How to Cook Well with Rory O'Connell s01e02 Episode Script
Episode 2
I love cooking and I love teaching people how to cook.
I've been doing both for 30 years.
To cook well, it helps if you love and value food, as that is where it all starts.
My approach to cooking is simple and not new.
Use the best ingredients you can, get organised and follow the recipe.
That way, you'll be sure to get wonderful results.
Preparing beetroot doesn't need to be a time consuming chore and believe it or not, it is utterly delicious eaten raw.
For this salad we simply peel it, grate it, dress it and then eat it.
I'm going to make a salad of beetroot and goats cheese which I know has become a little bit of a cliche but still absolutely delicious.
I've got a lovely selection of beetroot here.
You can boil them, you can roast them but we're quite simply going to peel them, grate them and eat them raw.
They're absolutely delicious eaten like that.
In some ways better for you like that than when they are cooked.
Most people will know the familiar lovely ruby beetroot.
When you cut into it, you have the lovely ruby coloured flesh.
That's easily recognisable.
I've got a couple of other exotics here.
I've got this beautiful golden beetroot.
Again when you cut into these, they have an incredibly rich golden colour which is fantastic.
They all taste the same and if you tasted them in a blind tasting and you could find a difference, you might be telling a little white lie.
Maybe some people have a more sensitive palate than mine.
This final one is sort of a magnificent thing.
It's streaked with this lovely pink flesh.
This is called a choggia beetroot.
To prepare the beetroot, cut off the top stalk and the little mouse's tail.
That's of no advantage to you here.
Then using a vegetable peeler, just peel.
The next step very simply is to grate it.
Watch your fingers when you're doing this.
I'm grating on them on the coarsest part of the grater.
You get these lovely shreds.
If you grate it on a finer grater, the beetroot clumps together so it feels a little bit heavier when you're eating it.
Even in a simple dish like this there are subtleties.
Why don't I also grate in a little golden beetroot which I've already peeled.
We're getting a nice mixed colour there.
The dressing here is very, very simple.
Some extra virgin olive oil which I just drizzle on.
Always with olive oil, put on slightly less than you think you need.
You can always put in a little bit more but putting in too much just makes it too oily.
Simple as that.
And lemon.
The combination of good olive oil and lemon is absolutely transformative in terms of your cooking.
You could cook all your life with just olive oil, lemon and salt and get absolutely fantastic food.
I don't want to make the beetroot too bitter.
I just want to bring out the acidity without it being too sharp.
A little like that.
A little pinch of salt and some pepper.
I'm going to use my hands and when you use your hands for mixing something with beetroot, obviously it's going to stain them.
Doesn't bother me too much but if you're going to a smart party or something or just don't want to have red hands, you can pop on a pair of gloves.
Let's see how that's tasting.
It certainly looks right.
See the way there's no a pool of oil anywhere.
Just taste.
Perfect.
The next thing I want is pomegranate.
This wonderful fruit which is used in sweet and savoury cooking.
I'm going to just cut it in half.
That is going to expose the beautiful ruby coloured seeds inside.
It's really just the most fantastic thing.
The easiest way to extract the seeds is just to hold the pomegranate over your fingers like that and then give it a bit of a spanking.
The seeds start to come out.
That should do it.
See the way it's just sort of jewelled with the beetroot.
I'm going to place a handful of that onto my plate.
That's about enough for a single portion.
I'll get another portion out of this.
I'm going to sprinkle a few of the pomegranate seeds around.
The next thing I want to do is give my hands a little rinse before I put the final ingredients on.
I'm going to put a few leaves just around the edge.
Just as an embellishment.
Also to help to lighten up the beetroot.
These are lovely tiny little mustard greens.
A few walnuts would also be very good here.
There's so many things that go really well with beetroot and that also go very well when you introduce goats cheese to the equation.
Our goats cheese.
I'm going to slice a single slice like that.
Not too thick.
Look how beautiful and creamy and soft this goats cheese is.
It's a fresh goats cheese.
The fresher they are, the softer they are.
I'm making a little nest if you like for it.
