April 2006 Archives

Being back in Ireland now, I nearly forgot all about Anzac Day this year on 25 April and it wasn't until a few days later that I got round to making the traditional batch of Anzac Biscuits for the Boyfriend. Although late for the day itself, this baking stint was perfectly timed for the weekend as we're about to embark on a camping trip - the first one of the year (we hope to remember the sleeping bags this time!) - and it's good to have some oaty biscuits to stave off starvation, or "for morale," as the Boyfriend puts it.

While assembling the biscuits for cooking last night, I was a little distracted by simultaneously trying to get my own supper ready (Mushrooms in Milk again, on top of some thick slices of Blazing Salads' Multigrain Rye Sourdough bread - yummy) and so I nearly forgot to add the sugar to the mixture - and it wouldn't be the first time, either. With toast and mushrooms almost ready and demanding my attention, I just grabbed the first bag of sugar that came to hand which happened to be the fabulously rich Dark Muscavado Traidcraft Fairtrade sugar. I'll never go back. The molasses flavoured muscavado gave the Anzac Biscuits a much deeper, almost treacly, flavour than the normal plain white crystals, a taste well worth repeating.

Incidentally, I always double my original recipe to make about three dozen biscuits. It's no extra work and it is well worth it to have a stash somewhere in the house (or tent) for nibbling on when the mood (or the Boyfriend) strikes.

With the unfamiliar sun putting on a show this past Sunday, it wasn't a day to be spent indoors so the Boyfriend and I headed out to Dún Laoghaire for a walk. As we wandered along the seafront, I had to make the inevitable detour to the People's Park for the Sunday market (check out Caitriona's photos of a market in February here).

For some reason it is called a farmers' market but there are precious few farmers or producers amidst the imported crafts, second-hand books and general nick nacks. There are, however, plenty of food stalls - people selling imported French, Italian and Finnish foodstuffs, goats' cheeses, olives, the inevitable huge queues at the organic fruit and veg stall and what the Irish Times calls "a real live farmer" - John Murphy with his Tinnock Farm Produce stall, selling lamb, organically-fed chickens, farm eggs and homemade butter.

With the freezer and the kitchen cupboards almost at bursting point - and a long walk ahead - I restrained myself from any more "stocking up" (at this stage I'm so stocked that if avian flu did happen to hit Ireland we probably wouldn't have to leave the house for food supplies for quite a while) and decided just to buy food for eating on the spot. We shared a Moroccan Lamb and Chickpea Pie from the ubiquitous Gallic Kitchen (good pastry, disappointing filling) and picked up a couple of great muffins from California Market Bakery. A stop at Mr Coffee's wee van and we settled ourselves down on the seafront for a satisfying picnic in the sunshine.

I didn't entirely manage to get away without adding to my pantry as I was waylaid by a shiny new stovetop espresso maker at the Italian stall - I've been looking for one of these for a while now - and, while making that purchase, picked up a jar of Red Pepper and Chilli Tapenade. The stall owner and a fellow customer were more than happy to tell me about the espresso maker, recommending that I just use water in it at first, then throw away a few cups of coffee before actually drinking one! Sounds similar to the way you season a cast-iron frying pan. After our conversation, the owner generously handed me a bag of Italian biscotti to have with my coffee. I've yet to have a morning at home to try out the espresso maker but the biscotti are delicious - the only worry will be keeping a few aside until I have time to actually make the coffee.

Nothing strikes more terror into the heart of a cook than being told that a guest is allergic or intolerant to certain foods. I find that it tends to concentrate the mind, not - as you may think - on what you can cook but, rather, what you can't. Told that I need to avoid spicy foods, my brain invariably starts wandering through all my Indian and Moroccan favourites. For vegetarians, I start musing over soups with meat bases or, perhaps, Mexican Beans - cooked with bacon!

In New Zealand we had regular coeliac and gluten-intolerant visitors and, once I had wrenched my mind away from couscous, bulgur and pasta-based meals, there was no problem. Roast Leg of Lamb, cooked with haricot beans, and served with Garlic Potatoes and Roasted Carrots was a particular favourite. Other safe - and tasty - dishes were Frittatas, curries or even Braised Lamb Shanks with Chickpea Mash. Fellow blogger, Gluten-Free Girl is always a good source of recipes as well.

