September 2009 Archives

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!

The Little Sister, who finishes college early on Fridays, was around yesterday so we took Little Missy for a walk that turned into an impromptu blackberry picking expedition.

Not being very organised, we had to use LM's hat for a basket, gathering (and eating) the berries while we strolled down the road. Blackberry season seems to be going on for ages this year, with a sunny September ensuring that there are plenty of fruit for eating and for cooking with rather than the usual one-or-the-other situation.

Our hatful of spoils, gently simmered with a little water and mashed with a banana, turned into an easy lunch for Little Missy. She devoured it (with a little help from the Little Sister!), lumps and all, making appreciative humming noises all the way through. Would that feeding babies will always come so easily.

When I was small, we had rhubarb growing in the back garden. Whatever variety it was - we had sourced the crown from some friend or relative so there were no labels - it grew gigantic stems, as thick as a baby's wrist, topped by enormous leaves that we thought looked like child-sized umbrellas. I was never a fan: it was so stringy that it had to be peeled before cooking and I was always extremely dubious about any fruit or vegetable that did such a good job of shining the inside of the saucepan in which it was cooked.

Now, all grown up, I just can't get enough of rhubarb. When in season, this Irish vegetable - yes, it's a stem vegetable rather than a fruit - is easily found at the market or supermarket if you don't have enough in your garden and it is always reasonably priced. Over the years, the stringiness that so offended me as a child seems to have disappeared. I grab it each time I see it on sale (the crowns in our garden are still unproductive) and make sure to stash enough in the freezer to keep us going even when it's not available. I love Rhubarb Jam, Rhubarb Crumble is a great favourite around here, my mother makes a great Rhubarb Tart, sometimes with added apple, and it's a great fruit to use in cakes.

This cake I put together for a bring-your-own-pudding dinner at the Writer's house recently. It's quick, easy and ever so gently scented with rosewater. Do not use too much - you don't want your cake tasting of soap! If you don't have rosewater, and it is easily found in delis or Middle Eastern shops, then you could always substitute a teaspoon of dried ginger or the rind of an orange.

Speaking at yesterday's Good Food Ireland Awards, Minister for Food and Horticulture Trevor Sargent made the point that restaurants and hotels are ambassadors for Irish farmers. This is something which can be simply ignored, taken for granted - or, more proactively, celebrated, with those in the hospitality industry becoming directly involved with the producers.

Good Food Ireland highlights the people and places that are committed to using Irish foods, through their website, touring maps and the annual awards. They aim to help tourists, both Irish and international, make informed choices about the food they eat, whether taking coffee in a small café, staying at a hotel, buying from a farm shop or participating in a cookery school class.

Their annual award ceremony acts as a showcase, with this year's artisan picnic using products from over 30 members, including organic pappardelle from Noodle House, Louise Clarke's rosewater meringues, savoury bacon and cabbage mouthfuls from Caroline Rigney's rare breeds and Pat Whelan's supremely tender beef fillet. It is an opportunity to try a variety of top quality Irish foods, to meet the people responsible for producing them and to talk to those who showcase these products in their establishments.

Congratulations to all winners, benchmark members in their categories, especially to New Member of the Year, Café Rua, and to Jean and Peter at Glebe Gardens and café who took the Top Regional Member (South) award.

I'm loving the new RTÉ player. We don't have a television at the cottage but at least I can check out the latest food series, normally at the same time as feeding Little Missy! While she chews and hums her happy way through dinners of mashed avocado and beetroot or potato and courgette, I've watched Corrigan's City Farm, most of Fresh from the Sea (note to self: remember to check player before programme is deleted) and am working my way through Trish's French Country Kitchen.

The latest programme to pop up is Rachel Allen's new series, Home Cooking. Her books are the ones that I return to again and again, especially Bake, which is right up my street. That particular one is up on my kitchen cookbook shelf (as opposed to the living room cookbook shelves, the piles of cookbooks on the stairs and the cookbook shelf in the spare room!) right next to Nigella Lawson's Domestic Goddess. Her latest book, also called Home Cooking (HarperCollins), is due out next month. Hopefully lots of new cooking opportunities - just as long as Little Missy gives me a chance to get the bowls and cooking spoons out!

Home Cooking is showing on RTÉ One on Thursday nights at 8.30pm

Sowans Organics produce baking mixes. But not just any old kind of mix, but a thoughtful and well-flavoured blend of organic ingredients, from breads and pancakes to ginger cake and brownies. Spelt flour features strongly: Super Spelt Bread is a great favourite around here, I loved the spelt pancakes and the spelt brownies didn't last too long in this house.

