Bibliocook: All About Food

If you've been a fan of Deborah's Humble Housewife blog - she's now blogging at taste.ie - check out her new venture at the beautifully designed Spicendipity, which sells a selection of spice mixes, sauces and baking mixes, alongside some gorgeous gift baskets. Press release below...

Continue reading "Spicendipity goes live" »

Craft butcher Jack McCarthy is a passionate man. Make a visit to his shop in the middle of the main street in Kanturk and be prepared to learn all about his wide range of award-winning meat products. On a quick visit to the town to meet up with the Editor earlier today, I called in to pick up some of my favourite North Cork pancetta. We were only in the door two minutes when Jack had us as a willing audience to taste his intensely savoury air-dried beef. Sliced thinly like Italian Bresaola, it melts in the mouth with a silky texture similar to the finest smoked salmon, leaving a lingering flavour of the spices used in the cure. This innovative craft butcher is like a shark, never standing still – for Jack there's always something to learn or try, a new product to work on, an old one to improve.

A wide variety of sausages were just asking to meet a barbeque: I picked up some of the ones that he makes with local Ardrahan cheese for the next sunny evening at home but could easily have bought twice as much again, so intrigued I was with the flavours on offer. The shop is festooned with awards, including the 2005 Gold Great Taste Award for Jack's spiced dry-cured back rashers, which come vacuum-packed in a striking gold foil packet with his trademark bay leaf. The same product also took the prize for Best Irish Speciality Product that year.

As I drove home, I started planning tomorrow night's dinner. If I can track down some Gabriel cheese, I'll make a spiky salad from the garden (the rocket and mustard are flourishing particularly well), dressed simply with lemon juice and decent olive oil, topped with the jewel-coloured slices of air-dried beef and some shavings of the cheese. But there's also rashers to try, the sausages to barbeque and the pancetta to toss with pasta or make into a superlative BLT. Thankfully Kanturk isn't too far away.

Jack McCarthy Meats, Main Street, Kanturk, Co Cork.
Tel: + 353 29 50178
Web: www.jackmccarthy.ie - Speciality hampers are available to order for delivery in Ireland.
Read Anne Kennedy's impassioned feature on Jack McCarthy at Greatfood.ie.
Watch Jack McCarthy on Nationwide.

You may have noticed some random design issues around here recently, as well as messed-up links, comments not working and the like. I'm still trying to figure out my MT upgrade and, of course, my computer hard disc managed to flatline in the middle of all of this. At the moment I'm lucky to be online at all and am working with a disabled hard disk in a parallel Linux world. Some time soon, I hope, services will return to normal.

My Nana always kept hens. As a child, I spent a lot of time at her house - just the other side of the hill from where we now live - and hens were an ever-present, taken-for-granted part of growing up. Previously my Nana, a trained and skilled poultrywoman, had kept flocks of hens for breeding; by the time I came along she just supplied Dwanes, one of the local shops, with fresh eggs for sale at the counter. But there were still jobs for the grandchildren to do. One of the dreaded chores was that of collecting the eggs. Slowly, slowly, slowly, the straw-lined wicker egg basket banging against my Wellington-clad bare legs, I would go through the gate in the far corner of the yard, wander past the haggart with all its fascinating bits of rusty farm machinery, turn right on to the lane the cows ambled along twice a day for milking and, keeping close to the less muddy inside side, come to the old wooden hen house. After taking a deep breath of clean air, I would twist the old bolt across, opening the door into the musty fug of the hens' world and prepare myself for the egg search.

These were very much free-range eggs; the hens spent their days roaming through the nearby grove and surrounding farmyards. Very few of the outdoor escapades of my cousins and I didn't involve encountering some squawking hen in an unlikely place. But there were always a few indoors and they looked very imposing indeed, especially to a little girl who wasn't too much bigger than the basket that she carried. Most of the nesting boxes that lined the hen house were empty that time of the day but there were always a few hens in place to put the heart crossways in you as you pulled back the disintegrating curtains that gave the layers some privacy. Unlike my Mother and aunts, I could never bring myself to root under a hen for eggs, always too afraid that that shar-looking beak would seek to defend its owner from the unwarranted intrusion. I wonder how many eggs I left behind in those days?

On Saturday the Husband picked up four Rhode Island Red, point-of-lay pullets from a hen lady near Kanturk to populate our sturdy and stylish new hen house and run from Fingerprint Wood Products. The crooning and clucking from the girls as they figure out their new surroundings has unlocked a stream of long-forgotten memories. Every time we go into the garden there has to be time spent observing the new arrivals and marvelling at their antics. Even though we are keeping them confined at the moment, they have already managed - even at a remove - to terrorise the local tom cat who was paying visits to our own cat. The cat herself normally follows us around the garden as we work outside; her movements are now more confined as she tries to avoid being seen and commented on by the hens. Last night the Husband and I spent half-an-hour in and out of the run, trying to find a bowl or bucket that our ever-so-slightly dense foursome would recognise as a water receptacle. They walked around - almost into - the various water containers for quite a while but not once while we were there did they actually see what was in them. Figuring that they wouldn't expire from thirst overnight, we eventually left them to it. I think that my Nana would have been very entertained.

Just got an email from Cactus TV (home of Saturday Kitchen and Richard and Judy) looking for people who are interested in learning how to bake and who would like to participate in a new cookery series. It all kicks off in June so they need volunteers in the Cork area ASAP. More info below.

- Do you love cooking but find the art of baking a bit of a mystery?

- Does your bread fail to rise?

- Do your cakes go soggy?

- Maybe you loved baking as a child but have since lost the skill?

Cactus TV are looking for people to learn to bake as part of a new cookery series – so if you’d like to pick up some top tips from a TV chef, are aged between 20-40, are available at weekends in June, and live in or around Cork, then email us with a photo ASAP at bake@cactustv.co.uk telling us your name, address, age, and why you’d love to be part of our baking school.

The perfect birthday? Take a day off work - this is always nicest if done midweek! - and book a night away in Gort-Na-Nain, a vegetarian guesthouse near Nohoval outside Cork city, run by the welcoming Lucy Stewart and Ultan Walsh, vegetable growers and suppliers of vegetables to Café Paradiso, amongst other Cork restaurants. Drive there after work the day before your birthday, picking up the Husband en route, and arrive just in time for your pre-booked three-course dinner. Relax and savour Lucy's fabulous cooking, using fresh-picked vegetables and fruit grown by Ultan, with the other (very entertaining) couple that happen to be staying there that night. Take a long walk to see the sea before tucking yourself into a large, comfortable bed in an bright and spacious room.

Rise early on a sun-drenched morning for cards and presents before wandering downstairs for a lavish breakfast of just picked strawberries, homemade muesli, brown bread, muffins, pots of coffee and, the piece de resistance, homemade chestnut sausages with fried potatoes, egg and spicy chutney. Persuade Ultan to show you around his polytunnels - giving the Husband notions - and admire his neat asparagus beds, the newly-planted apple orchard, rows of salad greens, aubergines, beans, artichokes, tomatillos, peppers and several varieties of tomato plants. Before you leave, check out the chicken run - there are plans afoot to populate the back of the cottage land with a couple of chickens once we actually get round to organising accommodation - and leave, knowing that this visit won't be a one-off.

Proceed on to Kinsale and, after a walk to stimulate appetite, take yourself for a long-anticipated lunch at Fishy Fishy. Despite the Sister's warnings ("Arrive early and be prepared to queue or arrive late and be prepared to queue"), we were whisked to a table immediately (always good to be doing these things midweek) and start to study the menu. We chose a chilli-spiked seafood salad and fish pie, added a couple of glasses of white wine and sat back to observe Kinsale, and our fellow diners, in the sunshine. Orders of clams and mussels arriving at neighbouring tables had me thinking that I should have gone for a different lunch but, when it arrived, there was no disappointment and no leftovers. Finish off with a decent brownie, served with ice cream and too-cold chocolate sauce and some good coffees then proceed directly to Charles Fort for afternoon reading and snoozing in the sun.

En route home, call into the Teacher's house for a cup of tea and to plan this summer's holidays (we're driving to and camping in France with the Teacher and the Tax Advisor) before making it back, eventually, to the cottage for supper in the sun. A perfect birthday? Without a doubt!

One of the things I love about living in an old cottage is the excuse to furnish it in alternative ways. When I lived in New Zealand, I was an habitué of the op shops (charity shops) in Christchurch, always picking up old cake tins or nutcrackers, battered but usable cutlery, my old dining table and an odd assortment of small stools, used about the house as bedside tables, wee seats and useful steps. Space being limited in Ireland, I've avoided my worst NZ excesses, much to the Husband's relief: there was once Words by the side of the street when one of my op shop chairs didn't fit into the car. One thing I do watch out for, however, is old china. No trip to New Zealand is complete without a few items being secreted in the luggage for the journey home; last time I even managed to fit a collection of old fashioned spoons (to match the bone-handled knives and forks that I had picked up at the Bantry market last summer).

As time goes on, my modern matched crockery and cutlery keep getting pushed further and further back in the press, as I use and re-use my favourite supper plates and particular forks. The dishes that would once been used as shallow soup plates make perfect pasta bowls and an assortment of mismatched side plates and saucers work to serve up deserts or sweet treats to have with tea. The photo is of the remaining pieces of a once-numerous set from Arklow Irish Pottery that I picked up recently. With rims of pale daffodil yellow, painted with twisted curlicues of gold, it is the perfect delft to use when eating early summer meals: platefuls and platefuls of steamed and dressed PSB (Purple Sprouting Broccoli - yes, it did turn both P and S, eventually), millet and bulgar salads with roasted vegetables, roasted buckwheat tossed with flageolet beans in a chilli citrus dressing. Everything seems to taste much better when eaten off the perfect plate - especially if that's done outside in the sunshine.

Working on a site upgrade at the moment - please bear with me while I wander around the back end of things and figure out what goes where.

There was great excitement in Urru, Mallow on Wednesday when the first of the Irish-grown strawberries arrived from Rosscarbery amidst glorious sunshine. We stacked boxes of ruddy fruit on the shelves of the fridge, inhaling their fragrance all the while, until it was decided that we needed to open one - just for quality testing, of course. That punnet wasn't long in being devoured, and - before they all disappeared with customers - I grabbed one for myself, to sit in the evening sunshine and eat, all tumbled on great scoops of Murphy's Vanilla Ice Cream. The first real taste of summer.

Just heard from a reader that the café at The Glebe Gardens in Baltimore is well worth a visit. Liz writes:

"Just wanted to let you know of a café I happened upon last weekend. It is the Glebe Café, in Baltimore, West Cork, and it is one to rave about. The produce comes straight from their garden on to the plate and it is just spectacular. The website is www.glebegardens.com. I think they are only open at weekends right now but I think they start a weekly thing in the summer. I had Organic Beef Stew....yummy simple great food, it just excited me so much that I had to tell someone."

Last June, while the new Husband and I were honeymooning in West Cork (along with eight of his family, six English Engineers and an Irish terrier called Bridie) we visited the Glebe Gardens and loved it. Unfortunately the café wasn't opened while we were there - although the Husband did meet the owner of the house and almost secured me a job while talking to him about me doing the course at Ballymaloe - but all the ingredients were present in the garden, just waiting to be used. Great to hear that it's doing well - I'll have to plan a trip back to the West this summer!

Just been checking out the James Beard Foundation Awards nominees and I see that congratulations are in order for Heidi Swanson for her nomination in the Healthy Focus category. Her book - Super Natural Cooking: Five Ways to Incorporate Whole & Natural Ingredients into Your Cooking - is a constant source of ideas and inspiration these days as I try out her ideas and experiment with new ingredients.

Nominated in the Asian Cooking section is Fuchsia Dunlop for Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook - I'm just reading Shark's Fin & Sichuan Pepper, her enthralling memoir of cooking and eating in China. Fuchsia is also up for a Newspaper Feature Writing award, as is David Leite of Leite's Culinaria. Other of my favourite authors up for awards are Mark Bittman aka the New York Times writer that brought No-Knead bread to the world (How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food), Alice Medrich for Pure Desert (we're big fans of her Chocolate Buckwheat Cookies around here), Anne Willan (The Country Cooking of France), 2005 Savour NZ presenter Patricia Wells (Vegetable Harvest) and - one of the most entertaining food books from last year - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver (I still have plans to try out her recipe for homemade mozzarella!). The awards will be announced on Sunday 8 June.

Although there has been lots of salad planted in the garden on recent weekends, including mustard greens, rocket and mizuna (at least I'll be able to distinguish between the plants after cramming in Ballymaloe for the salad leaves and herbs exams!), it's going to be a while before any of the leaves are big enough to eat. Then, of course, because our planting in succession routine is not entirely developed - despite best intentions - we'll have another glut to work through. But that's all ahead of us and, until then, I've been growing my own salad on the windowsill.

I bought a small, three-level seed sprouter last summer but it was much too warm in our Dublin flat so my first attempts weren't very successful. Now, on a bright windowsill in my unheated cottage, it's really coming into its own. It's on the window behind the sink which makes it easier to remember to rinse the sprouts twice a day - it's not so good when you forget although the smell will help you remember.

I started off using the seeds that I bought at the same time as the sprouter - broccoli (a bit weedy), fenugreek (spicy addition to salads), mustard (peppery, really good in sandwiches) and red clover, which is all a bit anonymous. Getting more adventurous, I recently moved on to the contents of the store cupboard. Mung beans - the bean sprouts we all know - have been a success, especially in their crunchy and juicy early stages but the quinoa never really grew properly and the wheatberries were much too much like grass to be palatable. I suppose that's why wheatgrass is normally used for producing juice. My absolute favourite - so far - are the sprouted lentils. I've been switching between the simple brown and crunchier Puy lentils, both which are great mixed with the stronger-flavoured mustard and fenugreek sprouts in salads and stuffed into sandwiches, pitta breads and wraps. With this tiny garden, I'm much better with successive planting - hopefully we can make it work better outdoors this year!

If you're interested in reading more, there's some very useful information about sprouting in the recent Guardian Grow-Your-Own Guide and the ever-useful Nigel Slater gives a few ideas about how to use them here.

Woo hoo! Bibliocook got a brief mention in Marie-Claire Digby's Webwatch in the food section of yesterday's Irish Times Magazine. Unless you have a subscription, you can't view it online so here it is (told you it was brief!):

Webwatch
www.bibliocook.com
Read about the culinary adventures of former entertainment journalist turned Ballymaloe-trained cook and food writer, Caroline Hennessy.
Published: Sat 19 April 2008 - The Irish Times - Magazine

Slow Food Cork has an event coming up this Thursday, 17 April, at a new bar called An Crúibín on Union Quay. Before it was revamped and made over, the venue was known as the Lobby Bar, site of many a night of musical madness and commemorated by inimitable Cork musician John Spillane in his nostalgic Magic Nights in the Lobby Bar. Now a tapas bar, An Crúibín will play host to, we are promised, a traditional evening of pigs trotters, tails, ribs and cheek, accompanied by bread from the Arbutus Bakery and pints of Beamish, my stout of choice. The event starts at 8pm, it costs €10 for Slow Food members (€15 for non-members) and bookings can be made at 021 4505819.