As a result, I constantly keep an eye out for good gluten-free dishes and, when I first came across Mark Bittman's recipe for a French flatbread, made with gluten-free chickpea flour, called Socca (or farinata in Italy) in an old New York Times article, my interest was piqued. However, getting my hands on the chickpea flour, was a little difficult and, between one thing and another, I almost forgot about it. An entry, however, on The Laughing Gastronome reminded me about the dish and, when I finally tracked the flour down - in one of Dublin's great Middle Eastern shops, Spiceland (also the source of large, wonderfully fragrant bunches of coriander for curries) - I was newly determined to try the recipe.

As the Boyfriend had put himself in charge of dinner that evening, he did all the actual cooking. There was some simple homemade tomato pasta sauce in the fridge, courtesy of his previous night's dinner, which he smeared on top of the cooked flatbread, sprinkling it with a handful of chopped chorizo before finishing it off with grated cheese for a Pizza-style Socca. We ate it hot and the base was very good, moist and supple, a little like polenta. This is perfect snack or light supper for your gluten-intolerant friends or family - and it's also tasty enough to be well worth cooking even if you don't have to cut gluten out of your diet.

Update 17 May 2006: As Maj pointed out in the comments below, chorizo may not be suitable for those on a gluten-free diet. Always check the label and, if in doubt, there's lots of information about non-friendly additives on US site Celiac.com.

If you're interested in learning about cooking, last week's final RTÉ Winter Food radio programme focused on cookery schools in Ireland and abroad. Programme guest Sinéad Gleeson has more information on the programme over on The Sigla Blog. I haven't yet embarked on any cookery classes here but I very much enjoyed the few that I did in New Zealand at the Mediterranean Food Company and with cookery teacher extraordinaire Judith Cullen.

As for exotic locations, the last time I was in Bangkok I did a Thai cookery course at Baipai Thai Cooking School which I can't recommend highly enough. It cost 1,400 Baht per person (about €30 at the time) for a whole morning of hands-on cooking, a recipe book and a lunch which, of course, you make yourself.

Step-by-step, with our small class of eight making every effort to follow her actions, the teacher demonstrated how to make fish cakes (Tod Man Pla), stuffed chicken wings and some gorgeous little banana custards. There were some ardent cooks in the class - as well as some who were less than enthralled at being there! - but it looked like everybody enjoyed the day, cooking, eating and getting to meet both the wonderful Thai staff at Baipai and fellow travellers. If you've ever got a morning to kill in Bangkok, amidst the temple visits and shopping, water taxis and cafés, it's well worth signing up for a class.

Baipai Thai Cooking School, 150/12 Soi Naksuwan, Nonsee Road, Chongnonsee, Yannawa, Bangkok, THAILAND 10120. Email: info@baipai.com

Ever since I've discovered the glories of butternut squash, there's rarely a week goes by without it being added to a dish or several. As with pumpkin, I tend to use more Middle Eastern or Indian flavours in my squash dishes - cumin and coriander seeds are particular favourites - but, as it's been a while since we've had a curry, I turned to the January edition of delicious. magazine for a recipe with more Asian leanings.

Telegraph food writer Tom Norrington-Davies (looking like a terribly cute yellow-jumpered gnome in the photos!) did a feature on oh-so-seasonal root vegetables under the heading of The Comfort Zone which, somehow, managed to incorporate a Pumpkin and Peanut Curry. As always, I busily messed around with the recipe, substituting squash for the pumpkin, adding carrots, and stepping up the chilli content.

As with all recipes involving chilli, add as much - or as little - as you feel comfortable with and always remember that their strength vary considerably. I am speaking from bitter (albeit slightly warm!) experience, here, after my fingertips tingled for a couple of days the first time I made a Thai Green Curry. Now I do all deseeding and chopping chillies with my hands safely enclosed in rubber gloves.

It might be an unusual ingredient in a curry but it is worth searching out some decent peanut butter for this storecupboard recipe. In New Zealand we used to buy the most amazing peanut butter from Piko Wholefoods that they seemed to make on the premises. There was no salt or sugar added to the mix - it was just, simply, peanuts ground into a paste. Here even slightly substandard peanut butter gives this convenient curry a delicious savoury, nutty depth.

