Recently in The perfect pestle and mortar Category

In our house we really like pizza, especially when the parents aren't about and the cottage turns into the Sunday lunch stop for the Sister, Little Sister and Small Brother. It's easy to make the dough and sauce ahead of time, leaving the final assembly for when everybody turns up. That way they also get to choose their own toppings, which keeps everybody happy. This is how it works:

Sunday morning

It was (almost) pig all the way at Bord Bia's Irish Food Bloggers Event yesterday as 30 people - some strangers in the flesh, yet already intimates online - gathered together for a day of demonstrations, discussions, and attempts at matching faces to personalities. As the ripples from 2008's dioxin scare are still being felt throughout the industry - only today has the Chinese market reopened to Irish pork - the focus was on the pig, specifically Bord Bia Quality Assured Irish Pork.

Following David Owens' information about the Bord Bia quality mark and the calm preparation of spelt bread and miso pesto by Lorraine Fitzmaurice of Blazing Salads, GMIT butchery lecturer Pat Conway's animated antics with a loin of pork really set the ball rolling (you can watch him in action here and here). For all the world like a cheery model for the butcher mannequin which stands outside shops around Ireland, Conway proceeded to cut up the meat with gusto, punctuating his sentences with strokes of the knife. Pork dissected, Maire Dufficy of Bord Bia took center stage for a demonstration of simple, mammy-style, pork recipes which whetted appetites for lunch.

Besides the pure food side of things, there was also a brief presentation from The Damien Mulley of FoodFight.ie and the Irish Blog Awards (bow down!) on blogging and its crossovers to traditional media, while Eoin Purcell, formerly of Mercier Press, spoke about taking a blog to a book, speaking with honesty about what he called the Irish "boutique" publishing industry.

Food stylist Erica Ryan and photographer Jocasta Clarke finished off the day with a fascinating - and intimidating - presentation on their jobs which, with all the talk of glycerin droplets and apertures had many of the audience (well, me anyway!) too intimidated to take out their cameras for the obligatory shots of the presenters. Of course, us being bloggers, during the rest of the day there were photos aplenty; of the pork loin wrestled about by Pat, Maire tossing noodles, the bread being mixed by Lorraine, and Jocasta Clarke putting shiny balls on psychedelic cupcakes. Cameras flashed right, left and centre at lunchtime to take pictures of the plates of roasted pork with roasted vegetables that we could barely eat for talking on all sides.

Informative and educational as the day was, it was also very much a day for meeting (well-known) strangers. Initial awkwardness only lasted as long as it took to start talking about the last blog post/twitter conversation as we realised how many connections we already had to each other.

It was a pleasure to catch up with Aoife from The Daily Spud again (check out her piece in The Irish Times' biodiversity supplement today) as well as an opportunity to meet Kristin from Dinner du Jour (watch out for herself and Kelly on the next MyKidsTime food newsletter) and the American representatives from AnAmericanInIreland and I Married An Irish Farmer. The day wasn't long enough to talk to everyone but it was a pleasure to meet the ladies and gentlemen behind CheapEats.ie, Smörgåsblog, Friendly Cottage, SupperSatisfaction, Mangos with Lime, Adventures in Veg and I Can Has Cook.

A huge thank you to the ladies - Maeve and Klara - at Bord Bia and Donal Skeehan for all the emailing, namebadging, tweeting and organising that happened in advance and on the day. Thanks also to Good4U whose sprouts and seeds were the perfect additions to a noodle salad on the bus home. Desert came courtesy of Lilly Higgins (a morish Macroom oatmeal ginger biscuit) and a fruit bowl from The Orchard Garden. Judging by the ever-increasing numbers on Donal's list of Irish food bloggers, we'll have to get a far bigger room next time!