Hog roast from Gubbeen was on the menu at the Waterford Food Fair farmers' market in Dungarvan yesterday. Cooking started on Grattan Square at 5.30am so appetites were well-stimulated by the time Fingal Ferguson and his staff started serving blaas stuffed with roast pork to a hungry crowd around 1pm. It wasn't the only food on offer at the market - think Chocolate Brownies from Tara's Cookies, Baldwin's farmhouse ice cream, O'Flynn's Gourmet Sausages that I often pick up in the English Market, apple juice from Killowen Orchard and the Crinnaughtaun Juice Company - but, with waves of pork-infused smoke wafting through the square as it cooked, it was definitely the most spectacular.
When we arrived, as the market opened, I grabbed a half-dozen duck and hen eggs from the Dungarvan and Waterford Irish country markets stall. Buying eggs first thing in the morning may not have been my most intelligent idea but, despite other purchases (hunks of local Knockanore and Knockalara cheeses, jars of Seville Marmalade and Fíor-Mil summer honey, fresh-baked rye and seed bread from the Ormond Café), along with the Sunday newspapers, various scarves and layers that were shed as the day heated up, we still managed to get them home in one piece. That was until they were introduced to some mushrooms and butter in the omelette pan that evening...

There's a video report on the first Mallow Farmers' Market on TG4 - go to Cúrsaí Reatha - Cartlann, scroll down to Nuacht TG4 - 05/04/08 and the piece is third on the Nuacht, 6.38 into the clip.

Waterford Festival of Food - this weekend! 11 to 13 April in Dungarvan, Co Waterford. Food trails, cookery demonstrations and a Sunday farmers' market that I'm planning on visiting. I hope they're going to be serving those delicious soft floury white bread baps, unique to Waterford, called Blaas. No weekend away in Tramore was complete without a breakfast Blaa, stuffed with bacon and omelette...mmmm....

Terra Madre Ireland 2008 - 4 to 7 September, in Waterford City. Slow food workshops, debates, tours and tastings, all based around the theme of sustainable food production. Sign up on the website for a news letter that will keep you up-to-date with all the goings-on.

Some weeks things work, at other times my attempts to fill the tins with sweet treats for work falls flat. This time I have a not very successful variation on Almond Honey Squares from a neat little Woman's Weekly Simple Slices book that the Husband ordered for me recently. I think he's trying to ensure his supply of different nice things to take to work - before I started making these weekly variations, it was a consistent diet of Chocolate Sesame Flapjacks and variations thereof.

Although I didn't really follow the recipe, I have to admit that it was not entirely my fault - this time. I had the honey - but the Husband had stuck a buttery knife, complete with toast crumbs, into the jar (luckily that transgression was balanced by the gift of the book!) - so that was substituted with maple syrup, which I couldn't even taste in the eventual result. One of my recently-purchased packets of flaked almonds went a-missing so instead I used a not-too-bad combination of flaked almonds and toasted pistachios. The eventual result - Nutty Chocolate Squares - didn't go to waste, they had their fans, especially when there was nothing else on offer, but only scored 6/10 from the Polish Colleague. His scale is, apparently based on flapjacks at 10/10. Here is the original recipe - I think this may be one to try again, but with honey this time.

Continue reading "Sweet treats for work: Nutty Chocolate Squares" »

With Irish cheeses and handmade terrines, fresh-shucked oysters, champagne and plenty of spiced beef, the launch of the Taste of Cork festival took place last Thursday in the English Market and it's shaping up to be something well worth checking out.

Although I was rather underwhelmed with my experience at the first Taste of Dublin, the teething problems - portion size, rain shelter, muck underfoot - seem to have been ironed out and, for the event's Cork debut, the organisers have chosen the historic surroundings of the Cork City Gaol (or Jail, depending on where you grew up!) for the weekend of Friday 27 to Sunday 29 June. The restaurant line up includes Jacobs on the Mall, Seamus O'Connell's Ivory Tower, the very familiar Ballymaloe House, and Mallow's representative - Longueville House. We're planning on a family day out - time to book those tickets!

Gradually getting through the Observer Food Monthly - it's like very good chocolate for me, not something to be gobbled down but, rather, to be slowly savoured - and just came across a feature on Bill Hogan and Sean Ferry of the West Cork Natural Cheese Company, makers of the superlative Desmond and Gabriel cheeses. The cheese-making partners have been in conflict with the department of agriculture since 2002, when their cheeses, all made from raw, non-pasteurised milk, were impounded. They eventually won their case - but it was not without much difficulty and hardship. Read the whole story - The revolution will not be pasteurised - here and then take yourself down to your nearest cheesemonger and buy a large slice of Desmond and Gabriel in tribute to a couple of cheesemakers who fought back.

Trish Deseine is a familiar name in the food blogosphere - particularly to anyone who reads Chocolate and Zucchini - and this Ulster-born food writer is also very well known in her adoptive France. Last year's publication of Nobody Does it Better: Why French Home Cooking Is Still the Best in the World, was her first major foray into the English-speaking world - her Boudin Noir aux Deux Pommes (Black Pudding with Apples and Potatoes) is one of those useful ideas that is cooked regularly in my house.

Her debut television series, Trish's Paris Kitchen, starts on RTÉ One tonight at 7.30pm. I don't know if the programme is going to be broadcast online just yet, although 4oD has completely spoiled me for watching TV on the web (thanks Suzy!), but you can catch Trish being interviewed on Corrigan Knows Food from last June and she was also being interviewed on Monday's Today With Pat Kenny - scroll down and click on Shows from the past week on the right hand side.

If you're anywhere in the Mallow area this coming Saturday, 5 April, you can catch the first Mallow Farmers' Market in the wee courtyard outside URRU - the culinary store, deli and café where I work - from 10.30am to 1pm. Stalls that will be there include my favourite Fermoy Natural Cheeses, smoked fish from Geraldine Bass' Old Millbank Smokehouse and herbs from West Cork's Gairdín Eden, which supply the fantastic salad leaves that we sell in URRU. Hopefully the weather will stay fine!

In the "I wish I was still living in Dublin" category, check out the forthcoming evening of Italian food, wine and song organised by Greatfood.ie and the Italian School of Cooking for this Saturday night (29 March). Tickets for that are on sale at Greatfood2buy.com. Independent wine blog Sour Grapes - well worth taking a look at for some decent wine reviews - is organising a wine tasting event at Fallon & Byrne for 15 April. Sign up at Sour Grapes here.

Not having a TV, I've only just heard about Willie's Wonky Chocolate Factory, a Channel 4 series about chocolate entrepreneur Willie Harcourt-Cooze and his dreams of growing, importing and manufacturing high-end chocolate products in England. Although there's no video online, there is a selection of photos from each of the four episodes of the show, the last part of which was shown last night, alongside some of Willie's recipes - I particularly like the Black Beans one. And make sure you don't miss the feature on chocolate ad blasts from the past, including the caramel bunny, the Man from Milk Tray and - of course - "Ambassador! You are spoiling us".

...in which Bibliocook pays a quick visit in the rain to Blackheath Farmers' Market, picking up a log of goat's cheese on the way, has dinner in a rather nice private room at The Punter in Cambridge, eats breakfast in Baker and Spice (while admiring the enormous rectangles of butter and jars of jam for sharing in the middle of the communal table, wondering idly how long it takes before the display is irretrievably destroyed) dashes into The Hummingbird Bakery to take a peep at their cupcakes, walks all the way from Richmond train station to Skye Gyngell's tea house at Petersham Nurseries only to discover - oh tragedy - that it is shut on Mondays, cooks dinner (a gnocchi dish, with Gubbeen cheese and chorizo imported by Caroline, very much adapted from an idea in this month's delicious.) for the London-based Brother and his partner, pays homage - once again - at Books for Cooks and catches up with a former Ballymaloe classmate over dark Americanos, Mushrooms and Goat's Cheese on Brioche and a Chocolate Loaf Cake at the Grocer on Elgin. Phew!

Eoin Purcell of Mercier Press in Cork (the same company, incidentally, that are publishing Kieran Murphy's Ice Cream book) has set about putting together a collection of recipes of traditional Irish family favourites. Everyone is welcome to contribute recipes from their own granny - or granddad! - and Our Grannies' Recipes will be published in October, with €1 from every copy going to Age Action Ireland. You can read more about it and take a look at the first few recipes here.

Congratulations to Lorraine at Italian Foodies - the winner of this year's Best Food/Drink Blog at the Irish Blog Awards! Kieran of Ice Cream Ireland was also a winner, taking the Best Business Blog award. You can read about all the winners on Maman Poulet, herself also a joint winner in the Best News/Current Affairs category. Sounds like a good night was had by all!

Best of luck to all the nominees, particularly those in the Food and Wine category, for this year's Irish Blog Awards! It's all happening tonight at the Alexander Hotel in Dublin but, the fact that this North Cork-based blogger works on Saturdays, combined with a visit from the Brother-Who-Lives-In-London means that I won't be able to make it to this year's event. Looking forward to hearing all about the winners, though!

I was on RTÉ Radio 1's Mooney programme yesterday talking about baking and breadmaking - if you're interested, you can listen here (I'm on after the 4pm news!) and here are some links to recipes that I either mentioned, or intended on mentioning, during the show.

My ever-popular Chocolate Brownies
Choc Chip Cranberry Cookies
Lemon & Pistachio Yoghurt Cake

And, for those breadmakers out there, here is a recipe for a simple Brown Soda Bread and - if you're getting more adventurous! - you could try Mark Bittman's No Knead Bread or even experiment with some Sourdough Bread.

Kevin Thornton's Guerrilla Gourmet evening at the Rock of Cashel is now online here for any fellow television-less fans of the show.

A quote from one of satisfied customer's at Denis Cotter's Guerrilla Gourmet evening, when he cooked a vegetarian meal for adamant beef-eaters at Bandon Mart. Watch the whole programme and access recipes online at the RTÉ Guerrilla Gourmet website - note: the programmes are only available for 21 days after broadcast.

Read a short review of Denis Cotter's beautifully realised Wild Garlic, Gooseberries...and Me here, as well as an older cookbook and Café Paradiso review.

Congratulations to all those who are on the longlist for the Best Food and Wine Blog 2008 - it's great to see so many old favourites there, including Val's Kitchen, Italian Foodies, Ice Cream Ireland, Martin Dwyer, The Humble Housewife and Eat Drink Live. There are also plenty of new blogs, reminding me that it's definitely time to do some work on my blog roll!

Best Food and Wine Blog Longlist 2008

Don't forget Pancake Tuesday tomorrow! I'm looking forward to trying out a new product from Sowan's Organics - two organic pancake mixes, one with unbleached white flour and a spelt variation, which I'm particularly interested in. Both come fortified with organic vanilla, a great addition to savoury dishes - when I'm making Nic's Buttermilk Pancakes, I flavour them with some vanilla extract before adding the crispy bacon and maple syrup. If you have to buy a mix, best stick with something organic but, if you're interested in making your own pancakes, you'll find my standard recipe here with a useful dish for Pancake Tuesday - Ricotta and Spinach Pancake Bake. For more ideas check out Greatfood.ie's pancake special.

Update February 06, 2008
Sowan's Organic Spelt Pancakes were a winner, filling and flavoursome, if a little too sweet for my taste for using with ricotta and spinach, although I still think that they would work well with crispy bacon and maple syrup.

I was recently asked whether baking - particularly bread making - in Ireland is undergoing a recent resurgence or is it on the way out? Are people too busy/too tired to cook, never mind bake, for themselves? Judging by the amount of people that bake and blog about it, it doesn't look like it! What do you think?

Apologies for the loss in transmission for the last while. My hosting company decided to play silly buggers and, as we were in New Zealand on an in impromptu trip to surprise the Husband's grandfather for his 80th birthday, it was a little difficult to sort out. Still, I'm back now and ready to start eating my way through 2008!

Christmas Cake, made by my mother from Granny's recipe - rich, more-ish and, best of all, still around to enjoy with pots of tea.

My aunt's fabulous Plum Pudding, eaten after Christmas dinner with lots of Brandy Butter and oodles of cream.

Black pudding from Hanley's of Mitchelstown, nicely flecked with oatmeal and hot from the pan with some late homegrown apples cut into segments and caramelised.

Greatfood2buy's Wild Cranberry and Apple Chutney, with toasted cheese sandwiches (particularly anything involving blue cheese) and, especially, with the aforementioned black pudding.

An almost disastrous Stephen's Day soup - Ham and Pea this year - which got left on too low a heat during the family's traditional woodland walk so that the peas almost didn't disintegrate in time for lunch. Some rapid simmering and cheeseboard distraction saved the day, however!

Slightly stale Stollen, toasted under the grill until brown and bubbling, buttered and served with mugs of cinnamon hot chocolate in front of the fire.

The traditional family post-Christmas dish: left-over ham and turkey stripped off the bones, heated in a simple Mushroom and White Wine Sauce and dolloped over sourdough toast or steaming heaps of garlicky mash.

Savoury tarts made for visiting family - a seasonal combination of broccoli, Cashel Blue, fresh cranberries, chorizo and caramelised onions snuggled together under a custard blanket.

Little wooden crates of brightly coloured clementines, heaped under the Christmas tree and eaten in great quantities as the antidote to Christmas excess...

Christmas is coming/The goose is getting fat... and it's more than time to have your Christmas lists made and almost completed. This year, between living out of the city and being completely immersed in the Ballymaloe Cookery Course, it's almost crept up on me - and I know that I'm not the only one! Here are a few present ideas for your similarly-food orientated friends.

After the course, I'm interested in a whole new kitchen makeover, complete with gas hob. Seeing as that won't be happening, it's time to take a look at the items that are in the Ballymaloe kitchen stations and see what I can add to my already bulging kitchen cupboards. Top of the list would have to be a simple cast-iron grill pan. Although I have friends that swear by them, I had never used one before but I ended up cooking so many different things this way - fish, steaks, chicken, vegetables - and I have several duck breasts (after the practices for my practical exam!) just waiting to be pan grilled, when I get my own one. QuirkyKitchen.ie is well worth taking a look around for things like this, as well as lots of other kitchen gadgets.

Despite watching various teachers manage to cut themselves on while demonstrating how (not) to use the Japanese mandolin (always a good time to busy yourself with your notes, rather than watch in close-up on the tv monitors!), it's still on my list. I have visions of slicing up cucumbers for pickling next summer, as well as plenty of potato and other root vegetable gratins.

A couple of loose-based tart tins are also something that I intend on picking up at some stage, if they're not in my Christmas stocking. I had a large one in New Zealand, bought from my favourite charity shop for $4, and loved using it. Tarts and quiches always look more spectacular when you can slip them out of the tin before presenting them.

If you - or the person that you're buying for - is based in Dublin, a voucher for the Italian School of Cookery is well worth picking up. You can get vouchers for individual classes of wine, cooking, food and song from just €60 or choose from any of their series of classes for 2008. I thoroughly enjoyed the class that I attended last year and I don't think that I was the only person there that night that made plans to go back at another stage. They're based in Rathmines so call around, especially if you want to take a look at the Italian wines, oils and preserves they also have on sale.

Online, head to Irish-based Greatfood2buy.com where you can put together a gorgeous package with seasonal Wild Cranberry and Apple Relish, a perfect addition to post-Christmas turkey sandwiches, a selection of spices and herbs in dinky little light-proof metal canisters - remember that you'll need nutmeg, cloves and star anise for your Christmas baking - and the intensely flavoured Halen Môn flavoured sea salt. Try a tiny pinch of Halen Môn with Taha'a Vanilla on top of a dark chocolate mousse to give new life to over-fed taste buds. Watch out especially for the beautifully packaged range of Le Tamerici mostarda (a pungent mustard jam, fabulous with cheese) and delicate organic jams. Greatfood2buy.com will deliver anywhere in Ireland, via An Post's Parcel Service, at a flat rate of just €7.95 but order now - last date for ordering Christmas gifts is 18 December.