Louise Sowan also produces a couple of gluten free bread mixes - a white and wholegrain - and it is the wholegrain that picked up the award for Best Organic New Product at last week's National Organic Awards. Having tested the white bread out on my coeliac gran, it got the thumbs up from her, and from two of my aunts that were there at the time. Most gluten free breads are horrible, but this is well worth looking out for - a mixture of brown rice flour and potato flour with no sugar (GF products are frequently oversweetened), additives or preservatives.

The rest of the National Organic Award winners are below, with a special mention for Ummera's superb smoked salmon, highly commended in the Best Organic Retail Product category.

Urru Mallow may be gone - and is still very much missed - but Urru Bandon is going strong and has been nominated in the Top Regional Member (South) category for this years Good Food Ireland Awards, along with other Bibliocook favourites Glebe Gardens and Café in Baltimore and Cork city's Liberty Grill.

The Best Producer Award is another area with plenty of familiar faces and names, including Ardsallagh Goat Farm, Glenilen Farm, Lorge Chocolatier, McCarthy's Butchers, and Arbutus Breads.

Good Food Ireland is an industry body that promotes excellence in food tourism, with members including farmers and fishermen to chefs, restauranteurs and food producers. The winners will be announced tomorrow at an Irish artisan picnic in the K Club.

Seasonal? What is seasonal? If you were to look in my garden at the moment, you might think that courgettes (and a few caterpillar-eaten cabbages) are the only things that are in season but my shortcomings as a gardener might not be best representative of what vegetables are available at the moment! Take a look at a farmers' market veg stall (or at a better managed garden) and it's easy to see that carrots and parsnips, the brassicas - broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower - main crop potatoes, runner beans, rhubarb and even Irish-grown peppers are all plentiful right now.

But it's not so easy if you do most of your vegetable shopping at the supermarket. With anything you could wish for in the supermarket all year round (I'm especially pointing the finger at you, tasteless Peruvian asparagus), it is sometimes difficult to know what you should be buying - unless you have prior knowledge. Bord Bia have just launched Best In Season, a website that focuses on promoting the fruit and vegetables that are available during their natural Irish season. Buying vegetables from Irish producers, whether organic or not, is vital unless we want to wake up some day and realise that all of our fresh produce is shipped in from overseas, leaving us at the mercy and whims of big business.

Their Best In Season calendar - divided into vegetables, fruit, salads and herbs - can be downloaded and printed off, there are recipes (including a great one for Smoked Mackerel and New Potato Salad), videos and links to a list of farmers' markets and the fantastic Agri Aware Incredible Edibles school growing projects. Well worth checking out.

With many thanks to the Best In Season people for the fabulous basket full of seasonal Irish vegetables.

For generations, perhaps scarred by the shared memory of starvation, Irish eating habits were simply about having enough. Food was plain, but plentiful: steaming piles of potatoes, well-boiled vegetables (often home-grown) and meat from the local butcher.

But in the last 20 years Ireland has become a different country.

With a population shifting from country to urban living, people side-stepped the back-breaking, uncertain, 24-7 world of farming for life in the suburbs, a 9-5 job and knowing exactly how much they would earn at the end of the month. Home cooked foods became unfashionable: who had time to slave over a hot stove when you could just zap a ready-made lasagne in the microwave? The further we got from the dirt and sweat of food production, the less we cared about how it was done, with price being the main issue. Until, of course, that food turned out to be tainted.

For anyone who is at all interested in what we eat, Basket Case is unmissable. The authors - RTÉ journalists Philip Boucher-Hayes and Suzanne Campbell - paint an alarming picture of how we have handed over control of our nation's food to profit-hungry supermarkets. It is a comprehensive, if depressing, assessment of Irish eating habits, from farmers' markets to German discount supermarkets, convenience foods to dioxin scares.

Well written, entertaining and educational (although I could have done without the David McWilliams-style Flash Paddy and inner culchie tags) this is the kind of book that will act as a wake up call for anyone who thinks that the farmers have it easy. The low price you pay today in the supermarket for your food may not be the price you end up paying in the long run when the race to the bottom drives farmers out of business and the food supply chain lengthens.

The authors do offer a tiny glimmer of hope. For consumers, their advice is to shop around the outer edges of the supermarket for real food - vegetables, fruit, dairy, meat and fish. For the industry as a whole, they argue that a food industry crisis could be prevented by state involvement and more support for quality Irish food production. It remains to be seen if anyone is listening.

Basket Case will appeal to any fans of Felicity Lawrence, Michael Pollan and Joanna Blythman. An essential read.