If there's one thing nicer than Murphy's Seacláid (chocolate) Ice Cream, eaten straight from the tub beside the fire (yep, it's still cold in Ireland!), then it's got to be that self same cold, intensely flavoured ice cream topped with great generous spoonfuls of creamy sweet/salty confiture de lait. Perfect for an Easter treat! Literally translated as milk jam, confiture de lait is a truly luxurious, indulgent toffee caramel sauce, similar to the Argentinean dulce de leche, and often used as a spread for bread, or even to sandwich cookies together.

I picked up this jar of confiture de lait when I was wandering around Beauvais airport in France before heading home to Dublin after a wonderful surprise weekend in Paris. I had come across a description of it before on Clothilde's mouthwatering Chocolate and Zucchini blog so, when I saw it, I couldn't walk away, adding the jar to a haul which included large quantities of cheese, wine, chocolate, salted caramels, cider, bread, rilettes, Calvados, garlic and herbs. It must have got hidden in the cupboard after we got home because I only got the brainwave of using it to top ice cream the other night. Well, it only just survived the opening night, the Boyfriend sneaking heaped spoonfuls, long after the ice cream had gone back to the freezer. It quickly went back into hiding, until the next time!

I've yet to try making it at home but David Lebovitz has a recipe for it here. Methinks that will come in very handy when the jar (quickly) runs out...

In London there is a wonderful shop called Books for Cooks. A bookshop, filled with - what else - cookbooks, it is situated at 4 Blenheim Crescent in Notting Hill and is the kind of place that Sunday supplements wax lyrical about. As does anyone who visits the shop. It is small, not so very wide, and has bookshelves from floor to ceiling, crammed with hundreds upon hundreds of books of amazing dishes, foods, ingredients and people. There is a cosy, albeit battered, couch in the middle of the floor, right between a piled-high table and a low shelf - just the place to sit and leaf through one of the many books that will take you on a journey to far off lands or reveal more about your own culinary surroundings. All this, and I haven't yet got to the best bit.

When you walk into the shop, intent though you may be on cookbooks, your nose might distract you, leading you down the back, past the shelves and couch - to the Books for Cooks test kitchen. It's where the cooks - Ursula Ferrigno (Bread, Trattoria), Eric Treuillé (Bread, Planet Organic - Naturally Good Food), Celia Brooks Brown (New Vegetarian, Vegetarian Foodscape) Jennifer Joyce (The Well Dressed Salad) - work through recipes from the plethora of cookbooks on the shelves.

Each day they cook a different simple and seasonal menu - soup, quiche or tart, maybe a desert or two, a few cakes - serving lunches, coffees and sweet things until, as they say themselves, everything runs out. And, with the smells of slow roasted tomatoes and Lemon Polenta Cake mingling with that of black inky print and new paper, everything does disappear quickly. Don't even bother on a Saturday, much easier to grab a table or a space during the week and give yourself time to savour some good seasonal food with, perhaps a glass of wine from owner Eric's own biodynamic vineyard in South West France.

If, as happened to me, you find yourself slightly dazed by all the cookbooks on offer, then you could always go the easy way out and pick up one of Books for Cooks own cookbooks. These are collections of the most requested and best-loved recipes from the cookbooks used in the test kitchen, tried out on very willing customers. Engaging and inspiring, the slim volumes are what Carolyn Hart's Cook's Books, while entertaining, tried to do but didn't quite achieve. Familiar writers like Nigel Slater, Darina Allen, Sybil Kapoor, Donna Hay are all invoked, along with some less usual names - Tessa Bramley (The Instinctive Cook), Patricia Lousada (Flavours of the Sun) and Camellia Panjabi (Fifty Great Curries of India). The first time I was there, got a copy of their Favourite Recipes from Books 1, 2 & 3. I have since acquired volumes 4 and 5 and, methinks, a trip to the shop to check if there are any new additions, is soon in order. Books for Cooks - heaven on earth!