Still on food, but angling towards the growing side of things, annual marjoram, chervil, sweet geranium, sage, spearmint, dill and fennel are all on my gardening list for 2008. It's also time to renew gift memberships with the Clare-based Irish Seed Savers Association. For €35 you get five varieties of seeds, three varieties of seed potatoes and a great newsletter twice a year. Also good for organic seeds and unusual varieties are Madeline McKeever's Brown Envelope Seeds (we loved the prolific Ushiki Kuri squash from Brown Envelope that we grew this year, the last one is awaiting me in the kitchen as I type) and the Organic Centre in Rossinver, Co Leitrim. Both the Organic Centre and the ISSA do a wide variety of courses, from vegetarian cooking and organic gardening to bee keeping and cheese-making and vouchers are readily available.

Best of all, if you've a little time for baking and cooking, you can make your own selection of biscuits and tasty treats for your friends and family. Nobody will turn down jars of homemade Apple and Sloe Jelly or Tomato Chilli Jam - I'm off to make piles of Choc Chip Cranberry Cookies, Ballymaloe Mincemeat Slice and Shortbread!

Congratulations to Anne Kennedy over on Greatfood.ie who has got her new fine food and ingredient gift shop - Greatfood2buy.com - off the ground in perfect time for Christmas. I know she has been cooking and testing for the Greatfood.ie range of chutneys, preserves and jams - Wild Cranberry and Apple Relish sounds especially good and I think I'll have to pick up a jar of Onion Marmalade with Plums and Port for myself. Living in the countryside, it's not always easy to get your hands on things like puy lentils, verjuice, organic polenta, lavender honey, quality spices or my favourite argan oil but Anne has put together a great selection of products that can be all yours in the click of a button (if you have the use of a handy credit card...) She also has the award-winning Castle Leslie range of balsamic reductions for sale - a bottle of their Balsamic Reduction with Sherry and Fig has gone down a treat in this house, with spoonfuls being tasted at regular intervals. I have great plans to use it on some pan-fried duck breasts, if it ever makes it all the way to the kitchen. Watch out next week for Greatfood.ie's Flavour of Italy range, including fine pasta, mostarda gift sets, Italian dolci and wine.

To celebrate the launch, Greatfood.ie have teamed up with the Italian School of Cooking in Rathmines to run a Christmas Artisan Food Fair on Sunday 9 December from 12 noon to 6pm. Wonder if Marco will be singing again?!

Transition from a full-time journalist's job in Dublin to country-based student life is more than just packing a car, cleaning out the old flat and shifting down to the cottage. Mindless routines - the 45-minute stroll to work, a computer-based eight-hour stint, walking home mentally preparing supper, deciding whether to call into one of my favourite shops on the way (Mortons, Donnybrook Fair, Taste of Italy, Al-Khyrat) - suddenly become more precious as the days speed towards leaving the city. Only one thing to do: sidestep the whole situation by flying off to Girona in Spain the day after the move!

The Husband and I spent three nights in the small Catalonian city earlier this week, time to soak up sun and recover from our eighth move in three years, a breathing space to adjust and look forward to the future. Plus an ever-welcome opportunity to consume copious amounts of tapas, cava, café con leche and rioja while reading stacks of books - Miranda Innes' Getting to Mañana, a memoir of her move to Andalusia set a perfect scene as well as having a good scattering of simple recipes - taking long siestas and general relaxation. Now back home, I've the task of condensing two kitchens, their ingredients and equipment (did I mention that I'm a hoarder?!), into one. It's baking blitz time this weekend - No-Knead Bread, Mexican Beans, Brown Bread, Chocolate Sesame Flapjacks, cakes and cookies - as I try to clear some space in the kitchen. Now, where did my new uniform disappear in the move?

Well, I've taken the plunge. Notice has been given at work. Going away parties (the Baggott Inn's self-serve Guinness taps proved particularly popular!), dinners and drinks have been partaken in. After ten years living in Dublin and five years in Cork city, it's time to return to the country. This weekend, the Husband and I move out of our horrible little Dublin flat and, in less than two weeks, on 17 September, I start the 12-week certificate course at Ballymaloe Cookery School.

It really is going back to school time. For the first time since I left second level, I have a uniform list and had to wander down to O'Connor's Workwear on Capel Street yesterday afternoon to purchase two sets of chefs' rig outs - white jackets, check trousers, the lot. Aprons, engraved knives and wine textbooks have been ordered directly from the school and a trip to Reeds filled my stationary requirements. All equipped, I'm ready to embark on a new phase of life as I take my hobbies - writing about food and cooking - and try to make them into something that I can earn a living from. Wish me luck!

Unless absolutely necessary, I tend to avoid bed and breakfasts. I've stayed in many around Ireland and most experiences are nothing to write about - unless in a negative manner. Last year's May Bank Holiday we were forced into B&B accommodation in Westport by weather unsuitable for camping. After we spent the evening avoiding a particularly racist guest, breakfast was enlivened by talk of the May Day flowers that had been left for our piseog-loving landlady. There was a landlady in Navan who thought we were only staying one night and could only offer us bed, no breakfast, for the second night. The best of the lot, however, has to be the Carlingford B&B where the bedroom was painted blood red - the walls, the ceiling, the skirting board, the bathroom even had a matching red toilet and bath! Most disturbing, I spent the night having nightmares about being trapped in a womb.

The one exception that I've come across in Ireland is a B&B just outside Ballymoney in County Antrim, that myself and the Husband stayed in years ago. We had a large, comfortable room, it was run by friendly but not too nosy proprietors and, best of all, they had alternatives to the usual fry-up breakfast - smoked salmon, pancakes and French toast were all for the eating if you gave notice the night before.

This weekend, en route to a wedding in Scotland, we discovered another wonderful B&B. We flew in to Inverness on Friday and, after searching through Organicholidays.co.uk, decided to spent the night at Shenval B&B. The Husband used to do a lot of walking in Glen Affric and was familiar with the area so, after hiring a car, we proceeded onwards to Drumnadrochit and went to stay with Pierre and Christiane Lebrun. Shenval is a small but comfortable B&B, with just three rooms (we ended up in the twin!) and a shared bathroom. After an afternoon snooze, an essential part of any holiday, we followed Pierre's advice and took walked to Corrimony Cairn, just far enough to encourage enough appetite for dinner.

We sat down to the table with a pair of French birdwatchers, for a simple but substantial feed of Scottish specialities - haggis with clapshot, a mixture of turnip and potatoes, followed by Cranachan (a mixture of whipped cream, whisky, honey, and fresh raspberries topped with toasted oatmeal). With dinner, the four of us shared a bottle of wine which we had brought along, sitting over tea and shortbread afterwards with Pierre and Christiane. A relaxed breakfast the following morning, complete with tattie scone and homemade bread, set us up nicely for the day ahead. As we left to drive to Lossiemouth, Pierre and Christiane stood at the door to wave us off, making the whole experience feel more like a visit to friends than a necessary evil. Dinner, bed and breakfast for two was £70. Money well spent.

Just a reminder that the Festival of World Cultures kicks off tonight in Dún Laoghaire. It is taking place all weekend with lots of free music and plenty of good eating. Slow Food has a stand at the Cool Earth eco-fair in the Town Hall so, if you're interested in learning about SF - and tasting some products from Irish artisan producers! - call in over the weekend.

For anyone who is interested in the relationship between food and farming in Ireland, the annual Euro-toques National Food Forum and Fair - entitled Reconnecting: Farming, Food & Rural Communities - will be taking place at Brooklodge Hotel in Macreddin Village, Co Wicklow on Sunday 2 September. On this year's panel are Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Trevor Sargent; UK organic movement pioneer and champion Helen Browning; Gerry Scully, the programme manager for Rural Development with Teagasc; Irish Farmers Journal columnist and farmer Peter Young; and Ross Lewis, chef/proprietor of Chapter One Restaurant and Commissioner of Euro-toques Ireland.

Peter Young, together with his wife, Jenny, recently opened Castlefarm Shop, a farm shop in Co Kildare selling organic, homemade and homegrown food. I've been reading about their dairy farm's conversion to organics and the work involved in running a weekly stall at a farmer's market as documented in Jenny's monthly column in Food & Wine Magazine. The farm shop definitely sounds like something to call into if you're around the area - I've added it into the Kildare page of my Bridgestone Irish Food Guide for future reference!

The forum takes place from 11am to 1.30pm and, after a break so that delegates can visit the nearby market, an organic and wild food barbecue will take place at the chapel in the grounds of Brooklodge Hotel. Last year's debate on food tourism in Ireland touched on many interesting points but it was all too short to fully discuss the issues raised. Still, it's an event well worth going to - lots of conversation with opinionated people, new producers to discover in the market and some really wonderful food at the barbeque. The forum, market and barbeque, which includes champagne reception and wines, costs just €45. For more information and bookings contact Ruth Hegarty of Euro-toques Ireland at info@eurotoquesirl.org.

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.

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...

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!

One of the many interesting things about food blogging is tracing the movement of ideas and recipes around the widespread world of bloggers. Since the first time I read about Mark Bittman's No-Knead Bread - currently on my (very long!) list of recipes to try - in the New York Times it has travelled far and wide. You'll also find Peabody's Cranberry Orange Cookies a-wandering around other people's blogs, as is Donna Hay's Self Frosting Cupcake recipe, which first surfaced on Niki's Baking Sheet and then moved out into the wider world.

The Baker's Edge baking pan is one of those things that's been wandering around the blogging world for the last while. My interest was piqued when it popped up on Chocolate and Zucchini last year. Beautifully photographed, as always, by Clotilde (she also has a savoury recipe here), I loved its curvy snake-like shape and was intrigued with the idea of a baking pan - it was originally designed for brownies - that was designed to distribute heat equally so that there wouldn't be such a difference between edge and centre pieces. And then I promptly forgot about the Baker's Edge - until it started cropping up other blogs. A few months later, I've become the proud owner of what may be the only Baker's Edge in Ireland!

Solidly constructed from non-stick cast-aluminium, it came with a leaflet of recipes (cup measurements only) as well as a dinky little red spatula which helps to smooth cookie dough around the turns in the pan as well as being invaluable when it comes to dividing up brownies and getting them out of the dish. Unfortunately my Baker's Edge has become a victim of our current peripatetic lifestyle. Living in Dublin during the week and the country cottage at weekends means that it, much like my digital camera, always seems to be in the wrong residence when I want to bake! I still don't feel like I've given it a proper try-out but I have been experimenting with David Lebovitz's Friendship Bars, trying to convert the ingredients for Chef Emily's Signature Cookie Bars into metric and playing with a great recipe for Coconut Blondies (which is how I discovered the thermostat for my Dublin oven is screwy) that I got from the Connoisseur.

I'll just warn any potential purchasers that if they, like me, have a fan oven - nothing else seems to exist in Ireland any more, come back NZ cooker, all is forgiven - to be extra careful when cooking in this pan as it is all too easy to overcook things. I'm fiddling around with a few different recipes at the moment and hope to post them soon. In the mean time, you can read about why the Baker's Edge came about and creator Matt Griffin's efforts to bring it into the market, and browse through some recipes here.

If you're in the mood for yellow food, Barbara over at NZ food blog Winos and Foodies has managed to wade her ever-gracious way through a total of 143 - that's no typo, I did say 143! - entries for her A Taste Of Yellow foodie event.

When I first started blogging, while living in New Zealand in 2005, it wasn't long before I discovered Winos and Foodies, one of - as far as I know - the first NZ food blogs and I've been a fan ever since, admiring Barbara's ever-inspiring zest for life, food, Donna Hay, baking and blogging, despite her ongoing battle against cancer.

Barbara's A Taste of Yellow, in support of Lance Armstrong's LIVESTRONG Day, is about raising cancer awareness and it has also become about people sharing their own cancer stories. You'll find her very comprehensive round-up here.

The first time I heard of Peter Gordon - the New Zealand-born, London-based chef of the Providores and Tapa Room - was when the whole Antipodean fusion cookery style was being written about in English newspapers like The Sunday Times during the early 1990s (my newspaper of choice through college although, after discovering Nigel Slater's food section in The Observer, I've never looked back!). While I lived in New Zealand in 2005, he opened a restaurant in Auckland - dine by Peter Gordon - and as a result was all over the NZ newspapers and food magazines. That's how I came across his fantastic and much-made (it's especially good as a Christmas pressie) Tomato and Chilli Jam recipe.

Peter is also a consultant for Air New Zealand, Tourism New Zealand and New Zealand Lamb. Unique Interactive recently got in contact to let me know that, wearing his lamb ambassador hat, Peter will be online for a webchat at www.uniqueinteractive.co.uk/chat on Wednesday 25th April from 2pm to 4pm. Darina Allen is also a fan - he was a guest at the Ballymaloe Cookery School last year.

If you're interested in sustainable food production, all three Slow Food Dublin Convivia are hosting a film screening and debate at The Sugar Club in Dublin on Tuesday 8 May. The films that will be shown are: Fowl, an Irish documentary by Andrew Legge, which examines modern day chicken farming and western people's relationship with food; and The Power of Community - How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, a film about how a country can successfully traverse the reduction and loss of finite fossil fuel resources.

Andrew Legge, director of Fowl, will be in attendance on the night and Davie Philip, Education Manager of Cultivate, the sustainable living and learning centre in Temple Bar, will introduce The Power of Community and lead a discussion afterwards.

The Future of Irish Food: A Film Screening and Debate event will take place at The Sugar Club on Tuesday 8 May 2007 at 7.30pm. Cost: €12 (members) and €15 (non-members). See you there!

There were two interesting food pieces on RTÉ news programmes over the weekend - Jennie O'Sullivan reported on a Slow Food Ireland promotion at a farmers' market in Kinsale on the Six One News and there was also a feature on Morning Ireland about the new farmers' market in Ballymun.

Also, here are a few more new Irish food blogs...

Eat Drink Live: I missed Limerick-based Laura's blog last time round but fortunately Val pointed her out. She is currently running a monthly muffin recipe on the site (check out the fabulous Paddy's Day ones here) and - as a result of her blog - has just started supplying Italian deli La Cucina with muffins, cookies and other assorted sweet stuff.

Italian Foodies: speaking of La Cucina, owners Lorraine and Bru have their own blog at Italian Foodies. Lots of simple Italian recipes, information on Italian foodstuffs and lessons on how to eat like an Italian.

Eat Me Drink Me: Abulafia's inspired experiments with Homecured Bacon and Pork Rillette are well worth reading. Plus she's also a fan of one of my favourite seasonal cookbooks, The Cook and The Gardener by Amanda Hesser.

Quirky Blog: Quirky Kitchen.ie has its own wee blog on the go, with a few recipes - just beware of straying on to the rest of the site which has lots of lovely bakeware, my favourite cast iron pots, all kinds of useful gadgets - and they deliver free in Dublin for orders over €100.

It's moving week so there's not much cooking and baking going on, apart from me making loaves of brown bread to try and use up some of the six - yes, count them, SIX! (and that's not mentioning the few that are down at the cottage, ahem...) - bags of flour that I have sitting on my shelves. The flat that we are moving into in Dublin is much smaller and doesn't have a freezer so for a while there was a mad race to finish up all the frozen foodstuffs at our current place. Then we made a quick trip to DID Electrical so we now have a new under-counter freezer and the pressure is off. It still leaves me scratching my head at some of the things that I have in there though. Who knows why I froze a brioche loaf or what kinds of curry are in all those little plastic containers that I use for lunches? Certainly not the person who should have been labelling them!