Basket Case: What's Happening to Ireland's Food? by Philip Boucher-Hayes and Suzanne Campbell is published by Gill & Macmillan.

I started growing my own vegetables when I was about 11. After a long winter hording my pocket money, poring over seed catalogues and haunting the seed display in our local hardware shop, I bribed my younger brother to help me dig a few beds in the overgrown back garden. An early adopter of raised beds, my growing spaces were enclosed with random pieces of wood that we filched from around the house when our mother's back was turned.

As it had been long neglected, the soil in the sheltered space was like black gold and everything I planted thrived, including - to my surprise - a set of tomato plants That summer we actually had enough sun to ripen a lot of the fruit, much to my mother's delight. She was always a sucker for real tomatoes after her own childhood experience of discovering the sweet taste that they had when picked ripe from the vine.

Despite that summer's sun, there were still plenty of unripened tomatoes left on the plant at the end of the summer so, ever the busy child, I picked them all and decided to make Green Tomato Chutney. Unlike jam making, which requires a little skill to figure out the setting point, chutney is child's play. Peel, chop, mix in saucepan and simmer (gagging at the vinegar fumes!) until it resembles something you might like with cheese: an easy make for any age. Only one thing - at the time, we weren't a chutney-eating household. I never did know what happened to all my lovingly filled and labeled jars.

This year was the third year in a row that we've had to pull up a collection of tomato plants without actually getting to eat a single tomato. What can I say? We're optimists. We just keep on trying. The plants had seemed very happy when they were planted out in the raised beds this year, putting on a great growth spurt. There were plenty of flowers that set well, swelling into a substantial amount of little green marbles, just ready for the sunshine. But it came too late. When we uprooted the plants to make room for a late planting of leeks on Sunday, I collected those green fruit and, now an affirmed chutney lover, decided to see if Green Tomato (and Apple - needed to bulk it up) Chutney is worth eating.

With some windfall cooking apples from my mother's orchard (a grand name for the few elderly, nettle-bound trees that still produce fruit!), this is the recipe that I used. I can't yet tell you if it's worth it or not as the chutney has to mature for at least a month before we eat it but it certainly uses enough vinegar to fumigate a whole house, never mind a small cottage! Best made on a day when you can leave all your doors and windows open. You can play around with the green tomato/apple ratio - I only ended up with a scant kilo of tomatoes so balanced it out with the apples.

...you just might find there really is such a thing as a free lunch. Discover wild mushrooms, or berries for a juicy jam in the untimate foodie treasure hunt. By Caroline Hennessy for The Irish Mail on Sunday on Sunday 13 September 2009.

No matter how busy things were for my Grandad, there was always time to go looking for mushrooms in autumn. If he spotted a patch of them down the fields, he would gather his army of grandchildren, supply us with buckets and lead us to the spot. We'd spread out, eagle-eyed for the tell-tale whiteness of field mushroom caps, bringing them back to Grandad for inspection. Once he saw that we had our eye in, he'd head off to another job on the farm, letting us scour the field before bringing our bounty back to the warm kitchen to be peeled and cooked for supper by my mam and aunts.

As a child, every walk in autumn was a feast waiting to happen. My cousins and I picked blackberries for Nana's jam, every second one a treat for ourselves, hunted for the tiny wild blueberries - known to us as hurts, to others as fraocháns - on walks in the hills, bit into crab apples for dares, puckering our mouths up against their astringency. I quickly learned how to tell if a blackberry is infested with worms and, when bringing in the cows for milking, how a grass stalk can be threaded with an unexpected find of mushrooms.

Sloes for soaking in gin, rose-hips for syrup and rowan berries for jelly: autumn was always my favourite time of the year. Growing up in a house where all jams and preserves were homemade, I was early indoctrinated with the benefits of getting something for nothing - never mind if it took hours in the process! I pored over old recipes, excitedly introducing elderberries into apple jelly and had to be discouraged from trying to make hedgerow wines long before I reached legal drinking age.

You can gather wild food all year round but the bright, crisp days of autumn make it the best season for variety and sheer flavour. If you're a nervous novice, there are many foraging courses on offer that will open your eyes to the abundance of edible food available - and remove the fear of picking and eating the wrong thing.

