Warm salad of Gubbeen cheese and bacon - "Mother and Son Salad" – with spiced cranberries.

Ingredients

Serves: 4

  • 4 handfuls mixed leaves
  • 100g Gubbeen streaky bacon, cut into fine lardons
  • 100g de-rinded and diced ( ¾ cm )Gubbeen cheese
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • Vinaigrette dressing
  • 1 tablespoon Highbank Orchard Irish Apple Vinegar
  • 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • ¼ teaspoon mustard
  • ¼ teaspoon honey
  • Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Spiced Cranberries

  • 450g cranberries, fresh or frozen
  • 250g sugar
  • 250ml water
  • 125ml white wine vinegar
  • ½ stick cinnamon
  • 1 star anise
  • 4 cloves
  • 4cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled and thickly sliced
  • 1 red or green chilli, split and seeded

Potato, Red Onion and Rosemary Crisp Cakes

Serves: 4-8

  • 300g, peeled and thinly sliced potatoes
  • 3 tablespoons clarified butter, melted
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 100g, thinly sliced red onion
  • 1 tablespoon rosemary sprigs
  • Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

  • Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees celius.

For the salad:

  1. Stick the whole cloves into the sliced ginger. Place the sugar, water and vinegar in a small, non-reactive saucepan. Add all of the spices and chilli and bring slowly to the boil.
  2. Add the cranberries and simmer gently until the fruit becomes tender and bursts. This takes only about 8 minutes. Allow to cool and store in the fridge.
  3. To assemble the salad, heat the olive oil in a sauté pan. Add the bacon and cook until crisp and golden.
  4. While the bacon is cooking, toss the salad leaves in enough of the dressing to make the leaves glisten. Place on a large flat serving dish. Scatter the diced cheese around and over the leaves. Drizzle some cranberries on in a similar manner.
  5. Finally, scatter on the hot and crispy bacon and serve immediately.

For the crisp cakes:

  1. Preheat oven to 250c
  2. Line an oven tray with parchment paper.
  3. Mix the potatoes with the butter and olive oil.
  4. Divide the potatoes into 8 even sized bundles and then on the parchment lined tray, arrange each little bundle in barely overlapping slices to create thin square or circular single layer flat cakes.
  5. Toss the sliced onions and rosemary sprigs in the remaining butter in the potato bowl and place them on top of the potatoes. Season each cake with salt and pepper.
  6. Place in the pre-heated oven and cook for c 30 minutes until dark golden at the edges and crisp.
  7. Serve as soon as possible.