Recently in Restaurant review: Simo's Moroccan Restaurant Category

Peter Ward established the well-regarded Country Choice café and deli in Nenagh, Co Tipperary in the early 1980s. He talks to Caroline Hennessy for EveryMonday.ie about how he thinks the latest recession will affect Irish artisan food producers. More here.

When I lived in New Zealand, cooking was my way of getting to know the (then Boyfriend, now) Husband's family and friends. Three of his sisters lived nearby in Christchurch and they, together with a boyfriend and various cousins, were regular visitors to our house. When I look back on the recipes that I gathered in those days, they rarely were for dining à deux; instead I cooked roasting tins full of Chicken with Garlic and Lemon, made overflowing pans of Beef and Chorizo Pie and baked large dishes of Chocolate Bread and Butter Pudding.

Of all those recipes, this one for a Moroccan Lamb and Apricot Tagine, is one that I have returned to again and again and it was my first choice of dish to cook for Glenroe Ladies' Group last week. A tagine, is quite simply, a stew by another name, with plenty of warming spices and a sweetness from the apricots. It's one of those cheap and cheerful recipes, easy to make ahead of time - the flavour is, in fact, much improved by making it the day before you intend to eat it - and, as it uses a cheap cut of lamb (€11.50 a kilo from Hanley's butchers in Mitcheltown) , this is a meal that won't break the bank.

This is the soup that I cooked at the Glenroe Ladies' Club demonstration - it is something that I make regularly as it has a great flavour, doesn't take long and is really good for freezing.

The smoked paprika is fabulous with it, giving a real depth to the soup. Perfect for sipping out of a large mug while you warm your hands, especially on a miserable wet day like today.

Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Soup
Butter - 25g
Olive oil - 1 teaspoon
Onion - 2, peeled and chopped
Garlic - 2 cloves, peeled and chopped
Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper
Smoked paprika - 1½ teaspoons
Butternut squash - 1, peeled, deseeded and chopped into 2cm pieces
Sweet potato - 1, peeled and chopped into 2cm pieces
Fresh thyme - 3-4 springs (or 1 teaspoon dried thyme)
Hot chicken or vegetable stock - 1 litre

Heat the butter and olive oil in a large saucepan. Add the onion, garlic, salt and black pepper and cook over a gentle heat for about 5 minutes until soft. Sprinkle the smoked paprika over the mixture and stir together for a minute until fragrant.

Add the chopped squash, sweet potato, thyme and hot stock. Bring to a simmer, cover and cook for 15-20 minutes or until the vegetables are tender. Using an immersion blender (or a liquidiser) puree the soup.

Return to the pot, heat through and taste for seasoning. Serve topped with a dollop of yoghurt or swirl of buttermilk.

Serves 6 generously.

The suspense was growing. There is an element of hope in cooking an upsidedown cake at the best of time but cooking one for a demonstration in front of 35 members of the Glenroe Ladies' Club was, perhaps, asking for trouble. Throw in anirregularly used gas oven - I live in a world of electricity, rarely cooking on gas - and a demonstrator who, while distracted, managed to turn the oven off instead of up (ahem) and you're adding a whole new layer of problems to the mix!

Normally I cook this cake at 180ºC, or Gas 4, but the oven was barely warmed to half that temperature by the time I was ready to put it in. What to do? Whack the oven up to Gas 8, leave the cake on top and get the nearest ladies to monitor the (hopefully) rising heat. It's always convenient to have mother and a few relatives in the audience in these situations! After I landed the cake into the slightly warmed up oven, a cousin kept an eye on the timing and I crossed my fingers.

When it was cooked, taking about 50 minutes instead of the usual 30-35, I held my breath as I turned it out. When I gingerly lifted the cooking pan away from the cake it, amazingly enough, looked fantastic despite all the messing about. Looks are one thing but the real proof is in the eating and there wasn't a crumb left to bring home. Enjoyable as it was, the evening wouldn't have been half as much fun without the cliff hanger ending!