Books for Cooks is at 4 Blenheim Crescent, Notting Hill, London, W11 1NN and - this is the important bit - is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10.00am to 6.00pm

Congratulations to Whitestone Cheese company in Oamaru, New Zealand who took Cuisine's Champion of Champions Award for their gorgeous Windsor Blue.

While travelling to Christchurch from a bach stay near Dunedin last August, the Boyfriend and I took the opportunity to call into the Whitestone Cheese café and shop - a stop well worth making if you ever find yourself in that area of New Zealand. Guided by a passionate shop assistant, we tasted our way through several of their cheeses, eventually leaving with a big chunk of Windsor Blue. We didn't realise then that this was New Zealand's most decorated cheese but we loved its creamy texture and intense flavour - even when scoffed with crackers in the car on the way home!

Later in the year, after tasting my way through a selection of blue cheeses at Canterbury Cheesemongers, Windsor Blue was also the successful choice to accompany a bottle of Giesen's Canterbury Late Harvest Riesling Reserve. I never managed to keep enough of the cheese to cook with but, when we were at the Whitestone Cheese café, among the tempting dishes on offer was a Broccoli and Windsor Blue Soup. A most versatile cheese, indeed.

Whitestone Cheese make a range of 18 hand-crafted varieties including organic camembert, sheep's and cow's milk feta, semi-soft pressed cheeses - Airedale Farmhouse, Whitestone Farmhouse - plus Windsor Blue's little cousin, Moeraki Bay Blue. Whitestone Managing Director Bob Berry believes that the cheese reflects the unspoiled natural environment that it comes from, telling Market New Zealand: "The distinctly regional flavours of our cheeses capture the character of North Otago where we are located, from its lofty mountains, quality pastures and clean air to the windswept coastline."

For those of us that can't get our hands on Windsor Blue at this side of the world, there are plenty of quality Irish blue cheeses around. Farmers' markets are always good hunting grounds if you're looking for local cheesemakers or you could take a stroll into Country Choice (Nenagh), Iago (Cork's English Market) or Sheridans Cheesemongers (Galway and Dublin) for some sampling. There's also a feature on Nationwide (again!) about Ireland's strongest blue cows' milk cheese - Bellingham Blue - to whet your appetite.

Last week I was running for a film preview screening at 10.30am but, in dire need of caffeine, I took a few minutes to grab a take-away coffee at the Butlers Irish Chocolate Café on Henry Street. I've been a huge fan of these cafés ever since they opened in Dublin - not so much for the coffee that they serve, but for the free chocolate that you get alongside it! It's a great way to test your way through the range but, although I had carefully studied the display and chosen a double chocolate chocolate for later consumption, at that moment in time I needed something a little more filling. There was a tempting-looking display of muffins, brownies and cookies and, nestled amidst them, a large, simple oatmeal cookie. Always a fan of the oatmeal cookie, I added one of those to my order and legged it down the street to Screen 1 in the Savoy and the Tristan and Isolde preview (not great, don't bother).

The lights went down as I walked in the cinema so I found a seat and settled myself, my coat, scarf, bag and carefully balanced coffee into place. Then, after a lot of rustling and digging for the cookie in my bag, I was finally organised. As the action unfolded (very slowly) on screen I concentrated on my coffee and the surprisingly good cookie. Moist and chewy, it had a vague ginger and cinnamon flavour and was studded with what I first took to be sultanas but, as I encountered more of the dried fruity nuggets, I realised that they, thankfully, didn't have that fruit's insipid sweetness. In the end, I never got to find out what the fruit was as the cookie was munched down to it's last crumb long before the lights came up and allowed any closer examination.

Later in the week, while taking a look at RTÉ's Nationwide website, I watched a feature on Tara Breen, who has gone, in a few short years, from making a few loaf cakes at the kitchen table to a staff of 15 and sales of €1m with her successful Tara's Handmade Quality Foods company. Browsing about on her site, I solved the question of those unknown fruit bits. Tara supplies Butlers Cafés with cookies and slices and my morning treat was her Tropical Oatmeal Cookie, packed full of goodness - organic oatmeal, free range eggs - and razz cherries! I had never come across them before but razz cherries, or Razzcherries, are cherries soaked in raspberry flavouring and then dehydrated. Unusual - and very tasty. Apparently they are available in the US and in New Zealand, although I can't say I ever remember coming across them. Razz cherries or no, it's great to see some decent sweet things available in Irish cafés. If they can't be bothered to make their own slices, muffins and cookies - like many New Zealand cafés do - the least they can do is source some decent products.