Then a little drizzle of honey.
Goats cheese and honey is a match made in heaven.
The sweet honey and the salty full-flavoured goats cheese.
I'm just going to drizzle over the whole thing.
Not too much.
The final little embellishment is a little drizzle of olive oil.
A tiny twist of black pepper.
And a few more flakes of sea salt.
A little bit of crusty bread.
Could be Irish brown soda bread or a little bit of sourdough.
Just very simple and delicious.
This is really good, simple, fast food.
Being able to grill or fry successfully is a really crucial technique.
One hopefully that can be approached without fear.
Regardless of what you're grilling, there are rules and guidelines and these will help you to get perfect results.
The T-bone steak we're using in our main course allows me to put those rules into practice.
Alongside the fabulous steak, what could be nicer than chips.
I'm also going to serve the steak with a salsa verde.
This taste of the Mediterranean alongside the fabulous Irish beef and potatoes is wonderful.
We're going to grill a steak next.
A fabulous T-bone steak with a little of the sirloin and the fillet.
You've got the best of both worlds.
We'll talk a little bit more about this really fabulous piece of meat in a moment but before we do that, I'm going to get some potatoes on to cook.
With a grilled steak, I think most people will agree chips or a potato of some description is really one of the perfect accompaniments.
I'm going to make oven roast chips.
I'm simply going to cut them into wedges.
I'm cutting them specifically into wedges like that so they'll all sit with the skin side down.
That's going to give me a crispier skin.
I've got lots of them here ready in my bowl.
I've got my oven preheated and I'm going to use olive oil.
Rather than putting the olive oil onto the tray, I put the olive oil onto the potatoes when they're in the bowl.
That way I find I use less olive oil.
I don't like to season the potatoes until they're pretty much cooked.
If I put on salt and pepper at this stage, they're more likely to stick.
If the potatoes stick it means I'm probably going to lose my lovely crispy skin.
I rather boringly like to sit the potatoes skin side down like that.
That way the part of the potato that you want to get really crispy, the skin, is in contact with the direct heat of the tray.
Those go into our hot preheated oven and they should cook away nicely.
You can see my oven is nice and hot because there's a nice head of smoke going on in there.
With the steak, what I like to do is have a little look at it and see if I think there's any excess fat.
I think you could safely say there's a little bit of excess fat there, which I'm going to cut off.
I'm just putting it onto the hot grill pan, just to start to let out a bit of its fat.
You need to have that beautiful marbling.
That's going to melt out and leave little air holes of tenderness behind it.
I like to rub it with a cut clove of garlic.
Just rub the steak lightly with the cut clove.
That's not going to make it taste strongly of garlic.
It just seems to improve the flavour of the beef.
This is important.
Pour some olive oil onto your meat, not onto your pan.
Spread it with your hands and use the excess on your hands to coat the back of the steak.
As you can see, my pan is really hot.
That's the key.
The other thing you'll notice, I haven't put any salt and pepper on here either.
I'm going to wait until the meat is nicely caramelised on both sides before I put the salt and pepper on.
When you're grilling, don't play with the meat.
The meat will tense up and actually lift up off the grill and it will release itself.
I'm going to cook this steak until it's about rare to medium-rare.
A little look in here, see what's going on.
I've got a beautiful colour going on.
Nicely marked and the lovely ridges coming from the grill pan.
Pretty happy with the way that's looking at this stage.
Now I can sprinkle on the salt and black pepper.
What I like to do some time around now, and this is easier said than done, just hold it for a few minutes to allow that fat to just crisp up and to render some of the liquid fat out of it.
That's great.
The ideal scenario with a steak is never to take it straight from the pan to eat it straight away.
Allow it to rest.
This will benefit from a minimum of 5 minutes resting, up to half an hour.
I've got my plate ready here.
A deep plate with an upturned plate in it.
The reason for that is that any juices that will inevitably come out of the piece of meat, will run underneath and be trapped and we can pour those over the meat afterwards.
But the meat is not sitting in its own juices.
I just want to keep it warm, not hot.
If it stays hot it will overcook.
