Parsnips have a history in Britain, we have cultivated the root vegetable for at least two centuries, but at one time parsnips and carrots went by the same name.

The parsnip used to be held in very high esteem. Especially by the Romans, although they began to drop out of favour due to the introduction of the humble potato, then further out of favour as the price of sugar decreased and became more readily available. After all parsnips, with their natural sweetness were often used in place of sugar to sweeten, for example a chocolate cake.

One of the more “exotic” items we came up with at Knockderry House Hotel is parsnip ice cream, which we serve with a warm chocolate torte.

Parsnip Ice Cream

4 Egg Yolks
300ml Double Cream
300ml Whole Milk
150g Caster Sugar
2 Parsnips (peeled and thinly sliced)

Method

1. Put milk and cream in a heavy based saucepan and add the sliced parsnips
2. Boil the parsnips until soft and puree with a blender before passing through a sieve
3. Whisk egg yolks and sugar with a hand whisk, and add the parsnip mix
4. Pour slowly and whisk quickly otherwise your egg yolks will scramble
5. Cool the mix down then put it in the ice cream machine to churn but if you don’t have and ice cream machine put it in the freezer in a shallow tray and mix every hour until set.

- Robert Burns, Address to a Haggis

Haggis is a very old Scottish delicacy, traditionally prepared by the wives of the drovers and made from readily available ingredients including the ‘pluck’ (heart, kidneys and lungs) of the sheep.

Haggis would have been prepared by boiling the chopped up pluck and mincing with diced onions before simmering with toasted oatmeal, suet and salt. Finally, the tasty mince mixture would be scooped into a clean sheep stomach and boiled for around three hours.

Unfortunately, our haggis recipe is confidential but the method is more or less similar. We make our Knockderry Haggis from lambs pluck supplied by Macbeth’s Butcher in Forres near Inverness, which is diced and sealed off before adding softened chopped onions, toasted oatmeal, herbs and lots of spices. The final addition is beef dripping which is then left to simmer for around 30 minutes to allow the oats to soak up the fat.

Once the haggis is ready we check it for seasoning and pack away in logs to be served with neeps, tatties and some whisky sauce. Perfect all year round, but particularly on Burns Night.

Recently, oxtail has become rather fashionable in restaurants and with some well-known chefs increasingly offering the humble oxtail on their menus. And no wonder. It is full of sweet and succulent flavour which comes from the meat being so close to the bone. It is therefore excellent as the base of stocks and sauces but allowed to slow cook it can make a delicious meal in its own right especially when served with a delicious glass of Tempranillo or Carmenere.

Braised Oxtail

1. When buying oxtail ask your butcher to cut it for you as this can be quite tricky or for the more adventurous, cut between the natural joints and it’ll cut through nicely.
2. Dice the onion and sweat it off in a heavy based pot with a star anise, grated carrot, celery and mushrooms.
3. Once all vegetables are soft, remove them from the pot and place in a clean bowl.
4. Return the pot to the stove, deglaze the pan with the water and get all the nice brown bits on the bottom off. Pour this in with the vegetables.
5. Now get your pot nice and hot. Meanwhile, season the oxtail with salt, not pepper at this stage as it will be scorched in the heat of the pan.
6. Now put your oxtail into the pan and brown all sides. Season with pepper now, add all vegetables, red wine, stock, thyme and let this cook slowly for around 4 hours, topping up with water when needed. You could speed this up by using a pressure cooker taking approx. 2 hours.
7. Once the meat is soft, take it out of the pot and set aside to cool. Turn up the heat and reduce the sauce until it is thick and syrupy. Once the oxtail is cool, you can pick it, shred it and fold it through your sauce.

Our Seasonal House Menu will change Monday 13^th February 2012. Visit our website at for all our latest menus and special offers.

