August 2008 Archives

Willie Healy, owner of URRU Mallow and one of the organisers of the Mallow Food Festival, was on RTÉ Radio 1's Mooney Show today, talking about the festival, farmers' markets and local food. You can listen to it here – it's the programme from Wednesday 27 August – and Willie is 46 minutes, 50 seconds in to the recording.

The pressure is on – only four days to go to this year's Mallow Food Festival – and we're hoping for sunshine! Last year, it was a glorious day, apparently, amidst the damp gloom that was the summer of 2007 (not very different at all from summer 2008) and the kids are due back to school so the weather is bound to perk up. The event takes place on the main street in Mallow on this Sunday, 31 August, from 12pm to 3.30pm and it's looking like we're getting at least 50 stalls to take place this year. Unfortunately, the fact that URRU will have a stall this year means that my purchasing power will be necessarily limited so I'll have to send the Husband and the Cambridge Couple off on many buying trips. Now, we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed for good weather...

We didn't have very many new potatoes this year so those that made it into the pot were treated like gold. We planted them, as normal, on 17 March - the traditional time in Ireland for planting the spuds, as far as I know, especially when they're earlies - but the weather was nasty after that so I think more than a few simply rotted in the ground. Between that, the terrible summer, the death of our cat and subsequent rise in the bunny population (we must not have been eating enough Rabbit Stew) it hasn't been an entirely successful summer in the garden. At least we've the hens to keep us fed and entertained, although when the weather was absolutely appalling there, last month, they seemed to go through a bit of a depression, egg laying dropping to just one per day. Fortunately they're now back up to a three-a-day average - making a lovely accompaniment to the few potatoes that we managed to salvage.

Supper ideas last night started with the potatoes and eggs, then I discovered a chunk of Gubbeen chorizo lurking in the fridge door so I went off on a warm salad direction. Unfortunately, my timing of the poached eggs did not coincide with the Husband's readiness for dinner so they're a little overdone, unlike Sarah's fantastic-looking ones. The measurements I give for the olive oil and sherry vinegar are very approximate - toss the salad, taste and see if you need any extra. A lot depends on the amount of flavoursome fat that your chorizo gives off as it fries.

When I get time to surf the net - not so often these days with freelancing and URRU keeping me busy - I love to go through my list of favourite food bloggers and magazines, reading their entries, picking up tips for things to try, places to visit and recipes to make. I have a list of recipes continually on the go, an odd assortment of things that I've picked up in my internet wanderings - Olive Oil Cookies from Mark Bittman in The New York Times, Lemon Potatoes from Organically Cooked, Salt-Kissed Buttermilk Cake from 101 Cookbooks, Chow's Salted Caramel Frosting, Baked Celeriac with Rosemary, Parmesan & Marsala from Taste - all of which are still on my "must try" list.

Val's recipe for Oatmeal Muffins was on that list for a while but, after several successful Sunday morning muffin bakes for weekend guests, it has made the leap to the "must keep" category. They only take a few minutes to throw together, are ready in minutes, and, as Val says, are perfect for freezing. Visitors are hugely impressed (make sure they volunteer to do the washing up afterwards!) and, most importantly of all, the muffins taste great when buttered while still warm, maybe with a smidgen of Raspberry Jam from Mallow Irish Country Market on the side or, if you're really lucky, some of my mother's Blackcurrant Jam. For the sake of speed and efficiency in the mornings, I've stuck to Val's cup measurements, apart from the butter and brown sugar, which I find easier in ounces.

I'm the Sourdough aficionado, using natural yeasts to raise my bread. Now – and it's been brewing for a while (pun very definitely intended) – the Husband is just after taking delivery of his own yeasts as he prepares to embark on a long-discussed, thought-over and well-researched foray into the world of making beer at home.

After we were both spoiled for choice with microbrewery beers in NZ, it's become more and more difficult to drink the rubbish that you can find on tap in most Irish pubs (with an honorary exception for Beamish, of course, and both the Franciscan Well Brewery and Bierhaus in Cork). So, this could be a whole new world. And, finally, there's some good reason for the dozens of empty beer bottles stored in the spare room!

If you're in the Mallow vicinity tomorrow, Saturday 23 August, call in to URRU as Arun Kapil of Green Saffron will be in store between 11am and 3pm, talking about his range of fresh, intensely flavoured spice blends and Indian ingredients, offering plenty of tips and tricks for making the most of them.

