When you have the boys in town and you have known them as long as Chef Kev has, you know good stuff is going to happen!
Here’s the situation: 7 lads, 8-pounds of beef, 1 epic adventure of a meal.
Horseradish mash, goose fat roasted potatoes, Vichy carrots, grilled beans, Yorkshire pudding and the left over demi glace from Christmas dinner was going to start us off on an epic night of good food, good company and one helluva time.
Kev grabbed this hunk of glory from his local butcher in Kilcock who knows how to treat him right. Over 8-lbs of succulent fore-rib roast is coated in mustard, garlic, thyme and rosemary and popped into the oven for 2 and a half hours!
One thing that needs to be said about beef in Ireland is it isn’t the same as other places in the world. For one thing, this meat is mighty fine due to the way it has been raised. I’m not talking beer fed, hand massaged Kobe beef, but I am talking about grass fed, normal life, natural cows that are born and bred in Ireland. Eliminating the corn-fed, machine-packed, bacteria-ridden muscle boxes from the meal equation has an intoxicating effect on your taste buds. Explosions of flavor bombs hit you all over.
By the time the main course has come around and finished, bottles of wine and beer have stacked the table and it’s not even 7 o’clock in the evening, yet.
Here comes dessert. Profiteroles a la banane with a whipped cream and chocolate ganache. Profiteroles would be like a donut hole crossed with a fried croissant. The texture is light, buttery and pop in your mouth goodness. Each one has been filled with a whipped cream and accompanied by a glazed banana slice. Drizzled with a chocolate ganache makes this dessert too good to be true.
In the end, what happens is a fantasmic evening drizzled with good laughter and lads that know how to talk. Stories of adventures abroad and how truly f*cked up and wild it was to grow up as a young boy in Ireland. These boys have stuck it through despite all going their separate ways. It makes the reunion that much sweeter.