The cake recipe is below - if you don't have an ovenproof frying pan, you can of course make this in a 25cm (10 inch) baking tin like these ones from The Kitchen Dresser.

My first local cookery demonstration - as reported in our local paper, The Avondhu!

The days are getting colder, nights are drawing in and it's time for some warming homecooked meals. Fancy trying out a few new tastes and flavours? Have you ever wondered what to do with butternut squash or sweet potato? Wanted to try making a Moroccan Tagine but not been sure of what it involves?

Glenroe Ladies' Club is holding a Winter Warmers demonstration evening with food journalist, broadcaster and Ballymaloe-trained cook Caroline Hennessy on Wednesday, 4 November in the Community Hall, Glenroe at 8pm. On the night we'll be starting with a Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Soup, moving on to a Moroccan Lamb and Apricot Tagine, served with a Nutty Lemon Couscous, and finishing with a Caramelised Plum Upsidedown Cake.

There's nothing pricy here: using vegetables and fruit in season means cheaper shopping, slow cook some inexpensive stewing lamb until it melts in your mouth and jazz it all up with a few warming and easily accessible spices. Looking forward to seeing you there! Everybody welcome.

"Try not to drool too much!" That was the Husband's parting shot as I left the cottage, en route to interview Willie Harcourt-Cooze at the Temple Bar Chocolate Festival on Saturday. It's not that I have the habit of going weak at the knees with my interviewees, no matter how charismatic - while at Savour New Zealand I managed Anthony Bourdain without so much as a missed heartbeat - but the Husband knew how much Willie's Channel 4 programmes had drawn me in, had witnessed my initially fruitless search for the 100% cacao bars in Ireland and had sourced a very well-received stash of those and the just-released chocolate bars for my birthday.

Did I mention that I also bought a copy of Willie's cookbook as soon as it came out? And that his hot chocolate is the afternoon pick-me-up of choice at the cottage? And that his cacao gets grated into and on top of many dishes (especially eggs fried in chilli oil) as we, as exhorted to by Mr Harcourt-Cooze, keep one of the bars on the worktop, next to the olive oil, salt and pepper? Hmm...maybe the Husband did have a point.

After the calm of the cottage, there was a real buzz on the streets of Temple Bar on Saturday with the weekly food, book and design markets taking place alongside the weekend-long chocolate festival. It had started on Friday with a variety of workshops, including one on truffle making with Gillian from Some Say Cocoa, Some Say Cacao, and a screening of the original Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The workshops continued on Saturday, alongside master chocolatier Benoit Lorge's cooking demonstrations and Willie's own talk on his adventures in making chocolate, from bean to bar.

While a lot of the events took indoors, the festival was made visible on the streets on Saturday by MaSamba Samba School's Chocolate Caravan, drumming oompa loompas (pictured) roaming the streets of Temple Bar. Sunday was Chocolate Fair day but I was long gone by the stage, my interview with Willie on tape and the transcription started. He was a pleasure to talk to, the encounter sweetened by the fact that he turned up with some of his new chocolate releases for me to try. I'm a sucker for good chocolate, even when it's not delivered by a charming man. And the interview? That's coming up soon in the Mail on Sunday. I'll let you know.

Coffee and cake - kaffee und kuchen - can you think of a better thing to warm you up on a bracingly cold Berlin afternoon? Over the course of ten days in Germany there were a lot of stops with Little Missy for a variety of sweet treats - and a lot of walking to compensate! Herself, myself and the Husband were staying at an apartment in the Friedrichshain district so, with the Husband gone from early to late on his course, LM and I set off to explore the city together. Mornings she slept then, as soon as she cocked an eye, she was scooped up, wrapped warmly, landed in the pushchair and we took off.