Aisling and William O'Callaghan at Longueville House in North Cork host an annual mushroom hunt in the grounds of their 18th century country house that is very popular with beginners and families. Aisling O'Callaghan attributes the origins of the hunt to her chef husband's own interest in wild food: "he was always foraging. [William is] a real hunter-gatherer and then he cooks everything that he collects. It's something we do with friends and with our kids." On the hunts, when mushroom expert Jim Fraser leads groups through the woods and fields that surround Longueville House, they have found a wide variety of edible fungi including ceps, chanterelles, girolles, blushers, chicken of the woods and hedgehog mushrooms. For those people worried about the possible dangers of mushroom picking, O'Callaghan has reassuring words: [Jim] will always have a chat beforehand to say this is what the poisonous ones look like and please do not pick. We also have a safety code and they're briefed on that so they're well prepared. It is vital, especially with children."

Although the hunts have been taking place for the last eight years, recently O'Callaghan feels that there is a lot of interest in going back to the simple things: "People love to come out and feel that they're learning something on the day. There's nothing as nice as tearing off down there with the dogs and the kids and the freedom of it. It's a fantastic day's entertainment."

For children who spend a lot of their lives indoors, going down to the woods and fields to look for berries and mushrooms is a completely new and very enjoyable experience. Keen forager Rachel O'Grady from Askeaton, Co Limerick feels that our lives have become so packaged that the tradition is in danger of being lost. "Children aren't taught anything, parents don't know what to pick," she comments. But there is a way of making a new tradition. "Get people out in the countryside, walking around and observing what's growing," O'Grady says, "that's the first step." She points out that foraging is part of a new interest in things that are local and seasonal, especially if people have more time on their hands these days. "Growing up in the country you're more aware of these things but they are accessible to everybody."

Whether you are out in the depths of the countryside or in the more urban setting of a city park, nature is freely and easily available. Sometimes it is just a matter of grabbing a basket, gathering the family, getting out there and seeing what's available. This gives us the opportunity to re-connect to our own childhood memories of these foods, to remember golden autumnal afternoons spent hunting with our own parents and grandparents for something edible amidst the trees and brambles.

"It's the passing of that experience and interest on to a younger generation," agrees botanist Olivia Goodwillie who has been running a foraging course at Lavistown House in Co Kilkenny for the last five years. Eating wild food can be very evocative, she finds, as people experience "the memories of picking blackberries from childhood rather than the actual taste of blackberries." Goodwillie emphasises how much children enjoy the chance to get outside, to climb fences, get wet and slop around: "It is a real kids' day - the big kids showing the small kids how to do it, how it was done in their day."

As well as foraging, Goodwillie is also passionately interested in good food so making something edible out of what's been picked is an integral part of the course at Lavistown: "The morning is spent foraging and the afternoon we light a fire, boil up our berries to make jelly and we boil water to make funny tea with things like dandelion roots and pine needles." Sometimes," she points out, "things may be edible but you might not know what to do with them after picking." One of the most popular things that she makes is a jelly, using a collection of different berries, including sloes, rose hips and elderberries. "The hedgerow jelly is absolutely delicious and especially if you make it over a fire, as we do, it has a smoky flavour which no jam that you buy will ever have."

Months later, on a cold January morning, as you eat the jelly on your toast, you're able to sit there and taste all the flavours of the time you spent outdoors. "You're eating memories," Goodwillie laughs, "you're eating your day."

Long gone is the era when knowing what to pick and when to pick it was the difference between eating and going hungry but discovering a hidden crab apple tree or beating squirels to the hazelnut crop still offers a primordial thrill. It's real hunter-gatherer stuff - even if you just eat all the blackberries as you go - but cooking with or making preserves from your gleanings is a tangible and delicious way of capturing the moment.

Foraging for wild food can be as simple (those blackberries again!) or as complex - mind the mushrooms - as you like but it's rarely less than satisfying. You may not quite manage to pick your dinner but you'll definitely have fun trying.

2009 Foraging Courses
Saturday 26 September - Foraging with Roger & Olivia Goodwillie
Lavistown House, Co Kilkenny. Ph: 056 7765145 Email: lavistown@eircom.net Web: www.lavistownhouse.ie

Saturday 26 September - Foraging with Darina Allen
Ballymaloe Cookery School, Shanagarry, Co Cork. Ph: 021 4646785 Email: info@cookingisfun.ie Web: www.cookingisfun.ie

Saturday 3, Saturday 10 October - Mushroom Hunting with Bill O'Dea
Avondale, Rathdrum, Co Wicklow. Ph: Mob 086 827 4899 Email: billodea@eircom.net Web: www.mushroomstuff.com

Sunday 4, Sunday 18 October - Mushroom Hunt at Longueville House
Longueville House, Mallow, County Cork. Tel: 022 47156 Email: info@longuevillehouse.ie Web: www.longuevillehouse.ie
Slow Food Ireland often run foraging events around the country. Check www.slowfoodireland.com for details.

