Smoked Gubbeen & Thyme Canapés

This is not the exact recipe for the cheese tartlets that I recently made as part of a team challenge given to the final ten cooks on MasterChef Ireland, but it is my attempt at recreating what I made as part of the blue team on that day.

 

As mentioned in my previous post this was an incredibly stressful test, but one that looking back on it, I enjoyed tremendously. For the task we were expected to produce 350 of each of three canapés, one of which was Caramelised Shallot & Gubbeen Tartlets. The following recipe is my take on these tartlets.

 

Needless to say, cooking these in my own kitchen, in familiar surroundings and using equipment I am used to was a world removed from the situation that myself and the other contestants found ourselves in on All-Ireland Final day in Croke Park. Also, this recipe produces 36 bite sized tartlets rather than the 350 we had to do last September, but please feel free to scale up the recipe if you are planning on serving them to scores of people!!!

I will say that the great thing about having endured the Croke Park Canapé challenge is that cooking at home for a few friends and family no longer seems daunting.

Ingredients:

Pastry:
200g plain flour, sieved

A generous pinch of cayenne pepper

A pinch of salt

100g butter, chilled and cubed

1 egg yolk

1tblsp cold water

Caramelised shallots:

2tbls vegetable oil

Large knob of butter

500g shallots, sliced finely

2 bay leaves

Filling:

2 egg yolks and 1 whole egg

150ml double cream
100ml milk

100g Smoked Gubbeen cheese, grated

1tblsp fresh thyme, finely chopped

Salt & freshly ground black pepper
 

Method:

Make the pastry:
1. Place the flour, cayenne pepper and salt into a large mixing bowl. Add the butter and using your fingertips rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Make a well in the centre and add the egg yolk and water. Using a fork, lightly work in the egg yolk and flour to make the pastry dough. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work-surface and knead briefly to form into a ball. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for at least half an hour.

Caramelised shallots:

2. Heat the oil in a large frying pan and cook the shallots over a medium heat for about five minutes, stirring regularly.

3. Reduce the heat as they are just beginning to colour and add the butter and bay leaves. Season well. Continue to cook on a low heat, stirring frequently for about 40 minutes until the onions have reduced in volume and are a deep golden colour. Set aside to cool. Remove and discard the bay leaves.

Blind bake the pastry:

4. Preheat oven to 190C/Fan Oven 170C/Gas Mark 5. Lightly grease a 36 whole mini-muffin tin and set aside.

5. Using a rolling pin, roll out the pastry to about 2mm thick on a work-surface lightly dusted with flour. Stamp out 36 rounds of the dough using a 5cm round cutter and use to line 36 mini-muffin tins. Place an empty mini-muffin case on top of the pastry that you have just lined the muffin tins with and weight down with a few baking beans.

6. Blind-bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes until golden brown and cooked through. Remove from oven and set aside for 5 minutes to cool. Remove the baking bean filled muffin cases and allow the tartlet shells to cool completely.

7. Reduce oven temperature to 150C/Fan Oven 130C/Gas Mark 3.

To make the filling:

8. Using a small balloon whisk, whisk the egg yolks and whole egg together in a mixing jug. Add the milk and double cream and whisk again to fully incorporate everything. Mix in the Gubbeen cheese and chopped thyme and season well.

To finish:

9. Put a small teaspoon of the cooled caramelised shallot mixture in the base of each tartlet shell. Carefully pour the egg and cheese mixture almost up to the top of each tartlet case. When all the tartlets have been filled, place in the preheated oven and cook for 15-20 minutes until golden brown and the egg custard mixture has slightly puffed up (this will deflate as they cool). Allow to cool and serve at room temperature.

Makes 36 tartlets.     

MasterChef Ireland 2014 - Cooking Under Pressure in Croke Park

Sunday, 8^th September 2013; the first time that the MasterChef Ireland final ten contestants came together… and what a day it was! It was a stressful, chaotic, pressurised, exhausting, but brilliant day and one that I will never forget.