Published in Ireland's Food & Wine magazine in April 2006.

Tom Biggane is quietly confident. "Let the cheese do the work," he says. "If it's good enough it will sell itself." And Clonmore Goat's Cheese has proven more than good enough. A gold and silver medal winner at the National Farmhouse Cheese Competitions, Sheridans Cheesemongers sold out of their stock of the hard gouda-type goat's cheese before Christmas and are not expecting to get Clonmore back in until June. This seasonal farmhouse cheese is nutty and smooth, with a satisfyingly sweet goaty aftertaste that intensifies as it matures. Not that it often gets a chance to sit around for long.

Clonmore is made by Tom himself in the little extension on the side of their farmhouse near Newtown in North Cork, with his wife Lena going across the road twice a day to milk the 80 goats that make up their herd. It is labour-intensive work. Late February, when I met him, is a quiet time of the year but the goats are due to start kidding any day and then it will be work seven days a week for four months solid. They make cheese from late March onwards, giving it at least two months to mature before putting it on the market, and working straight through until the goats start to dry up in late October and early November.

Unlike goats on the continent that live and are fed indoors, Tom and Lena's goats are free-range, able to roam about 20 acres of pasture with a comfortable shed for them to bed down in at night or shelter in if it's a wet day. Intelligent animals, goats, and not very willing to stand around in the wet and cold when they have a chance to be indoors. When they do deign to emerge into the outside world, the goats are natural browsers, often happier to nibble at shrubs and bushes in the ditch than graze the grass in the field. Or, as Lena points out, to get stuck into a neighbours garden if they manage to escape. As a result of this less than intensive farming, the Bigganes only get 150 gallons of milk per goat per year - a good yield would be 200 gallons - but it is the access to grass that, Tom believes, makes all the difference in the taste of the cheese.

A reserved man, Tom is nevertheless passionate about cheese-making. Although the Bigganes started keeping goats to subsidise the cows - Tom also milks 40 cows every day - it has become more than just a way of keeping the rest of the farm going. "We got into it to supply other people," he explains, "but, as time went on, started cheese-making ourselves." In 1994, the LEADER programme, a EU Community rural development initiative, and local organisation, Ballyhoura Development, were looking for someone in the area to supply a cheese-maker with goat's milk so Tom and Lena, after some work on the fencing to contain the notorious escape artists, added goats to the farm. After a few years observing other people making cheese from their milk, one of the people that they supplied was getting out of the cheese-making business so he sold Tom the equipment in 2000. A couple of cheese-making courses later - one at the Dairy Products Research Centre in Moorepark, Fermoy and another specifically for people interested in making goat's cheese in Thurles - Tom started producing a few rounds of cheese. Iago in Cork's English Market was their first customer then Kevin Sheridan of Sheridans Cheesemongers also started taking cheese. It was a slow and a small start, the production of Clonmore growing with its market until, as Tom laughs, "it passed us out". He believes everything fell into place about three years ago. They fell short of cheese in 2004 and last year Sheridan's sold out just two months after the Bigganes stopped producing.

Tom likes a break of a few months but he thinks that the current six-month gap is too long. "We need to grow and fill that gap," he declares and, to that end, he is waiting on the arrival of a new 500-litre vat from Holland to replace their small, antiquated 130-litre one. At the moment each batch only makes five or six 2-3kg cheeses at a time and last year he had to make cheese every day. "Last year was a bit of a drudge," he says, "because we were constantly working. I wasn't looking forward to it this year but the new vat should let us make cheese every second day." Tom is also planning to expand the flock - but not too much. Last year they milked 50 goats, this year it'll be up to 80 and, within two years, they're hoping to have 100 goats. Then, he thinks, it will be more than enough for the family themselves to manage. "If it gets any bigger we'll have to take someone on."