Our steak and chips are nearly ready and they'll be delicious just as they are but I'm going to elevate them with some delicious salsa verde and a fiery horseradish sauce.
Coming up after the break, I'll be making some wonderful thin almond biscuits, inspired by a trip to California.
Before the break, I prepared some potato wedges which are cooking away nicely in the oven.
Then I cooked my steak just the way I like it and set it aside to rest.
Now I'm going to make the two sauces that I'm going to serve with the steak.
Salsa verde literally means green sauce.
It's a combination of herbs and leaves and today I'll be using some rocket, flat parsley, mint and tarragon.
I find that the mint and tarragon give a slightly perfumed flavour to the salsa.
If you wanted to you could put all the ingredients into a food processor.
That's fine.
You get a pretty good result.
I find when you do it by hand, it's not quite so pureed and not quite so refined.
In that way, I find I get the individual flavour of the sharper ingredients like the anchovy and the caper.
They help to cut through the richness of the meat.
That's the green taken care of.
Next up some anchovies.
You'll want to chop these finely.
You get little flashes of that flavour.
That's going in.
Then my capers.
I'm going to just give these a little coarse chop.
I want the sharpness and the acidity of those.
This is robust for sure.
Lots of strong flavours going on.
Now add a few dollops of French mustard.
Crushed garlic.
A little zest of lemon to freshen everything up.
That should do it.
Then a good glug of extra virgin olive oil.
Let's give it a stir.
You see it coming into a paste.
Make sure to mix through the mustard properly.
Just a little taste like that.
It's delicious.
It's not going to take any salt because of the anchovy, the mustard and the capers.
So that's ready.
Starting off, I've got my softly whipped cream.
Slightly runny cream in here.
I've got my vinegar and lemon juice in here already.
Also a pinch of English mustard powder.
I like the heat of that.
And a pinch of salt.
Unusually, a pinch of sugar.
Not to make it taste sweet but it lifts the flavour of the horseradish.
A twist of black pepper.
The other absolutely crucial ingredient, my horseradish.
I've given it a little scrub and then with a vegetable peeler, you can see it peels easily to reveal this beautiful ivory coloured flesh.
It's a lovely hot, pungent root.
It's so good with so many different things.
A little bit of lemon on my microplane.
Doesn't matter, it's all going in.
When you're grating the horseradish it releases a lovely aroma and scent.
Sinus-cleansing, purifying sort of flavour.
That could easily be described as an enthusiastic amount of horseradish.
Let's give it a stir.
That looks really good.
Let's have a little taste.
Perfect.
Really good balance of heat from the horseradish and the mustard.
The little bit of sugar is not instantly obvious.
It's just lifted the flavour.
These look as if they're lovely and crispy.
Perfect.
At this stage we need a pinch of salt.
It's worth noting no surplus fat here.
The small amount of olive oil we used just to glaze them and moisturise them lightly, was sufficient to make them all lovely and crispy.
Salt like that.
Just slide them in there.
Those on their own with another drizzle of olive oil or dipped into cold butter would be absolutely fantastic.
Our steak has been resting.
When I'm serving a steak like this, this is a treat.
This is a big deal because it's not going to come particularly cheap but it's worth it.
This fabulous Irish quality assured beef should be treated as a treat.
Any little juices that have run out of the meat while it's been resting, I like to pour those over.
They're delicious.
Another wonderful accompaniment to this meal is a simple green salad tossed in a light vinaigrette.
That's pretty much ready to go to the table.
We have everything we need to make a really beautifully balanced meal.
A superb piece of beef, our potatoes which are lovely and crispy and full of flavour and not forgetting the lovely salsa verde and the horseradish cream.
Just a marriage made in heaven.
When I worked as a chef, I was lucky enough to spend time in the kitchens of Chez Panise in California, presided over for over 40 years by one of America's most inspirational chefs, Alice Waters.
It was there that I learned how to make this biscuit which I'm going to show you now.
I find with a good biscuit, it's so much more interesting for me than a fluffy cupcake.
In the case of a biscuit, it's acceptable to have a second or even a sneaky third one.
