Bibliocook: All About Food

On a quick trip to Dublin today and enjoyed a brief visit to Carluccio's Caffè on Dawson Street. Lots of gorgeous food to look at and buy – including some very presentable Christmas hampers and gifts in luxurious packaging – in the deli area at the front of their premises but we didn't have time to linger. In search of some quick soup, we got Pasta e Fagioli, a sustaining bowl of borlotti beans and pasta in a rich broth, with a chunk of olive oil-soaked, salt-sprinkled foccacia. A cup of fresh mint tea (mint leaves in boiling water, sweeten as desired) finished off a simple and satisfying repast. Must go looking for that Pasta e Fagioli recipe in my new Carluccio's Complete Italian Food cookbook...

Next Wednesday, 19 November, if you're around Cork you should head directly to Fenn's Quay Restaurant, which is hosting a Bubble Brothers Cahors wine tasting dinner. Jean-Raymond Clarenc of Clos Triguedina will be there to talk guests through tastings of about six of his wines, matched with food from chef Kevin Crowley. And the price? A very reasonable €50 per person. You can call the restaurant directly (021 4279527) or check out the Bubble Brothers blog for more details. They're also running a competition to win a free dinner and there's more information on that here.

Nights are dark and cold and my cooking has changed to correspond with the changing of the season. Anything that can be put into a pot and forgotten about in the oven while I get some work done scores particularly highly on my dinner scale and last night's dish got full marks for maximum flavour with minimum effort.

This is based on a Jane Grigson recipe from her constantly referenced Vegetable Book. When we still had lots of vegetables in the garden it was a fantastic resource for the regular gluts; now as I do most of my vegetable buying at farmers' markets, it still comes in useful for the random piles of roots or brassicas that I end up with. I've been getting lots of cabbage from Morris from Gairdín Eden and, as I refuse to actually boil it (too many bad childhood memories!), I am always on the lookout for some different way to cook it.

For this recipe, which Jane calls Stuffed Cabbage in the Troo Style, you only need three ingredients but you can't skimp on them. Get yourself some good cabbage and make sure you pick up some fabulous sausages – I got some herbal Hodgins sausages, made locally in Mitchelstown and they had a great kick. I'll give the proportions that I used but I don't really think that it matters too much if you deviate from them. Tempted though I was to jazz it up a little, Jane does point out that she's tried adding different herbs, tomatoes and bacon but has always come back to the simplicity of the original. I made this in my lovely bean pot (a present from the Connoisseur) which ensured that not too much of the gorgeous juices evaporated. Serve with something simple to mop up – mashed potato is always good – or you can try the idea from Writing at the Kitchen Table and put a layer of sliced potatoes on top.

Continue reading "Baked Stuffed Cabbage" »

Just heard that Jo'Burger in Rathmines – the place that undoubtedly serves the best burger in Dublin and the place of our last meal before we forsook the capital for country life – has been named most popular restaurant by The Dubliner in a public poll. As I write, this year's The Dubliner 100 Best Restaurants guide is being launched in the Westbury Hotel, with Dylan McGrath of Mint chosen favourite chef by his peers. Other favourites in the People's Choice Award are Bentley's (avoid the Aviator Lounge at all costs), Café Bar Deli, Chapter One, L'Gueuleton, La Maison des Gourmets, Saba (great noodles), Town Bar and Grill, The Unicorn and the ever-fabulous Winding Stair.

Greatfood.ie have just relaunched a much-expanded discussion board, with a dedicated area for bloggers to list their own blogs at www.greatfood.ie/forum. While you're there, check out Clodagh McKenna's cute aprons (although much too cute for a cottage kitchen!) and take a look at the selection of cookery courses on offer throughout Ireland.

Nigel Slater, my favourite cookery writer, wrote a piece on squash and marrows in Sunday's Observer and, seeing as I'm probably not the only one to have lots of squash to use, I thought it might come in useful. You'll find it here. Speaking of squash, check out 101 Cookbooks for a version of Denis Cotter's recipe for Borlotti Bean Mole with Roast Winter Squash.

The Tannery cookery school has just opened and Paul Flynn has lots of tempting courses on offer, including his Irish Adventure With Food demonstrations and practical classes focusing on winter food like turnips, kale, parsnips and slow cooked beef. I recently borrowed his cookbook from the Clonmel-based cousin and am thoroughly enjoying it – if his classes are as accessible as his writing then he's on to a winner.

Just came across this article on 20 Cheap Eats throughout Ireland in the Sunday Tribune which mentions lots of my favourite places, including Gruel, the Farmgate Café, Ard Bia, Cornucopia, the Cake Café – and there's another 15 to try out.

