One Local Summer - Week 6

I'm late again, sorry. However, I had a marathon cooking session yesterday (not really, but it felt a bit like it) and have made lots of extras so that I'll be eating local or nearly local every day this week. I also checked the place I got my white wine vinegar from as mentioned in my post on tomato ketchup below and it's from Breisach in Germany which according to ViaMichelin is 1,263 km (bit less than 800 miles) away - so definitely not local then.

First up then is bistecca all' pizzaiola which is beef in a tomatoey garlicy sauce but that description really doesn't do this dish justice so I stick with the Italian name.

For the beef, I used a housekeepers cut (which is only €10.50 a kilo, I got about 500g) cut into four slices - more or less, decent knives are one thing I don't have so it was more like three slices and some diced bits for a fourth portion. Meat was browned on each side and then put into a casserole dish. Meanwhile I chopped an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic and fried them in some olive oil. A tin of tomatoes was added to this with salt, pepper, basil and oregano and the whole lot simmered for fifteen minutes then poured over the beef and put into a low oven for an hour or so. This should normally be served with a baked potato and peas or a green salad but I had no greens so just did some potato. It was absolutely fabulous, the meat was meltingly good and very, very tasty.


Ingredients:
Beef - from Coolanowle about 57 miles
Potatoes - organic, from market, Denis Healy sold, definitely Irish but not sure if from his farm or not.
Onion - forgot to ask, also organic, Denis Healy sold but not Irish (onions are on my list of exceptions)
Garlic - French (also an exception)
Tomatoes - I used a tin from the cupboard, Italian tomatoes so not local but have been in the cupboard for ages so I'm counting them as a storecupboard ingredient. I did intend to use the tomatoes I had cooked and frozen a couple of weeks ago but had already added them to my lentils (see below) by the time I remembered I was aiming for local on this meal! So, instead of one almost entirely local meal and one not, I have a mixture.
Dried basil and oregano from cupboard.

My second dish was not very local at all (bar the tomatoes which should have gone with the beef above!) but will last me for at least six meals I think.

Lentil stew with chorizo.

Ingredients:
Lentils - from cupboard. Another item that's been sitting in my cupboard for ages but in Tupperware so no label to tell me where they're from. I'm pretty certain you can't get Irish lentils but that these are organic.
Chorizo - from local cheesemongers - label was blurry but I believe this was from France.
Tomatoes - Irish, bought and cooked down a few weeks ago and used from freezer
Potatoes - Irish, organice, bought from Denis Healy
Onion - as above
Garlic - as above
Rosemary - garden

I also made a broccoli and herb quiche - tried to be clever and make wholewheat pastry for this but obviously there's a different technique for making pastry using wholewheat flour so it ended up more like biscuit than anything else. Haven't tasted it yet so will be interesting to see what it's like.

Ingredients:
Pastry made using organic Irish wholewheat flour (Co. Tipperary) and handmade butter (purchased from Coolanowle but made by a neighbour of theirs).
Eggs - Co. Meath
Broccoli - Irish, organic, bought from Denis Healy
Courgette - garden (only a mini one)
Tomato - first from the garden, a cherry tomato, half of which I ate (soooo good) and the other half sliced in two to add a bit of colour
Scallions - garden
Chives, thyme, oregano - garden

Doing a bit better on the local front for this one. Next time I think I'll just do a pastryless quiche.

I still have some mince at home which I bought from Coolanowle as well, will be doing something with that this evening. I think a bolognese style sauce made using the Irish tomatoes I bought at the market this weekend.