The dry food cupboards are also well supplied - too well supplied. My habit of bringing food home every time I go travelling makes every cupboard clear-out a memory trail. There's a little leftover honey and argan oil from Morocco, along with some dukkah that didn't get used up when the weather turned cooler. My baking supplies at the cottage have been supplemented with vanilla bean paste and natural almond extract from our December stop in Norfolk, there's wine from New Zealand and Spain to move, not to mention the other fruits of that trip to Barcelona - membrillo (quince paste), fig and nut cake, several chorizo from the Boqueria food market, assorted chocolates and the most of a kilo of garlic. All week we've been eating soups and Socca, quinoa (very good used instead of bulgar wheat in this salad with Pomegranate Molasses Dressing) and a Chocolate Biscuit Cake with coconut, nuts and wheatgerm (decidedly tasty, despite being made from a ragbag of ingredients). I now have a new cooker and kitchen to break in - once I get everything out of their boxes - but, before that we're off on a long-promised trip to try out the much lauded Old Convent in Clogheen with the cousins and their partners...

If my (cracked and misshapen!) Chocolate and Raspberry Cheesecake has whetted your appetite, check out Peabody's round up of cheesecakes from around the world. There is a grand total of 54 cheesecakes and all votes have to be in by next Saturday, 31 March.

Warning: this is not something to go looking at in the run-up to lunchtime. All the photos of fabulous cheesecake concoctions will definitely have you drooling!

Because I know I won't be able to post from the cottage on St Patrick's Day - we're down for the weekend to get the spuds planted on the traditional day, 17 March, in the Boyfriend's painstakingly rabbit-proofed garden - I'm going to celebrate Paddy's Day with a round-up of new Irish food blogs. If there's anyone else out there, just let me know!

The Humble Housewife - an American Irishwoman, living in Edenderry with her American husband and two daughters, Deborah definitely has her hands full with a couple of blogs but is also thinking of getting back into food catering. Check out her recipes for Sticky Cinnamon Buns, Deborah's Divine Dinner Biscuits and lots of family-friendly dishes.

Organico Bantry - this independent family-run café, shop and bakery in Bantry has a blog, although it takes a little fiddling around to locate it, with lots of great healthy recipes using organic, fairly traded and locally sourced products. Next time I get my hands on some beetroot, I'm going to try out their Organic Beetroot Salad. The last time we had beetroot I pickled it, using a recipe from Darina Allen's Simply Delicious Vegetables, and it was good but it did linger around a little longer than necessary. Anyhow, anything with yoghurt can always get my attention.

Stuff Yer Bake - although based in England, Sarah's is very definitely an Irish blog, with a subtitle like: "The mad ramblings of a Northern Irish foodie". Take a look at her picture of a delectable pork belly, just after an update on cake decorating and before one on her diet, which she illustrates with a picture of and recipe for the River Café's Orange, Almond and Cardamom Cake. Diet? What diet?

Superyacht Chef - Niall Harbison is a private chef on super yachts and there's plenty of video footage of his cooking on board. He's also working on raising money for an orphanage in Africa and you can find more information on that project here.

The Diet Cast - Hayden's blog about eating healthily, with plenty of information and links on growing your own food, sustainable living and food concerns. He has also just announced a competition on fellow site My Diet Friends for anyone interested in writing about sustainably sourced and prepared food. If we ever manage to grow anything in our rabbit-infested garden - or even manage to catch a few of the pests - I'll definitely be up for that.

Val's Kitchen - Val always has fantastic photos on her site - check out her spectacular St Patrick's Day cookies - and I always love to read reviews of local eateries.

And here's also a couple of websites about sustainable living in Ireland that are well worth taking a look at:

The Good Life: Self-Reliance In An Uncertain World

Irish Sally Gardens: living the sustainable dream in rural Ireland

Did I mention that I was a bit dotty with dates recently? I'm raging that I managed to MISS the Irish Blog Awards, thinking that it was on next weekend. It actually took place last night and I only discovered when I did a wander around the Irish blogosphere this morning. Although I'm disappointed that I didn't manage to make it along, it was great to see that some of my favourite bloggers were among the winners. Take a bow Ice Cream Ireland (Best Business Blog, Best Specialist Blog), Conor for Best Blog Post (You may feel a small prick), the lovely ladies at Beaut.ie (Best Design and Best Newcomer) and The Sigla Blog (Best Arts and Culture). Congratulations all!

Continue reading "Doh! The Irish Blog Awards...forgotten" »

Fairtrade Fortnight kicked off on Monday this week and, if you're not off chocolate for lent this year, you can indulge and feel suitably virtuous at Amnesty Ireland's launch of their fairly traded and organic bars of chocolate. It takes place tomorrow night, Thursday 1 March, at 7pm in the Freedom Café on 48 Fleet Street in Dublin's Temple Bar and admission is €5 per person. Rumour has it that there'll be a chocolate fountain in situ.

Incidentally, if you're about town and looking for a decently priced, delicious lunch, the Freedom Café is definitely the place to go - and, if you're interested in chocolate supplies for baking, pick up a doorstopper 1kg bar of their Amnesty Fairly Trade Chocolate.

For more information on fair trade and the Fairtrade brand, there was a good article in Sunday's Observer Food Monthly Magazine (I'm only getting through Sunday's papers at this stage in the week!) here and you can also listen to a feature on RTÉ's Morning Ireland.

I'm heading off to Barcelona with the sister for three days in a few weekend's time and I'd love some food suggestions! We've never been there before so this is completely new ground for us both. The Boyfriend has been recommending the "silky" coffee to me, the sister has lists of places to try out (she arrives several days before me) and, my appetite whetted by the Mediterranean Food Company's tapas class and several nights consumption at Dublin's Market Bar, I have every intention of eating my way through as much as possible of everything on offer in Barcelona.

After having very positive experiences with using the Lonely Planet World Food Guides in Thailand, Malaysia and Morocco - handy little books which incorporate information on food history, vocabulary, specialities and recipes in one pocket-sized package - I've ordered one on Spain to add to my collection. Fingers crossed that it arrives in time!

We're staying at a self-catering apartment in the Barceloneta area, which will give us the chance to ramble through the markets, buying fresh produce to prepare at home. What I would really like to do is a cooking class or walking tour of the markets with a local guide. Anyone know where I could find any information on something like this?

...unfortunately Bibliocook didn't manage to make it through to the shortlisted stage of the 2007 Irish Blog Awards. However, some of my favourites did so best of luck to Beaut.ie, Sinéad Gleeson, One Breast Less, Conor O'Neill, The Waiting Game and Ice Cream Ireland on 11 March at the Alexander Hotel. You can see the full list here and a particularly big thank you to all who voted for Bibliocook!

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

The best thing about these kind of longlists is the opportunity to discover lots of different blogs. I've also noticed several old favourites like Beaut.ie, Maguire's Movies, The Sigla Blog, Maman Poulet, Blogorrah, Conor's Bandon Blog, Winds and Breezes and Bubble Brothers. Other food blogs in my category - there are a total of 32 of us so forgive me if I don't post the whole list - are Random Grub and Ice Cream Ireland. I've also come across An Irish Craftworker's Good Life, Siopa Eile and Munster Pubs before but sites like One Breast Less, The Waiting Game and Burma Review also look well worth spending some time with.

Voting for this round will close on 16 February at 5pm and the award ceremony will take place on 3 March in Dublin's Alexander Hotel. Big thanks to Damien and Jason for all their work on this and best of luck to all the nominees!

Thanks to Marco and Marcello, my hosts at the Italian School of Cooking, where I attended a class on pasta making last night. As well as learning how easy it is to make pasta without a machine - I was dead proud of my attempts at orecchiette! - I had a thoroughly enjoyable evening, eating and drinking, meeting people and being serenaded over dinner by a very enthusiastic Marco. The school, which is centrally located in Rathmines, is definitely worth checking out. Time to pick up a bag of durum flour from the Italian shop in Ranelagh for some pasta-making experiments down at the cottage.

Although we may be back in Ireland, today we are celebrating Waitangi Day, a national holiday in New Zealand, with that ubiquitous Kiwi desert - the pavlova. After bemoaning the lack of pavlovas in Irish supermarkets, the Boyfriend went off to work this morning laden with boxes of meringue nests, tubs of cream, my hand whisk and a nice pink bowl to assemble a selection of impromptu pavs for his workmates. Bron has an entertaining defence of the NZ claim to the pavlova here, along with many delectable pictures of her own fabulous Waitangi Day creation.

Boiled, Baked & Basted, the brilliant RTÉ Radio 1 programme that I mentioned in October, featuring chefs and cooks talking about their favourite cookbooks, sadly came to an end on 30 December. A simple but effective format - just the voice of the interviewee, interspersed by actors reading from cookbooks that they mentioned - made this essential listening for the cosy Saturday nights that we spent in the cottage. You can listen back to the whole 13-programme series on the all-new redesigned RTÉ.ie website here.

I've just discovered another informal wine course in Dublin. This one is on in The Vaults and starts on Tuesday 13 February at 6.30pm. The sessions are hosted by a Master of Wines from Findlater Grants and run every second Tuesday for four weeks, costing €35 per person per night. More information is online here (they also do a - pricy - cookery course and details for that are here).

Tuesday 13 February
Wines from Australia

Tuesday 27 February
Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir from around the world

Tuesday 13 March
Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon from around the world

Tuesday 27 March
Wines from Italy

I'd be the first to admit that, despite my frequent use and consumption of the fruit of the vine, I don't know much about wine. This is something that I've been meaning to remedy by doing a wine-tasting course but life, somehow, always manages to get in the way. Perhaps a resolution for 2007? I've already missed the first night of the La Cave Wine Tasting Programme but, should I be organised enough, there's plenty more to savour in the coming weeks - must see if I can get there for the evening that features New Zealand Pinot Noir! These events take place in the small French wine bar on South Anne Street from 6.30pm to 8.30pm. Each tasting costs €30, which includes all wines and a light meal of cheese, salami and pâté.

Monday 29 January
Introduction to Wine Varietals: Part 1
Riesling (Germany), Sauvignon Blanc (New Zealand), Chardonnay (France), Viognier (Argentina), Cabernet Sauvignon (USA), Merlot (Chile), Shiraz (Australia), Grenache (France)

Monday 5 February
Introduction to Wine Varietals: Part 2
Pinot Grigio (Italy), Chenin Blanc (South Africa), Torrontes (Argentina), Albarino (Spain), Sangiovese (Italy), Tempranillo (Spain), Malbec (Argentina), Pinot Noir (New Zealand)

Monday 12 February
Introduction to French Wines: Part 1
Loire, Rhone

Monday 19 February
Introduction to French Wines: Part 2
Burgundy, Beaujolais, Alsace

Monday 26 February
Introduction to French Wines: Part 3
Bordeaux, Cahors/Bergerac/Madiran, Jura

Monday 5 March
Introduction to French Wines: Part 4
Champagne/Sparkling, Provence/Languedoc-Roussillon

Monday 12 March
Matching Food and Wine
What works, what doesn't work

For more information and bookings, you can contact La Cave Wine Bar.

New Zealand cafés still continue to surprise and delight me. A moist Spinach Risotto Cake at Reid's Store during a break while driving to Nelson the morning after we arrived, eaten in bright sunshine outside on the decking was my re-introduction to café cooking, NZ style on this trip. There were other days of happy eating. Marinated Lamb on a Puy Lentil Salad with lemon yoghurt dressing at Nelson's Morrison Street Café, with a glass of local sauvignon blanc; a sticky, dried fruit-packed, gluten free Ginger Slice with a long black, milk on the side (my coffee order of choice in NZ) in Muses Café, Motueka, en route to the Boyfriend's family bach in Ngaio Bay; a last Christchurch breakfast of a fresh-baked savoury Spinach and Cream Cheese Muffin followed by an enormous date-studded sweet scone outside Veronica's Café on New Regent Street, soaking up the last rays of sun as we watched the tourist trams going past.

The secret seems to lie with the fresh-baked, often on the premises, scones, muffins and slices, good ingredients - many cafés (try Under the Red Verandah or Vic's Café, both in Christchurch) trumpet their use of free range eggs and local produce - and proprietors and customers who won't accept stale, prepacked goods made at one location and shipped all over the country as is all too often the case in Ireland. One of the few cafés I've found in Ireland that comes close to the NZ ideal is Michelle Darmody's Cake Café (there's a short piece about it here) in Dublin, even down to the mismatched, old fashioned dishes and cups that feature in my favourite Kiwi cafés.

It's often the small things in NZ cafés that make a customer feel cared for - a carafe of water either arriving on your table first thing or readily available; airy toilets which look like they have been cleaned recently; piles of things available to read while you eat, often including Cuisine, Taste and Dish and a couple of cookbooks. It's always reassuring to see café staff interested in food-oriented publications! The only place I've seen something like this in Ireland is in the delectable Café Paradiso in Cork which, funnily enough, is run by a half-Kiwi couple.

There is always an exception, and on this trip it was the Cityside Café in the ground floor International Terminal of Christchurch airport. Pasty rolls were stuffed with an indeterminate green-flecked paste that went under the name of spinach and feta. A stale chocolate muffin topped with an oddly misplaced dab of raspberry jam made me feel right at home, being a good example of the kind of sweet thing on offer in many Irish cafés. My flat white was barely lukewarm and, for a last taste of NZ, it really was a disappointing experience. Next time I'll make sure I bring in my muffins from Muffin Break - a shopping center café chain that manages to get it right, albeit in (usually) horrible surroundings, with decent muffins and lots of gluten-free options. At least their coffee is made with hot milk!

Two weeks in New Zealand and I didn't want to leave. Being on holidays and it being summer, rather than grey and gloomy Irish winter, certainly made things harder, especially as we had such a good time catching up with family and friends on that side of the world. We thoroughly enjoyed the main reason for our trip - the Boyfriend's sister's wedding last Saturday - especially as the reception was held in a recently opened vineyard in Moutere, Woollaston Estates, and I had more than a few chances to sample their 2006 Nelson Sauvignon Blanc!

Special mention must go to the Boyfriend's mother for cheerfully catering, twice daily, for at least eight people. I've taken down plenty of recipes from her notebooks. Now all I need is a little Irish sunshine to give me an excuse to make her Rice and Chickpea Salad or maybe I could get motivated to whip up a batch of her Chocolate Chippies this weekend...

While I didn't manage to bring back as many foodie items as Heidi did from her North Island trip - the Boyfriend had to fit another rabbit trap and a new fishing rod somewhere, after all! - I still managed to squeeze in a pile of cookbooks, a couple of new purchases and a few old ones from my Christchurch kitchen shelves.

Although I picked up Nicola Galloway's Cooking for your Child as a gift for a friend, after spending hours looking through the Boyfriend's mother's copy of these commonsense recipes and advice for friends and family of all ages, methinks I'll have to spend some more quality time with it before passing it on. It is a mine of useful information on catering for people with food allergies and intolerances and, like me, she believes in using real, wholesome butter rather than messing around with those interfered-with spreads and margarines. I also brought home The Great New Zealand Baking Book by Allyson Gofton - the perfect thing to keep at the cottage for wet Saturday afternoon baking sprees and a dear old copy of that Kiwi classic, the Edmond's Cookery Book, a present from the Boyfriend's aunt to keep me entertained after I was knocked down by a courier truck in Auckland two years ago.

