ITALIAN FOODIES

A friend of ours was home from Luxemburg for the weekend, he came home to vote, we live here and although we had intended to we never made it. The joys of running your own business and caring for a 6 month old! We're job-sharing the bambina minding so one of us is at home with her all the time so basically she's spoilt rotten by "mamma and papa'". We had a busy week in the shop and about 2 hours sleep for the week(ok I tend to exaggerate a little) so on Sunday we decided to off load her to Nonna(grandmother) and go out for dinner with our "amico"which we rarely do these days!!

There's been a little explosion of new hotels in Limerick in the last year - The George, The Absolute, The Hilton and most recently The Marriott. To be honest I find hotel food a bit hit and miss, we had tried The George and The Absolute so we said we'd try the Marriott. It's only been open a few weeks so unfortunately we were the only people there but although it lacked atmosphere we had a very good meal. I have to say I had one of the best fillet steaks I've ever had in Ireland. It was aged Angus beef and the price was not for the faint-hearted at €38 but it was worth it, it was like butter to cut through, so tender and so tasty and the most important thing was that it was cooked rare, a problem I have every time I order steak. The boys had lamb which also got the thumbs up and we finished off with a mouth-watering chocolate fondant!!

Then to finish off the meal we ordered 3 Illy espressos, now I have many pet hates but one of my biggest has to be "SUGAR LUMPS",  I know in the grand scheme of things this is ridiculous but I have to share it with you. I've talked about coffee so many times at this stage I'm sure you're getting bored but I have to talk about sugar. SUGAR LUMPS should not be served with espresso!! The whole point of espresso is it should be hot, the sugar should dissolve quickly and it should be drank in a couple of mouthfuls. SUGAR LUMPS prevent the natural consumption process because you have to wait for it to dissolve and you have to keep stirring it like a crazed idiot so you can get the sugar dissolved before the coffee goes cold. Are you beginning to see how this can affect one's life??

In Italy they actually use a very refined sugar, it would be like Castor sugar here. We use Castor sugar ourselves at home instead of granulated sugar for our coffee. We have Italian sugar sachets in La Cucina. If there is anything worse than SUGAR LUMPS it's SUGAR STICKS but that's another day's rant. Anyway they serve Illy coffee in the Mariott with SUGAR LUMPS, the coffee itself was a little disappointing especially when they are using such a good brand(one of my favourites, I love their image) but other than that I would recommend it for dinner!!

Now that my rant is over back to Italian food, a few people have asked me for a traditional Italian lasagna recipe. I have already posted the bolognese recipe so this is the recipe for besciamella and I will post the lasagna recipe later in the week! Once again we make this in huge batches in La Cucina so we would never make it at home so I'm going to give you the recipe from the Silver Spoon which is the same way we do it anyway!

WHAT YOU NEED:

• 50g butter
• 50g plain flour
• 500ml milk
• salt

WHAT TO DO:

 - melt the butter in a saucepan over a medium heat

 - mix in the flour to make a roux

 - pour in all the milk, whisking constantly until it starts to boil

 - season with salt, lower the heat and simmer for about 20 mins until the sauce thickens. The most important thing is to stir occasionally so you don't have any lumps. We use the whisk to stir, it keeps the sauce lump free!

Ciao!!