(* with apologies to Stéphane Reynaud's Pork and Sons)

If you're interested in gardening, food - or both! - make tracks to Bord Bia's Bloom 2010 festival, which is taking place in Dublin's Phoenix Park over the June Bank Holiday weekend, from 2 to 7 June. Alongside the show gardens and an expanded artisan farmers' market, Bord Bia's Best In Season will be displaying a marquee-ful of fresh produce to highlight the fruit and vegetables in season in Ireland (check out the Best In Season website for some printable calendars to stick up on your fridge), the members of GIY Ireland are growing vegetables for an Edible Garden, and Bloom meets SeptemberFest with a Craft Beer Garden for the ever-growing number of fine beer aficionados.

A cookery stage will feature demonstrations from Darina Allen, Catherine Fulvio of Ballyknocken House, Neven Maguire, Jenny Bristow and fellow blogger extraordinaire Donal Skehan of Good Mood Food.

Should you wish to brush up on some old-school basics there will also be talks and demonstrations on lost and forgotten food skills over the weekend, including butter churning, fish smoking and apple pressing. Plenty to keep everyone in the family occupied! There is more information in the press release below, on the Bloom website, Twitter and Facebook. Tickets, without any of those annoying booking fees, are also available online or by phone (0818 300 260). Discounts will be available for tickets booked in advance and kids go free.

Donal Skehan, over on Good Mood Food, has been putting a list of Irish food bloggers together in advance of tomorrow's Bord Bia bloggers event and there are now - count 'em - more than 40. It's a long way from the empty slate in March 2005 when Bibliocook took its first tentative steps into the world!

I remember the excitement when I first discovered early bloggers like Ice Cream Ireland, Bubble Brothers, Val's Kitchen, Italian Foodies and Martin Dwyer, many of whom I have also met in person since. In the first couple of years of the Irish Blog Awards, there was no need of a special food and drink section but, by 2008, there were more than enough of us to warrant our own category. Now it seems like there are more people to discover every day and, thanks to Damien Mulley, FoodFight.ie is a great way of keeping up with what's happening.

I'm looking forward putting more faces on the names, recipes and writing tomorrow - and a great deal of thanks is due to Bord Bia and Donal Skehan for all the organising! Anyone interested in car pooling from North Cork?

Simple, accessible recipes are Tana Ramsay's hallmark and that hasn't changed in her latest book, Tana's Kitchen Secrets. Unlike her superchef husband, Ramsay's family-orientated recipes - she has four children to cater for - are all of the easily achievable, what-will-I-make-tonight kind. Dishes like Indian Lamb Chops, Moroccan Fish Tagine or Raspberry & Lemon Torta will appeal to everyone and there's no need for complicated equipment or difficult-to-find ingredients.

Each of the recipes is accompanied with a "kitchen secret" or tip - how to make perfect roasted vegetables, cooking with honey, skinning a fish - which will be invaluable for new cooks as well as a great refresher for the more experienced. The chapter on Slow and Easy Meat is perfect for anyone who likes to get the prep (and the washing!) out of the way early and Ramsay also has great chapters on vegetables, bread making and sauces/dressings.

Sweet treats aren't forgotten about with a tempting selection of puddings, cakes and biscuits that includes the traditional - Victoria Sponge, Cherry & Almond Loaf - alongside recipes that are just a little bit different, such as Caramelised Peaches with Hazelnut Crème Fraîche, Pineapple with a Lime Twist, Lemon and Thyme Shortbread.

Packed with plenty of colourful, tasty ideas, Tana's Kitchen Secrets is a cookbook designed for lots of kitchen use.

Must Try: Roast Beetroot with Crème Fraîche & Chives, Chocolate Cheesecake, Pineapple Tart Tatin, Tomato and Tarragon Mayonnaise

Tana's Kitchen Secrets by Tana Ramsay is published by Mitchell Beazley

Just picture the scene: an ancient chateau set amidst vineyards in the heart of the Bordeaux countryside, guests from all over the world gathering together on the terrace to celebrate a wedding, May sunshine breaking through the clouds as the couple stand in front of friends and family. C'est tres romantique, non?