Some of the tempting new NZ cookbooks that I found on sale but could not, alas, justify in buying included The Confident Cook by Cuisine writer and Savour New Zealand 2007 Programme Director Lauraine Jacobs; Taking Tea in the Medina, an exploration of Middle Eastern tastes and flavours by Julie Le Clerc and and Joh Bougen; and new collections of old favourites from Kiwi writers Ruth Pretty and Jo Segar (Ruth Pretty's Favourite Recipes and Jo Seagar Cooks). Christelle Le Ru also has a second book out - French Fare is the follow-up to her Simply Irresistible French Desserts and watch out for Passion Chocolat in 2007.

Knowing that the latest edition of Cuisine is waiting at home - I'm on my second subscription now - I avoided that on the magazine racks but, as I return to the stormy Irish winter, I grabbed Taste and the new Julie Le Clerc magazine to fortify myself with descriptions and pictures of summer barbeques and salads, picnics and pool parties. It's not helping though!

We left a damp, wintery Ireland last Friday morning and touched down to blue skies and sunshine in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Wednesday after a three-day stopover in Kuching with my Malaysian family. Sure beats sitting around in Ireland with the post-Christmas blues! While in Kuching we got a chance to feast on our favourite teh tarik, or pulled tea, and roti canai, layered Indian breads that are served with a runny dahl. The next day, the reheated roti are especially delicious when they reappear with kaya, an unctuous coconut spread, not unlike lemon curd. Daily feasts of tropical fruit at my aunt's house included papaya, the hairy-skinned rambutan, several types of banana, mangosteen, sweet ripe pineapple and rich, juicy-to-your-elbows windfall mangos from the neighbour's tree. This time round we avoided the durian, however!

This was my fourth trip to Kuching - the Boyfriend's second - and our laziest. Tired from the first leg of the journey, we just relaxed, read, slept, enjoyed the heat and had some quality time with the family. There was time to snack on my aunt's rich fruit cake, my cousin's sesame-flecked brownies - although we didn't go for too much of the durian cake, after our last experience with that noxious fruit - with meals of homecooked Malay curries contributed by neighbours and my uncle's relatives. Had some good, spicy, although not too hot, Tom Yam, dishes of Mee Goreng (fried noodles), Butter Prawns and Nasi Ayam, but we missed out on Laksa, Satay and Murtabak this time round. We'll have to store up those treats for the next time we return.

Now we're back in the land of numerous types of ginger beer - Bundaberg is still at number one and, we discovered on a brief explore round the city, also available in Singapore - Pegasus Bay Sauvignon Semillon, feijoas, fantastic cafés, the Boyfriend's favourite savoury meat pies, kumara and Ginger Gems...roll on the next couple of weeks!

Number three in an occasional series...

Any foodie can't help but be seduced by Ana Pascal's (Maggie Gyllenhaal, never looking sexier than here, kneading dough in dungarees) passion for cooking in Marc Foster's Stranger than Fiction. You can find a good review here on Confessions of a Film Critic. An anarchist baker, Ana runs a little café, counters laden with tempting-looking cookies and cakes - just like the kind of café that you'd like to have in your own neighbourhood. Not amused by having to be audited by IRS agent Harold Crick (Will Ferrell, playing it straight for once), she nevertheless bakes him fresh chocolate chip cookies, serving them up with a glass of milk and a helping of light-up-the-screen charisma. She also has an amazing speech which, of course, I can't fully remember or find online anywhere, about how she realised in law school that she was meant to be a baker, giving a litany of American cookies, traybakes and brownies that will have you salivating at the cinema. And how does the IRS agent win her heart? With a box of flours - rye, wholegrain - all in little brown paper bags with colour-coded stickers. Anyone stuck for an idea for your favourite foodie this Christmas?

Incidentally, if you're looking for a café in Dublin as nice as Ana's looks in Stranger than Fiction, check out Michelle Darmody's The Cake Café, behind the Daintree paper shop on Camden Street. They've had gorgeous gingerbread houses on the counter lately, just perfect for Christmas, and - like Michelle's other establishment, the Curved Street Café - all the food is deliciously homemade. Well worth a wander.

If you're looking for a Christmas present with a difference, Oxfam Ireland recently launched an online Fair Trade shop at www.oxfamirelandshop.com - they have plenty of foodie gifts, including a selection of Blake's Irish Fairtrade and Organic Chocolate Bars, coffees, teas and a couple of lovely Fair Trade Hampers, along with jewellery, warm throws and wooden toys.

Or, this being the season of goodwill, you could give yourself (or another) a chance of a very special food bloggers prize by making a donation to the third A Menu for Hope fundraising campaign. For every US$10 that you donate - this year the funds raised are for the UN World Food Programme - you get a raffle ticket and a chance to win one of the great prizes from around the world: meals at Tetsuya's in Sydney, L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon in London; dinner in New York with New York Times Wine Critic Eric Asimov or a cup of tea with Harold McGee in San Francisco; books from New Zealand, France and Malaysia; tasty treats from all corners of the world, cook's tools and an substantial selection of wine-orientated gifts.

Check out Chez Pim for an ever-growing list of prizes (and David Lebovitz's blog for a detailed list of the prizes contributed by European bloggers) and go to the donation site for instructions on how to sign up. Winners will be announced on Chez Pim on 15 January 2007.

If anyone's around Dublin for the weekend and at a loose end - although that might be unlikely given the time of the year! - the National Crafts and Design Fair is on at the RDS in Dublin this weekend. The Dublin-based Cousin and I went along last night and discovered plenty of ways of spending our money on arty, crafty bits for Christmas, plus a whole room devoted to a variety of food products, whether you're looking for regato style goat's cheese from Cloon Goat Farm or tubs of soft Springwell Sheep's Cheese, to stock up for Christmas on Filligans' chutneys, mustards and jams (make sure you check out the Irish Peach & Cardamon Chutney), mini caramel waffles from Wicklow Fine Foods and Boozeberries festive-coloured liqueur. At the Simply Swedish stand I was delighted to replace my all-but disappeared Cloudberry jam that Alexandra sent from Sweden for the last round of EBBP.

There are plenty of things to taste - chocolates, cheeses, cakes and cookies, delicious fresh-baked bread from Sowan's Organic Bread Mixes, delicate teas to smell. And, if you're anything like me, you'll come out with your wallet lighter and your arms heavy-laden with presents for other people - and yourself of course!

Last weekend's (unexpectedly extended) stay in England included a trip to the best farm shop I've ever visited, the HFG Farm Shop at Beeston, Norfolk. We were in Norwich visiting the Engineering Couple and my kinswoman, their beloved Irish terrier, Bridie, who, knowing my love of food, brought us there after a morning spent tramping and on the river in their Canadian canoe. Outside the shop were long stems of brussels sprouts and sparkly Christmas wreaths but the real treasure was inside. Tables were piled with home baking - hungry from our morning's activities, Paradise Slices, Flapjacks, Shortbread and Date Slices immediately caught our eye - while groaning shelves of jams, jellies, oils, vinegars and chocolate lined the walls. A freezer was stocked with a multi-coloured selection of loose frozen fruits and baskets of locally grown vegetables were stacked high at the end of the room. The food available was more than tempting and, although I did resist, I still managed to walk out of the shop heavily laden with the aforementioned baking, brown paper bags of spelt and wholewheat flour from Letheringsett Watermill, a warty celeriac, a selection of nobbly Jerusalem artichokes and, because I never can resist something gingery, a bottle of Great Uncle Cornelius' Finest Spiced Ginger Non-Alcoholic Apertif.

Add to this a selection of cookbooks purchased over the weekend - on a very brief trip into Books for Cooks I picked up Paula Wolfert's Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, a very welcome copy of volume 7 of their own Books for Cooks cookbooks plus a bottle of owner Eric's own very decent biodynamic wine for our hosts - a pot of vanilla bean paste and bottle of pricy (but very necessary!) natural almond extract from Lakeland Limited and the Boyfriend's long-hunted for and LARGE rabbit trap and it's no wonder that we ended up having to check in a bag or, rather, the rabbit trap box, on the way back, something which caused great amusement at the luggage carousel in Dublin Airport. At least we managed to eat some of the weekend's purchases in situ, especially those from Sunday's farmers' market at the Forum - a rich chocolate pudding from the Old Fashioned Pudding Company (good with ice cream, albeit missing useful microwave instructions), juicy onion bhajis and other well spiced Indian snacks, tastings of moist Caribbean fruitcake, fudge, sausages and cheeses...it's surprising that we didn't roll off the airplane ourselves!

I didn't have much time for shopping on my recent Berlin trip but I did manage to make a selection of purchases around the themes (although I didn't notice this at the time!) of cherries and chocolate, mostly from the fantastic Kollwitzplatz Saturday Market.

In the cherry category we have:

1 x bottle of Griotka cherry liqueur from Prague Airport. Very useful when you arrive at a cold cottage late on Friday nights, especially when sips of the liqueur are alternated with sips of caramelised cinnamon hot chocolate.
1 x bottle of kirschwasser or cherry brandy from Berlin. Still unopened. I'm limiting myself to one bottle of alcoholic cherry drink at a time!
1 x small tin box of Pulmoll cherry sweets, also from Prague Airport.
1 x bar of Nestle Noir Cerise chocolate. Decided to pass this to the family - it then disappeared too quickly for me to test it.
1 x jar of amazing cherry-laden jam from Scandinavia, I think, that I ended up buying after starting a conversation with a Very Persuasive saleswoman in Kollwitzplatz Market.

Continue reading "Cherries and chocolate from Berlin" »

I recently got a mail from a New York PR company about a Nextbook podcast featuring one of my favourite cookbook writers, Middle Eastern food enthusiast Claudia Roden. Nextbook's interviewer, Hugh Levinson, visited her kitchen in London and talks to her while she prepares Poulet aux Dattes (Chicken with Dates) and Salade de Tomates et Poivrons Grillés (Grilled Tomato and Pepper Salad), both from her last publication, The Book of Jewish Food.

It is a lovely, relaxed interview with Claudia cooking and talking about how she became involved in food writing, her own family's food history and the importance of understanding how food and culture are intertwined. A word of warning though - don't listen to this at work. It will just make you much too hungry! The interview is online here and the same page also has copies of the great-sounding recipes that she cooked while talking to Hugh.

The second episode of Richard Corrigan's show, Corrigan Knows Food, will be on RTÉ One this evening at 7pm. While I think Corrigan can sometimes go a bit overboard (his recent Late Late Show appearance was embarrassing, to say the least) when he's on form, he's an enthusiastic presenter and inspiring cook. Why, however, someone felt the need to shoehorn the man into a badly-fitting magazine format, is a mystery. Anne Kennedy has a good review of the first programme in the series here on Greatfood.ie and you can watch the show online here.

Corrigan also makes an appearance on last night's Questions and Answers, responding to the question "Does Richard Corrigan think he is promoting Irish food and tourism when he criticises Irish food products?". John O'Donoghue, Minister for Arts, Sport & Tourism, brings up the old chestnut of Ireland: The Food Ireland (recently debated at the Euro-toques forum in Brooklodge) and there are also contributions from Kevin Sheridan of Sheridans Cheesemongers as well as a whole heap of good sense talked by a gentleman - whose name I didn't catch - from the Associated Craft Butcher's of Ireland.

Here are a few Irish food sites that I've been spending time on recently...

* Greatfood.ie - I wrote about this site when I first discovered it in April and I've been enjoying it ever since, especially the recipes for spice blends from Orgapod's Nafisa Brennan. Between her ideas and Barbara over at Winos and Foodies talking about her own homemade curry powder, I'm getting inspired!

* The Irish Foodie - "tastes and scribblings" from Hamlet Sweeny in Dun Laoghaire. Check out his rant on the homogenisation of eating-out food in Ireland.

* Where's the Salt? - a Cork perspective on food for families (and Kieran Murphy's superb Chocolate Chip Cookies)

* martindywer.com - lucky Martin is just recently back from Terre Madre 2006 in Turin. Read about his experiences with Antonio Carluccio et al here.

* Though small, it is tasty - after recently becoming the very proud owner of my own damson tree, I was particularly taken with this entry on Damson Gin. Make sure you check out the Caraway Vodka too!

The dates and presenters for Savour New Zealand 2007 have just recently been announced and, as a participant at the 2005 event, I cannot recommend it highly enough for anyone with even the slightest interest in food and wine. It takes place in Christchurch, from Friday 27 to Sunday 29 April 2007, and this year Lauraine Jacobs, Cuisine magazine food editor, is the Programme Director.

Presenters that she has lined up include one of my favourite cookbook writers, Tamasin Day-Lewis; New York cheesemonger extraordinaire, Rob Kaufelt; San Francisco's Nancy Oakes of the acclaimed Boulevard restaurant; Gabriela Llamas, from Madrid's famous cooking school, Juan de Altamiras; and British food writer Tom Parker Bowles, author of the recent Year of Eating Dangerously. As at Savour NZ 2005, the international is well balanced with the local - Martin Aspinwall of the wonderful Canterbury Cheesemongers; South Island Chef of the Year and Best Young Canterbury Chef, Guy Stanaway; Marlborough winemakers Matt Thomson and Patrick Materman; and Australian representatives - Geoff Lindsay, chef/owner of award-winning Melbourne restaurant Pearl and Max Allen, best-selling author and Australia's most published wine writer.

Do be aware, however, that a delegate pass is NZ$685 but this does include eight classes over the weekend, all the food and wine that you can possibly eat and drink during those classes, lunches (just in case you're a bit peckish!), coffee breaks, the opening cocktail party on Friday night and the Great Farewell send off on Sunday. The Boyfriend and I were trying to plan our next trip to NZ to coincide with Savour New Zealand but a family wedding in January has put paid to that. I'll have to try and sign up for 2009!

In Berlin most of this week to present the Other Voices website at the Prix Europa internet competition. A total of 22 sites are nominated for the Exploration award, each of which has to give a half-hour presentation. Our area of the competition is fortunately limited to three days - long, intense and tiring but also incredibly rewarding. It's not often you get the chance to sit down with your professional peers to discuss and share concepts, ideas and inspiration from all over Europe. As for getting to see Berlin, forget it. The most I've experienced so far is through the window of the bus that takes us to Potsdam every morning or from a taxi speeding home through a hushed late-night cityscape. I've a free day on Saturday though - perhaps time to explore some markets, discover Berlin and, of course, have some close encounters with German food, for myself.

Update Sunday 22 October: And the winners were...the team behind the wonderful Fantastic Stories from Denmark. Many congratulations to Sidsel and Ole!

Well, after a few years of searching - plus 2½ never-ending months of frustrating to-ing and fro-ing with mortgage providers, solicitors and auctioneers - the Boyfriend and I have finally managed to take possession of a little country cottage, our Irish bach, in North County Cork. It is a typically small Irish cottage with a pair of small bedrooms upstairs. It could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as roomy although the current lack of furniture does make it feel slightly more spacious!

Last Saturday was spent scrubbing and scouring every surface before we spent our first night there so, as you can imagine, very little cooking was done. We brought a couple of Nigella's Dense Chocolate Loaf Cakes down with us (Cee at Kitchen on Clarendon has the recipe online here), for visitors and to encourage the cleaners' morale at low blood-sugar moments. All meals seem to have been eaten at speed as we listed all the things that we had yet to organise. My exploration of my new kitchen was limited to turning on the cooker to heat up some comforting Chicken Noodle Soup that travelled over from my mother's 15-miles-distant kitchen in a borrowed saucepan.