I love how something as simple as a biscuit can be so unbelievably sophisticated.
The recipe is very straight forward.
I've got some water and some butter in my saucepan which I'm going to melt.
The predominant flavour in this biscuit is cinnamon.
I'm going to pop that in there.
We're going to heat this just to melt the butter and water.
This is going to bind our dry ingredients together.
Cook it on a lowish heat because you don't want this to boil.
You certainly don't want to evaporate the liquid because then your proportion of liquid to dry ingredients will be somewhat different.
Let's get this on.
In the meantime, let's look at our other ingredients.
In my bowl I've got my flour sifted.
I've got a little bit of bicarbonate of soda and that's just going to give a little rise to the biscuits.
That will cause the mixture to bubble and just get a little bit of air in there.
With bread soda or bicarbonate of soda, I pretty much always like to pass it through a sieve to be sure there are no lumps.
Just give that stir around.
That's ready.
I've got some flaked almonds.
Do have them fairly finely chopped or sliced and you'll see the reason for that a little later on.
The other ingredient is some soft brown sugar like that.
That's ready.
The butter has melted and the cinnamon has mixed through nicely.
Now turn off the heat.
Add in the sugar into the liquid ingredients.
Stir in the sugar until it's completely dissolved.
Once you've achieved this treacly texture, pour your mixture into the flour.
Then our flaked almonds.
Then mix it together.
It should come into a thick sort of mixture.
You have to just work a little bit hard at this stage.
That's looking exactly as I'd expect it to look.
That's it.
That's the consistency.
Thick like that.
I'm now ready to form that into my rectangle.
Parchment paper is great because you're pretty much guaranteed it's not going to stick.
I like to form it into a rectangle.
You can make these whatever size you want.
That's enough to get me going with one slab.
Then I just flatten it out like that.
Not a thing of beauty at this stage, that's for sure.
Don't worry, all will be revealed.
Then just push it to make the shape more formal, right into the edge like that.
We've got what one could vaguely call a rectangle.
Then just wrap it.
Compacting it as I go.
Fold up the ends.
Getting it neat like that.
This is going to go into the freezer until it's completely frozen.
My biscuit mixture is frozen as you can hear from the sound it makes.
Unwrap the parchment.
What we're going to do is to cut thin sticks of the mixture.
What I like to do then is to leave a little space between them because they do expand slightly.
You've got these little thin sliced, slivered almonds just flecked through the biscuit.
Flavoured with the cinnamon, it's a really good combination of flavours.
The problem with these is once you have one, you want another one and possibly another one again after that.
It's a really, really convenient thing.
That's it.
They are ready to go into the oven.
I've preheated my oven which is so important for any of these things.
Pop that in and they'll cook in about 10 minutes.
I think my biscuits must be nearly cooked.
Let's have a look.
Okay.
Perfect.
They've caramelised lightly and sort of crisped up.
Even if you touch them they're still a little bit soft.
What I like to do at this stage is to slide them in one go off the tray, still attached to the paper.
You could serve these on their own.
The primary purpose of a biscuit generally speaking is to have it with a cup of tea or coffee.
But I'm serving the biscuits as dessert in this particular meal and I'm going to combine them with some lovely ripe pears.
With pears, you need to think a couple of days ahead.
So buy the pears 2 or 3 days ahead, keep them on your kitchen counter so they ripen up nicely.
I also have a little bit of cheese here that I'm going to serve with this to complete the trio.
This is a beautiful cows milk cheese called Coolea, which comes from West Cork.
This is a matured one.
The nutty almost caramel flavour of the cheese, sounds like a strange thing to say in terms of a flavour of a cheese.
That will pair brilliantly with the pears, if you'll forgive the pun and also with the biscuits.
I'm going to put my biscuits onto this little glass dish.
It also has a glass cover which you might think is completely over the top but there's something about lifting the dome off a dish that just makes everything sort of special.
The crispy, cinnamon biscuits, the lovely nutty cheese from West Cork and the pears.
A perfect combination of flavours.