This was the idyllic setting for our friends' wedding last Saturday week at Château Lagorce. Just back at the cottage after days of travelling, the whole event still seems dream-like. The location was amazing, the French celebrant's memorable accent bringing to mind Rowan Atkinson's priest from Four Weddings and a Funeral and the continuous stream of pre-dinner canapés were extraordinary (earthy beetroot gazpacho, perfectly seared scallops, crunchy fried morsels of tête de veau or calves head). I, unfortunately, had to leave before  dinner was served - Little Missy decided that it was time for bed - but I did see plates beautifully cooked duck going past as we headed for home and heard tales of croquembouche (a French profiterole wedding cake) for afters.

We - suckers for punishment - decided to drive over so that we could camp but unfortunately the weather wasn't warm enough. Of course, we only found this out after a very disturbed night under canvas when LM decided to tell all our neighbours exactly how bloody cold it was at 3am. A move to a nearby hotel for the wedding and a subsequent stay in a cosy mobile home at an exceptionally good camp site near Saint-Émilion proved to be money well spent as we all got much more sleep. So the tent didn't get too much use this time round but at least it didn't take up too much space in the car and there was plenty available for wine loading on the way home. And that wasn't all we loaded. With whole aisles of cheese and chocolate in the hypermarches, I was in heaven. When the Husband unloaded the car I'm sure he wasn't surprised to discover stashes of chocolate bars, saucisson, camembert, cider, tins of duck and pork cassoulet, and bread tucked in amidst the clothes and sleeping bags! 

A few recommendations: 
We travelled over on Irish Ferries' Oscar Wilde from Rosslare which is perfectly adequate although very slow (9.30pm departure, 5pm arrival the following day) but came home on the more comfortable Pont-Aven with Brittany Ferries, which delivered us straight to Cork after only 14 hours. It is slightly more expensive but the fact that it cuts down on travel time at sea and in Ireland and also serves better food and coffee makes it well worth the extra money. 

Landing in Cherbourg and leaving from Roscoff (nice town, good for food) meant that the area around Rennes was a good place for stopping in each direction. On the way down we stayed at an Accor hotel on the outskirts of the city which was far nicer that its unpromising outside appearance. For the homeward journey, the bride's sister pointed us in the direction of the inexpensive and easy to find Logis Auberge Du Cheval Blanc in the picturesque town of Chateaugiron so we didn't have to do battle with Rennes traffic for a second time

We also took advantage of her research for places to stay after the wedding, ending up at the wonderful Domaine de La Barbanne. They have a range of campsites and well-equipped mobile accommodation options, it's 30 minutes walk to Saint-Émilion, has two free buses going each way from the campsite every day and there are plenty vineyards within 10 minutes walking distance. I'd go back there in a shot - if it didn't involve 7½ hours driving from Cherbourg in a car with a Little Missy.

How do you make seaweed sexy? Take a passionate woman who happens to be an expert forager and cook, add a strong sense of place - the Sligo coast - scatter with a selection of recipes from well known (Domini Kemp, Hugo Arnold) and local Irish chefs (Brid Torrades of Sligo's Tobergal Lane Cafe) and you have Prannie Rhatigan's fabulous Irish Seaweed Kitchen.

An erudite cookbook that makes seaweed accessible to those who never had the opportunity to harvest duileasc, kelp or sleabhac, Rhatigan combines tempting recipes with tips on how to make the most of a large variety of sea vegetables. Seaweed plays a major part in some recipes - Filo Pie with Sea Spaghetti, Mushrooms and Apples, Duileasc Champ, Nori Pancakes with St Tola Cheese - but Rhatigan also has a wide range of recipes with unexpected additions: a seed cake with sugar kelp, cookies with sea spaghetti or alaria, duileasc in cheese scones. The Teddy Bears' Picnic chapter gives a great selection of recipes that will appeal to kids and directions on how to set up your own clambake, a method of steaming foods - Ratigan includes lobsters, chickens, clams and mussels - in a pit with seaweed, had me salivating.

