Tall Ships Races

This weekend was the annual "Dublin Tall Ships Races and Festival" here in the city, and Dublin has been preparing itself for the festival all week long.  When I say tall ships...I mean it.  They are all huge pirate ships that have raced across Europe since July to end the race in the River Liffey and celebrate!

This is some info I gathered from the website, though who gets what if/when they win is beyond me.  I never claimed to know everything about this city and it's many festivals.

"The Tall Ships Races 2012, presented by Szczecin and organised by Sail Training International, will commence in St Malo, France from the 5th to the 8th of July.

From St Malo, the fleet will race across the Bay of Biscay to Lisbon in Portugal, before carrying on to Cádiz in Spain.

The Tall Ships will depart Cádiz to cruise in company along the length of the Portuguese coast before reaching the safe harbour of A Coruna in Northern Spain.

At this point excitement will be mounting in Dublin, as the fleet will depart A Coruna on the 13th of August to head north for the Irish Sea and Dublin.

The The Tall Ships Races 2012 – Dublin event will take place from the 23rd to the 26th of August."

We've all been watching the various ships pull into the city's harbor and river this week, and I explored many of the ships on my morning walks.  Drew even got to see the city's many bridges lift and open to accommodate these pups, which was pretty cool.  

Because we were going to Belfast this weekend, I opted to check out the parade and festival on Friday after lunch with my pal.  The parade consisted of the various fleets of the various ships from their various countries.  Each fleet would walk down the quay, representing themselves in different ways - some had full on marching bands with drum lines (!), some just wore costumes like animals, some marched in their full on sailor gear, some danced around in water demon costumes.  It was a real treat.  Countries represented were....UK, Germany, Poland, Denmark, Ecuador, Italy, Mexico, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Latvia, Estonia, Ireland, Norway, Belgium, Russia, and Lithuania.  Damn!  That's a lot of boats and sailors.  It reminded me a bit like Sex and the City's description of Fleet Week: lots of good looking sailors walking around the city in uniform!  Not that I like that sort of thing, of course.  But my single gals would.  (I'll let yall know next year when to come visit!)

Here are some pics I took of all the foreign sailing shenanigans:

Mere-fold dancing awkwardly. 

Water demon!  Ahhhhhh!

Another stilted water demon thingy.

Queen of the Sea.  Or something.

Good looking sailors!

"It's an over-sized hat.  It's funny.  It's funny because it's ah...bigger than uh..you know.  A normal hat."
(Name that quote!)

Bag-piping sailors!

Los mexicanos!

I wanted to run up and start speaking Spanish to them.  But I didn't.  

Ships, ships, and more tall ships!

It was a fun little festival day and I was only sorry we didn't stay in town for the weekend to get to see it all.  But there will be plenty more Dublin festivities to explore!  That rhymed.

Homemade Naan

Like I said in my previous post, I was very skeptical and nervous about making this Homemade Naan.  But the recipe said it was easy and too delicious not to, so I went for it.  It actually wasn't all that difficult either!  Yay!

Here's the cast of characters: salt, olive oil, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, milk, yogurt, and flour. Easy enough.

Measure out all of the dry ingredients in a bowl.

Stir them up.

Now form a "well" in the center of the bowl with your flour.

I took several pictures in case you couldn't see it due to the shitty lighting.

Next, measure out half a cup of milk and warm it up....

And add half a cup of plain yogurt to it.  Mix together.  

This picture looks unappetizing, huh?  

Now pour the warmed dairy mixture into the well, a little at a time, and begin stirring the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.

It'll start forming a dough.  The original recipe says that you can add as much or as little as is necessary to form the dough.  Mine kept getting dried out so I'd keep adding a little more...until I had eventually used all of it.

It should form into some lumpy, sticky dough.

The recipe says to form it into a ball (for which I had to flour my hands)...

And cover it with a damp cloth for 2 hours to "rest".  Or something.  Then you do all that other stuff I talked about yesterday.

After two long hours, you can flour your counter, big wooden cutting board, or tiny ass plastic cutting board that can barely fit on your kitchen counter.

Scoop out the sticky dough.  You might think by letting it sit, it should have risen or changed somehow.  It won't.

Now start kneading that stuff for about 2-3 minutes.  Mine was extra sticky so I'd add a little flour every now and then.

When you're done kneading it, form it into a ball...

And score it into 8 pieces.  If you want them even.  If you wanna tear globs of dough off and wing it, you can do that too!  Whatever makes your skirt fly up, as they say.

Then....you like....separate the pieces out and form them into a long square shape.  This wasn't as easy as I thought.  It was still sticky and wouldn't completely stretch the way I needed/kneaded it too.  Ha!

After you shape it like you want, you can season it up with anything you choose!  Salt and pepper, herbs, spices, whatever you want!  We chose oregano, rosemary, and garlic powder.  You season one side pretty liberally, and then flip it over and brush water on the other side.  (I don't have a pastry brush so I used my fingers and it worked just fine.)

This picture kinda looks like a chicken cutlet or something doesn't it?

Then you take the very stick water side and throw that down in a hot pan.  You watch it for few minutes; it'll start to bubble up and you can use a spatula to check the underside.  Then you flip it onto the seasoned side and let that part get nice a charred.

In the recipe I go off of, they suggest putting the water side down in the pan, and after that side is done, charring the other side with tongs over your gas stove.  I don't have a gas stove and did both sides in the pan and it worked beautifully.

Voila!  Our first finished piece.