The day started early, with the contestants being introduced to each other. I already knew Rich and Charlie as we had all come through the same heat, but I didn’t know the others and was extremely curious to get to meet everyone.

There was little time for conversation as we were bundled onto a coach with no idea of our destination. This added to the collective nervous excitement as none of us knew what to expect. It wasn’t until we saw the unmistakable form of Croke Park in front of us and remembered that it was the day of the All-Ireland Hurling Final between Cork and Clare that we began to speculate whether we might be about to be given some type of cooking challenge in the iconic stadium? We quickly realised that this was the case, but still had no idea exactly what the challenge was going to be.

Edel gives her reaction on hearing what the task is.

Standing by the Liam McCarthy cup in the empty stadium, Nick and Dylan soon informed us that we were to be divided into two teams of five and that each team would be required to prepare and cook 1,050 canapés. These would be served to the teams and their families as soon as the match was finished. It was hard to believe that within a few hours the deserted stadium would be thronged with tens of thousands of supporters shouting for their teams. It was very surreal standing there, looking at the pristine pitch and the magnificent stands and everything seeming so calm.

I was on the blue team along with Rich, Charlie, Edel and Nessa. We were told that we had 350 each of three canapés that we had to prepare within six hours and that they had to be ready to serve immediately once the match was over. We were given recipe outlines for each of the canapés. It was up to each team to decide who to appoint as team captain and how to divide the work.

The three canapés that we had to prepare were:

• Smoked Gubeen Tartlets
• Mini Thai Crab Cakes
• Mini Pitta Breads filled with Marinated Lamb, Baba Ganoush and Rocket

The team agreed that Rich would be team leader and that he would oversee the work and make sure that we all stayed focused.

I volunteered to make the tartlets and immediately set about making the pastry for the 350 individual tartlets. Because of the amount of pastry involved this had to be done in batches. The pastry then had to be rolled out thinly, put into the tart tins, blind baked, before being baked again with the smoked cheese and egg custard mixture.

Me and Rich.

The others had their own challenges to face. There seemed to be no end to the amount of pitta breads that Charlie had to individually bake; Nessa was trying to marinate mountains of lamb and cook it to melting tenderness in the allotted time and Edel had a show-down with some very belligerent crabs, but she prevailed! 

Throughout all of this Rich tried to calm us and halt the quickly developing panic that was setting in. My one overriding memory of the day is of Nessa, Charlie and myself trying to pipe baba ganoush into the beautiful pitta breads so lovingly baked by Charlie, but the ganoush was getting everywhere other than where it was meant to be going. We were covered in the stuff. We invented a new verb for the English language that day – to ganoush or be ganoushed; a very messy activity as the blue team can attest to!

Charlie looking for divine inspiration?

We were given six hours to complete this task, which at the beginning seemed like an eternity… it WASN’T! Time was running out and everyone, not least of all the judges were concerned that we might not have any canapés ready to serve.

We were working in unfamiliar surroundings in make-shift kitchens in rooms under the pitch, preparing food on a large scale but in miniature serving sizes which made everything so finicky to produce. We had to share oven and hob time which became increasingly difficult to co-ordinate as the pressure increased. It was just so stressful, made even more so by the fact that none of us knew each other well and even though we were part of a team we were also competing against each other in the overall competition.

Diana looking calm and composed

All this time, the match was being played above our heads and every so often we would hear the roar of the crowd but we had no idea of what was going on above ground….we just knew that we HAD to produce the blasted canapés!

In the end, we didn’t get the full cohort of canapés completed but our team did manage to finish and serve 900 canapés. In the context of the bizarre situation which we found ourselves in, this was an achievement in itself.

We had been through a stress-filled day surviving on adrenalin and a determination to do our best, but so had the players as the match ended up being a draw; the final score – Cork 3:16 to Clare 0:25. Apparently it was a great match, but all we cared about was that our canapés seemed to have been enjoyed.

In memory of the eventful day we all had in Croke Park, I have recreated a version of the little tartlets that and will post the recipe separately.

 

This episode first aired on RTE1; 8.30pm, 1^st April 2014.