Alongside information on how to gently introduce seaweed to your diet and a glossary of edible seaweeds, there is also a well-photographed chapter on picking your own, with tips on where the different varieties grow. Just in case you don't get a chance to splash around by the sea side, Rhatigan also includes the contact details for Irish and Northern Irish seaweed suppliers, including Bibliocook favourite and Foodtalk: Wild Food interviewee Seamus Moran of LoTide Fine Foods. That list - and a useful bookmark printed with a simple guide to preparing seaweed for culinary use - will give impetus to many people interested in embarking on their own seaweed adventure. A fascinating, delicious and inspiring read.

Irish Seaweed Kitchen by Prannie Rhatigan is published by Booklink. More information on her own website at www.prannie.com. After being inspired by her cookbook, keep an eye on The Organic Centre website for her popular seaweed cookery demonstrations and walks.

So, we didn't win last night - but, as my producer said, that doesn't mean that we aren't great! An Australian show - The Main Ingredient: New Years Day, which was presented by Kelli Brett and produced by ABC Radio - took the 2010
Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Award for Best Food/Drink Radio Programme.

Disappointed? Yes, of course. But I'm still fiercely proud of the Foodtalk series and we didn't do too badly to make it onto a shortlist of seven out of all the food radio shows in the world. Better luck next time, hopefully.

Today's the day when the results of the 2010 World Food Media Awards will be announced in Adelaide. Fingers crossed for Foodtalk: Spices and the other Irish nominees.

Don't forget - Dine In Cork Restaurant Week starts today, Friday 30 April, and runs until next Saturday, 8 May. A total of 25 restaurants in and around Cork, including Bibliocook favourites Star Anise, Liberty Grill, Fenn's Quay, Jacques (all in Cork city) and Over the Moon in Skibbereen are offering a three course dinner, plus tea or coffee, for just €25. You'll find more details, including menus, here and on Facebook/Twitter. Book early, book often!

The ninth edition of the Bridgestone Irish Food Guide has arrived and it's overflowing with smokehouses and bakeries, markets and farmshops, gastropubs and country houses.

Packed with, as they say, "all the good stuff and only the good stuff", John and Sally McKenna, together with their contributing editors, have roamed the highways and byways of the country to put this chunky, opinionated food directory together. Whether it is revisiting old favourites - Glebe Gardens, The Old Convent, McCarthy Butchers - or discovering new pleasures (Gourmet Gadgets, Kate's Farm Shop, the Blue Geranium Café, Organico), there's lots to read here and even more to seek out.

But it's not all sweetness (check out Bridgestone newbie Pandora Bell) and light (Valentia's Lighthouse Café gets a great write up). In his introduction John McKenna takes the supermarkets, which he describes as amoral, destructive harlots, to task for their role in destroying Irish farming.

He calls for the shoppers of Ireland to take a stand, focusing on Fair Trade for our own by "buying local food from local farmers". And then, with the hundreds of entries that follow, he hands you the tools to facilitate this, whether it is by market, by website or by phone.

My copy has now gone to live in the car, fitting neatly into its usual spot - the side pocket of the passenger's seat - where I can peruse it regularly, helpfully pointing out good stopping spots to the Husband. Any book that can help me identify decent stopping places on the road from Cork to Dublin (Café Odhrán and The Gallic Kitchen, both Abbeyleix) is more than worth €15. Bring on the next road trip!

The Bridgestone Irish Food Guide 2009 is published by Estragon Press. Buy it online here.

9 July 2007: A trip to Carlow with the Bridgestone Food Guide

Stirring tagines in Morocco, making fish cakes in Bangkok or buying the ingredients for Chicken with Apples in Normandy, make the most of your holidays by taking a cookery class while abroad. On SilverCircle.ie Caroline Hennessy gives some ideas for locations where the recipes you learn will last far longer than a suntan.

