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Cheese on Toast With Onion & Tomatoes

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10784854_313414535527325_480044253_nWhen I was growing up cheese on toast was a staple. However when I moved overseas in the early 1990s I stopped eating it.

Why? Well two reasons really:

  1. Sliced bread is common in the UK and Ireland. It isn’t in France, Italy or Spain
  2. Most cookers in France, Italy and Spain don’t have grills like Irish cookers do

Of course I currently live in Ireland, so I’ve no excuse. Pretty much every single cooker sold in this country comes with a grill.

So every now and again I will make cheese on toast.

However cheese on toast by itself is a little pedestrian.

To make it a little bit more interesting I like to slice up an onion and a tomato so that you get cheese and onion with tomatoes.

Preparation is simple – simply grill the bread on one side. When it’s done add your cheese, onion and tomato.

Grill until the cheese has melted. The tomatoes and onion won’t be fully cooked, but if you’ve cut the onion thinly enough it won’t matter.

You can serve it “as is” or add a bit of chutney.

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Cheese on Toast With Onion & Tomatoes

A tasty and easy to prepare snack or light lunch / dinner
Course Snack
Cuisine Irish
Keyword cheese, onion, toast, tomatoes
Prep Time 2 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Total Time 12 minutes
Servings 1

Ingredients

  • 1 - 2 slices Sliced bread suitable for toasting
  • 50 g Cheese any will do, but cheddar is probably best
  • 1 - 2 Tomatoes one or two depending on how many slices of bread you're using
  • 1/2 Onion

Instructions

  1. Toast the bread on one side under your grill
  2. While the bread is toasting, peel and slice the onion. Slice the tomato.
  3. Once the bread is toasted on one side remove from the grill turn it over and add the cheese, onion and tomato slices
  4. Grill until the cheese has melted
  5. Serve hot with some chutney

Recipe Notes

You can make this "low carb" by using a lower carb bread

 

Irish Food Isn’t Boring

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If there’s one thing I’ve learnt over the last couple of years it’s that Irish food is far from boring. Sure, you can choose to eat boring Irish food that lacks imagination, but if you want to you can find good and interesting cuisine on your doorstep.

Earlier this week a couple of us had dinner in the excellent 101 Talbot in Dublin. The restaurant’s been there for about 20 years, though I don’t think I’d been back there in the last 19 or so (I have vague recollections of eating there some time in the 1990s) until a couple of months ago.

Their menus are an interesting take on the potentially “boring” dishes that you can find in more middle of the road Irish restaurants. Chicken, for example, is served stuffed with black pudding. You can also choose to have slightly more exotic food, so I started with the pigeon:

pigeon

You can’t get pigeon on the menu in that many restaurants and it’s surprisingly good. It’s not like quail (caille), which I find a bit disappointing (due to the lack of meat)

Then moved on to the lamb, which was served in a tagine style.

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And since I was feeling “bold” I topped it all off with a quite exquisite dessert.

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The desserts are all made “in house”.

The ingredients are all sourced locally and I washed it all down with an Irish craft cider.

Price-wise it was pretty good value. It worked out around 40 Euro / head including starters, main, desserts and drinks.

Good quality well prepared fresh food is something I enjoy and I’m not going to apologise for that! Also, if you’ve spent the entire day on your feet, like we had, then being able to sit down and relax over a good meal is a good idea!

Cooking Kale With Other Vegetables

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10731948_770707073003107_970495236_nI was on the road for several weeks in October. While I enjoyed the trip and I really enjoyed getting to have genuine Mexican food in Mexico City, I missed not being able to cook for myself.

Sure I could have stayed in an AirBnB for some of the time and cooked my own meals, but I wasn’t travelling for pleasure and the schedule for a lot of the trip didn’t really give me much time to do anything – never mind shopping and cooking.

However I am definitely considering different options for some of my future trips in 2015.

Having said that, I’m now back at home most of the time until the New Year. I’ve got a few trips between now and the end of the year, but for the most part I’ll be able to cook for myself for the next two months.

So what have I been cooking since I got back?

Kale.

