk around and watch them working, and asked the odd question here and there. It's clearly not a hardcore US-style grill festival, but that expectation will never be met in a mainstream event of this size.

General stuff

The regular toilets were pretty grim, according to one of our group who went. Standard for a festival, though.

The crowd was very middle-class, and probably 25-45 in general. There were loads of kids around, and the vibe was pleasant. Didn't see anyone falling over drunk, or anything anti-social. There were several Gardaí floating around in uniform.

The one slight 'shock' we got was that when 8pm came, everywhere stopped serving on the dot. No "ah just one last round", that was it. Which is fair enough I suppose.

Overall… Probably spent 150 a head, but I'd consider it a very good evening. At times discussion on this forum always devolves into what something costs, which is somewhat tiresome, because evaluating something doesn't always have to come down to the question of value for money... This wasn't cheap, but everyone had a great time. Compared to other years, they seem to have a got a handle on some of the issues that bedevilled them in terms of crowds and queues.

Dave_The_Sheep

Can't remember if I asked this already. How prevalent is the use of the phrase "doggy bag" these days? I've gotten a few odd looks the last few times I've asked for one.

(I used to never get one as I finished everything, but my appetite is way down these days so it's becoming more and more required)

New Home

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122550451#Comment_122550451

I'd use the term regularly or I'd say I'd like to take away the rest of my food - the only odd looks I got were from waiting staff who didn't know any better, but in my book wasting food is a mortal sin.

Gloomtastic!

Likewise, we ask for food to go all the time and they never question it.

the beer revolu

I'd use the term doggy bag, as required. If I like a meal and can't finish it, I'll always ask for a doggy bag (or "daa baau", if in a Chinese).

Dave_The_Sheep

It's more the term than the practise I was wondering about. No issues asking for one here.

Recliner

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122550451#Comment_122550451

I never use the phrase. I just ask for the remainder wrapped to go.

I wonder if the younger generation of waiting staff would ever have heard of the phrase. Not that I'm ancient or anything. 😁

Black Sheep

I suspect these days you're just better asking for the leftovers 'to go', I suspect there's a younger generation, maybe also foreign wait staff in general, who won't be familiar with the 'doggy bag' phrasing.

The Black Oil

Took this a few weeks ago in the Eden Project in Cornwall. Someone reached in to grab a few too.

PXL_20240815_133801425.jpg

Dave_The_Sheep

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122476465#Comment_122476465

Gave this a bash earlier. Forgot the garlic like a total bellend, but added some red pepper and onion as I had some that had to be used up. Had it in a pita with some fresh sliced cabbage, diced carrot, feta and chickpeas. Very nice, I have to say, fair play Mystery Egg!

taytobreath

anyone experience of buying from those companies that sell recipe kits on a subscription

Mollyb60

I tried Hello Fresh during lockdown. Worked well enough, made nice meals and the instructions were nice and simple but I ultimately felt it was a massive waste of packaging. The meals came in a huge box,all individually wrapped (like a couple sprigs of parsley or a little baggy of parmesan), which was a huge pain in the arse to get rid of. Especially the fresh meat etc that were in cooler bags. It just felt even more wasteful than buying a whole head of parsley that I wouldn't use.

I got some nice recipes out of it (one for a butternut and bacon risotto that I still use) but it just wasn't worth the money for me. Nice to try out but that's it.

the beer revolu

I hadn't thought about all the packaging. That would put me off big time. I don't even like getting take away because of the packaging!

I'm old enough to remember old newspapers (lined with a clean sheet of paper) making up the bulk of packaging in chippers. This was replaced with sheets of plain white paper. Now it seems most takeaways want to put everything in boxes. A slice of pizza now needs a box, fish and chips now need a box.

I went right off my favourite Indian cafe, Iyer's, when they changed to only disposable.

awec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122654172#Comment_122654172

Used Drop Chef 4 or 5 years ago for a while.

It's grand, the best thing about it is getting to try new things.

But some weeks the choices were a lot better than others and I found it more expensive than just buying groceries over the long term. I think it really only works if you're feeding 2 people, if you're tying to feed a family it's not as good.

Obviously their thing is you only get the exact amounts you need, so there is no waste. But if you're someone who'll eat re-heated leftovers for lunch the next day example this obviously doesn't work any more. Also, you might get 100g of rice or whatever for an individual meal, but if you have 5 rice dishes from them you'll pay more for the 500g of rice from them than if you just bought a bag of rice in the shop etc.

It's worth trying for a while but I doubt anyone sticks with it long term.

miamee

I've also tried Hello Fresh for a few weeks during a period of time where I was feeling pressure with work then making evening meals before or after evening classes I was attending. Unfortunately OH wasn;t in the best health at the time so a lot of the cooking fell to me, I thought these meals would take the pressure off me if I had all ingredients and a recipe ready to go, however when I needed a meal cooked quickly I would have been better off with a meal I knew well rather than trying to follow a new recipe every time. Some of the meals were very tasty and I kept the meal cards but didn't actually make any of them again. If you're stuck in a rut of making the same few dinners and want to try new things, I'd give them a go but as mentioned they are more wasteful with packaging and in my experience didn't save me any time with cooking, just maybe with food shopping where I had to buy less.

Gloomtastic!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122655368#Comment_122655368

I think my family would all have heart failures if I bought one of those food delivery boxes and all the packaging would give me palpitations.

Take aways are not too bad for packaging round here. We had a chipper last weekend and everything went into the brown bin afterwards. Chinese tupperware is washed and reused. The only bad ones are the local Japanese takeaways. All the packaging is washed, dried and into the green bin but it is so wasteful only using it once.