Here are some more pieces, spread with Irish butter, which is evidently essential to good naan.  (Not necessarily Irish butter, just butter.)  Mmmmmmm.

We made 8 delicious pieces of this soft and chewy goodness and managed to eat 5 just that evening alone between the two of us.  It's perfect to eat alone and wonderful to use as a vehicle for scooping up sauce and rice.  It's so easy that I think I shall make some again when we get home from Belfast, and try some different spices.  Yay!  

Here are the two recipes I used: the original one (made by IndianSimmer, an awesome Indian food blog), and one with step-by-step instructions if you don't find mine very helpful!

Happy eating!  

Chicken Tikka Masala

Keeping with my "one recipe from Pinterest a week" thing, I decided to be adventurous this week.  I made INDIAN FOOD!  I generally pride myself as being someone who will try anything, who likes a lot of different foods, etc. - but I never really knew enough about Indian food to feel comfortable enough going to an Indian restaurant and ordering it.  Tom and Missy took us to an Indian place a couple of weeks ago and ordered everything for us and it was all SO GOOD.  I couldn't even tell you what all we ate, except for a dish called Chicken Tikka Masala.  I've heard of this dish all over the place because...though I assume it has Indian roots, it's somehow become the "national dish" in England.  Which means they serve it in a lot of places here too.  They sell pre-made jarred Masala sauces and it's readily available to whoever wants it here in Ireland.

I decided to be bold.  None of this jarred shit for me.  I did my research and decided to make it from scratch, knowing nothing about it and knowing I'd have to invest in a lot of probably expensive spices and other materials that we probably don't need.  Oh well.  Upon more research, I came across a recipe for homemade naan bread, which we also had at the restaurant.  You almost HAVE to have a bread component with Indian food to mop up all the extra sauce and stuff.  Could I really make homemade naan?  I've never made anything bread-like in my life!  Well, you bet your ass I could!  I did it and it was pretty damn good!  (I'll post about that next.)

I loosely followed the recipe I found online/Pinterest for Chicken Tikka Masala, though I looked at several others and kind of combined several the recipes together.  (Even though Drew repeatedly tells me "Babe, I really don't like flying off the cuff on recipes you're doing for the first time that you know nothing about."  I smile and nod and then throw in extra spices the recipe doesn't call for or add mushrooms when it doesn't tell me too.  Like this one.  And it always turns out great so suck it!)

Side note: my kitchen still has no natural light so please excuse the pictures.  And this photographer still has no clue what she's doing so please excuse the pictures.

Let's begin.  Here is the large cast of characters for our meal.

We have 3 chicken breasts, 2 cans of peeled tomatoes (though it calls for diced, whoops), ginger, cumin, coriander, an onion, some garlic cloves, salt, yogurt, tomato paste (or puree, here), garam masala, cayenne pepper, heavy cream, sugar, parsley/cilantro, and olive oil (or vegetable oil, but I didn't feel like buying it).

For this recipe, it tells you to combine the salt, cayenne, coriander, and cumin; rub them all over the chicken, and let it marinate.  After it marinates, you dip it into a yogurt mixture and broil it.  All of the other recipes I'd read said to marinate with the yogurt mixture, so that's what I did.

After you combine the spices, grate some ginger...

And throw it in there with the spices, and chopped garlic.

Add little olive oil and a half cup of plain yogurt and whisk together.

Dice up some chicken breasts into small chunks...

And throw them in the marinade.  Mix it up.

Then pop it in the fridge to let it marinate for at least an hour - though some people marinate their's overnight.

Now we'll start on the sauce.

Chop up an onion.

Heat up some oil in a pot...

And throw the diced onion in to sauté.

Now the recipe doesn't call for mushrooms, but I threw them in anyway.  Naturally.  I like mushrooms cause they bulk up sauces, they're delicious, and because I had to use them before they went bad in a few days!

Throw those in there with the onions to brown.

Look who's home from work with a surprise for me!  Yay!  

(He also took over camera duties, thankfully.)

The recipe calls for a Serrano pepper.  I of course couldn't find one here with these shitty grocery stores so I bought some nondescript "Spicy Red Peppers" that seem to work just as well and do the trick.  

Slice that up very finely (along with the other garlic).

Take a break to sip your wine.

Grate up some more ginger....

And scoop it all in the pot with your onions and shrooms.

Throw in a tablespoon or two of tomato paste...

And a tablespoon (or a little more) of garam masala.

Stir around "until fragrant", about 2 minutes.

Throw in your cans of tomatoes and stir around.  

Meanwhile, place all the chicken in one layer on a foil-rimmed baking sheet and broil for 10 minutes.  Depending on what temperature you use.  And I couldn't even tell you what I used...200 Celsius maybe?  

Pop those suckers in the oven.

While the chicken is baking, measure out 2/3 cups of heavy cream...

Pour it in the pot...

And stir it up!  The sauce will become orange in color and heavenly in flavor!

Throw the cooked chicken in.

And stir it up!  Let it simmer.  Mmmmm.

Heat up your Uncle Ben's 2-Minute Basmati Rice in the microwave...

And serve it up!  

Doesn't this look good, if I do say so myself?

Let's give it a try.

He approves!  Success!

My first go at Indian/British food was victorious.  And I may or may not have sampled it again today and it tastes even BETTER the next day!  I don't usually post recipes because...I don't always follow them.  If you want to go off of the one I used, click here.  I will say that between the two of us, the savory naan is almost gone.  I'll have to make another batch of it since it was so easy!  Stay tuned for that recipe.  Bon appetite!