So a couple of years I ended up grabbing a domain BrittanyBeers.com and at the time I thought it was one of the funniest things ever. Hell I still do. It was a time when everyone was on about the Beers … Boards Beers … Karanet Beers .. PHP Beers … ILUG Beers … Having a connection with Brittany I thought the domain was perfect. I was getting married in 2007 and I regged the domain on the 2006-08-27. I’d a great intention to have it as our wedding site but these things never work out and I only ever ended up putting together a proof of concept graphic. Flash Forward and...

When I was first in Madrid in April/May 2009 I was blown away. One of the first things we did after checking into our place in Chueca was to go in search of some food. Not speaking the lingo at all we looked at various menus outside restaurants all mentioning a “Menu del Dia” (Menu of the Day) We picked a place not the most chic and what I’d probably classify as a working mans restaurant. I had Spag bol as the First Plate (what would be a main in Ireland) followed by I think it was a plate of Eggs / Gammon steak and chips … this came with a bottle of wine … a desert and a...

So this isn’t a carbonara as such (note the lack of egg) but to me it is sort of This is a nice quick dish and the Ingredients for it are pretty basic Onions (I used shallots once again .. softer flavour) Pancetta (Bacon / cured ham of some sort you could chop up a couple of rashers if you wanted) Mushrooms (I’d have generally used button mushroom but I used some Shiitake Mushrooms here as there’s a nicer flavour from them Cream Pasta (ideally you’d use tagliatelle in this case I used fusilli) Steps: Chop the onion and throw it on the pan with a bit of olive oil (I chopped...

So this is yet again another pretty quick and easy one to make. Its also probably not the best for you in terms of the amount of butter I put into it. So it is Ciabatta with tomato,onion, ham and cheese .. you could grill or oven cook this depending on what you want to do Ingredients you’ll need I like to use vine cherry tomatoes they’ve got better flavour I like ciabatta though I’ve used a baguette for this in the past as well Red onion is a subtler flavour and less likely to repeat … this time I used some shallots Butter .. this requires a good chunk depends on the amount of...

So I never really came across Asparagus wrapped in Bacon in Ireland .. but here in the Menu del Dia’s you constantly have asparagus offered as one of the plates. This led me the other day to say **** it I’m going to try it out So what do you need (preheated oven to 220C) 1: Asparagus 2: Rashers (we’ve tried this with serrano ham before but its a bit too dry) 3: Olive oil / pepper / salt (though with the rashers you could probably do with out the salt) So take 2 -or 3 stems of asparagus … hold tightly and wrap a rasher around them Complicated I know … try to get it so its...