Easy to achieve and delicious to eat.
: Tracey Carr, RTE 2015.
I've been doing both for 30 years.
To cook well, it helps if you love and value food, as that is where it all starts.
My approach to cooking is simple and not new.
Use the best ingredients you can, get organised and follow the recipe.
That way, you'll be sure to get wonderful results.
Preparing beetroot doesn't need to be a time consuming chore and believe it or not, it is utterly delicious eaten raw.
For this salad we simply peel it, grate it, dress it and then eat it.
I'm going to make a salad of beetroot and goats cheese which I know has become a little bit of a cliche but still absolutely delicious.
I've got a lovely selection of beetroot here.
You can boil them, you can roast them but we're quite simply going to peel them, grate them and eat them raw.
They're absolutely delicious eaten like that.
In some ways better for you like that than when they are cooked.
Most people will know the familiar lovely ruby beetroot.
When you cut into it, you have the lovely ruby coloured flesh.
That's easily recognisable.
I've got a couple of other exotics here.
I've got this beautiful golden beetroot.
Again when you cut into these, they have an incredibly rich golden colour which is fantastic.
They all taste the same and if you tasted them in a blind tasting and you could find a difference, you might be telling a little white lie.
Maybe some people have a more sensitive palate than mine.
This final one is sort of a magnificent thing.
It's streaked with this lovely pink flesh.
This is called a choggia beetroot.
To prepare the beetroot, cut off the top stalk and the little mouse's tail.
That's of no advantage to you here.
Then using a vegetable peeler, just peel.
The next step very simply is to grate it.
Watch your fingers when you're doing this.
I'm grating on them on the coarsest part of the grater.
You get these lovely shreds.
If you grate it on a finer grater, the beetroot clumps together so it feels a little bit heavier when you're eating it.
Even in a simple dish like this there are subtleties.
Why don't I also grate in a little golden beetroot which I've already peeled.
We're getting a nice mixed colour there.
The dressing here is very, very simple.
Some extra virgin olive oil which I just drizzle on.
Always with olive oil, put on slightly less than you think you need.
You can always put in a little bit more but putting in too much just makes it too oily.
Simple as that.
And lemon.
The combination of good olive oil and lemon is absolutely transformative in terms of your cooking.
You could cook all your life with just olive oil, lemon and salt and get absolutely fantastic food.
I don't want to make the beetroot too bitter.
I just want to bring out the acidity without it being too sharp.
A little like that.
A little pinch of salt and some pepper.
I'm going to use my hands and when you use your hands for mixing something with beetroot, obviously it's going to stain them.
Doesn't bother me too much but if you're going to a smart party or something or just don't want to have red hands, you can pop on a pair of gloves.
Let's see how that's tasting.
It certainly looks right.
See the way there's no a pool of oil anywhere.
Just taste.
Perfect.
The next thing I want is pomegranate.
This wonderful fruit which is used in sweet and savoury cooking.
I'm going to just cut it in half.
That is going to expose the beautiful ruby coloured seeds inside.
It's really just the most fantastic thing.
The easiest way to extract the seeds is just to hold the pomegranate over your fingers like that and then give it a bit of a spanking.
The seeds start to come out.
That should do it.
See the way it's just sort of jewelled with the beetroot.
I'm going to place a handful of that onto my plate.
That's about enough for a single portion.
I'll get another portion out of this.
I'm going to sprinkle a few of the pomegranate seeds around.
The next thing I want to do is give my hands a little rinse before I put the final ingredients on.
I'm going to put a few leaves just around the edge.
Just as an embellishment.
Also to help to lighten up the beetroot.
These are lovely tiny little mustard greens.
A few walnuts would also be very good here.
There's so many things that go really well with beetroot and that also go very well when you introduce goats cheese to the equation.
Our goats cheese.
I'm going to slice a single slice like that.
Not too thick.
Look how beautiful and creamy and soft this goats cheese is.
It's a fresh goats cheese.
The fresher they are, the softer they are.
I'm making a little nest if you like for it.
Then a little drizzle of honey.
Goats cheese and honey is a match made in heaven.
