Chef and writer Paula McIntyre looks to the past and her own Ulster-Scots heritage to serve up mouth-watering recipes for friends and family, crafted from the finest local ingredients. The Atlantic ocean is on Paula’s doorstep. On clear days she can see the Isles of Mull and Jura, a reminder of the early Scottish settlers who brought ingredients and recipes to these shores and who remain a major influence on her own approach to cooking. Paula makes a Glens of Antrim lamb roast with a caramel and vinegar glaze and elevates the humble turnip by making two side dishes: turnip cake and turnip gratin. This is followed by salt ling, a sustainable fish, roasted and served with boxty, poached leeks, bacon crumb and an elderberry caper butter sauce. The final dish is a brined and braised Denver cut of beef with a nettle and onion crust served with a barley risotto.
Paula cooks on the terrace, serving up locally-caught langoustines on a potato and smoked dulse wafer with pickled carrot. She then makes what she describes as ‘love on a plate’ – a country pie made with locally-bred ham served up with crowdie cheese and pickled smoked beetroot salad. She rounds off with a rhubarb and blackcurrant tray bake with cider custard poured over.
Paula adds a modern, streetfood twist to traditional roozle breid, a variation on potato bread, by transforming it into a taco filled with shredded slow cooked beef cheek and topped with horseradish and pickled onions.
Paula rustles up a sandwich or ‘piece' but first she has to catch the filling. She heads to Lough Neagh with father and son fishing duo Gerry and Daniel McNally to fish for pollan. Back in the kitchen, she adds a sweet and sour tomato jam and scallions to the fish to complete a truly delicious ‘piece'.
Paula pays a visit to a Belfast fishmongers where they smoke their own haddock. Inspired by Arbroath smokies, she'll be using is as a casing for a Smokie Scotch egg served up with a parsley mayonnaise.
Paula finds inspiration in a vintage Women's Institute cookbook, published in 1945. She will make a beef tea served up with corwaddle, a type of oat biscuit, topped with savoury butter cream and onion jam.
Paula will be show casing dollaghan, a fish caught in Lough Neagh. After treacle-curing it, she will serve the dollaghan on wheaten farls with a cucumber relish. And as an extra treat, she will reveal how to make a champagne from gorse.
Paula shows us how to make her version of Steak Diane by substituting the steak with a collop of venision which she will be flash roasting and serving with sauteed potatoes.
It's Halloween, and Paula has some recipes with a spooky twist to share. On the menu is neep and cider soup, sausage cobbler and a mouthwatering toffee apple pudding.
It's Hogmanay in the Hamely Kitchen. Chef Paula McIntyre is celebrating Auld Year's Nicht with a delicious festive supper. On the menu is a warming bowl of cock-a-leekie soup. Paula doesn't do things by halves, so her version involves poaching a whole chicken, which leaves the meat beautifully tender. As Paula says, if you're harbouring any new year's resolutions, this broth, full of leeks and barley and parsley, will get you off to a great start.
Paula shares recipes for cullen skink and a delicious baked apple pudding. She heads to Cushendun beach, where she shows two young fiddle players how to barbecue pork shoulder.
Paula cooks the perfect pork chop and makes a show-stopping tipsy laird trifle. She sets up her barbecue in Glenarm Castle, where she prepares chicken with two young farmers.
Paula makes her version of classic beef olives and an ecclefechan tart. Against the stunning backdrop of the Mourne mountains, Paula cooks battered monkfish and potato bread chips.
Recipes include sausage rolls with carrot ketchup and a nostalgic brown lemonade cake. Paula shows a highland dance teacher and her dad how to barbecue lamb.
Chef Paula McIntyre recreates a selection of mouthwatering dishes, from a Belfast banquet held in 1859 to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Scotland’s most famous bard.