It’s July and it’s lashing rain. That can only mean one thing. Oxegen weekend. As the first 30 odd thousand arrived yesterday to grab a good camping spot, they were greeted with torrential rain. Just as well then that they were  already hammered or monged. As long as they stay that way for the next 3 days, they’ll be grand.

The endurance test of getting wasted and pissed on with 80,000 people in a field is something that I passed with flying colours, about 17 years ago. And I never intend to do it again.  In 2005, curiosity and free passes got the better of me and I went down with a friend to Oxegen to have a wee looksie. The car park and it’s wild inhabitants gave me a proper dose of the fear. It looked like a reenactment of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, with a few post modern additions.

Didn’t even make it inside. Sold me passes and legged it back to town. This year’s affair promises to be the most challenging yet. Not only do the promoters have to deal with low ticket sales due to national economic shiteness, but with Eminem on the bill the scrote count will be very high. Security nightmare. Add to that the buckets of thunder and rain that are forecast for Saturday and you’ve got heckuva gig to run.

Like I said,  that kind of weekender would have been a like a walk in the park for me – when I was in my teens.  Nowadays, I prefer slightly more civilized affairs. And although I have no doubt that the rain won’t just be falling on Kildare for the next few days, I won’t care. With the help of some carefully chosen meals and drinks,  I can make believe I am somewhere far more exotic and tropical, like Bray or Skegness.

Just coz it’s minging outside doesn’t mean you can’t have a little sunshine indoors. A few pina coladas and some grilled fish with a tropical salsa should bring bring on a little bit of that summery flavour. My pina colada recipe has fresh pineapple and dessicated coconut in it, gives it a nice moreish texture. The salsa recipe was given to me by my good friend Bilbo Bangkok, who after 8 years of living in Thailand knows a thing or two about tropical food. Lash tunes like this one on to get into the mood.

A TROPICAL FEAST, FOR A SHITTY IRISH DAY

GRILLED OR BARBECUED HALIBUT – Just basically get some halibut steaks from a decent fishmonger, 10 oz per person is good. Mix a teaspoon of peanut oil in with some salt and smother that onto the fish. Grill either side for just a couple of minutes each side. Using a fish basket is handy, buy one. They look like this:

BILBO BANGKOK’S TROPICAL SALSA – Lash this on your fish, this fella came up with it:

INGREDIENTS:

* 2 large ripe tomatoes
* A fresh pineapple. Tinned will do if you are really desperate
* 3 spring onions
* Lots of fresh  coarsely crushed black pepper
* A quarter of a cup of red wine vinegar
* A handful of fresh parsley

METHOD:

- Quarter the tomatoes, remove the seeds and  dice them into small cubes about the size you would see on a bruschetta.

- Then dice the pineapple about the same size as the tomatoes. Cut your spring onions the same. And the 3 ingredients into a bowl and mix them up. Now crush your black pepper, and crush a lot. Mix that in with the vinegar and everything else. The result should be a balance of sweet, sour, bitter and salty, a nice salsa with a tropical twist. Smother this on to some grilled or barbecued fish and then sprinkle a little chopped parsley on top of it for added freshness.

COCONUT RICE – Your carb to go with the fish. Goes really well with it.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups jasmine rice
1 can coconut milk
1 1/2 cups water
1  teaspoon of sugar
A pinch of salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon of Chopped fresh coriander

METHOD:

- In a pot with a tight-fitting lid, combine the coconut milk, water, sugar, salt and pepper and stir it all up until the sugar dissolves.

- Add the rice and bring to boil.  Cover it up, bring the heat to a low simmer and cook for about 20 minutes.

FRESH PINA COLADA – Use some of the left over fresh pineapple from the salsa in this pina colada. This is how you make just the one. Double the ingredients for two, etc.

INGREDIENTS:

- 50 ml of clear white Havana Club

- Half a teaspoon of dessicated coconut

- 50 ml of coconut cream

- 1 table spoon of chopped fresh pineapple

- 25ml of pineapple juice

- 2 tablespoons of ice

METHOD:

Lash it all into a blender and blitz the lot. Pour into a chilled glass. Garnish with a sprinkle of cinnamon on top of the drink if you like or a pineapple chunk on the side of the glass.

I have been barred from my own kitchen this weekend. Many will take great pleasure in this. Especially those who I have barred from The Sugar Club in previous years.

The weekend before saw me take on a dizzying array of culinary tasks, the volume of which created a disturbance in the domestic force of Chateau Davis – hence the barring order in place for the next 72 hours. I made up 2 pots of pomodoro sauce, 2 large batches of pizza dough (one plain and one flavoured with garlic and white pepper), prepared and marinated Chicken satay for a bash on the following Wednesday and cooked dinner for immediate family on Saturday and extended family on Sunday. In between, I also attended a course out in Hick’s of Dun Laoighre on how to cure and smoke meats.

Ed and Bren Hick make the best sausages and rashers in Ireland. You can dispute that with me all you like, but I may have to kick your ass, coz I know I’m right. I missed out on their sausage making course a few weeks ago so when they dropped me a mail about another one they were doing called, “Makin Bacon”, I had to make sure I could head along.

There were about a dozen of us there. Ed was our Master of Rashers. He showed us how curing and smoking work, how to do it ourselves and sent us off with our own kit that included a kilo of pork, a bag of curing salts and a bag of beech wood chips. It was 2.5 hours very well spent. Not only did we learn some very old cooking methods but we picked up some great tips here and there too. Like putting a few small incisions with a scissors along the fat of the rasher so they don’t curl up on ya and can cook evenly. Please observe:

Not that any of that mattered last weekend.  All I got at home was, “why are you cooking more food? You should be fixing the door/mowing the lawn/washing your socks, etc.”  Luckily, I have a bag of Jambalaya stashed away in my freezer so I can still have me own grub, if I so choose. This is a classic Cajun dish. And if you really want to make a really decent one, you’ve gotta get the Cajun sausages from Hick’s.

www.hicks.ie

That’s why I call this one:

DUN LAOIGHRE JAMBALAYA

INGREDIENTS:
- 4 Chicken fillets
- 1 packet of Hick’s Cajun  sausage. Get them at the Temple Bar Food Market on a Saturday, Liston’s Camden Street, Magill’s  Clarendon Street or from the lads themselves in Dun Laoighre.
- 2 large onions, dice them up
- 5 celery sticks, slice them diagonally, about a half inch thick
- 2 green peppers, dice them up
- 4 tablespoons of Worcester sauce
- 1 jar of passata
- 3 tablespoons of cajun spice (2 for sauce, 1 for chicken)
- 2 smoked chilies (these are also called chipotles, you can buy them from Taco Taco in The Epicurean Food Hall, Liffey St.)  or 2 teaspoons of tabasco sauce.
- 1.5 cups of water
METHOD:
- Fry the sausages in some peanut oil in a large pot.
- Remove them with a slotted spoon and set aside.
- Fry the onions and then the celery and peppers in the large pot.
- Throw in the worcester sauce, 2 tablespoons of cajun spice, tabasco or smoked chilies, water and passata. Lash the sausages back in too.
- Bring it to the boil and then stick a lid on it at a simmer (low
heat) for 1.5 hours.
- Meanwhile  dust the chicken fillets with the remaining Cajun spice.  Cut them up and fry them whole and then cut them lengthways. Put them in the pot and
cook for another half hour.
- Serve with some rice. You either mix the rice all up with the
jambalaya or else serve the jambalaya on it.
- For sides cook up some corn on the cob and buttered green beans. Also have
some sour cream handy, it’s very nice with the sauce.