The vegetable garden suffered this year. Not only was the weather appalling but the Husband, lulled into a false sense of security by our bunny-killing machine (aka Puddy Cat), took down the rabbit-proof fence – the week before the cat up and died on us. It didn't take long before the rabbits realised that our newly planted leeks, beans and kale were an all-you-can-eat buffet. The only things that survived were a few plants of perpetual spinach, some Swiss chard – and, thankfully, the squash.

After last year's success with the Ushiki Kuri squash we planted lots more, alongside some pumpkins. Despite the weather and fortunately ignored by the rabbits, the squash took off and we managed to gather a decent yield, most of which is hanging up around the kitchen in old onion net bags. The pumpkins – the variety was, I think, Queensland Blue from the ISSA – never really did very well and we only managed to salvage one. Still, at least there's enough squash so that we can make winter warming soups like this one, adapted from Nigel Slater's Bean and Black Cabbage one, especially good for killing colds if you have some good chicken stock in the freezer.

Continue reading "Squash for soup" »

I've written here before about my experience of building an outdoor wood-fired oven on a workshop held at Mallow Racecourse during the summer. My own oven is still not, ahem, built (or even started) but Hendrik Lepel, ovencraftsman extraordinaire, is holding another workshop in Nohoval over the weekend of the 15 and 16 November. More details below.

Continue reading "Outdoor oven building" »

There is a satisfying heft about Cornucopia at Home, an approachable collection of recipes from one of Dublin's best-known vegetarian restaurants. Written, photographed and designed by former staff, this handsome volume is a labour of love – and it shows.

Eleanor Heffernan, who worked in the restaurants a waitress, manager and chef for seven years, is the beating heart of the book: she knows the recipes from all angles, having been the chef preparing squash for the savoury Butternut Squash, Pumpkin Seed and Rosemary Scones (she always used the easy-to-chop, straight end!), dealing with the customer who wanted to buy an uncooked Apple Crumble for baking at home to impress a date, and noticing which of the dishes are most demand when they arrive on the counter (Sweet Potato, Broccoli and Lentil Sambar, White Bean and Roast Mediterranean Vegetable Pie with Basil Mash and Chocolate Marble Silken Torte are just a few of the favourites). With atmospheric photography and food styling from Orla Keeshan and Orlagh Murphy's colourful graphic design/illustration, the book is both testament and tribute to the ideals behind Cornucopia.

Cornucopia was set up in 1986 by Neil and Deirdre McCafferty. This Irish couple had just returned from nine years living in Boston and, having being influenced by the vegetarian and raw food cultures in America, decided to set up a health food shop and cafe on Wicklow Street. Successful from the start, after a few years, the food side of things expanded into the entire premises and so it has remained, under Deirdre's stewardship – Neil died suddenly of pancreatic cancer in 1993.

The restaurant has remained true to their original ideals: constantly aiming to achieve a happy union between health and taste. Quality seasonal ingredients, organic when possible, cooked simply are the basis of these recipes which will appeal – as does the restaurant – to those who are on special diets, are vegetarian or vegan, or who just appreciate good food.

The cookbook contains the greatest hits of Cornucopia, recipes chosen by democratic and diplomatic means, snapshots taken of staff behind the counter, educational information on ingredients and scenes from the life of the restaurant. Divided into five chapters – Soups, Salads, Mains, Breads and Deserts – each is subdivided into sections which make it easy to find your way around. In Salads, basic information is set alongside recipes for potato salads (including my favourite Garlic Mayonnaise Potato Salad with Toasted Hazelnuts), bean salads, grains and noodles and raw salads. The Bread section has a particularly useful table of bread preparation tunes, along with the ever-fantastic and exceptionally simple Spelt Bread that is ever-present on the counter.

Recipes are clearly laid out, easy to follow and, in the main, very uncomplicated. Just a cursory flick through will give you lots of ideas for dinner – take a look at Moroccan Chickpea Tagine with Orange-Scented Bulgar Wheat, Butter Bean, Roast Fennel, Pepper and Rocket Salad or Tomato, White Bean and Savoy Cabbage with Basil Oil Soup. For anyone who is restricted to a special diet, there are plenty of ideas, with some particularly good recipes for gluten-free and sugar-free baking.

There's no doubt that this book will be snapped up by the restaurant's many long-term restaurant customers – but they're not the only ones that are going to enjoy, appreciate and cook from Cornucopia at Home.

Cornucopia at Home is published by Atrium. Read more about the cookbook here.