After we especially enjoyed the Lamb Rogan Josh at his Ballyvolane banquet, I very kindly (not at all thinking of myself!) gave the Husband the Rogan Josh blend as one of his birthday presents. The sachet scented the rest of the presents and wafted spice around the kitchen until he eventually gave in and cooked it for the night the International Aid Worker came to visit. It was fabulous and there might even be a repeat performance next weekend when a couple of the English Engineers come to visit. The Garam Masala, rose petals and all, is also fantastic and comes with a recipe for Arun's very morish Garam Masala Cookies that was tried out to great effect this week by my German Colleague.

Don't forget – while Arun is talking about spices in store, we also have the Mallow Farmers' Market taking place in the courtyard outside URRU from 10.30am to 1pm.

When the Husband and I stayed at Gort-Na-Nain in May, I admired Ultan and Lucy's recently built outdoor wood-fired oven. A sturdy stone-clad structure that they can use to bake pizza and bread, it sits in a magnificent location, on the then-sunny patio outside their kitchen, looking across the hills to the sparkling blue sea. My interest piqued, they put me in contact with the builder, Henrik Lepel, and I asked him to keep me updated about any future breadoven building workshops.

On one of my rare weekends that actually incorporated both Saturday and Sunday (two so far, this year!) Henrik happened to be holding a workshop at the Mallow Racecourse, building an oven for the Garden Fair. So, with visions of savoury pizzas and fresh-baked breads dancing in my head, I promptly signed up. Alas, torrential rain on the Saturday put an end to that day's workshop but Henrik persevered and the following day saw a small group of be-wellied participants gather to build under a tarpaulin at the racecourse. Despite even more rain, that evening we had completed all three layers over the wet newspaper-covered domed sand mould that Henrik had shaped the previous day. The following week it was successfully used to cook the most delicious pizzas at the Garden Festival – I was working in town but several of my customers gave me great reports on how well the oven was working.

Henrik's next workshop will be taking place at Kealkil, near Bantry in West Cork over the weekend of 23-24 of August, is limited to eight participants and is priced at €120 per person, including lunch. For more information and for bookings, contact Henrik at 086 8838400 or email kirdnehl@hotmail.com. As for me, I still have good intentions and am on a search for some subsoil to build my own oven. I just need someone to do some digging for me!

You can see some pictures of one of the first breadovens that Henrik built on Irish Allotments.

Despite all the recent rain and bad weather, the range of vegetables available at the Mallow Farmers' Market continues to expand. As well as his fantastic salad leaves, which I eat for lunch every day, Morris from Gairdín Eden has been selling huge bunches of rhubarb and carrots. I also picked up some parsnips this week, along with a jar of West Cork Eden Honey – perfect for Honey Flapjacks, if I can save some back from the Husband and his toast!

My favourite thing to do with the smallest, sweetest carrots after I get them home on Saturday evening is to take them all off the bunch, scrub them well and eat them for dinner with a big bowl of homemade hummus. With a good chunk of one of Gudrun Shinnick's cheeses - herbed St Bridget, aged St Gall, spicy Cais Dubh - or some of the other cheeses that she sells on her stall (the soft Knockalara sheep's cheese has been very popular around here) it's a perfectly easy supper to eat outside in the sunshine (if and when that happens).

We've been waiting for the organic vegetables from Patrick Frankel, a new producer in Donneraile, and they started arriving in the last few weeks. On Saturday, his stall was manned by a helpful French girl, selling herbs, spring onions, yellow and green courgettes, an assortment of tomatoes, new potatoes, peas and, much to my delight, mangetout. When I shop for vegetables and fruit, I try to buy as locally as possible – first Ireland, then Europe, then I don't bother. Despite me inadvertently leaving the mangetout in work over the weekend, they've already made it into a large tub of Nigella's Sesame Peanut Noodles as well as a Potato Salad with Chorizo and Mangetout. The only thing I missed this week was one of my market staples, the smoked trout from Geraldine Bass of Old Millbank Smokehouse. I use it in warm and cold salads with pasta, potatoes or couscous, in risottos and oven bakes, panfried with spiced garlic butter and mashed into fish pâté. I just might have to take a trip to Friday evening's Killavullen Farmers' Market at the Nano Nagle Centre and see if she's there.

The next Mallow Farmers' Market will take place in the courtyard outside URRU from 10.30am to 1pm on Saturday 23 August.