The sweet honey and the salty full-flavoured goats cheese.
I'm just going to drizzle over the whole thing.
Not too much.
The final little embellishment is a little drizzle of olive oil.
A tiny twist of black pepper.
And a few more flakes of sea salt.
A little bit of crusty bread.
Could be Irish brown soda bread or a little bit of sourdough.
Just very simple and delicious.
This is really good, simple, fast food.
Being able to grill or fry successfully is a really crucial technique.
One hopefully that can be approached without fear.
Regardless of what you're grilling, there are rules and guidelines and these will help you to get perfect results.
The T-bone steak we're using in our main course allows me to put those rules into practice.
Alongside the fabulous steak, what could be nicer than chips.
I'm also going to serve the steak with a salsa verde.
This taste of the Mediterranean alongside the fabulous Irish beef and potatoes is wonderful.
We're going to grill a steak next.
A fabulous T-bone steak with a little of the sirloin and the fillet.
You've got the best of both worlds.
We'll talk a little bit more about this really fabulous piece of meat in a moment but before we do that, I'm going to get some potatoes on to cook.
With a grilled steak, I think most people will agree chips or a potato of some description is really one of the perfect accompaniments.
I'm going to make oven roast chips.
I'm simply going to cut them into wedges.
I'm cutting them specifically into wedges like that so they'll all sit with the skin side down.
That's going to give me a crispier skin.
I've got lots of them here ready in my bowl.
I've got my oven preheated and I'm going to use olive oil.
Rather than putting the olive oil onto the tray, I put the olive oil onto the potatoes when they're in the bowl.
That way I find I use less olive oil.
I don't like to season the potatoes until they're pretty much cooked.
If I put on salt and pepper at this stage, they're more likely to stick.
If the potatoes stick it means I'm probably going to lose my lovely crispy skin.
I rather boringly like to sit the potatoes skin side down like that.
That way the part of the potato that you want to get really crispy, the skin, is in contact with the direct heat of the tray.
Those go into our hot preheated oven and they should cook away nicely.
You can see my oven is nice and hot because there's a nice head of smoke going on in there.
With the steak, what I like to do is have a little look at it and see if I think there's any excess fat.
I think you could safely say there's a little bit of excess fat there, which I'm going to cut off.
I'm just putting it onto the hot grill pan, just to start to let out a bit of its fat.
You need to have that beautiful marbling.
That's going to melt out and leave little air holes of tenderness behind it.
I like to rub it with a cut clove of garlic.
Just rub the steak lightly with the cut clove.
That's not going to make it taste strongly of garlic.
It just seems to improve the flavour of the beef.
This is important.
Pour some olive oil onto your meat, not onto your pan.
Spread it with your hands and use the excess on your hands to coat the back of the steak.
As you can see, my pan is really hot.
That's the key.
The other thing you'll notice, I haven't put any salt and pepper on here either.
I'm going to wait until the meat is nicely caramelised on both sides before I put the salt and pepper on.
When you're grilling, don't play with the meat.
The meat will tense up and actually lift up off the grill and it will release itself.
I'm going to cook this steak until it's about rare to medium-rare.
A little look in here, see what's going on.
I've got a beautiful colour going on.
Nicely marked and the lovely ridges coming from the grill pan.
Pretty happy with the way that's looking at this stage.
Now I can sprinkle on the salt and black pepper.
What I like to do some time around now, and this is easier said than done, just hold it for a few minutes to allow that fat to just crisp up and to render some of the liquid fat out of it.
That's great.
The ideal scenario with a steak is never to take it straight from the pan to eat it straight away.
Allow it to rest.
This will benefit from a minimum of 5 minutes resting, up to half an hour.
I've got my plate ready here.
A deep plate with an upturned plate in it.
The reason for that is that any juices that will inevitably come out of the piece of meat, will run underneath and be trapped and we can pour those over the meat afterwards.
But the meat is not sitting in its own juices.
I just want to keep it warm, not hot.
If it stays hot it will overcook.
