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June 29, 2007
Malaysian food in Ireland
Thanks to Slow Food Dublin for an educational, entertaining and delicious evening at last night's Malaysian food cookery demonstration and dinner. With four trips to visit my family in Malaysia over the past five years, I've enjoyed every opportunity to sample the foods on offer and Mee Goring, Roti Canai, Teh Tarik, Kaya and Murtabak are just a few of the things that I love to eat while travelling there. While there may not have been any Teh Tarik or Roti on offer last night, chefs Rama and Mat Ju cooked up a storm in front of the crowd - yummy Mee Goring, morish Onion Bhajis, a well-flavoured Vegetable Curry, and Dosai - fermented lentil and rice pancakes - with Coconut Chutney. After the demonstration, we feasted on a buffet which also included slow-cooked Beef Rendang, Nasi Lemak or Coconut Rice, and a few savoury additions - crispy ikan billis (dried anchovies), hard boiled eggs, chutney, peanuts and fresh cucumber.
Although the food was very good, eating it in Fallon & Byrne's comfortable upstairs function room meant that the experience lacked a certain roadside charm that only comes from sitting on rickety stools by a food stall somewhere in Malaysia, hot, sweaty and starving, our dusty feet sticking out into the sunshine as we await plastic platefuls of whatever we've ordered, while drinking the refreshing juice from a hacked-open coconut. You'll only get that experience in Malaysia itself but the taste memories that flooded back last night when I ate a combination of Nasi Lemak, ikan billis and egg brought many a Malaysian breakfast to mind.
The next Slow Food get together in the Dublin region is a spit roast feast at The Church in Macreddin Village by Brooklodge Hotel in Wicklow. Local Wicklow foods - Three Wells Farmhouse Ice Cream, organic vegetables and salads from Gold River farm, Old MacDonnell's Farm soft goats' cheese and yoghurts, Sweetbank Farm seasonal fruits - will be served alongside slow spit roasted Wicklow lamb together with mackerel and vegetables cooked on the barbeque. That event takes place on Sunday 22 July and there's more information available at Slow Food Ireland.
Posted by Caroline at 6:52 AM | Comments (0)
June 26, 2007
Honeymooning in West Cork
West Cork is undoubtedly a fantastic place to spend time in even if, as happened to us on last week's communal honeymoon, it pours for most of the time. We were lucky enough to be staying in a wonderful cottage on Ardagh Castle Goat Farm but, with eight of the Husband's family nearby in Baltimore and another half-dozen English Engineers staying out on the Sheep's Head Peninsula, there wasn't much time to properly appreciate the beautifully restored cottage! We did, however, get a chance to feast on the owner's crumbly, Wensleydale-style Ardagh Castle Goat's Cheese. A picnic hamper of Norfolk food specialities from two of the English Engineers yielded up a tube of Letheringsett Watermill Spelt Biscuits which had enough sweetness to marry happily with the cheese. Ardagh Castle Goat's Cheese is only available locally around Baltimore and at the Saturday farmer's market in Skibbereen but I've managed to export a large chunk of it to North Cork.
A week is a short time, especially when it only stretches from Monday to Saturday so we didn't manage to get round to visit all the places which I had hoped to or, unfortunately, any of the great suggestions from Jenny at Where's the Salt. Although I drove past The Good Things Café several times en route to visit the English Engineers, it wasn't open at the time, although I did take a peek inside at the newly-painted café premises! With so many people around, a dinner at Heir Island Cottage had to be abandoned this time round, although it does give us an excuse for another trip down to that area of the country.
Of the things that we did get round to doing, The Glebe Gardens, on the road into Baltimore, were well worth a visit. We were particularly taken by the potager garden, flowers and vegetables growing in fruitful profusion side-by-side and the Husband loved their polytunnels - especially when the heavens opened and we needed shelter. Their café was also being refurbished (and should be open again for business soon) but we didn't really need afternoon refreshment, after having a long, leisurely and very good lunch at Rolf's Country House, just above the town. Of the pubs in the area, we enjoyed a night at the Tin Pub in Ahakista and a window seat at Bushe's Bar in Baltimore proved to be a comfortable place to watch the rain teaming down.
