Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk with Aviva Insurance.
Aisling Larkin is here to talk about the taste of summer, the flavours of summer and we're all here for it, Aisling. Oh yeah, summer has arrived, didn't it? You kind of spend so many weeks going, will we get a summer? Is summer here? And it is here and it feels glorious. It feels warm and it feels exciting and there's a little bit of adventure and liveliness in the air.
The French have a beautiful word. It's called viv or vif and it means this kind of liveliness, this energised energy that's in the air and I think that's what summer brings and then you're trying to capture that and bring it into food and how do you translate that into food?
Chapter 2: What summer flavours should we prioritize?
And it changes what you want to eat, doesn't it? Oh my goodness, so much. Like when the weather is so nice, everybody will say, God, I wasn't even hungry. Oh, we'll just have something quick. And this is where the... You just want to be outside. You don't want to be in the kitchen cooking. None of us do.
So from that perspective, but also your appetite goes down because your body is really busy thermoregulating. And for the likes of us in Ireland who get three or four days, like we're grand. But for people who live in... Big heat all summer long. You know, it's that thing of how do you stimulate your appetite as well as everything else? And flavours can do that on certain foods.
So there's a couple of big summer flavours that you have identified. And we'll start with mango, which is a great one. Yeah. You've things like mango, passion fruit, yuzu, grapefruit, lemon, lime. Can I just put my hand up and say, I don't know what a yuzu is. I've heard of it. I probably have had it in things. I don't know. What is it? So it comes from central China.
It looks like an underripe lemon, very hard, kind of gnarly skin on the outside. Very much used in Japanese cuisine. Very difficult to cultivate. So it's very premium fruit. Flavour-wise, right, it is a cross between a mandarin, a lemon and a lime, all mixed together. So it has a slightly softer, more rounded floral flavour than just a lemon or a lime. But it's citrusy, is it? It
It is citrusy, but it's almost like a toned down elegant citrus. So you would never, you'd rarely buy like a yuzu fruit. But what we can buy is yuzu syrup and yuzu kind of juice.
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Chapter 3: How do summer temperatures affect our appetite?
And you would use that. So there's yuzu ponzu, which is used kind of like with soy sauce over fish and things like that. So it's a very, think of almost like, you know, like elderflower. that delicate kind of under note it's a little bit like that a little bit like bergamot so that's what yuzu is. So it's to elevate your dishes and what would you be using it in? Dessert-y type things?
Dessert-y type things yeah so like beautiful like yuzu white chocolate tiramisu would be really nice yuzu in a lemon tart would be beautiful even the syrup you can buy it in one of the shops on Drury Street there there's a company I'll actually put a picture later it's a brown bottle it's only about 15 or 16 euro for the yuzu syrup beautiful in a cocktail. I
you're just using a drop of it are you a tiny bit now i'm going to eat some of this beautiful food that you because i'm not letting it go to waste what about what is this is gorgeous so back to the mangoes this is a mango and prawn salad so we've got prawns that are cooked in garlic and lemon juice then i've done a beautiful quinoa so just cook the quinoa bought a gorgeous miso dressing from the supermarket really nice poured that over it and then i made a mango salsa
Which is lovely. The difference the miso dressing makes to the grain. Like it is just a completely different food. Totally. Because that without anything. Oh, it's so bland. It's so bland. Hard to eat. Yeah, I feel like it's homework, you know. Totally. And like that miso dressing is, it's a really premium. It's a lovely product, not expensive in the supermarket.
Again, I can pop up a picture later of it, but it's a lovely little one. The mango salsa, right? We have mangoes in Ireland. Tommy Atkins is one of the varieties that come to Ireland, right? The only way I can describe them to you is almost like a functional pair of shoes. They're a mango. They look like a mango. They kind of smell like a mango, but they're functional. They're hardy.
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Chapter 4: What is yuzu and how can it be used in summer dishes?
They're made to be transported. So like I bought this mango a week ahead of this segment to have a beautiful and ripe and ready. That's the secret, isn't it? Well, it is. But even still, when I prepared it last night, it was still a little bit hard. So how do you how do you fix that if you buy a mango in the supermarket? The mango salsa is gorgeous. Chop up your mango.
There's a little bit of olive oil in there. Lime juice. You're bringing in that lime, little bit of chili, little bit of red onion. And then I added a little bit of honey into it. And that just it enhances the sweetness. The most beautiful thing. Mangoes in all the world are Alfonso mangoes. They're from India. They produce like something like 28 million tons of them a year.
Actually, it was broke on the news on Global News today. They've had a really bad crop this year, like really, really bad. So like farmers who would have done six or seven thousand crates of mangoes are reporting they'll only do about 600 this year. And it was due to dramatic weather, El Nino, all of this kind of stuff. So we won't see the Alfonso. so in Ireland this year maybe?