Not by itself, however, but with other vegetables. I bought some kale in one of the German discount supermarkets last weekend (oddly they always seem to stock it while SuperValu, Dunnes and Tesco don’t) planning to do my kale with anchovies pasta at least once. However plans change and I ended up using kale as the vegetable to go with some meat a couple of evenings this week. While I do like kale it’s a little overpowering by itself, so I prepared it with some other vegetables:

  • kale
  • courgette
  • chilli (only one to give the dish a bit of a “kick”
  • grated carrot
  • tomatoes
  • shallots

It’s a bit dry so you probably will need to add a bit of water to the pan or you’ll get burnt and still raw vegetables. I sort of sauteed them all for a few minutes so the kale reduced a bit and the courgettes were cooked enough, but were still crunchy (soggy = bad)

Served with some meat from my local butcher that was nicely grilled on the George Foreman and a bit of French mustard (a l’ancienne style with the seeds is my personal preference).

End result? Damn tasty!

I also posted a vine of it cooking:

 

Mexican Food Overload

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I was in Mexico City last week. While I’ve no idea how many calories were involved over the course of the 5 or 6 days I was in the city, the quality of the food was exceptional.

Here are a few shots to illustrate:

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I haven’t been near a weighing scales yet, but I suspect Mexico wasn’t too kind, but if you’re going to misbehave then you might as well enjoy the food while you’re doing so.

Getting My Chilli On

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chilli and herbsI like cooking with chilli. Generally I try to grab a pack of fresh chillis once a week and use them (in moderation) to add a bit of heat and flavour to soups and pasta dishes.

While browsing the other evening I came across an article talking about a specific type of chilli. Aleppo chilli. So I went off in search of places where I could actually buy it and came across this site.

The domain name says it all – chilliesontheweb.co.uk – they specialise in chillies and related products. And their pricing, service and shipping fees are all very good.

So I not only picked up some aleppo chilli crush (pictured above), but I also got chilli drinking chocolate. I like chilli. I like chocolate and when I was in Guatemala earlier this year I got to try hot chocolate with chilli. And I was hooked.

The chilli drinking chocolate on sale comes in a variety of flavours and strengths. So, since I didn’t want to kill myself, I opted for the simplest option 🙂

Unlike the cheaper drinking chocolates sold by the likes of Cadbury, the South Devon chilli farm drinking chocolate is more flakes than powder. I’m still experimenting with quantities, but about 5 or 6 teaspoons of them added to a microwaved mug of milk seems to work.

Since I’m conscious of my “behaviour” I use fat free milk, which is probably not as tasty as “normal” milk, but it’s still very tasty.

Calorie count? I’ve no idea, but if you can’t enjoy good quality and tasty hot chocolate from time to time then there’s not much point!

Exploring Carlow Environs By Bike

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For the last couple of months I’ve been cycling in and out of work and around the town. The distances I’m covering every week aren’t exactly amazing in terms of burning calories etc.,
So this weekend I decided I’d do a bit more.
The Barrow river flows through Carlow town and the old tow path is accessible on a bike.
It’s not an area that I was familiar with, as I’d never explored it.
The track apparently runs for about 100 km both north and south of Carlow town, so in theory I should be able to go in either direction.
It’s pleasant to be able to cycle away from cars and trucks, though the downside is that the surface isn’t exactly even.

But you do get to see some lovely old locks like this one:

lock on the Barrow near Carlow town

And nice old bridges like this one

bridge over one of the Barrow's smaller tributaries near Carlow town

I like variety, so I’ll try a slightly different route out and back the next time I head out.

Unfortunately Google maps isn’t too helpful when it comes to the southern part of the track, so I guess I’ll have to find out the “hard” way 🙂

Cheese Meets Beer

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On a recent shopping expedition I came across an interesting cheese.

It’s an Irish cheese made with beer, or washed with beer from the Little Milk Company.

A semi-soft cow's milk cheese with made by Knockdrinna using Organic milk from the Little Milk Company, and rind-washed in Irish Craft Brews including O'Hara's Pale Ale from Carlow Brewing Company

The official description piqued my interest:

A semi-soft cow’s milk cheese with made by Knockdrinna using Organic milk from the Little Milk Company, and rind-washed in Irish Craft Brews including O’Hara’s Pale Ale from Carlow Brewing Company

Having tried it over the last few days I’m not 100% sure if I like it or not. It’s quite a strong and possibly “acquired” taste. I like strong cheeses in general and love goat’s cheese and every type of blue cheese out there, but this one has an almost overpowering flavour.

You can read more about the cheese’s back story over on the Knockdrinna site – it’s interesting, which is one of the reasons why I like supporting local producers, even if I don’t really like the end product (though that is definitely a matter of personal taste).