A trip to Friday's Bantry Market showed just how easy it is to eat locally in West Cork. We stocked up on Gubbeen salami, chorizo and smoked bacon (read more about the Fergusons of Gubbeen here), grabbed some pesto, sundried tomatoes and butter bean salad from the olive stall, some old-fashioned, bone-handled cutlery to eat with, a slice of pâté from Frank Krawczyk of West Cork Salami, and the pièce de résistance, a set of four asparagus plants for a new asparagus bed that the Husband (still getting used to that new name!) kindly rabbit-proofed last weekend. I also caught him browsing through information on polytunnels while at the market - wonder how much longer we'll be without one?!
Weather aside, there's plenty to look at, do and eat in West Cork. For us it was the perfect place to honeymoon, communally or not. Now, to get used to normal life as a married couple...
Posted by Caroline at 7:05 AM | Comments (13)
June 7, 2007
Growing like crazy
Life is busy - but, despite a routine that involves week-long neglect and frenzied activity at the weekend, the cottage garden is thriving! The Boyfriend is a member of the Irish Seed Savers Association so we got a few different types of potatoes from them, planting Cara, Ratte and Arran Banner varieties, along with some Roosters that sprouted in the bottom of the cupboard in March. They were all - apart from the Roosters, which is a more floury variety and an accidental planting - chosen deliberately for their blight resistant and waxy properties. So far the blight resistance, together with the blight-spray ministrations of a very helpful neighbour, seems to be working so hopefully there won't be a reprise of the Great Irish Famine in Ballyvoddy (still, there's always rabbit for the eating...)
The Irish Seed Savers were a great source of interesting-sounding plants, as were a very helpful company called Brown Envelope Seeds. On one of the dark, dreary February nights, while travelling back to Dublin on the train, the Boyfriend and I pored over our catalogues, and after many arguments and discussions, picked what we thought was a restrained amount of seeds. With visions of Ushiki Kuri Squash and Babington Leeks dancing in our heads, there was lots of excitement as the packets arrived. And then, between driving up and down the country on Fridays and Sundays, maintaining full-time jobs in Dublin during the week and busy weekends at the cottage, we had to find time to actually plant them.
Sown with the help of the Little Brother over Easter, the seeds turned out to be extraordinarily fertile and we ended up with an enormous amount of seedlings in old cream, yoghurt and vegetable cartons. It took us quite a while but they were eventually planted out in fits and starts over the last month and we now have Magic Rainbow Chard, Niki's Cut and Come Again Kale, rocket, tomatoes, celeriac, (lots of) purple sprouting broccoli and Painted Mountain Sweetcorn all safely behind the rabbit proof fence. Although there have been attempts by the rabbits to infiltrate our wee veggie patch, they've not yet succeeded and hopefully, fingers very much crossed, won't manage at all. Due to the kindness of the aforementioned neighbour who has a very well-maintained vegetable garden, we also have leeks and beans planted, along with some garlic, and edible flowers like marigolds, nasturtiums and sunflowers. Our old damson and apple trees have set well, as have the more or less ignored blackcurrant bushes. Lemon thyme, regular thyme, rosemary, parsley, chives and a little bay tree are all thriving in pots by the back door - near enough for me to actually use the herbs - and plants of black peppermint and lemon verbena are settling into place.
The Boyfriend - who next week will become the Husband! - has already plans for the extension of the veggie patch. Black weed-proof matting has been laid in an adjoining block and - mentally, at least - seeds have been sown for next season. I've been talking to a gardener at Annes Grove Gardens (a place well worth packing a picnic to visit) about getting artichoke plants for next year and there's a list of vegetables that we want to grow stuck on the front of the gardener's encyclopaedia that has become our bible. And it's all so worth it when you go out into the garden, colander in hand, and are able to pick enough rocket and soft herbs for a delicious, home-grown side-salad. It tastes even better when you can sit outside in the sunshine to enjoy it!
It may be quiet around here for the next couple of weeks as we're off to spend some time in the cottage before the Boyfriend's family arrive for next weekend's wedding celebrations. We're honeymooning, en famille, down in Baltimore, West Cork so if anyone has any foodie suggestions for the area, they would be very gratefully received! We're staying at a goat farm and already on the list are Heir Island, The Glebe, Organico and Rolf's Restaurant. I might even have to try out some of Conor's recommendations around Bantry and, in a non-foodie context, there's also Haydn Shaughnessy's art gallery to visit down in Kilbrittain. A week will be much too short!
Posted by Caroline at 7:25 AM | Comments (13)