Farmhouse cheese-making is as much an art as it is an artisan craft. Within certain specific parameters - the cheese is made on one farm, by one family, using the milk from one flock - there are an almost infinite amount of variables. The grass and natural herbage, the terroir, combine with the personality of the cheese-maker to make a unique product. Tom speaks with distain about the uniformity of factory-made cheeses, telling me that the character of Clonmore changes all the time. "Every day's milk can be different, depending on the time of the year," he notes, "and, if you stir and cut a minute longer it makes the cheese different. Even if you let the cheese mature a month longer it's not going to taste the same as it did a month before. It's a living thing. I find it very interesting." There's a danger, though, in getting new equipment. "My biggest fear," Tom admits, "is that I won't be able to turn out the same cheese. I don't want the cheese to change, whatever about the vat." The customers that turn up at Iago and Sheridans time after time to buy Clonmore would be very much in agreement.

Caroline Hennessy

New season Clonmore Goat's Cheese should be in the shops by June and will be available from Iago in Cork's English Market and Sheridans Cheesemongers in Dublin and Galway.

Sheridans Cheesemongers notes on Clonmore Goat's Cheese, courtesy of Kevin Sheridan
Clonmore is a small, gouda-shaped cheese with a beige waxed exterior and a bone-white paste that is intermittently freckled with small holes. In good condition the cheese is milky on the palate with a cheesey tang that gently gives way to the unmistakable rounded, goaty finish that typifies Clonmore. Make no mistake, this is a wonderful hard goat's cheese. It is in no way sharp or soapy yet has a distinctive, smooth flavour that can be amazingly more-ish.
Clonmore is one of those cheeses that is better served below room temperature, left out in a warm room it has a tendency to become slightly oily. Clonmore partners well with scaled down wines, enjoy chilled with a Chablis or a good Sauvignon Blanc from the Loire.

If you're interested in cheese, particularly of the Irish variety, it's worth picking up this month's edition of Food & Wine Magazine for a series of profiles of Ireland's leading cheese makers, a piece by Sheridan's Cheesemongers' Dan Fennelly on how cheese changes with the seasons, recipes from the Ballymaloe matriarch Myrtle Allen and the best accompaniments for a plateful of cheeses. Read restaurant reviews of Dublin's Café Úna, a truffle orgy at the K Club and Conor favourite Boqueria tapas bar in Cork. You can have your own say on the discussion forums at editor Ernie Whalley's own Fork'n'Cork website. For fans of goat's cheese, there's a piece on Tom Biggane, maker of the very special Clonmore Goat's Cheese from Newtown in North Cork written by, ahem, one Caroline Hennessy. April's Food & Wine Magazine - in the shops now!

In the Irish Times Magazine last Saturday there was a feature on Country Choice's Peter Ward. Prestigious American foodie magazine Saveur is about to publish an edition extolling the virtues of Ireland's artisanal food industry. One of the people mentioned in their "detailed who's who of artisanal food in Ireland" is Peter, who has brought Saveur editor Colman Andrews to Nenagh several times over the last few years. Coleman celebrated the St Patrick's weekend by coming to Ireland to cook with Peter and his wife, Mary, at a Slow Food Seasonal Irish Spring Produce meal in Country Choice and he has now marked Ireland as a destination for "gastrotourists". All I'll say is that they're in for a lot of disappointment if they go anywhere off the trail as marked out by Georgina Campbell and the McKennas' good food guides.

Apart from the Avoca Handweavers shops, it's difficult to find good food on the move throughout the country. I've ranted here before about the quality of food in Ireland and Irish cafés and I'm not alone. Kieran at Ice Cream Ireland has given out about the quality of coffee available and Conor's review of Café Paradiso has segued into a discussion of value for money in Irish restaurants.

But, complaints aside, what should we do - not necessarily in order to facilitate these mythical gastrotourists - but to improve the quality of food in Ireland for the people who live here full-time? Peter, coming at the situation from the perspective of the specialist food provider, believes that Irish agriculture has to change focus: "I'd love to see more primary producers of food such as milk, beef, lamb, eggs, chicken and pork start producing it for direct sale to customers, and respond to the changing taste in the market." But he accepts that this isn't going to be easy: "that can't happen without a whole course of education for farmers," he muses. And it's not farmers that need to be educated. The blight of discount supermarket chains Lidl and Aldi is spreading across the land and you're going to be hard pressed to find Irish goods in these stores, let alone artisan produce. Give me Peter's Country Choice any day - if his ideas of an artisan food stand in every Spar, Mace and filling station across the country ever get off the ground I'd be a very happy traveller!