Our steak and chips are nearly ready and they'll be delicious just as they are but I'm going to elevate them with some delicious salsa verde and a fiery horseradish sauce.
Coming up after the break, I'll be making some wonderful thin almond biscuits, inspired by a trip to California.
Before the break, I prepared some potato wedges which are cooking away nicely in the oven.
Then I cooked my steak just the way I like it and set it aside to rest.
Now I'm going to make the two sauces that I'm going to serve with the steak.
Salsa verde literally means green sauce.
It's a combination of herbs and leaves and today I'll be using some rocket, flat parsley, mint and tarragon.
I find that the mint and tarragon give a slightly perfumed flavour to the salsa.
If you wanted to you could put all the ingredients into a food processor.
That's fine.
You get a pretty good result.
I find when you do it by hand, it's not quite so pureed and not quite so refined.
In that way, I find I get the individual flavour of the sharper ingredients like the anchovy and the caper.
They help to cut through the richness of the meat.
That's the green taken care of.
Next up some anchovies.
You'll want to chop these finely.
You get little flashes of that flavour.
That's going in.
Then my capers.
I'm going to just give these a little coarse chop.
I want the sharpness and the acidity of those.
This is robust for sure.
Lots of strong flavours going on.
Now add a few dollops of French mustard.
Crushed garlic.
A little zest of lemon to freshen everything up.
That should do it.
Then a good glug of extra virgin olive oil.
Let's give it a stir.
You see it coming into a paste.
Make sure to mix through the mustard properly.
Just a little taste like that.
It's delicious.
It's not going to take any salt because of the anchovy, the mustard and the capers.
So that's ready.
Starting off, I've got my softly whipped cream.
Slightly runny cream in here.
I've got my vinegar and lemon juice in here already.
Also a pinch of English mustard powder.
I like the heat of that.
And a pinch of salt.
Unusually, a pinch of sugar.
Not to make it taste sweet but it lifts the flavour of the horseradish.
A twist of black pepper.
The other absolutely crucial ingredient, my horseradish.
I've given it a little scrub and then with a vegetable peeler, you can see it peels easily to reveal this beautiful ivory coloured flesh.
It's a lovely hot, pungent root.
It's so good with so many different things.
A little bit of lemon on my microplane.
Doesn't matter, it's all going in.
When you're grating the horseradish it releases a lovely aroma and scent.
Sinus-cleansing, purifying sort of flavour.
That could easily be described as an enthusiastic amount of horseradish.
Let's give it a stir.
That looks really good.
Let's have a little taste.
Perfect.
Really good balance of heat from the horseradish and the mustard.
The little bit of sugar is not instantly obvious.
It's just lifted the flavour.
These look as if they're lovely and crispy.
Perfect.
At this stage we need a pinch of salt.
It's worth noting no surplus fat here.
The small amount of olive oil we used just to glaze them and moisturise them lightly, was sufficient to make them all lovely and crispy.
Salt like that.
Just slide them in there.
Those on their own with another drizzle of olive oil or dipped into cold butter would be absolutely fantastic.
Our steak has been resting.
When I'm serving a steak like this, this is a treat.
This is a big deal because it's not going to come particularly cheap but it's worth it.
This fabulous Irish quality assured beef should be treated as a treat.
Any little juices that have run out of the meat while it's been resting, I like to pour those over.
They're delicious.
Another wonderful accompaniment to this meal is a simple green salad tossed in a light vinaigrette.
That's pretty much ready to go to the table.
We have everything we need to make a really beautifully balanced meal.
A superb piece of beef, our potatoes which are lovely and crispy and full of flavour and not forgetting the lovely salsa verde and the horseradish cream.
Just a marriage made in heaven.
When I worked as a chef, I was lucky enough to spend time in the kitchens of Chez Panise in California, presided over for over 40 years by one of America's most inspirational chefs, Alice Waters.
It was there that I learned how to make this biscuit which I'm going to show you now.
I find with a good biscuit, it's so much more interesting for me than a fluffy cupcake.
In the case of a biscuit, it's acceptable to have a second or even a sneaky third one.
