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 forages for wild garlic which she will incorporate into a roast onion soup, served with savoury cheese and smoked tomato jam biscuits. Paula is a keen sea swimmer and she’ll be serving up this soup to her fellow swimmers on East Strand, Portrush. She also makes the beautifully descriptive Ulster-Scots dish mollygowans and clappydoos, which is an escalope of monkfish and shellfish cooked in cider dressed in brown butter. Paula finishes up the series with a nostalgic trip back to childhood (with an adult twist) by cooking a baked homemade hazelnut liqueur custard, honeycomb crumble wafers, apples and blackberries.
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.
Paula McIntyre cooks up a festive feast in a Hamely Kitchen Christmas special. On the menu are some yuletide spiced biscuits with jewelled centres made from boiled sweets. The recipe is inspired by Paula’s cooking heroine, Florence Irwin, who was a food columnist in the Northern Whig for over 50 years. Paula cooked her first turkey at age 11. Over the years, she has perfected her technique, and she shares her top tips for roasting a turkey to golden, tender perfection.
Paula meets the Parton family cook, Rachel Parton George, Dolly’s youngest sister, who cooks catfish for her. Paula also enjoys the best of southern BBQ with pitmaster Ben. She heads to a family-run rodeo to enjoy the show and the many food stalls. At her outdoor mountain kitchen, Paula cooks river trout with grilled green beans, crispy country ham and almond dressing, and grilled peaches with bourbon-smoked salt sauce on waffles.
Paula visits Belfast, Maine. She meets a local clam-digger who is keeping up the tradition of digging for clams by hand and heads to a restaurant which specialises in New England’s famous clam chowder. Paula is a big fan of maple syrup, so it is a real treat to visit a maple syrup farm and museum. Her final stop in New England is for some delicious lobster rolls. In her outdoor kitchen on the Maine shoreline, Paula cooks coal-baked quahog clams with leek, apple and kelp butter and Scotch pancakes with blueberries and smoked maple syrup.
Paula’s next leg of her American food adventure sees her taking on a big breakfast challenge. She visits America’s oldest cast-iron forge to see how skillets are made, takes an unforgettable cable car ride above the mountains in Gatlinburg and tries her first taste of moonshine at a Smoky Mountain distillery. At her cabin kitchen, Paula makes a popcorn-topped pudding and Hush Puppies with a savoury relish.
Paula is in New England, where she is delighted to meet Brad McFadden, whose ancestors come from the same townland where she grew up. After sharing a home-cooked meal made by Brad, she visits a family-run distillery to sample the latest fruit-based liqueurs. Her final stop is at Mack’s Apple Farm which is famous for its apple cider doughnuts. At her cabin on the Maine shoreline, Paula cooks a mushroom-stuffed potato farl and an apple dumpling coated in hazelnut and cinnamon.
Paula heads to Kentucky to meet a food writer with Scots-Irish roots who shows her how to make the perfect buttermilk-fried chicken. She meets a chef at a farm to table restaurant who is putting mountain ingredients such as squash and buttermilk cheese on his menu. Paula’s last stop is at a dairy farm that makes an unusual but tasty buttermilk ice cream. Paula continues the buttermilk theme in her outdoor mountain kitchen. She makes a buttermilk, lima bean and bacon soup and skillet-cooked biscuits with watermelon, strawberry and coconut jam, and whipped buttermilk cream.
Paula McIntyre visits Nashville, the world’s country music capital. She joins the queue at Arnold’s Country Kitchen, a Nashville institution, to sample meatloaf, turnip greens and their famous fried green tomatoes. Paula then heads to a music venue to hear a special performance by Kirwan, a duo from Northern Ireland who left home for a new life in Music City. And she joins the congregation’s best cooks at the Second Presbyterian Church at a celebratory Scots-Irish pot luck lunch. At her outdoor mountain kitchen, Paul cooks a sugar plum and hazelnut cobbler and barbecued pork shoulder with corn on the cob, kale and squash.
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.
