Fairtrade chocolate at Amnesty in Dublin

Fairtrade Fortnight kicked off on Monday this week and, if you’re not off chocolate for lent this year, you can indulge and feel suitably virtuous at Amnesty Ireland‘s launch of their fairly traded and organic bars of chocolate. It takes place tomorrow night, Thursday 1 March, at 7pm in the...

Looking for information: Barcelona

I’m heading off to Barcelona with the sister for three days in a few weekend’s time and I’d love some food suggestions! We’ve never been there before so this is completely new ground for us both. The Boyfriend has been recommending the “silky” coffee to me, the sister has...

By request: Ricotta and Spinach Pancake Bake

I have made this dish a couple of times for Pancake Tuesday as I love to have a pancake main as well as desert! One of the best things about it is that many of the elements can be made beforehand. This year I made the pancake batter on Sunday, the pancakes and tomato sauce on Monday, then assembled, baked...

Pancake Tuesday

Not being very clued in with dates, the first notice I received of the annual pancake flipping day was a display of bottles of squeezy lemon and pancake batter mixes at Morton’s in Ranelagh. Pancakes really are one of the easiest things to make so don’t bother with the mix – it’s...

Thanks to all who voted, but…

…unfortunately Bibliocook didn’t manage to make it through to the shortlisted stage of the 2007 Irish Blog Awards. However, some of my favourites did so best of luck to Beaut.ie, Sinéad Gleeson, One Breast Less, Conor O’Neill, The Waiting Game and Ice Cream Ireland on 11 March at the...

The easiest Valentine’s Day dinner: Baked Vacherin Mont d’Or

First, get your hands on a small round soft cheese called Vacherin Mont d’Or. It is a seasonal French or Swiss cheese, which means that you can only have this kind of meal between mid-September and March – like asparagus, it makes it all the nicer as a result. Preheat your oven to 200°C and...

Baking days at the cottage: Simple Lemon Shortbread

Since returning from New Zealand we’ve been spending most weekends down at the cottage, the Boyfriend inventing new and more ingenious ways to catch the rabbits (score so far – Boyfriend: nil, rabbits: merrily increasing by the day) and me pottering around in the kitchen, baking cakes and slices...

Irish Blog Awards nomination

Wow! I’m delighted to see that Bibliocook is on the Best Specialist Blog longlist for this year’s Irish Blog Awards. You can read more about the awards goings on here, all the longlists for the various categories are here and – very important this! – you can vote for your favourites...

The Italian School of Cooking

Thanks to Marco and Marcello, my hosts at the Italian School of Cooking, where I attended a class on pasta making last night. As well as learning how easy it is to make pasta without a machine – I was dead proud of my attempts at orecchiette! – I had a thoroughly enjoyable evening, eating and...

Happy Waitangi Day!

Although we may be back in Ireland, today we are celebrating Waitangi Day, a national holiday in New Zealand, with that ubiquitous Kiwi desert – the pavlova. After bemoaning the lack of pavlovas in Irish supermarkets, the Boyfriend went off to work this morning laden with boxes of meringue nests, tubs...

Boiled, Baked & Basted – encore

Boiled, Baked & Basted, the brilliant RTÉ Radio 1 programme that I mentioned in October, featuring chefs and cooks talking about their favourite cookbooks, sadly came to an end on 30 December. A simple but effective format – just the voice of the interviewee, interspersed by actors reading from...