The news and weather forcasts are warning that Hurricane Tomas is going to hit Ireland in a few days and coupled with very high tides due to a full or new moon means that they expect coastal areas to flood. This part of the country experienced severe flooding this time last year so let's hope it ends up nothing like that. I guess today however is the calm before the storm as it is glorious out now.
Last night I cooked "Coq au Vin" for the first time. It's a dish I have been wanting to do but avoiding as I thought it was complicated but ended up far from that and is such a simple and insanely tasty meal. Just brown come chicken thighs and drumsticks in a pan and then place in a large dutch oven. Then render some bacon in same pan and scatter over the chicken, then brown some pearl onions and scatter over the chicken. Thrown in some nice button mushrooms, a few cloves of garlic, fresh sprigs of thyme, bay leaves, pepper/salt and most importantly a whole bottle of deep, rich French red wine. Bring to the boil and put in oven for any hour. After chicken is nice and tender remove it, the onions, mushrooms and bacon from the liquid and place in a warm serving dish. Discard the bay leaves and thyme stems and reduce the liquid on stove top by about 1/2 and finally thicken with a butter/flour paste. Pour this sauce over the chicken in the serving dish and serve with rice and freshly chopped parsley. Perfect quick winterly evening's meal as so full of flavour and I know it was really good as the girls devoured it!
Speaking of the girls, they have two birthday parties this weekend with both at the same location (rollerskating) but on different days and times so we have some taxiing to do. Other news is that Gwen is now very involved on the schools fundraising committee and spent some time last weekend at a shopping bag packing event at Tescos in Wilton. Parents basically help customers with their shopping bags for tips and it yielded a record sum of money for the school. She has me signed up for a very interesting fun raiser event in two weeks that I will tell you about later!