Hare is an amazing meat. It is very lean and if cooked properly, very tender. It has a gamier flavour than rabbit so needs a sometime hanging to achieve the right depth of flavour, and because it is a bit bigger than a rabbit it can feed up to eight people making it a really good nutritious way to feed a family at a low cost.

‘Jugged Hare’ is the  traditional way to prepare hare with “Jugged” referring to the stoneware jug in which it was cooked along with its blood and liver, herbs, claret, red currant jelly, onions and cloves. But our favourite is a simple hare pithivier, or small pie, made with a slow braised hare in a puff pastry dome and served with some pureed celeriac, and roasted root vegetables; ideal with a glass of our Veldt Range Ruby Cabernet 2009 from South Africa, a soft, juicy wine packed with winter red fruits.

January’s Seasonal House Menu starts Monday 9^th January 2012.

Any time I hear this merry little tune it makes me think of the wonderful aroma given off by the chestnuts roasting the oven in our kitchen.

Brown like a dull mahogany wood, the chestnut is a stand out fruit, especially at this time of year. Most often thought of at Christmas time, they can be found at any good vegetable market from mid-late October.

Always buy more than you will require, as no matter how good your supplier is or how thoroughly the supermarket rifle through them, you will always find the odd mouldy or rotten one.

Chestnuts can easily be eaten raw although can often be somewhat astringent, more so if the thin membrane encasing the nut is not removed.

Chestnuts ready for roasting

The best way for chestnuts to be eaten in my opinion is roasted, roasted in their shell, peeled then roasted again to achieve that nutty, sweet flavour with a little crunch on the outside and soft fluffy texture inside. Chopped up and served with some nice baby potatoes, some lovely lardons of streaky bacon, baked breast of guinea fowl, and lashings of gravy.

Chestnuts don’t have to be served only as a savoury option, quite the opposite actually, they lend themselves wonderfully to desserts also. Like a chestnut and coco parfait, or caramelised chestnuts atop a warm Christmas pudding with brandy butter mmmm…

So get out there and pick up some of those fantastic chestnuts and see what you can make, or come along to Knockderry Country House Hotel and taste our marvellous chestnuts.

The organ meats of the deer can also be eaten, but they would not be called venison, instead they are named noumbles.

In recent years venison has seen a distinct rise in popularity due in partial fact to its low fat content. In fact here at Knockderry House Hotel when making items such as venison burgers or venison sausages we need to add fat to the meat e.g. for burgers we add streaky bacon and for our venison sausages we add Stornoway black pudding to keep the moisture when cooking.

Our Venison is supplied by our local game keeper Pat Leonard, our most recent beast coming from no more than 2 miles from Knockderry House Hotel in a small area called Rahane. We receive the stag (usually around 170lb) that has been hung for 3-4 days. Perfect for the young stag we recently acquired. The older the animal the longer it needs to be hung, as the muscles are much tougher.

When it arrives, we skin it and butcher it and use every part of the animal in the hotel kitchen.

We have the loin, the most tender, lean, most expensive piece of the animal, the haunch, which takes much more cooking, better to be braised or stewed, and the ribs and the flank which are good to be braised and crisped up.

One dish loved by our guests is our venison pie.

Venison Pie

500g Venison mince
1 Ltr Venison stock (beef stock or vegetable stock can be used)
2 carrots (diced)
2 Sticks of celery (diced)
100g Celeriac (diced)
1 large white onion (diced)
1 Sprig of thyme
1 Bay leaf
2 cloves of garlic (pureed)
1 Tbl Red currant jelly
1 Tsp Olive oil
S & P

Method

Sweat off carrots, celery, celeriac, onions and garlic in the olive oil in a heavy based pot until soft but without colouring.

Set the vegetables to one side and in another (very hot) pan brown off the venison mince.

Once the mince is browned, nicely strain off the fat in a colander, add to the vegetables, then add the stock, thyme, bay leaf and redcurrant jelly simmer the mince in the stock until the sauce reduces to a nice saucy consistency.

Season to taste.