Luckily we bought a table and chairs with the house so, even if there wasn't much time for eating there was something to sit at and on. Even better, we've also acquired a damson tree (and a pot of delicious damson jam from the former owners), a few blackcurrant bushes, three still-fruiting apple trees and a half an acre of overgrown land, already complete with numerous inhabitants of the rabbit variety. Looks like the Boyfriend's dream veggie garden may have to wait until we figure out a way of dealing with the infestation. At the moment, as we will still continue to live and rent in Dublin during the week, it may be a little difficult to figure out how best to rid ourselves of the beasties. Rabbit Stew, anyone?

In yet another of my infrequent series of alerts about Irish food programmes, a new RTÉ Radio 1 show called Boiled, Baked & Basted started on Saturday night. It features chefs talking about the favourite and most inspirational cookbooks in their collection (Bibliochef, perhaps?!) and the first show has Paul Flynn of the acclaimed Tannery Restaurant in Dungarvan talking about books by Marco Pierre White, "scary hero" Elizabeth David, the esteemed list-topping Roast Chicken and Other Stories by Simon Hopkinson and two books that speak directly to my love of Middle Eastern food - The Moro Cookbook by Sam and Sam Clark and Arabesque: A taste of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon by Claudia Roden. If you, like me, are interested in cookbooks (in my house you'll find piles of cookbooks by the bed, on the dining table, in the living room, and a row to reference on the kitchen counter) you'll find this programme very interesting.

Boiled, Baked & Basted is on RTÉ Radio 1 on Saturday nights at 8.30pm and the Paul Flynn show is also available to listen to online here. Incidentally, Paul Flynn is also the author of two cookbooks himself, An Irish Adventure with Food: The Tannery Cookbook and Second Helpings: Further Irish Adventures with Food, both published by the Cork-based Collins Press.

With the onset of cooler weather, the amount of cooking and baking in my house has increased, if not the recent writing about it. It's no longer torturously hot in our tiny kitchen if the oven is on and, as a result, I've gotten back into baking old reliables like Brown Soda Bread and our favourite Chocolate Flapjacks as well as trying out new recipes for Bill Granger's Coconut Loaf (especially good toasted), Peanut Butter Cookies (very moreish) from current favourite cookbook, Comfort by Michele Cranston and a zesty Lemon Poppy Seed Loaf that I decided to make in homage to the tasty muffins that I usually get in Dún Laoghaire from the California Market Bakery.

Weekend visitors have given me the opportunity to investigate some new vegetarian recipes, especially a Greek Bean and Pepper Stew using some enormous gigantes beans that nearly took over the kitchen after an overnight soaking, and our monthly bookclub is always a good time for thinking up a new soup idea and this time it's a meaty, bulked up version of Harira. I hope to cover all these recipes on the site soon but the webmaster course that I'm doing, a fast-approaching business trip to Berlin and a concurrent house purchase seem to be eating far more time than they should!

My email has been acting up recently so it's taken me a while to realise that I actually have a couple of real messages amongst all the ridiculous spam that crams up my inbox. One of the more interesting mails was from the recently opened and wonderfully named Ya-Ya House of Excellent Teas (see below) which sounds well worth checking out if you're in Christchurch. For those in search of spicy hot chocolate in Dublin, Fallon & Byrne do a too-mild version which is worth trying out but it can't beat the stuff you make at home yourself and sip by the fire on a cold, dark autumn's night...

Hi Caroline,
I'm aware that your post about chocolate & chilli on www.bibliocook.com is now more than a year old, but I recently remembered reading it a long time ago. I remembered reading about someone (you) here in Christchurch being interested in hot chocolates. We just opened Ya-Ya House of Excellent Teas last month in the Poplar Street/Cotters Lane area (just a block away from the mentioned Aji) and hot chocolate with chilli is on our menu as an alternative to tea. We moved here from Europe last year and were desperate in our search for a good hot chocolate. It was impossible to find any place that served a good hot chocolate, so we decided to do it ourselves.
Jo

Whether you're in Dublin or Christchurch, New Zealand this weekend, there are plenty of Slow Food-organised events taking place. The Christchurch branch have their second "how to survive when ship-wrecked" morning by the sea taking place on Saturday 23 September. Led by Slow Food member, amateur botanist, professional fishing guide and enthusiastic forager Peter Langlands, participants will spend the morning gathering seaweeds, shellfish, crustaceans and fish from Canterbury's shoreline at Port Levy. Information on species identification, harvesting and cooking techniques will be combined with some cautionary notes. Car pooling will take place from the CPIT car park at 9:30am. You can email Convivium Leader Bill Bryce for directions and hopefully you'll avoid what happened to me last year - a frustrating hour spent waiting in the wrong CPIT car park!

Also in Christchurch, on Sunday 24 September, The Bicycle Thief restaurant will host a family-style meal cooked by chef Nik Mavromatis to raise money for Nik to attend the Slow Food Terra Madre conference and Salone del Gusto in Turin in October. The dinner will be at 6pm on the Sunday of September 24th and the cost will be $70 per person for five courses, including wine. I've eaten Nik's fantastic food at the café in the Mediterranean Food Company and he was the inspirational teacher for classes I attended there on Tapas and pasta-making. I can tell you where I'd be on Sunday night, were I in New Zealand, especially with a menu like this...

Canapes and cocktails at 6pm, followed by:
Bagna Cauda with witloof, cardoons, baby vegetables and organic rye
bread. Wine - Cracroft Chase Pinot Gris 2005
Trio of shared pasta dishes: Gorgonzola Gnocchi, Buckwheat Pasta with
Salmon Roe and Crème Fraiche, Butternut Pumpkin and Sage Ravioli. Wine - San Silvestre 2003 Barbera D'Alba
Roast Porchetta with Cavolo Nero and Puy Lentils. Wine - Pegasus Bay 2004 Pinot Noir
Masticha-infused Rice Pudding with Rhubarb Compote. Wine - Lombardo Sicilian Moscato NV

On this side of the world, at Sunday's Farmleigh Food Market in Phoenix Park the Irish Raw Cow's Milk Cheese Presidium will launch a new label which will be used by the producers to designate cheese made from high quality raw Irish milk. The cheesemakers will be there to give tastings and talk about their cheese and Kevin Sheridan, one of the co-ordinators of the Presidia, will be giving a talk at 3pm on Irish raw cow's milk cheeses as a part of the Farmleigh culinary month. Kevin, of Sheridan's Cheesemongers, is passionate - some might say evangelical - about good cheese and about Irish raw milk cheese in particular. At a recent Slow Food Dublin evening he talked us through samples of Drumlin, Cooleeney Raw, Mount Callan Cheddar and the stunning Bellingham Blue.

The cheeses which are a part of the Irish Raw Cow's Milk Cheese Presidium are:
- Drumlin made by Silke Cropp in Cavan
- Cooleeney Raw made by Breda Maher in Tipperary
- Mount Callan Cheddar made by Lucy Hayes in Co Clare
- Dilliskus made by Maja Bindler in Dingle, Co Kerry
- Bellingham Blue made by Peter Thomas in Co Louth
- St Gall made by Frank and Gudrun Shinnick in Co Cork
- Durrus made by Jeffa Gill in Co Cork
More information on the Irish Raw Cow's Milk Cheese Presidium is online here and the Cáis (Irish Farmhouse Cheesemakers Association) website is at www.irishcheese.ie

Also watch out, the following weekend, for the Temple Bar Food Market's 10th Birthday Party on Saturday 30 September with talks and demonstrations in Meeting House Square and at the Cultivate Centre at SS Michael & John's Church.

If you're down in West Cork this weekend, or can make your way there, the Taste of West Cork Food Festival started in Skibbereen last night with a dinner which featured local products like Gubeen Bacon, Union Hall Smoked Salmon, Gallan Cream Cheese, Beara Preserves and Ó Conaill Chocolates.

Other events that will take place include a field trip to Gubbeen Farm, guided by cheesemaker extraordinaire Giana Ferguson; Saturday's Mystery Dine Out Night - you buy a ticket and are told where you're having dinner; and the Wild and Organic lunch at Kalbo's Bistro. And, most important of all, don't miss talented young Irish artist Neva Elliott serving tea and cakes at the Archiving Skibbereen Studio in the West Cork Arts Centre!

For some recipes using products from West Cork - marketed under the Fuchisa Brand - get your hands on 2004 Collins Press publication, A Taste of West Cork.

I'm not a fan of RTÉ's Late Late Show but there was a debate about Irish food on last week's programme which you can watch from this page. An aggressive and rambling Richard Corrigan doesn't come off very well but Derek Davis manages to defuse the situation, while still managing to get his points about Irish food - and they're not complimentary - across.

For all those Rachel Allen fans out there - and I know that there are lots of you! - she returns to RTÉ One next week with a new television series called Rachel's Favourite Food at Home. A hardback cookbook to accompany the series is published by HarperCollins and it's difficult to walk into any Irish bookshop at the moment without tripping over a stack of them!

The show starts at 7.30pm on Wednesday 13 September and here's the blurb on the book from the HarperCollins site:

Rachel's Favourite Food at Home draws on international influences, classic regional fare and good old family favourites to provide creative options for every occasion, whether planning a simple family meal, hosting a festive dinner for the entire clan, squeezing in a sneaky romantic meal for two, heading out for a glorious picnic, chilling out on the sofa with your favourite comfort food, or spending time baking muffins with the kids.

I was in the heart of County Wicklow yesterday, listening as the Irish branch of Euro-toques, a European-wide community of cooks and chefs, debated the idea of Ireland as a culinary destination. Held at the lovely Brooklodge Hotel in Macreddin Village, this was Euro-toques Ireland's fifth National Food Forum. Chaired by Peter Ward of Country Choice delicatessen in Nenagh, the panel consisted of Colman Andrews, former editor-in-chief of US food magazine, Saveur; John McKenna, the man behind the Bridgestone Guides; artisan butcher, market trader and sausage-maker extraordinaire Ed Hicks; editor of The Dubliner, Trevor White; and John Mulcahy of Failte Ireland, who provide training and development services for the tourism and hospitality industry.

Far more questions were raised than could be answered or even properly debated over the course of the brief two-and-a-half-hour gathering, including the enormous gulf between perceptions of foodie Ireland and the reality. John McKenna spoke passionately about the facsimile Irish experience currently been offered to guests in hotels and restaurants throughout the country and emphasised the fact that a food culture would only develop as good people do good things individually and at their own pace. The need to encourage Irish people to eat well was also stated by Trevor White, and Ed Hicks encouraged local authorities to demonstrate an intelligent appreciation of guidelines towards the market traders that have such an important role to play in local communities and in enriching visitors' experiences of Ireland.

As the panel discussion ended, only to be continued on an individual basis throughout the afternoon, a food fair was in full swing outside throughout the showers and sunshine with many of the usual suspects - apple juice, cheese, organic vegetables - joined by less familiar Irish blueberries and Boozeberries, nettle preserve from Bluebell Organic Farm and Meadowsweet Apiaries' beeswax and honey lip balm. Although the day ended very pleasantly with a thoroughly enjoyable organic and wild food barbeque in the idyllic grounds of Brooklodge, it now remains to be seen what - if anything - emerges from yesterday's discussions.

Related stories: Choice in the country April 06, 2006

Things have been a bit mad around here lately so I unfortunately haven't been able to participate in last two Hay Hay, It's Donna Day events - Snap Cookies and Brilliant Bruschetta, hosted by Clare at eatstuff.net and Bron Marshall respectively.

Due to a traffic accident, Clare hasn't been able to do the round up so Barbara, the HHIDD instigator, with Bron's help, has put together a round up of the imaginative cookies that emerged from that challenge at Winos and Foodies. Barbara also met Ms Hay in person at the recent Auckland Food Show and you can read all about that on the same post here. The Brilliant Bruschetta roundup is now online and, if you hurry, you can also vote for the winner of the event until 5pm New Zealand Time (5am GMT) on 11 August.

Being the last day at work before a Bank Holiday weekend, Friday was terribly busy - but considerably brightened up by the arrival of my Euro Blogging By Post parcel from Sweden! Once goods inwards got round to delivering it to my desk, I resisted the temptation to open it immediately and tucked it safely under my desk (sneaking looks at it all the time!) until it was home-going time...only to discover that it was too heavy to carry for 30 minutes on a too-warm summer's evening. Luckily, the Boyfriend and I were able to call into the office on Saturday morning before we headed down the country for the weekend. I ended up opening it at home with the Little Sister, who got me out of my digital camera-not-working dilemma by using her phone to take the photo of "Swedish summer treats" illustrating this post.

The first thing that I came across in Alexandra's well-packed box was a bulging tin of Surströmming Fileer marked with a warning! A Swedish delicacy, it apparently smells so much that she strongly recommends that I "open it outside and far away from people...It will leave an unforgettable memory." Seeing as I live surrounded by people in an apartment block in Dublin at the moment, I'm going to have to wait for an appropriate moment to try it. Perhaps I'll wait until a weekend after we move into our country cottage in the middle of nowhere, Co Cork.

Also tucked into Alexandra's box were Matjesfiléer and Loksill, two different kinds of pickled herring - just as well I've started eating fish in the last few years! She tells me that these are eaten with new potatoes or are "delicious in sandwiches." I don't think it will take as much courage to eat these as the Surströmming but, between being at home with my family, travelling and having my Vegetarian Cousin for dinner, they remain in the fridge for the moment.

I couldn't resist opening the jar of Hjortronsylt (cloudberry jam) immediately. I've read lots about these berries - most recently (albeit briefly, despite the name) in Tessa Kiros' Falling Cloudberries - and the jam is delicious, with a flavour somewhat like honeyed apples. They are related to raspberries and, like that fruit's jam, the Hjortronsylt is packed full of crunchy seeds that give it a wonderful texture. Looking for information on them, I came across Pille's nami-nami blog and her recipe for Rye Bread Canapes with Blue Cheese and Cloudberry Jam. First I'll try out Alexandra's suggestion of serving the jam on top of ice cream and then, if there's any left, will use it to top some of the Cashel Blue and Crozier Blue cheeses that Mum packed for me when I was leaving after the weekend.

A bottle of Pippi Longstocking's beloved Sockerdricka (sugar soda), some great Krafthattar - party hats for traditional crawfish parties which are held in August - and a tin-foil wrapped package of sweet and short homemade sugar cookies completed the parcel. Unfortunately, while packing to return to Dublin, our dogs at home got their noses into the box of goodies and ran away with the cookies, leaving behind nothing but a well-licked piece of Swedish tinfoil. I did a search on Alexandra's blog, Catching Points, and discovered Alexandra's recipe for these Sugar Cookies so I'll have to make them for myself and, this time, make sure they're nowhere accessible to a naughty Labrador and terrier combination. I think those cookies would make a great combination with some warmed cloudberry jam and ice cream...hmmm...how far can one jar of cloudberry jam go, I wonder?

Thanks to Alexandra for such a fantastic taste of a Swedish summer and insight into another country's summertime traditions - I'll let you know how I get on with the Surströmming when I muster up enough nerve to finally open the tin! - and also many thanks to Jeanne for doing all the organising and hosting the event. If you're interested, you can track all the other parcels here and even (before 25 August) sign up to international Blogging by Mail at The Happy Sorceress.

One of the (very) many events organised by fellow food bloggers is a series of regular parcel exchanges. Last year in New Zealand I thoroughly enjoyed participating in Blog By Mail 2 and now I've gotten involved in Euro Blogging By Post #5, this round of which is being run by Jeanne over at the London-based Cooksister blog. Jeanne picked "The Taste of Summer" as her theme so I've assembled a parcel along those lines with an emphasis on Irish products.