I love how something as simple as a biscuit can be so unbelievably sophisticated.
The recipe is very straight forward.
I've got some water and some butter in my saucepan which I'm going to melt.
The predominant flavour in this biscuit is cinnamon.
I'm going to pop that in there.
We're going to heat this just to melt the butter and water.
This is going to bind our dry ingredients together.
Cook it on a lowish heat because you don't want this to boil.
You certainly don't want to evaporate the liquid because then your proportion of liquid to dry ingredients will be somewhat different.
Let's get this on.
In the meantime, let's look at our other ingredients.
In my bowl I've got my flour sifted.
I've got a little bit of bicarbonate of soda and that's just going to give a little rise to the biscuits.
That will cause the mixture to bubble and just get a little bit of air in there.
With bread soda or bicarbonate of soda, I pretty much always like to pass it through a sieve to be sure there are no lumps.
Just give that stir around.
That's ready.
I've got some flaked almonds.
Do have them fairly finely chopped or sliced and you'll see the reason for that a little later on.
The other ingredient is some soft brown sugar like that.
That's ready.
The butter has melted and the cinnamon has mixed through nicely.
Now turn off the heat.
Add in the sugar into the liquid ingredients.
Stir in the sugar until it's completely dissolved.
Once you've achieved this treacly texture, pour your mixture into the flour.
Then our flaked almonds.
Then mix it together.
It should come into a thick sort of mixture.
You have to just work a little bit hard at this stage.
That's looking exactly as I'd expect it to look.
That's it.
That's the consistency.
Thick like that.
I'm now ready to form that into my rectangle.
Parchment paper is great because you're pretty much guaranteed it's not going to stick.
I like to form it into a rectangle.
You can make these whatever size you want.
That's enough to get me going with one slab.
Then I just flatten it out like that.
Not a thing of beauty at this stage, that's for sure.
Don't worry, all will be revealed.
Then just push it to make the shape more formal, right into the edge like that.
We've got what one could vaguely call a rectangle.
Then just wrap it.
Compacting it as I go.
Fold up the ends.
Getting it neat like that.
This is going to go into the freezer until it's completely frozen.
My biscuit mixture is frozen as you can hear from the sound it makes.
Unwrap the parchment.
What we're going to do is to cut thin sticks of the mixture.
What I like to do then is to leave a little space between them because they do expand slightly.
You've got these little thin sliced, slivered almonds just flecked through the biscuit.
Flavoured with the cinnamon, it's a really good combination of flavours.
The problem with these is once you have one, you want another one and possibly another one again after that.
It's a really, really convenient thing.
That's it.
They are ready to go into the oven.
I've preheated my oven which is so important for any of these things.
Pop that in and they'll cook in about 10 minutes.
I think my biscuits must be nearly cooked.
Let's have a look.
Okay.
Perfect.
They've caramelised lightly and sort of crisped up.
Even if you touch them they're still a little bit soft.
What I like to do at this stage is to slide them in one go off the tray, still attached to the paper.
You could serve these on their own.
The primary purpose of a biscuit generally speaking is to have it with a cup of tea or coffee.
But I'm serving the biscuits as dessert in this particular meal and I'm going to combine them with some lovely ripe pears.
With pears, you need to think a couple of days ahead.
So buy the pears 2 or 3 days ahead, keep them on your kitchen counter so they ripen up nicely.
I also have a little bit of cheese here that I'm going to serve with this to complete the trio.
This is a beautiful cows milk cheese called Coolea, which comes from West Cork.
This is a matured one.
The nutty almost caramel flavour of the cheese, sounds like a strange thing to say in terms of a flavour of a cheese.
That will pair brilliantly with the pears, if you'll forgive the pun and also with the biscuits.
I'm going to put my biscuits onto this little glass dish.
It also has a glass cover which you might think is completely over the top but there's something about lifting the dome off a dish that just makes everything sort of special.
The crispy, cinnamon biscuits, the lovely nutty cheese from West Cork and the pears.
A perfect combination of flavours.
Easy to achieve and delicious to eat.
: Tracey Carr, RTE 2015.