It took me a little while to figure out how to manage the u-bahn with LM so I discovered that walking from the apartment to Alexanderplatz took just over half-an-hour along the historic Karl Marx Allee. Half way there, Café Sybille was always a welcome stop for refreshments plus a side helping of history from its mini-museum on the building of Stalinallee, the Communist-centric former name of Karl Marx Allee. If we got as far as Alexanderplatz before LM needed a stop, the food department on the ground floor in Galeria Kaufhof was another good spot after I figured out how to work their system. Basically, grab a seat in the back corner and find a place to park the pushchair, figure out what you want to eat from the menus on the tables and order from the surrounding counters. For a sugar hit, their cake counter, piled high with lots of delightful sweet things (a tart of caramelised nuts on a biscuity base was a favourite) is particularly good.

Managing a pushchair plus a Little Missy around any city on your own is not the easiest and I did end up walking past plenty of places that looked great but weren't so easily accessible. That said, once I found the u-bahn stations with lifts (all clean and most of which worked), the city was much easy to travel around - praise be for barrier-free travel - so we roamed around the Tiergarten (tip: if you have a baby with you, you get to skip the two-hour queue for getting to the top of the Reichstag building), spent mornings in the Spandauer Vorstadt (grab some bircher muesli at Milchhall Berlin or Blintschiki in Gorki Park) and, in the last few days, discovered the delights of our Friedrichshain district (eating pizza from a woodfired oven at Pizza da Dante, taking away some beautifully decorated treats from Cupcake Berlin or visiting my local 50s milkshake bar at Milkabilly).

As Little Missy goes to sleep these days between 7pm and 8pm (if we're lucky!) there wasn't much chance for evening adventures but, when the Sister came over for a few nights, herself and myself did get a night off to head for dinner with The Shy Chef. But that's a whole other story...

The packing is finally done - it's not easy heading away for ten days with a small baby! - Berlin, here we come (again).

I might have missed Donal Skehan in last year's Eurosong Finals but I have been following and enjoying his food blog for the last couple of years. Skehan, who juggles his music career (he's a member of pop group Industry) with food writing, has just produced his first cookbook, Good Mood Food. With a few basic rules - eat a variety of colourful fresh foods and drink plenty of water - this is good, solid, sensible eating presented in a bright, accessible format.

Healthy food doesn't have to be tasteless or boring is the stand out message as Skehan produces a series of simple, quick dishes ranging from breakfasts (Nutty Breakfast Bars, Oat Pancakes), to lunches (Sesame Pasta Salad, Tahini Noodle Toss), dinners (Mojito Chicken, Sweet Potato and Parsnip Mash) and even some sweet treats (Baked Pears with Spiced Honey). If you're feeling under the weather, Skehan points out that food is the best way of fighting back with a selection of cleansing and healing juices, teas (I particularly liked the Orange, Mint and Lemon Balm Tea) and soups.

All tousled hair and cheeky grin, Skehan's youth and pop connections should appeal to a younger audience than most cookbooks reach. A perfect gift for the student in your life.

Must try: Swedish Cinnamon Buns, Real Baked Beans with Ciabatta, Oven Roasted Sausage and Sweet Potato

Good Mood Food by Donal Skehan is published by Mercier Press.

Despite the fact that we only have two hens now, we still end up with a lot of eggs and I'm always looking for something new to do with them. I love making egg-based quiches or tarts but, with Little Missy on hand, recipes that involve a number of steps - making pastry, prebaking it, making filling, baking end result - often fall by the wayside. That's why I'm in love with this crustless quiche recipe.

There are just two steps: make the filling and bake the end result, both things that I can do while LM is napping, and it's as good cold or at room temperature as it is hot. Depending on what I have a glut of, I vary the vegetable and cheese content: we've had broccoli and cheddar, spinach and feta, courgette and Gruyere, even leek and smoked mackerel, using crème fraîche instead of cheese. Just lightly cook your vegetables - steaming or sautéing are both good - mix them with everything else and land into the oven. Even if you don't have your own hens, this is a cheap and simple recipe to get the most out of the vegetables on hand.

A perfectly seared scallop and a mouthful of Asian 'slaw, some crispy chilli squid on a sesame fried ricecake, a cone of battered smoked haddock with chunky chips and homemade tartare sauce, barbequed prawns, a pile of pickled seaweed alongside tuna carpaccio and fish pâté: it was a full-on seafood feast at the weekend's Dingle Peninsula Food and Wine Festival.