Working my way through Leon: Ingredients and Recipes, Allegra McEvedy's fantastic cookbook from the London-based restaurant chain at the moment. As there was a big bunch of lovely dirty parsnips sitting around from the last Mallow Farmers' Market – like carrots, they always keep better when they still have some soil on them, even in my newly warm kitchen (the Husband recently got the stove working, just in time for winter) – I couldn't resist trying out her recipe for Indian Parsnip Soup. I followed it (almost) to the letter, even down to adding a drizzle of honey, a scattering of sumac (finally getting a use for that packet hanging around in the spice box) to each serving, with a wedge of lemon on the side to accentuate the flavours and it was, without a doubt, superb. Perfect for this horrible wintery weather too. Review to follow, when I get through the rest of the book, but you can read some of her writing and recipes in this series of extracts from the book on the Guardian website.

Extract from Leon: Ingredients and Recipes - Part One
Extract from Leon: Ingredients and Recipes - Part Two
Extract from Leon: Ingredients and Recipes - Part Three
Extract from Leon: Ingredients and Recipes - Part Four

One of my major perks, on days I work from home, is having the opportunity to make myself something really good for lunch. If those days also happen to feature me making chicken stock or reconstituting a big bag of dried pulses – these things happen in the kitchen without me having to think about them – there's more of a treat in store. A couple of scoops of chicken stock get siphoned off to make a gutsy noodle broth, infused with slivers of ginger, garlic and chilli and eaten with relish. Freshly cooked butter beans can easily find themselves tossed with a sundried tomato dressing and some of the left-over roast pumpkin from last night's dinner.

My most successful recent impromptu lunch involved chickpeas. I cooked a few handfuls of the just-tender pulses in my cast iron pan with some olive oil, taking plenty of time, until they were toasty and golden, added some garlic and lemon juice while the pan was still hot then tossed them with plenty of freshly grated parmesan. Simple and delicious.

Continue reading "Warm Chickpea Salad with Parmesan" »

If you're around Dublin on Sunday 14 December, Slow Food Dublin are planning a pre-Christmas, open air roast at Meeting House Square in Temple Bar with chestnut-stuffed roast pig on a spit, mulled wine, hot cider and live music. They will also have a number of stalls from food producers around the square and are looking for any new producers in the Dublin area to contact them if interested in participating. More information below.

Continue reading "Slow Food Dublin: Winter Roast" »

Tuesday was not a nice day. As I drove down to Kilmackillogue pier in Kerry in the morning, the rain rarely stopped beating against the windscreen as the wipers battled to give me a view of the road. It was not the perfect day to go out on a boat yet that's exactly where I was heading, off harvesting mussels with Paul Kelly, who is a part-time mussel farmer as well a gold and silversmith. On a brief stop in Kenmare – Jam was calling for morning tea – I took a moment to admire Paul's rings, which combine gold, silver and both precious and semi- precious stones, in the window of his shop, before hitting the wet road again for the extra half-hour drive to Kilmackillogue.

There were a few fishermen already out on the sheltered pier, well-clad in bright yellow oilskins and debating the state of the markets as they readied their shrimp pots. Paul layered up his waterproofs – I just had my NZ raincoat which is generally very useful, but not in this kind of weather. It just took a few minutes on the small boat, zooming out to Paul's mussel farm, before I was wet through. At least the top half of me was someway dry but I've never regretted my lack of waterproof leggings so much before. At least the water was calm and I was somewhat sheltered from the worst of the rain by standing behind Paul as he steered the boat into the bay.

We went way out, through rows of buoys, rafted together, marking where the mussel-growing ropes are located. When we reached Paul's farm, he reached under a buoy and pulled up one of the ropes. It's still early in the season but it was loaded with full sized mussels, which he easily pulled off by hand, along with hundreds of little crabs and starfish and lots of random bit of seaweed. Mussel fishing in Kilmackillogue is done very simply: if you hang the rope, they will come. Tiny seed mussels attach themselves to the rope and grow there, in seawater that is six fathoms deep. They then look after themselves, staying open underwater, feeding constantly until they are large enough to be harvested.

With a brief stop at a sorting table on a raft near to shore to get rid of the smaller mussels and associated debris, we returned to the pier, me wet to the skin and starting to freeze. Paul exports the majority of his mussels to France, saving a few for local restaurants including The Lime Tree in Kenmare, where I first tasted them. He landed a large sack of the mussels we had collected in the boot of my car, warning me that they might be a little salty as they were still full of seawater. I nodded, teeth chattering, as I planned huge bowls of Steamed Mussels for supper, Mussel Soups and Seafood Stews, Paella or maybe some Mussels with Garlic Breadcrumbs...