Serve in a deep bowl and top with creamy mashed potato, sprinkle on some parmesan cheese and grill until golden brown. Serve with honey glazed parsnips.

Alternatively, you could serve with a puff pastry top, cut puff pastry to desired size, score a nice pattern on it, brush with egg yolk and bake in the oven till golden and well risen, and pop on top of your pie.

A handful of tasty brambles

Our advice is, do as we do at Knockderry Country House  and take a small pot and a good sturdy stick to push past the prickly stems and search out brambles near you. If you have to buy then try a farmers’ market and select those that are neither too firm nor too squishy. We suggest you rely on your sense of smell to help you guage what is the perfect fruit.

Wild brambles right on our doorstep

A well stored bramble can be kept for a couple of days in a cool dry place, but they also freeze well so try to get a few bags in the freezer to combine with autumn apples in puddings later in the year. Brambles are best enjoyed with a little sugar and a lot of cream, but there are a variety of ways for us to make the most out of these tasty berries from a version of a late summer pudding to a fabulous addition in a cold Martini on a balmy evening.

The boys from the Knockderry kitchen will be out scouring the hedgerows and showcasing this fruit throughout the month of August so have a look at our website for our current seasonal menu or come and try our Tasting Menu which is available from Tuesday – Saturday every week.

At Knockderry Country House Hotel, we prepare squid in a variety of ways but my personal favourite is probably the simplest. Dust the rings with spiced flour and fry it, before serving it with some chilli and garlic noodles.

When frying, grilling or even poaching, take care not to over cook it, as this makes the delicacy a very tough chew! All in all squid is a beautiful piece of food and one of my own favourite foods.

Ingredients

200g Squid rings, or squares
1 tbl Plain flour
1 tbl Blackened Cajun seasoning
1 tsp Smoked paprika
1 tsp Malden sea salt
1 tsp Mixed spice
1 pinch cracked black pepper

Method

Dust the squid in the mixture and fry in hot oil around 180 – 190ºC for around 3 minutes. Drain on a clean piece of kitchen cloth, season.

Try experimenting with different flavors of noodles, chilli, coriander, lemon and find something that suits you.

The day will provide an exciting and fun day out for the whole family who can discover for themselves what really goes on on a working farm.

Visitors can see for themselves how natural plant and insect species are encouraged to thrive alongside crops, they will get a close-up look at farm animals and see how the needs of wildlife are balanced with modern food production.

The day’s events include a nature walk, sheep shearing demonstration, hosted farm tour, as well as a chance to meet the pigs, sheep and poultry and a delicious array of fresh farm produced will be available in the farm shop.

This popular annual event organised by LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming) is a must for anyone interested in how farmers produce our food, and the ways they care for our countryside too.

So for a fantastic day out in the open air why not go along and see what can be done on a small farm!

Directions from Drumfork Rd: turn into Drumfork Farm, go through the gate and take the left fork. Please note that this is an unmade road and care should be taken with vehicles with low clearance. Please wear appropriate footwear for a farm walk.

Visitors can turn up on the day but the farm would appreciate an e-mail or a call on 01436 678895 to get an idea of numbers.

Afternoon Tea at Knockderry House

Afternoon Tea is often be seen as a bit of luxury, a birthday treat or a surprise for friends and here at Knockderry Country House Hotel we offer all of the trappings of this little piece of yesteryear and luxury but at a very affordable price. Our luxury afternoon tea, consists of a selection of delicious homemade finger sandwiches and cakes including French macaroons, miniature éclairs, fruit scones with cream and jam and if you really want to make a celebration of it add a glass of fizz and you too can feel like a duchess…or even a princess!

A mouthwatering afternoon treat at Knockderry.

Knockderry Country House  Hotel is offering from the 29th April – 2 May, a Royal Afternoon Tea to celebrate the forthcoming royal wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton on the 29th April. For more details please call us on 01436 842 283.