Useful Contacts
The Wilde Kitchen, Normandy, France
www.wildekitchen.net
The Hanoi Cooking Centre, Hanoi, Vietnam
hanoicookingcentre.com
La Maison Arabe Cooking School, Marrakech, Morocco
www.lamaisonarabe.com
Baipai Thai Cooking School, Bangkok, Thailand
www.baipai.com

Forget growing your own vegetables - keeping chickens in the back garden is one of the fastest growing hobbies in Ireland. But how easy is it to make sure you have your own fresh-from-the-hen free-range eggs for breakfast? Caroline Hennessy shows you how on SilverCircle.ie.

Useful Contacts
Elaine Mackey runs regular courses on keeping chickens from her home in Ballinteer. More information is available on her website www.keepingchickens.ie or via email: elaine@keepingchickens.ie

Friendly forums with lots of useful information on keeping chickens:
www.poultrykeeper.co.uk
www.keepingchickens.myfreeforum.org

Chicken housing and equipment:
www.omlet.co.uk
www.fingerprint123.com
www.chic-hens.ie
www.sophieshens.com

After I recovered from the excitement of the Foodtalk: Spices nomination in the Best Food/Drink Radio Programme for this year's Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Awards - it's taken a while! - I found a few fellow Irish nominees on the list.

Two RTÉ-produced television programmes - Catherine's Italian Kitchen with Catherine Fulvio (one of the few dark-haired female chefs working in a sea of blonds!) and Trish Deseine's Trish's Paris Kitchen - are competing against each other for Best Television Food and/or Drink Show. The other Irish nominee - although categorised under United Kingdom - is Darina Allen for her hefty Forgotten Skills of Cooking (Kyle Cathie) in the Best Hardcover Recipe Book (over €35) category. One of the books that Darina is up against is the heartbreaking Secrets of the Red Lantern by Pauline Nguyen (Murdoch Books), which I've just finished, a book on Vietnamese food as told through a prism of pain and miscommunication.

Also on my bookshelves is one of the nominees for Best Soft Cover Recipe Book, KOTO: A culinary journey through Vietnam by Tracey Lister and Andreas Pohl (Hardie Grant). I picked this up in Hanoi while doing a cookery class at the Hanoi Cooking Centre and, with my recent purchase of a corriander plant, I'm hoping to actually use some of the recipes! Andrew Pern's magnificant Black Pudding and Foie Gras (Face) is up for a Best Food Book award, as is the thought provoking Bottom Feeder by Taras Grescoe (Harper Collins).

It's also good to see New Zealand's Cuisine Magazine nominated in a total of six categories, between photographers (Aaron McLean, Ken Downie), writers (David Burton, Ralph Kyte-Powell), as well as being up for Best Food Magazine and Best Drink Magazine for their Cuisine Wine Country publication. 

But, naturally enough, the most important category is my own! Here is a list of my fellow nominees, with - when I could find them - links to their radio programmes.

BEST FOOD/DRINK RADIO PROGRAMME
Foodtalk: Spices - Presented by Caroline Hennessy and Kevin Thornton, produced by Soundsdoable, IRELAND
Talking Food with Lyndey Milan - Presented and produced by Murray Wilton and Lyndey Milan, AUSTRALIA
Kathmandu Kitchen: Spiritual Sustenance - Presented by Elaine Corn, Produced by Capital Public Radio, USA
Cooking with Lynne Mullins - Presented by Lynne Mullins, Produced by Fairfax Media, AUSTRALIA
Cooking with Kindness - Presented by Kate Nelson and Geoff Hutchison, Produced by ABC Radio, AUSTRALIA
Sue Zelickson Holiday Special - Presented by Sue Zelickson, Produced by WCCO Radio, USA
The Main Ingredient: New Year's Day - Presented by Kelli Brett, Produced by ABC Radio, AUSTRALIA

There was big excitement at the cottage when I learned that Spices, one of the Foodtalk documentaries that I presented for Newstalk, is a nominee for the 2010 Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Awards! These awards celebrate the very best in international food publishing and broadcasting. With a total of 700 entries across 21 categories, now whittled down to 181 nominations, it is a true honour to make it this far. Spices is nominated in the best food/drink radio programme category alongside six other programmes from Australia and America.

