The Sea Monster is back!

I have mentioned in previous ‘blogs’ of my love of both Monkfish and Samphire – well here is a simple and totally delicious recipe which combines these two ‘treasures’ with a few other special ingredients, to make Rosemary Infused Monkfish Chunks in Air Dried Ham Parcels.

Monkfish, as it is commonly known in the UK, because of its ugly appearance is sometimes referred to as either Sea Monster or Sea Monk. It is mainly found in the North Atlantic and presented in UK fish mongers in the form of fillets. However in Spain it is sold in steak form with the central bone in much the same way we buy halibut steaks.

The recipe for the monkfish/ham bit is here. The fish chunks are coated in warm rosemary infused oil and wrapped in any air dried ham. The recipe uses Parma ham - I prefer Serrano and to me it is just as good and cheaper! This link explains a little about the different air dried hams. Then these parcels are baked in the oven with cherry tomatoes to make a mouth watering mix of flavours.

I then prefer to serve these parcels and tomatoes on a bed of samphire. As I previously mentioned in another blog, I simply place the samphire in a colander, wash well with cold water and then pour a kettle of boiling water over the samphire – that’s it!

So go for it, you will be delighted with this great yet simple recipe and let me know if you liked it. By the way, I have found an exciting new monkfish recipe where the monkfish medallions are baked in a lemon and herb crust – I will let you know how it tastes after I make it this weekend!

FLOUR - Proper Flow Control In The Silo & At Home

Flour is truly a simple yet complex commodity, universally providing the key ingredient to provide mankind with the ‘Bread of Life’. There are many different types of flour, with wheat flour being the most commonly used. There is also:

• corn flour (sometimes called corn starch and used in making ice cream)


• rye flour (wheat free with low gluten content)


• tapioca flour (wheat free, gluten free and made from the root of the cassava plant)


• rye flour (wheat free and makes a denser bread such as pumpernickel)

The list of wheat free and gluten free flours is a long one!

Our household flour comes to us in small neatly packed bags and perhaps we only appreciate the true properties of flour once it has been baked into wonderfully smelling new warm bread.

In Ireland, especially in the country areas when I was a small boy the majority of bread baked was called ‘Soda Bread’ which took its name from the fact that instead of using yeast as a ‘rising’ ingredient, to make Irish Soda Bread, a combination of buttermilk liquid and sodium bicarbonate power were used to create carbon dioxide bubbles to ‘rise’ the dough. The buttermilk of course was the by-product of 'churning' whole milk to make butter; indeed it was also used by the farmer’s wife as a thirst quenching drink, stored in the cool of the butter pantry.

When my mother made soda bread she baked them on a flat griddle above the fire to form Soda Farls. During this process she always had flour up to her elbows and occasionally on her nose where she had rubbed it to stop an itch. I used to watch this entire process with awe and my reward for helping her to clean up afterwards would be a slice of fresh, warm soda bread, smothered in Irish country butter – I can still remember that exquisite taste to this day!

As I got older, I was also allowed to help in the dough making process and remember on one occasion when in the middle of adding the flour, she was called away to speak with a visitor. I was instructed to add a tablespoon full of plain flour to thicken the dough and being somewhat complacent, instead of using the big spoon, I decided to tip in straight from (in those days) the small cotton sack. Well at first the flour did not flow but remained ‘firmly’ in the bag until I tipped the bag higher, when ‘whoosh' - half of the flour in the bag suddenly ended up in the mixing bowl and all over me. Of course it ruined the dough and also ruined my chances that day of tasting a freshly buttered slice of soda bread! If you fancy making some Irish Soda Farls you will find a simple recipe here.

Through my company Primasonics I have encountered the exact same flow characteristics of flour within silos. It holds up on the side walls of the silo, making silo cleaning difficult and the build up can become so great that it all dislodges with such force as to cause the flour to run like water out of the silo discharge device and onto the floor. To solve this side wall build up we install a sonic horn of the correct frequency on top of the silo and sound it for a few seconds every few minutes. This prevents side wall build up thus providing controlled ‘mass flow’ but the sound waves also keep the flour within the silo at a flat level on top, thus making it much easier for stocktaking with much more reliable stock figures as a result.

Let me know by e-mail (sound@sonic-horns) if you get round to making and enjoying some Irish Soda Bread!