It's kind of an Asian supermarket buy or a premium kind of buy and you will pay a premium price but the colour is orange and it's deeper and they're sensational. When you get a hard mango when you do all of those things that you mentioned with the lime and so on are you ever going to soften it or are you just changing the flavour? A little bit of both. You are softening it a little bit.
So the acid, so it's like a ceviche on a fish. So the acid will almost kind of, isn't it lovely? Bright, zingy, fresh, couple of herbs through it. The acid will definitely help to soften it. The honey will help with the sweetness, but it's firm. Like it would be lovely to have it a little bit smoother. Frozen mango is a good option though.
You know, it's not a bad option to make something like a mango lassi. Put in your live natural yogurt, a little bit of lime juice, tiny little bit of cardamom and make this beautiful kind of smoothie for the mornings. And that's another lovely way to have it. Now, will we move to the coca melish? Oh, let's move to the cake. I love it. So I'm making this at Bloom this weekend, actually.
So and it's gorgeous. It is a plant based cake, first of all. So it's passion fruit, lime and coconut cake. But it's a plant-based cake. I was at a bake sale recently and a lady came up and she said, do you have anything that's for vegetarians, for vegans? Do you have anything that's like non-dairy? And you didn't, did you? There was nothing. There was nothing for her.
So I went off and I have developed this recipe and I love it. It's so easy. You melt your butter. So plant-based butter, like a stork or a plant-based butter, margarine. You heat up coconut milk. Into the coconut milk, you're going to put a tablespoon of vinegar, like an apple cider vinegar or a white wine vinegar.
and then you're going to pour that over your flour your sugar a little bit of vanilla in there and then your desiccated coconut can go in and what happens is you don't need an egg don't need an egg you don't need an egg there's no eggs in there there's no butter in there and it's just beautiful and it's It's literally a melting one. And you pour the wet ingredients over the dry.
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Chapter 5: What are the benefits of using yuzu syrup in cocktails?
Yes. That is what? Passion fruit and lime. So it's literally the pulp of the passion fruit. And passion fruit pairs beautifully with lime, with white chocolate, with dark chocolate. It's gorgeous. Another little trick, actually, there's a lovely product you can buy, which is passion fruit curd. Like beautiful Irish companies make it.
If you buy, you know, you can buy like doughnut holes in the balls of little doughnuts. If you put a little bit of the passion fruit curd in a piping bag and like pipe it into the centre of your doughnut, like delicious, pipe in a little bit of cream as well. Oh, my God. Heart attack, heart attack territory. Oh, but it's like delicious for the summer. You would use that like you would lemon curd.
Exactly like lemon curd. So if you love a lemon meringue pie, you could do a passion fruit curd lemon meringue pie. And it's really, really nice.
Chapter 6: What are some delicious recipes featuring mango?
I have a beautiful lemon and elderflower tart recipe on my website. And lemon tarts are no... Like, I think a lot of home bakers think they're very difficult to do. And they are. Mine is so easy. You're literally just doing your sugar with your eggs, pouring your cream straight in. I put a little bit of elderflower cordial or syrup into it.
And then you put it into your pastry case, bake it in the oven. It's foolproof. But you have done a blind bake, have you, beforehand on your pastry and your pastry is beautiful and you've done all that properly as well. Or you can buy your shortcrust and just use that and it works. But you want to make it yourself, don't you, from the start? It's nice to do a rich one, yeah.
So this is a long way away from the mammy salad. There is a place for the mammy salad on a hot summer's day. Oh gosh, absolutely. But if you want a bit of zing, really, you need to introduce these gorgeous... Summer flavours. Absolutely. Mango, passion fruit, the limes, the lemons.
And like I said, to do it in a beautiful salad like that, that feels like it's good for you, but it's just delicious first. It's gorgeous. Coconut and yuzu. They're the unusual ones that we might want to experiment with this summer. Now, Aisling, will you remind me of your website so that people can find all of these wonderful things?
So Instagram is probably the best place, Aisling Larkin, or the website is AislingLarkin.ie and all of the recipes we've spoken about today are up there. OK, thank you so much for making my lunch. I enjoyed it an awful lot. And thank you as well for listening to the programme. We'll be back with you tomorrow.
And don't forget, if you've missed anything on the programme, you can check it all out on the Go Loud app where you can listen back. The team today, Cormac McDonagh was on sound, producers Helena O'Toole, Dee King and Alex Russo, research by David O'Connor and Shanna Cole. And our broadcast assistant is Anne-Marie Cain.
The Clare Byrne Show. With Aviva Insurance. Weekday mornings at 9. On Newstalk. Conversation that counts.
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