After writing about Irish success in the Great Taste Awards last week (I was also delighted to hear that my favourite Ummera smoked chicken took a Gold award), I was interested to receive this press release (see below) about the just-launched Irish Food Awards.

Awards will be given in a total of 17 categories, including preserves/conserves, breads, chocolate, ice cream, seafood and cheeses. To be eligible, all foods entered must be commercially available in at least three outlets and be made in either Northern or Southern Ireland by companies registered in this country. The awards will take place at the Dingle Peninsula Food and Wine Festival, on the weekend of 3rd to 5th October – another good excuse to head into Kerry for a couple of days! More information is available in the press release below and at www.irishfoodawards.com.

When I was a little girl, one day during our summer holidays in Youghal, I caught sight of a Ladybird book called Learnabout...Cooking. I remember wanting to ask my mother to buy it for me but she had already left the shop. Fortunately, her youngest sister, at that stage still unmarried and able to come on our extended three-generation two-week holidays by the sea, whisked it off to the cash desk and I walked proudly home with my first cookery book under my arm.

Now my copy, one book amongst hundreds, is tattered and food-stained. Chocolate Mousse was a particular favourite for years, I remember, as was the Lemon Surprise Pudding. I never really got to grips with the Scotch Eggs, though, and Cheese Baked Potatoes – because of my fixation against spuds – were totally out but I definitely remember assembling that classic of the Seventies, Cheese and Pineapple Hedgehog, with tinned pineapple and rubbery, orange cheddar. One recipe that I have returned to over and over again - and which, at this stage, doesn't even resemble the original – is Flapjacks.

I've tried many other recipes for Flapjacks in the past – these Chocolate Flapjacks are undoubtedly fantastic – but this is the one I'm currently happiest with and make most often. It can be made as simple or as complex as you like. Some days I just make simple Honey Flapjacks, as in the picture, leaving out all the nuts, seeds and dried fruit, and substituting honey for the golden syrup. Other times it depends on what's on my baking trolley. I've tried a mixture of jumbo and regular oatmeal sometimes and varied the type of of sugar (light and dark brown sugars, raw sugar, demerera) I use. The first four ingredients are necessary: the rest can be played around with. Almonds and cranberries, cashews and dried pineapple are all combinations I've tried in the past but I keep coming back to the hazelnut and apricot variation. Have fun with it – as long as you keep the proportions the same, the recipe is endlessly forgiving.

With the 2008 Olympic opening ceremony taking place today, enigmatic China is at the center of attention. Fuchsia Dunlop's Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper uses food and cooking to successfully delve beneath the surface.

Chef and cookbook author Fuchsia Dunlop's memoir of her time cooking and eating in China is an enthralling read. In 1994, at a time when China was still very closed off from the outside world, this young Englishwoman moved to Chengdu, in the Sichuan province. Ostensibly, Fuchsia was there to study the Chinese policy on ethnic minorities but food was a strong motivating factor – as she filled out her application form, it was with the Chinese sugarplums of chilli bean sauce, Sichuan pepper and frilly pig's kidneys dancing in her head. Despite Fuchsia's early disorientation, she plunged into life in Chengdu, learning the language and finding her way through the bold and interesting flavours of Sichuan food. Before long, she was taking lessons at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine and was subsequently invited to join a three-month professional chef's training course – an unprecedented invitation for a Westerner.

Shark's Fin... traces Fuchsia's passionate love affair with Chinese food, in all its tastes and textures, colours and complexity. As she recounts the details of her training, after which she wrote her award-winning Sichuan Cookery book, she also travels the country, experiencing different foods and cultures. For many in the West, China – and Chinese food – is often just an amorphous mass, all of one piece, but Fuchsia brings the different regions of China into sharp relief, although this reader could have done with a slightly more detailed map. She eats absolutely everything (poisonous snake and hairy crab, two of the “three headed” feast of Yangzhou and pig's brains), discusses the Chinese love of MSG (“the cook's cocaine”), investigates the region where Sichuan pepper comes from and also notes that Ferran Adrià gave credit to Chinese gastronomy for forging a path that is now being exploited in his El Bulli restaurant in Spain, as he plays – in a very Chinese way – with “form and mouthfeel.”

To write her second book, Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, Fuchsia lived in Hunan during the fear and paranoia of the SARS virus, a long way from her relaxed days in Sichuan. From this point onwards, the tone of Shark's Fin... becomes similarly dark, as she struggles with her own identity – Chinese or British? – and starts to lose her omnivorous appetite, wondering if she should become vegetarian. Happily, an encounter with a stray caterpillar on a plate of vegetables at home in Oxford helped her to clarify her thinking.