While our personal food trail seemed to lead us unerringly to the fish-orientated stops along the way, there was also some time to enjoy a glass of Bubble Brothers' sparkling Veuve du Vernay and the Husband got to sample some of Beoir Chorca Dhuibhne's cask conditioned ale.

We finished off the eating (at that stage) with a couple of scoops at Murphy's Ice Cream: the Brown Bread Ice Cream with Caramelised Orange Marmalade is definitely worth returning for and I loved the Dark Chocolate Ice Cream topped with a dollop of Irish Whiskey Cream. Given that we had Little Missy in tow this year, there was no trip to Out of the Blue but, after a day spent eating, we couldn't really have justified another meal.

We didn't feel too hard done by as we were staying at the comfortable Heaton's Guesthouse which offers - just in case you might get the feeling that we weren't getting enough seafood - fish for breakfast. Choose from the fish of the day (my haddock was spanking fresh and impeccably cooked), undyed meaty Dingle Kippers (one mouthful was enough to make me rethink my life-long hatred of kippers) or Ted Browne's smoked salmon in any number of ways. And that's after a first class selecton of fresh fruit salads, stewed fruits, yoghurts, juices, at least three different homemade breads (not counting two different kinds of scones) and a cinnamony bread pudding.

All that, and a farmers' market around town too but I was terribly restrained, just a bag of Paddy's O'Granola, a jar of Magpie Cottage Goat's Cheese and some Green Apron Cracked Pepper Mustard, plus a bottle of cider from David Llewellyn and, the pièce de résistance, a punnet of his sweet, musky Irish-grown grapes. Who would have thought that you could grow decent grapes in Ireland, especially in North Dublin?

All the weekend's fishy offerings got gobbled up so fast that there was no time for photos, hence this picture of the Irish grapes, grabbed right before we devoured these too. Sometimes the more good food you eat, the more you want to have. Dingle is good like that.

The An invitation to participate again in the judging of the Blas na hÉireann National Irish Food Awards in Dingle on Friday gave me the opportunity to discover a range of new products - as well as stick around for the rest of the weekend's Dingle Food Festival festivities! This year's judging was quick and efficient as the initial judging at UCC had slimmed almost 800 entries down to three in each category; all we had to do, in a series of blind tastings, was choose the gold, silver and bronze winners.

I was fortunate enough to have to taste Minihan's rich Chocolate & Hazelnut Torte (gold winner in the Functional & Health Foods category), one of only two dishes that my fellow judges and I were interested in having more of. The other was the well-spiced Chicken Korma from Bombay Pantry (gold winner in Ready Meals), which served as an early lunch.

Friday evening's award ceremony turned up lots of favourites amongst the award winners, including Nibbles Food Emporium's Pear and Almond Tart, Glenilen Farm's handmade butter, Mella's Chocolate Fudge, Benoit Lorge's nougats, McCarthy's black pudding and Blazing Salads breads. Irish sourced products from SuperValu, Superquinn and Aldi made a strong showing and Country Choice's Peter Ward, the evening's MC, made a heartfelt plea to the big supermarket buyers, many of whom were in the room, to treat artisan producers well.

This year's Blas na hÉireann Supreme Champion was a product from Fermoy, Silverpail's SuperValu Supreme Truffle Fudge Ice Cream, and you can see all the winners in each category here.

Blas na hÉireann National Irish Food Awards have announced the shortlist for 2009. The products in each of the 28 categories - ranging from soups and cheese to biscuits and sausages - were chosen from a blind tasting of almost 800 entries, which must have been a whole lot of fun for the first round of judges!

The winners will be announced this Friday, 2 October, at the Dingle Peninsula Food and Wine Festival (personal pick for the weekend: Sunday's cheesemaking course with Maya Binder) but, in the meantime, you can see the full shortlist online here.

Just got a message from one of the researchers on RTÉ's The Restaurant. At the moment they are looking for diners for the next series of the television show. If you're interested, read on!