My digital camera is still flatlining (anyone with any ideas on how to get an Olympus Camedia digital camera C-370 Zoom to realise that it has fresh batteries in its belly please let me know!) so I can't take any photos of the full haul. You'll have to make do with a lovely photo from the Olivado Avocado Oil website instead.

A jar of Homemade Dukkah - an addictive Egyptian blend of spices and nuts, dukkah was everywhere in New Zealand. All the farmers' markets had a stall - sometimes several - which offered samples of dukkah. You dipped a piece of bread into a little dish of olive oil and then into the dukkah before eating. The oil made the crumbly mixture stick to the bread so you got a flavoured mouthful of different textures. It's very morish and was widely available in NZ but I haven't come across it in this angle of the world yet so, with the help of Claudia Roden and her New Book of Middle Eastern Food I made my own. It was difficult but I managed to wrestle enough away to send off to my EBBP partner.
Does it Taste of Summer? Coming from Egypt, how could it taste otherwise? Useful for nibblish picnicing.

Olivado Avocado Oil - We eat the dukkah with Moroccan aragan oil which has a complimentary nutty flavour but it seems to be difficult to find outside Morocco so I picked this avocado oil in homage to where I first discovered dukkah. A glorious green colour, avocado oil tastes - funnily enough! - of rich, nutty avocados. It's considered to be a very healthy oil and is also great as a moisturiser. There are some great uses for avocado oil on the Cuisine magazine website and I was delighted to recently discover NZ's Olivado brand in my local supermarket.
Does it Taste of Summer? Yes, oh yes! Even without dukkah, it is a wonderful dipping oil. Cut some ciabatta or flatbread into chunks, you’re your avocado oil into a plain shallow white or cream bowl to show off the dramatic green colour and dip away. Better than butter for summertime suppers.

Ditty's Irish Oatcakes - the nicest oatcakes I've ever come across are these handmade (they almost look homemade) version from County Armagh company Ditty's Home Bakery. I first tasted them at a Dublin Slow Foods evening devoted to cheese, specifically unpasteurised Irish farmhouse cheeses from Sheridans Cheesemongers, and have bought them many times since.
Does it Taste of Summer? Perfect for picnic-based cheese moments.

Moutarde Verte a L'Estragon - because, even when camping or picnicking, you can't part a girl and her mustard. Particularly when the mustard is such a glorious pale green colour as Edmund Fallot's tarragon-flavoured version. When I saw that it matched the avocado oil, I just couldn't resist getting it!
Does it Taste of Summer? Summer is all about salads and the best salad dressings involve a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil (De Cecco is my current brand of choice), a couple of teaspoons of balsamic vinegar and a dab of decent mustard. Good with anything from lentils to butterhead lettuce leaves.

Blakes Organic Milk Chocolate with Coconut Filling - both organic and Fairtrade, (as well as being wrapped in recycled paper!) this chocolate is made in Switzerland for Blakes, a new company in Galway, and I'm all for trying out new Irish products. I had to buy another bar for myself to do extra testing.
Does it Taste of Summer? The smell of coconut in food, drink (or even sunscreen) always makes me think of summertime heat. This is a Very Good Thing if you live somewhere that you don't get much in the way of soaring temperatures, although I don't think that's a problem for my EBBP partner.

Bunalun Organic Caramel Wafers - I was introduced to these on a sun-drenched walk in the mountains surrounding Glendalough and they're now a camping staple. Thick sweet caramel sandwiched between crisp wafers from impeccably designed organic producers Bunalun - what's not to like?
Does it Taste of Summer? Take these with you on a summertime walk and tell me!

To finish off my package, I also included a copy of the July edition of Ireland's Food & Wine Magazine with it's glorious chilli-enhanced colourful cover and the Observer Food Magazine's Taste of summer special (Does it Taste of Summer? Yes it does!) - there's a great article on Morgan Freeman's restaurant in Clarksdale, Mississippi although author John Carlin does gush a bit. Some more bubble wrap and a quick trip down to the post office on Tuesday and my foodie package started winging its way to ...? You can track the parcel progress and arrivals at Cooksister.

Update 27 August 2006: You can see a photo of the contents and read about Petula's reactions to my parcel on her blog la cuoca petulante.

Ireland has recently been going through a spell of glorious weather with near-constant sunshine and temperatures in the mid to late 20s and so I've not stepped near the kitchen for the last while. Cooking is mostly out of the question and baking has been abandoned for the moment - very little Brown Soda Bread gets made these days! - as our kitchen is just too small to cope with the heat of the cooker and/or oven. Meals at home are mostly light salad affairs or, given half a chance on these long, warm evenings, consist of picnics eaten while sprawled on the grass in one of our local parks.

Depending on who's out of work first, the Boyfriend or myself pick up the fixings from Hennessy's Food Store, Donnybrook Fair or Morton's of Ranelagh - a substantial bread, like Blazing Salads' organic sourdough, some savoury-sweet olives and semi-sundried tomatoes, a chunk of pungent oozy cheese, thin pliable slices of salami or on-the-bone ham, maybe a scoop of Donnybrook Fair's intensely meaty chicken liver paté, a handful of sweet-scented cherry tomatoes and a few dollops of tapenade, hummus or pesto. For desert, I'm a particular fan of Glenilen Farm's screwtop jars of natural yogurt layered with fruit compote.

We grab our rug, a nicely chilled bottle of wine, some books and the picnic bag - already crammed full of lightweight cutlery and melamine delph - and hotfoot it to either Belgrave Square or Herbert Park to read in the sun while balancing mouthfuls of salami, brie, tomatoes and pesto on top of roughly hacked slices of bread. Food always seems to taste much nicer when eaten outdoors in the sunshine. When the sun starts to drift below the horizon, it's time to pack up and wander homewards, nicely toasted and full of good food. We might bemoan the lack of a garden, patio or balcony to make use of in summertime, but there's definitely ways of getting around that!

I'm at two-day Irish music festival Oxegen this weekend, although fortunately - considering the rain and muddy conditions in Punchestown racecourse yesterday - not camping. The less said about food there the better! Normal service will resume next week.

None of the much loved Enid Blyton's Famous Five books that I read as a child were complete without a picnic - ham rolls, hard boiled eggs, slabs of fruit cake, tinned pears and, of course, lashings and lashings of ginger beer. The only kind of ginger drink that I came across in Ireland was ginger ale, ginger beer's much sweeter and less spicy sibling. I wasn't too impressed.

Years later, long after my Famous Five fixation had passed, I came across ginger beer (along with many other ginger products) in New Zealand and I became addicted. I don't normally buy soft drinks but, especially with the long journeys in the South Island, ginger beer was the drink of choice to keep both driver and passenger going. A non-alcoholic drink that is refreshingly tart and not too sweet, there were many brands available but the variety that I most loved was an import from Australia called Bundaberg.

Sold in a distinctive squat brown glass bottle, it had a ring-pull metal top which I never quite got the hang of. Still, that was only a small and easily manageable (get the Boyfriend to open the bottle!) drawback so, when I unexpectedly came across a small display of Bundaberg ginger beer in my local supermarket - tricky top or no - I was delighted. It's the equivalent of discovering a packet of Tayto cheese & onion Irish crisps in your local Christchurch dairy. Now all I need to complete the NZ nostalgia trip is the faded green, leaky, tank-like 22-year-old Honda Accord that we drove throughout NZ...

I have to agree with Ice Cream Ireland's comment on the incongruous presence of Starbucks at last weekend's Taste of Dublin. It's difficult to see what they have to do with food at all and in Dublin in particular. RTÉ 2FM DJ Rick O'Shea also writes of his experiences at A Taste Of Dublin (Or Two, Or Three.... Maybe Dessert Too...) and there's debate over at the forum on Ernie Whalley's forkncork.com. While you're there, it's worth taking a look at the conflicting opinions on Fallon & Byrne.

Friday afternoon was a good time to be at the inaugural Taste of Dublin event as blazing sunshine encouraged a cheerful and good humoured crowd to linger, sample and wander around a Dublin Castle courtyard crowded with stands and stalls. My €35 ticket (I managed to keep the dreaded Ticketmaster booking fees to €2 by buying from the Ticketmaster outlet in Stephen's Green Shopping Centre) entitled me to €20-worth of florins, the festival currency, but the sky was the limit as soon as you set foot inside the event areas. With sample signature dishes priced from €5 to €8, that €20 didn't last long and I've even read of people spending another €70 on top of that. I was well behaved though - after spending my first €20-worth, I just bought €5 extra - and, although portions were less than generous, I would have been hard pressed to find something I really wanted to spend more on. It doesn't have to be a taste of Dublin to be good.

As I had decided to avoid all restaurants that I had previously eaten in, the first of the stands to catch my eye was Gary Rhodes' much hyped (and not yet open) Dublin venture, Rhodes D7. For my first €5 I got a shot glass of tangy White Roasted Cherry Tomato Soup with a salty stick of Olive Bread. Good - but much too tiny. L'Ecrivan's contribution to my afternoon was Natural Smoked Haddock Linguini with Asparagus and Peas, Light Curry Froth (€5). Spaghetti had been substituted for the linguine and the thinner strands of pasta weren't as good at holding the intensely flavoured cream sauce which remained, in lonely puddles, at the bottom of my bowl.

After a few more circuits of the food stalls, I chose La Stampa's Braised Quail with Savoy Cabbage (€6). This was by far the largest portion I got so I took one of the few seats available to give it my fullest concentration. No matter how nice, food always suffers from being eaten while you stand, constantly juggling plates and bags. Although the wooden knife I was given was no match for the meaty portion of quail, there weren't many scraps left by the time I finished. The Town Bar and Grill's Strawberry and Cassis Pavlova with Mascarpone Cream was my summer-appropriate but not-so-grand finale. Although perfectly pleasant, there was little flavour from the promised cassis.

On the wine side of things, there were small samples aplenty with glasses of wine available from €4. The most interesting part of the day for me was meeting the passionate wine importers behind www.spanishwines.ie. Already selling to off-licenses and restaurants in Ireland, they've just launched a website selling these under-represented wines and a glass of their fragrant Guitian Godello (easily recognisable from its smart, art deco-style label) was a perfect drink on such a warm day and, I can only surmise, a great accompaniment to some tapas for a Spanish-style summer's evening with friends.

As a taster of Dublin restaurants, this event was exactly what it said on the tin although I don't know if I would be hurrying off to visit any of the restaurants that I sampled on the day. The Cellar Restaurant's fantastic looking Fish and Chips, served in a cone of paper with a dollop of mushy peas, nearly had me breaking my resolve to avoid familiar restaurants and I had to turn my back to avoid looking at the dishes produced by the much-loved Silk Road Café. Reports from my cousin, the Environmental Scientist, gave top marks to the White Truffle Risotto (also from the Cellar Restaurant) and Roly's Hot Chocolate Pudding. Although she got rained on during the Saturday afternoon session, she wasn't undaunted and already has a plan for 2007: "We'll have to go back next year (with rain gear, regardless of the forecast!) in a group of at least four, get there early, bag a table, stay at it and then get as much as possible from each place and bring it back for everyone to share!"

Although I did enjoy the afternoon's tasting, the most exciting thing was the sheer number - and variety - of people there, swapping tips on the best dishes, stealing forkfuls from each other's plates, sharing tables with strangers, enjoying the sunshine together. If you didn't manage to make it to Taste of Dublin, take Maman Poulet's advice and take the price of the ticket to your local farmers' market for good food and tasting aplenty.

For anyone interested in reading a few more food blogs, there's a great article in last Friday's Guardian. Check out the best of the blogs, including several old favourites - Chocolate and Zucchini, 101 Cookbooks, Is My Blog Burning? and Food Blog S'cool. Well worth a look.

For anyone looking to experience some of the tastes, sounds and aromas of Morocco without having to travel too far, a Moroccan Market will take place next week, from Wednesday 14 to Sunday 18 June in Dublin's Wolfe Tone Park next to the Jervis Centre. Situated in Temple Bar Square last year, apparently the textiles, jewellery, pottery and - most importantly! - food were very popular. It's certainly worth checking out. More information is available on the Temple Bar Cultural Trust website here.

Lonely Planet's World Food Morocco
Does exactly what it says on the tin. Having travelled and eaten our way around Thailand and Malaysia with the respective versions of these small, incredibly useful books, I recently added their Moroccan edition to my collection. Dense with information on everything from food customs to street foods and including recipes for traditional Moroccan dishes like couscous and tagines, they're an invaluable resource while travelling. A mine of fascinating facts on argan oil, which is used to make the nutty breakfast spread called amalou; details of the ubiquitous mint tea and other drinks; regional variations in foodstuffs; and the utensils used in the Moroccan kitchen. A selection of great photos help you to identify ingredients and - Lonely Planet are nothing if not thorough! - it also has a dictionary of culinary terms, a glossary and useful phrases in both Arabic and French. As well as our well-used Malaysia & Singapore and Thailand books, the Lonely Planet World Food series also covers places like Portugal, Vietnam, Ireland (but, to the Boyfriend's disgust, no New Zealand!), Greece and New Orleans. An invaluable travelling companion.

La Cuisine Marocaine by Latifa Bennani-Smirès
I picked up an idiosyncratic English translation of this in Marrakech and - odd syntax and spelling aside - it is a very engaging book. Recipes for rghaïf and beghrir vie for space with details of how to make and shape pâtisserie Marocaine, the small, intensely sweet, rich and fragrant nut-filled pastries that are served with mint tea. There is little in the way of introductory detail about these and many other dishes although the methods are well explained.

The pick of the bunch...

A New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden
The grandmother of them all. This book - a reissue of Claudia's 1972 landmark Book of Middle Eastern Food - is not just about Moroccan food but includes dishes from across the countries of the Middle East, putting them firmly in context, both historically and geographically. Last year I took this book out of the library in Christchurch but, after reading just a few pages, knew that I had to get my own copy as there were so many recipes that I wanted to investigate. The introduction is a culinary history of the Middle East as Claudia tracks the techniques and ingredients that travelled in the wake of conquerors and oftentimes remained in situ long after their empires had disintegrated. Traditional stories, folklore and songs are dotted through the recipes, further enriching the text. There are more than 800 recipes in this book - and that doesn't count the frequent regional and national variations also detailed after the recipes.

The paperback is perfect for holiday reading although 1) it's important to avoid reading it when you're hungry and 2) it did make me long for my own kitchen to try out her recipes. Not as unashamedly greedy as Nigel, Claudia still manages to convey her infectious love for and interest in these dishes as well as her belief that food is all about family and friends. It's a bible for anyone who, like me, loves to cook with the ingredients of the Middle East - cumin and coriander, preserved lemons and lentils, fresh herbs and harissa. An absolutely invaluable book.

And, when you come home:

Get your hands on Greg Malouf's Arabesque for an important A-Z of Middle Eastern ingredients and what to do with them after dragging them from plane to train to automobile. Another book that I haven't read myself but which cropped up several times in my foodie research on Morocco is Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco by Paula Wolfert. Paula has a website here. New Zealand author Julie Le Clerc also has a wonderfully colourful cookbook called Made in Morocco.