With interest in China at an all-time high for the Olympics, Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper is an insight into the country and the people, as well as its food. And it certainly has inspired me – with the Husband's Sister and Brother-in-Law currently studying in Xinjiang province, a trip over there may be on the cards at some stage in the not-so-distant future.

Congratulations to Greatfood.ie, who won three gongs at the recent Great Taste Awards in London with their chutneys and relishes. These awards are considered to be the Oscars of the foodie world, with 2021 producers entering almost 4800 products this year to be judged in a wide variety of categories.

The products – Hot Red Pepper Jam, Walnut and Fig Preserve, Wild Cranberry and Apple Relish – are made with Monaghan-based En-Place Foods, who also picked up an award for their for their Castleleslie Balsamic and Apple Reduction (haven't tasted this – yet – but you have to try their Sherry and Fig Balsamic Reduction drizzled on roast duck or trickled over a warm goat's cheese salad).

I'm a particular fan of the Wild Cranberry and Apple Relish, several jars of which we devoured around Christmas while on a black pudding bender. A special pack of the award-winning preserves are available as a special pack from Greatfood2buy.com and, while you're there, you can also pick up a bottle of the Balsamic and Apple Reduction. Make sure you check out my favourite Argan oil and their dinky little tins of spices as well.

What do you read while travelling in France? A stack of novels, a French phrase book – and Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking. My holidays normally involve dragging at least one cookbook of the country about with me, often with a relevant Lonely Planet World Food guide. World Food France is out of print, unfortunately, but I grabbed the last copy of the ED book at work as I ran out the door on the last day.

Although we didn't push ourselves to travel too far, there were still hours spent in the Astra, driving to and from the boat at Roscoff, various campsites and a side-trip to St-Emilion, all made much more manageable by ED's entertainingly opinionated and self-assured writing. While the Husband and the Teacher drove and navigated, I read about the cooking of various regions, perused lists of French terminology for techniques and ingredients and inspired a pre-late-lunch appetite by poring over descriptions of Oeufs sur la Plat, Blettes à la Crème and Pommes au Beurre.

Back home now, but ED's writing has lost none of its inspiration. The vegetables and eggs chapters, especially, have lots of ideas to play around with: I've cooked her Endives au Beurre since I came home and La Pipérade was especially good to feed the boys while camping. I still have to work my way through the last part of the book, the fish section is particularly appealing at the moment as I've gotten some fantastic pollard from my fishing-loving Kildorrery Cousin. If you're travelling to France at any stage – or if you just want to evoke the food of the countryside - French Provincial Cooking is the book for you.

For me, few trips abroad are complete without some kind of local food or kitchen accessory purchase, although flying does tend to put the skids on most shopping. Getting the ferry to France this year meant that life was very much easier when looking at things to bring home. The Husband went over with the intention of picking up some equipment for his nascent home-brewing career, giving me a chance to look round kitchen equipment with an eye to actually being able to bring something home. Mr Bricolage proved to be the perfect place for us both. He picked up a 40 liter plastic keg and a variety of other beer-making paraphernalia; while I was hemming and hawing over a stoneware vinaigrier, he grabbed it for me and legged it to the cash desk. A vinaigrier is a vinegar maker, an urn-shaped pot with a wide, lidded mouth to slosh in your left-over wine and a little tap to let you pour off the resulting vinegar. Mine also came with the cutest little stool, I presume to allow more air circulation.

There's lots of information out there on the web about making vinegar from wine and the whole mysterious business of a “vinegar mother”. As with sourdough starter, you can buy the mother but I think I might just see what time does to my collection of wine dregs. Some of the best information that I've found is on the Gang of Pour website. I'll let you know how I get on!

If you're a farmers' market fan and in the Clonakilty vicinity next Friday, 8 August, watch out for the launch of the town's market at Spiller's Lane Car Park (by the Credit Union).

The market kicks off at 8.30am and Darina Allen will be doing the official opening honours at 12.30pm. According to the Friends of Clonakilty Market, "the very finest local and seasonal foods will be available, including organic vegetables, fresh fish, locally baked breads, rashers and sausages, olives, dips, sun-dried tomatoes, jams, chutneys, sushi, farmhouse cheeses, freshly brewed coffee and much more..."