One of the big advantages of being settled back in Dublin, with book shelves once again, is having all my old cookbooks to pore over and rediscover. Although I did manage to build up a fair collection in New Zealand, it couldn't really compare to my beloved older stacks of books by Nigel Slater, Darina Allen, Tamasin Day-Lewis, Nigella Lawson and my ancient copies of the Paula Daly-written McDonnell's Good Food Cook Books. The first and second books in this series, bought from saving up the tokens on Stork Margarine packets, were two of the first cookbooks owned by my mother.

Every recipe, of course, used Stork Margarine - they were first printed in 1976, long before Darina Allen started turning the Irish nation back into butter lovers - and just leafing through them is an exercise in nostalgia. As a child I cooked my way through Drop Scones, Franzipan Flan, Steak Diane and Melba Toast, while a picture of The Runaway Train children's birthday cake furnished many hours-worth of dreaming. I subsequently made this for a cousin who probably was too young to appreciate more than the Liquorice Allsorts used for wheels and the Smartie cargo - it's not really a cake worth returning to. But many of the recipes, albeit with Stork swapped for butter, definitely are.

Every Christmas Cake in our house was, and still is, covered with Almond and Royal Icing according to the tables in the first book. I learned how to make choux pastry from the step-by-step photographs when I was about eleven and subsequently became famed for my Chocolate Éclairs. Family get-togethers were normally preceded by several days of Éclair-making when I took over the kitchen and most of the freezer (and probably my mother's nerves!) to make what I considered a sufficient supply - normally 2-3 per person. While I haven't made Éclairs in years, I have returned to several other of the recipes, with a few modern updates, to great success.

The Sausage Plait pictured on the cover was a particular favourite when I was younger. One day I cooked it on the shelf below one of my mum's Apple Tarts and, although I initially thought it was ruined when the tart's sweet, appley juices overflowed on top of it, the apple flavour actually complemented the pork so much that I now add apple to the recipe. It's a great supper dish, especially with a good accompanying salad, and it also travels very well as part of a picnic spread.

As I finished up at work on Friday, I suddenly, as I looked out into the showery evening, got a yearning for gingerbread. No fancy stuff, I just wanted a damp and aromatically spicy loaf, the sort of teabread that would go perfectly with a cup of tea on a weather-swept Saturday. When I was younger, this kind of longing would be easily satisfied with a squashed loaf in a packet that said "Jamaica Gingerbread" but now, with a well-stocked baking cupboard, spur-of-the-moment cooking decisions aren't too much of a problem.

During my slow month-by-month perusal of Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries (I'm reading it in real time) I had come across a reference to an afternoon's baking involving a Double Ginger Cake. A quick search of the Observer website threw up the recipe but it wasn't quite the one that I was looking for. What I wanted was a cake involving the darkness of treacle or molasses rather than the lighter flavoured golden syrup that Nigel used. Plus he used stem ginger in syrup and, well stocked as I am, I don't have any of that on hand. But the recipe below that - David Herbert's Ginger Cake - was something that hit the spot. I jiggled around with the amount of golden syrup that he used in the recipe, adding some sturdy blackstrap molasses instead. Rather than mixed spice, I added my own mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg and freshly ground peppercorns and, as I had picked up a packet of lovely sugar-encrusted crystallised ginger chunks last weekend while in Nenagh's Country Choice, a small handful were chopped up and added to the cake batter to add a little texture.

This is a cake which takes more time in the oven than it does to put together and perfect for Friday night when I didn't have much time to devote to it. With one eye on the clock, I landed the Gingerbread into the oven while getting ready for a gig at Whelans of Wexford Street - Joey Burns of Calexico was playing. I took a break from applying eye-shadow to ladle the ginger syrup over the cake and resisted the temptation to break into the loaf as I headed out the door. At 2am that night it tasted good, but not as great as it did on Saturday afternoon with a steaming hot cup of tea. I love it when a plan comes together.