Later that night, after I had distributed bags of mussels to my mother, aunt and half the neighbourhood, the Husband and I sat down to a feed of Mussels Steamed with Garlic and White Wine. Paul was right – the liquor released was saltier than I am used to – but it didn't spoil our appetite as we relished the chance to eat the plump, juicy morsels to our heart's content. I steamed the remainder, picked the mussels from the shells and froze them to eat another day – despite our best efforts, we're just not able to eat more than a couple of kilos at a time! I don't think I've ever had the opportunity to eat mussels so fresh and delicious.

During my first couple of years in Dublin, I worked on Great Denmark Street, just off the top of O'Connell Street. At that stage, there weren't many lunch-friendly places around the northside so, if catching up with friends for lunch, the usual thing was to meet outside Trinity (cue Caroline legging it down O'Connell Street, over O'Connell Bridge and up Westmoreland Street at the rate of knots at 12.55pm) and go from there. One of my favourite places to go with the Tax Advisor – if we could grab a seat – was Cornucopia on Wicklow Street. We would fill up on warming winter soups, my favourite Spanakopita or hearty quiches, always with a big debate over which salads to choose. After a feed there, the Tax Consultant used to be terribly impressed at the fact that he didn't get hungry all afternoon long.

Then I moved jobs, out to the wilds of Donnybrook, quickly learning to bring my own lunches rather than depend on the vagaries of the RTÉ canteen, and Cornucopia lunchtimes were a thing of the past. Now, however, the very fine Atrium at Cork University Press have released Cornucopia at Home so that no one has to be deprived of their Cornucopia favourites – as a chickpea fan I'm looking forward to getting my hands on their Mediterranean Chickpea Salad recipe. I've already got several books published by Atrium on my shelves and in use, including The Creators from Dianne Curtin and Denis Cotter's first book, The Café Paradiso Cookbook. His A Paradiso Year: Autumn and Winter Cooking always gets hauled out as the days get shorter, especially when I have as many squash in the garden as I do this year. Watch out next year for the first cookbook from Carmel Somers of the Good Things Café in Durrus – from advance reports Eat Good Things sounds like something that should not be missed.

Any excuse is a good one to visit Dingle and when it involves a Food Festival and an invitation to participate in the judging of the inaugural National Irish Food Awards, also known as Blas na hÉireann, how could anyone resist? Certainly not me and Saturday found my tastebuds at the ready to sample some of the enormous variety of foods entered into a series of blind tastings. Without the context of packaging and placement, it was a real opportunity to see what was out there on the Irish market. And it wasn't all, ahem, work. I also got to meet fellow bloggers Val and Ollie, catch up with my former teacher Rory O'Connell, wander around the variety of food stalls scattered around the town, eat a first class meal at seafood restaurant Out of The Blue have several afternoon affogatos and sample a variety of the Mexican flavours on offer at Murphy's Ice Cream (the Guacamole was a very surprising hit.)

Amongst the winners are a lot of old favourites like Benoit Lorge's chocolates (his Rum Bitter won Silver in the chocolate category), Green Saffron's Rogan Josh spice blend (frequently used in this house), The Apple Farm's refreshing and classy Sparkling Apple Juice, East of Boston's Tantalising Toffee Sauce, David Llewellyn's intense Balsamic Cider Vinegar, Just Food's organic soups (as served in URRU) and breads from both the Blazing Salads Bread Company, a stalwart of my Dublin life, and the traditional Barron's Bakery in Cappoquin. All the results of this year's awards are below and are on the Blas na hÉireann website: congratulations to all the winners!

Continue reading "National Irish Food Awards/Blas na hÉireann winners" »

Who would have thought that garlicy guacamole ice cream could possibly equal gorgeousness?

Sadly URRU missed out at last night's Good Food Ireland Awards – we were nominated in the Top Regional Member category for the south of the country, along with The Blue Geranium Café at Hosfords Garden Centre, Café Paradiso, The Farmgate, Hayfield Manor Hotel, QC's Seafood Bar & Restaurant, The Poacher's Inn, The Tannery and the eventual winner – The Cliff House Hotel in Ardmore.

Still, there was more than enough good food, wine and company to keep us entertained in the Shelbourne Hotel and I got to catch up some old friends, including Anthony from Ummera Smokehouse – his award-winning organic gravadlax was on the menu, alongside Geraldine Bass' (Old Millbank Smokehouse) rich smoked salmon pâté – and Louise from Sowan's Organics, with her new spelt brownies. More information on the nominees and winners, highlighted in bold, below.

Continue reading "Good Food Ireland Awards" »