The programme, which was presented by Kevin Thornton and myself, featured Carmel Somers of the Good Things Café in Durrus together with Green Saffron's Arun Kapil. Spices was just one of the six programmes in a documentary series that was first broadcast on Newstalk from December 2010 to January 2009 and produced by Soundsdoable, a small, inspirational independent production company. Gents, I love your work!

I was fortunate enough to be involved in the Foodtalk series from an early stage. Together with Soundsdoable, I worked on putting the pieces together during the non-summer of 2008 and spent that golden autumn driving around the country to interview amazing people about the food that they love. That was occasionally stressful - sometimes journeys took far longer than anticipated! - but also a fascinating learning experience and enormous fun.

We also spent two incredible days in Kevin Thornton's kitchen, recording the sounds of him cooking: cream boiling, knives sharpening, the sizzle of frying tuna, the crunch of a lobster shell being penetrated by a knife. It was like having a personal cooking class from the best chef in the country, with the added benefit of getting to eat the finished product. Noisettes of venison, flambéed with Madeira? Yes please!

The recordings gathered together, my producer got to work and I have to credit him with having the vision to produce such an amazing finished piece. He wove the interviews with the people featured, evocative introductions that I wrote and recorded, chats between myself and Kevin and the sound of Kevin's kitchen with beautiful original music into a dream-like, seamless whole. I loved working on this series, getting to talk to many amazing people and - always important - getting to eat the very best food.

Fingers crossed for Monday, 3 May, when the results will be announced at an awards ceremony in Adelaide.

If you haven't already heard it, you can listen to the Foodtalk on Newstalk Spices programme here and there is more information on the rest of the Foodtalk series here.

There was sunshine and crowds at the Mallow Food Festival on Easter Sunday morning, the street thronged with people wandering at the early event before heading home for Easter lunch. I abandoned the Husband and Little Missy at home for a quick zoom in and out as we were heading down to Gort-Na-Nain Guesthouse that afternoon, with a side trip to Cork so the Husband could peruse the offerings at the Franciscan Well Easter Beer Fest.

Mallow Food Festival: There were sweet things aplenty, including a couple of stalls - Cupcake Cottage and Crafty Confections - concentrating on beautifully decorated cupcakes. For those who wanted to preempt their lunch, Green Saffron were doing a brisk trade dishing up bowls of fragrant curry, Anne Bradfield's Taste a Memory pies were going down a treat and there was a busy-looking stall serving up baked potatoes and vegetarian chilli. There were also gorgeous aprons, in adult and kids' sizes, on sale from Coco Chico. I was very restrained, just picking up some Ballyhoura apple juice, cider and cider vinegar and a couple of jars from the Rebel Chilli stall: a sweet but spicy jalapeno and raspberry relish and a HOT jar of chillionaire sauce.

Franciscan Well Easter Beer Fest: The Husband, after a few considered pints - sorry, tastings! - was most impressed with the hoppy, refreshing Óir (he thinks) from new Kildare company Trouble Brewing.

Although I wasn't drinking, I was impressed with the range of microbrewery beers on offer, the stalls arrayed around a small courtyard with a well-produced brochure listing all the breweries and beers. It's a great sign of the times when there's such a variety available and it looks like Ireland's microbrewery revolution is finally taking off.

Franciscan Well Brewery, North Mall, Cork. www.franciscanwellbrewery.com

Gort-Na-Nain Guesthouse: staying at Gort-Na-Nain is like staying with that couple of really cool friends that you have - you always get a comfortable room, ready-equipped with great music and books, a chance to walk around the five-acre organic farm and observe how things have been progressing, and, to top it all off, they are also amazing cooks.

For dinner: tartlets of Jerusalem artichokes, chard and feta - little stacks of crispy polenta discs, sandwiching borlotti beans with mature Ardrahan goats' cheese - muscavado meringue with stewed rhubarb and cream. And we don't even have to do the wash up! Is it any wonder that we return year after year?

Gort-Na-Nain, Ballyherkin, Nohoval, Kinsale, Co Cork. www.gortnanain.com