Books
Wild Food by Roger Phillips: a well-illustrated reference book which includes good recipes.

The Easy Edible Mushroom Guide by David Pegler: pocket-sized, with accurate photos and drawings.

There are days when nothing but a loaf cake will do. When I'm calling round to a friend or heading to stay with a cousin, I like to bring something with me and these days I'm going through a phase of loaf cake making. I normally make a pair so there's one to take and one to leave at home - it would be terrible if the Husband starved to death in my absence!

Perfect with morning coffee or afternoon tea, loaves are good and portable if you're travelling and there's more cutting in them so they go that bit further. Favourites include Ballyvoddy Tea Brack, Gingerbread and, when there are bananas on hand, a chocolate-studded Banana Loaf, but I'm stuck on this Lemon Poppyseed Loaf at the moment. Moist, zesty and very morish, it's difficult to resist. Just check your teeth afterwards for any stray poppy seeds.

A note on lining loaf tins: I'm lazy so I just take a piece of greaseproof paper and wedge it roughly into the buttered tin. It might not look great but it's done quickly and speed is often of the essence around here with Little Missy shouting for attention while I try to get something in the oven.

I've only managed to go to the cinema twice since Little Missy arrived on the scene, an enormous drop off when compared with the four or five films a week I might go to see when I reviewed films for the RTÉ entertainment website. I used to go see those films during the day, and for free. That was a Very Good Thing - even if the films were bad, and some were really, truly horrendous.

A couple of months ago I went to see the latest Harry Potter with the Little Sister in Mallow. LM decided to throw a colicky/hissy fit at home, almost driving the Husband to distraction while I sat on oblivious in the cinema. Once I went to the Big Scream, a parent and baby screening at Cork Omniplex in Mahon Point but the film on offer that day was Angels and Demons. About two-thirds of the long, inexplicably convoluted way through, I decided - as I wasn't being paid to review films anymore - that I was well within my rights to leave.

When I heard that Julie & Julia was being released in Ireland in September, I was determined to see it and had the Husband lined up to do another night of Little Missy-sitting. Then I got an email from the Cork Omniplex - this month's Big Scream film is, ta da!, Julie & Julia.

For any other similarly film-deprived parents, this month's screening is taking place next Wednesday, 16 September, at 10am and, despite all the babies around the place, I've definitely been in films when there's been more noise from a more, ahem, mature audience. The Big Scream films are just €7.00 for one adult and one child under four years.

As a child, autumn was one of my favourite times of year. Going back to school was much eased by the fact that there were blackberries available for eating on nearby hedges, crab apples down the fields to be gathered and plenty of field mushrooms to be picked. This year, Little Missy in her sling for our daily walks, trying to grab any bramble that comes near her, we've been keeping an eye out for plump sloes and watching as the elderberries ripen, while eating lots of blackberries.

Last weekend we visited the Galway-based Schoolfriend. A chunk of Saturday afternoon was spent picking blackberries near her house, her three-year-old holding the bowl for us as the Husband, Schoolfriend and I picked the sweet, inky berries. Her 14-month-old kept an eagle eye on proceedings from the pushchair and Little Missy enjoyed the activity as their two dogs 'helped', grabbing mouthfuls of blackberries for themselves.

Back at the house, the Husband peeled and chopped a few apples and a couple of pears from their tree outside. The fruit was popped into the oven to soften while the three-year-old and I made a simple crumble topping: a big bowl for me, small one for him so we could both get our hands messy, rubbing the butter into the flour, then mixing it with the sugar and oats. We tossed the apple/pear mixture with a little sugar, a shake of cinnamon and the blackberries, spread the crumble over and landed it into the oven, just vacated by the Schoolfriend's Shepherd's Pie. It's easy to make dinner when there are a few people involved!

The details of the 2009 Blas na hEireann food awards have just been announced and the organisers are looking for entries from Irish food producers.

Read on for more information on the food awards and remember, all foods entered must be commercially available in at least three outlets and be made in Ireland, either North or South, by companies registered on the island.

The winners will be announced on Friday 2 October as part of the Dingle Peninsula Food & Drink Festival - an event well worth checking out. The Husband, the Sister and myself thoroughly enjoyed the festival last year, doing lots of walking, eating our way around town and staying at the lovely Pax Guesthouse, all great hospitality, homemade cookies and warm hotwater bottles!

If you're thinking of entering, don't delay - the closing date for Blas na hEireann entries is next Thursday, 10 September.