Honey - Moroccan honey is the most un-honey-tasting honey that I've ever eaten. We often had it for breakfast, the rich caramel sweetness drizzled across English muffin-styled Moroccan pancakes called beghrir or the flaky, multi-layered rghaïf. Accompanied with a tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a café crème, it made the perfect start to the day.
Spices - although I've been really happy with my old blend of ras el hanout from Greg Malouf's Moorish, I couldn't resist the chance of picking up some more to compare and contrast it with what I use. I also got turmeric, ground ginger and two types of chilli powder(at least I think that's what piment fort/piment doux means!).
Olives - a kilo of green olives in what the shopkeeper described as "piquante" flavouring and another half kilo of wrinkled sweet black olives. I loved how each meal in Morocco started with a small bowl of these olives and a basket of flatbread as we perused the menu. They never lasted long.
Dates - considering the variety and quality on offer, I was restrained and came home with only a half kilo of the sweet, plump fruit. One dish that kept turning up in the books that I read while travelling there was of a roasted fish, stuffed with almond-filled dates. Must try and keep a few true Moroccan dates to try out that recipe.
Preserved lemons - while picking up the olives and dates in a small shop near the Casablanca train station, minutes before we had to get the train to the airport, I couldn't resist getting a few of these glorious-looking lemons. This, despite the fact that I'd made a jarful from some organic lemons before I left Ireland! Another thing for the compare and contrast experiments, methinks.
Garlic - the small bulbs of garlic available in Morocco are much sweeter than the stuff that you can find on sale in Ireland. I love to use raw garlic but it can be very off-putting if, instead of gently cosying up to the other ingredients, it decides to loudly broadcast its presence. I brought some good quality garlic home from Paris and it lasted me ages so I couldn't resist grabbing a couple of bulbs in Casablanca when I got the chance.

Continue reading "Moroccan (foodie) souvenirs" »

After two weeks of sunshine and heat in Morocco we've returned to an amazingly summery Ireland - perfect for last night's sun-soaked family party to celebrate my Gran's 90th birthday.

Just in the door of our Dublin flat so sour milk has to be thrown out of the fridge, fresh supplies to be bought and the raw clay Berber tagine that we lugged through a couple of taxi trips, two flights, three airports and a pair of train journeys needs to be unpacked, along with assorted spices, dates, olives, tea, honey and god only knows what else from our travel-beaten rucksacks.

And then I'll have time to sit down and write about the meals, tastes and flavours that I've encountered during my time in Morocco!

Bibliocook is on tour! The Boyfriend and I travelled to Casablanca last weekend to meet with a friend - the Australian - and spend a couple of weeks travelling around the country. It's a good opportunity to practise the languages that we've been learning, French for me and Arabic in the Boyfriend's case, as well as doing a thorough investigation of the food and flavours of Morocco. Not to mention continuous stops to feed the BF's addiction to the refreshing, sweet mint tea available on every corner. Unfortunately, the lack of internet cafès in the Sahara and absence of QWERTY keyboards may mean less frequent updates for the moment but I'll remedy that as soon as I get back to Ireland. Now, time for tonight's tagine...

A wee while ago, Sinéad over at Sigla sent me a link to a piece on Irish language podcast blog An tImeall on Cócaireacht agus Filíocht (Cooking and Poetry). My prowess as gaeilge not being what it should be, I had to get a friend to translate it for me - many thanks to the Schoolteacher - and am finally able to appreciate Conn's kind words. There's a link to the page here or, for my non-Irish readers, a couple of paragraphs translated below. Isn't the Irish word for blogging - ag blagadóireacht - absolutely gorgeous? Compliments like these just might be the way to encourage me to improve my Irish.

Continue reading "Táim ag blagadóireacht" »

Watch out for the idiosyncratic food columns by Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos in The Guardian newspaper. After tip-off from my workmate about Kapranos being about to publish a collection of the columns, I went searching for them online. They're pieces about the foods that former Glaswegian sous-chef Kapranos encounters while on tour with the band - a burger at Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles, blowfish in Osaka, the best New York donuts, street food in Singapore. Here are a few links to his most recent articles:
05.05.06 Alex Kapranos: The Formosa cafe
28.04.06 Alex Kapranos: The kluski pasta
21.04.06 Alex Kapranos: It came from the east
31.03.06 Alex Kapranos: Eating habits
24.03.06 Alex Kapranos: Guilty pleasures
17.03.06 Alex Kapranos: Donut delights
10.03.06 Alex Kapranos: Carnivore's corner
03.03.06 Alex Kapranos: Big fat pig
24.02.06 Alex Kapranos: Fast food revenge
17.02.06 Soundbites

Watch out next month for Taste of Dublin 2006, running from 22 June to 25 June in the gardens at Dublin Castle and described in the press release as Dublin's "first outdoor gourmet food and drink festival". Ha! There's a reason why there aren't more outdoor events in Ireland - talk to the shivering, drenched stallholders at any of the markets around the country and see why. Anyway, festival visitors can expect signature dishes from a selection of the city's restaurants, including a few of my favourites - the lovely Silk Road Café in the Chester Beatty Library and the more sophisticated Cellar Restaurant at The Merrion.

Other restaurants participating are Bang Café, Chapter One, Diep Le Shaker, Jaipur, King Sitric, La Stampa, L'Ecrivain, Peploes, Town Bar & Grill, Unicorn, Yo Thai and Chai Yo. I've eaten a few times, years ago, in Bang Café and always enjoyed the experience while Town Bar & Grill was the setting for our work Christmas dinner (never a good time to assess a restaurant - I will draw a veil over the rather inebriated proceedings!) so I look forward to browsing and tasting.

The big draw for me will be the Chef's Theatre with demonstrations from the ever-interesting Richard Corrigan of London's Lindsay House and Bentley's Oyster Bar and Grill along with Irish kitchen heroine Darina Allen. And, for those of you who are fans of her daughter-in-law, Rachel Allen is also one of the chefs lined up to demonstrate. Of course, as the event is ticketed according to time (two sessions daily, 12pm to 4pm and 5.30pm to 9.30pm), getting to see Richard and Darina in the same session is going to prove a challenge. Think I'll pass on Rachel!

The tickets, priced from €25 to €75, depending on how many florins - the currency to be used in paying for your Taste(s) of Dublin - you want to buy in advance. Apparently the exchange rate is one florin to one euro and dishes will be priced from €5 to €8. Fair enough, but the Ticketmaster booking fee is pricy at best (€2.95 on the €25 tickets), rising fairly sharply to something nasty (€5.95 for the €75 tickets). For my money, the best deal looks like the €35 option which works out at €15 entrance fee plus €20-worth of florins. Now, I just wonder what's the best way around around that €4.38 booking fee?

Our first weekend of the year under canvas couldn't exactly be called an unqualified success. We did actually remember to pack the sleeping bags (and Anzac Biscuit morale) but, despite such forethought, it wasn't exactly the weather for camping in the west of Ireland. The heavens opened early on Sunday morning, raining us off Achill Island and we had to retreat to an old-school bed & breakfast in Westport back on mainland Mayo. At least we managed to have a cold, but fine, Friday night breaking our journey at the ever-reliable Lough Ree campsite in Ballykerran, near Athlone before moving on to the beautiful-on-a-fine-evening Seal Caves Park in Dugort on the north side of Achill Island. We cooked dinner outdoors on our little gas burner - a typical simple one-pot camping meal of Clonakilty Black Pudding, roughly chopped mushrooms and baked beans - and drank red wine in the still-warm late evening sunshine, feeling like summer had finally arrived.

When we went to bed on Saturday it was a glorious night, clear skies and stars overhead. Alas, after about six hours rain on Sunday, it was time to abandon our damp and wind-buffeted tent. Still, bad weather allows for some investigation of local hostelries and eateries and there was surprisingly good pickings on our ramblings.

Continue reading "A wander round the west" »

A new arrival on the Dublin grocery scene is the gorgeous-looking Fallon & Byrne, a classy supermarket along the lines of Donnybrook Fair, on Exchequer Street in the city centre. They've been renovating the building for a while and, seeing it opened at last, I just popped in for a few minutes last Saturday week. A former telephone exchange, it's an airy, echo-y space, all parquet floors and food everywhere. Right inside the door is a juice bar and, dotted around the periphery of the vast floor space, were also an in-store butchers, a long deli counter filled with take-home dishes, a coffee bar, complete with high stools and tables, and a well-stocked cheese and charcuterie counter which I could have spent the rest of the afternoon poring over.

One row was filled with piles of unusual vegetables and fruit - I was sorely tempted by the heads of perky looking chicory or Belgian endive, having enjoyed a dish in Paris where they were rolled in slices of ham and baked in a béchamel sauce. But I was already late to meet with friends so I had to leave with nothing but a little packet of saffron from the intriguing spice range, a lot of it sourced from London's The Spice Shop, across from Books for Cooks on Blenheim Crescent. Although my brief visit was only to the ground floor, apparently Fallon & Byrne encompasses another two levels - a wine bar and cellar downstairs and there's going to be a restaurant on the first floor.

It's definitely a place that I'm going to want to explore more. Meanwhile, there's an interview with F&B food hall manager, Rachel Firth, on new Irish foodie website Greatfood.ie (another place well worth taking a - virtual - look around) which explains more about the ethos behind and aims of the store.

Fallon & Byrne, Exchequer Building, 11-17 Exchequer Street, Dublin 2.

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.

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

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.

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!

After making Nic's Buttermilk Pancakes twice in the last ten days, I just have to sing their praises here. They take minutes to put together, don't involve getting out the weighing scales (just use the cup measurements), are easy to cook, and - if you're on a weekend away - the dry ingredients sit happily together in a zip-locked baggie until you choose to combine them with the buttermilk, butter and egg. Most importantly, they turn out delectable, light, fluffy, American-style thick pancakes without having to resort to a mix. We ate them this morning with oodles of fragrant organic maple syrup from Nenagh's wonderful Country Choice deli, grilled rashers of bacon and, in my case, a little extra butter to further add to the sweet/savoury combination combination.

After measuring the flour and leavening agents into a bag on Friday (I was home sick, that's my excuse for being half-way organised!), I cooked these pancakes for the final meal of a wonderful weekend with the Schoolfriend and her husband at the comfortable Tir na Fiuise just outside Terryglass in North Tipperary, which we found through the Responsible Travel website. After several recommendations, we initially had hoped to eat at Brocka on the Water in nearby Kilgarvan Quay on Saturday night but, even with a week's notice, they were booked solid. We stayed a little closer to home, at Terryglass' own Derg Inn, and were not disappointed with a lovely meal in relaxed surroundings and a friendly barman who even dropped the Boyfriend and Schoolfriend's husband home a few pints after we had departed for the night.

There's plenty of good eating in this area. Lunch - a loaf of still-warm brown soda bread, another of tomato and fennel, a sizable chunk of mature Irish cheddar, sliced ham and turkey breast, sunblush tomatoes and The Old School House Food Company's sweet cucumber and red pepper relish - came, via the Schoolfriend and her husband, from the aforementioned Country Choice, a shop where I could spend quite a lot of browsing time. All that, and we hardly got a chance to check out the places mentioned in Georgina Campbell or the Bridgestone Guides. It's the perfect area for a chilled out weekend with friends and I had the extra bonus of being close enough to home to cheer the Little Sister on to victory at the All-Ireland Junior A Camogie Final (St Mary's, Charleville vs Portumna Community College) in Dolla. Congratulations to the St Mary's girls, clear winners on a muddy pitch with a score of 1-11 to 0-05!

Listening to Winter Food the other day I heard an interview with Sean and Kieran Murphy of Murphy's Ice Cream in Dingle. They take presenter Clodagh McKenna through the making of their fabulous ice cream, telling her about local milk, flavourings and types of ice cream (Mango and Chilli - is that exported outside the Kingdom?!), taking her into a freezer room piled high with their produce - brioscaí (Cookies and cream), caramal (Honeycomb), bó bhán (Irish cream liqueur), fanaile (French vanilla) - and treating her, much to Clodagh's delight, to sú craobh or Raspberry Sorbet. And don't forget their seacláid - "chocolate, always chocolate', as Kieran says several time during the interview. No secrets where his heart lies, especially if you check out his blog at Ice Cream Ireland and his decadent recipe for Hot Chocolate.

In my continuing quest to discover the perfect Hot Chocolate recipe, I recently tried out - via an online recipe which has since disappeared - Pierre Hermé's recipe for Caramelised Cinnamon Hot Chocolate. Basically, it involves carmelising some sugar with a cinnamon stick, adding milk and a little water, then heating the mixture with LOTS of chocolate. It was amazingly rich - I ended up drinking mine with a spoon - and, I think, best served in espresso cups, rather than the cappuccino mugs that I used. The Boyfriend was not hugely impressed, considering that it was more like chocolate soup than the mug of hot chocolate that he had been promised. Next time I think I'll try Kieran Murphy's take on hot chocolates. Even though I've never been to Dingle I've heard many favourable things about their shop/café there and in Killarney and I know from personal experience how good their ice creams are. Even though summer seems a long way off, maybe I'll just have to grab a tub of ice cream on my way home some evening...and eat it in front of the fire.

Ah, St Patrick's Day. There's very little I can say about this Irish holiday without descending to cliché but, one of the great things about being back in Ireland is that we get a day off work. If you're not busy drowning the shamrock and having a feed of Guinness in some 'Orish' pub around the world (or maybe even if you are!), a big pot of Ham and Pea Soup and a couple of loaves of Irish Brown Soda Bread are as good a way of celebrating as any.

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Last Friday, over a glass of wine and some nibbles at a city centre tapas bar, the Boyfriend - after WEEKS of mystery - handed me my passport and...a guidebook for Paris! He had told me that we were going away for the weekend, we would be spending time in a city and that I had to pack for cold weather. Despite lots of guessing - I thought Galway, or maybe Belfast - I hadn't even come close to figuring out where we were going.

Coincidentally, I had been reading Clotilde's Paris-based Chocolate & Zucchini blog that morning. Between salivating over her descriptions of croissants aux amandes and peering with interest at the contents of her basket at the supermarket (I love visiting supermarkets in other countries), I was mentally planning a trip to Paris. Some dozen years ago, while au pairing in Chamonix, I had visited my friend - a fellow au pair - in Paris. At the time neither of us had any money so we just spent our time walking outside museums, reading menus and gazing longingly in patisserie windows.

Paris is the perfect city for food lovers - especially if you're not flat broke! We spent much of the weekend exploring Le Quartier Latin, thinking, talking about, sampling and eating all the wonderful French food on display. I could spend the rest of the week writing about the weekend but, instead, here are a few of the food highlights of our trip to Paris.

Continue reading "Une vacance surprise à Paris" »

It might be a bit after the date but I don't think it's too late to offer my congratulations on hearing the news that New Zealand's Cuisine magazine has been judged Best Food Magazine in the World at the Gourmet Voice Festival in Cannes at the end of January.

When I arrived in New Zealand I was at first bemused by the range of food magazines on sale. It didn't take me long, though, to realise that Cuisine was head-and-shoulders above the rest. I loved the mix of features, information on local producers and things in season, evocative photography and, most of all, their attitude to FOOD. It introduced me to writers like Ray McVinnie, Genevieve McGough, Julie Le Clerc and Lauraine Jacobs, many of whom also cropped up at Savour New Zealand. One of the first things I did when I arrived back in Ireland was to fork out for a subscription to the magazine and I regularly reference the Cuisine website. Just as well - all my last year's Cuisines are packed away in a box somewhere in Christchurch!

The Gourmet Voice Awards, which aim to reward and promote professionals involved in food and drink communication across all media, awarded Cuisine a gold Gourmet Voice trophy – one of just four golds awarded overall. It's undoubtedly a great publication but which came first? The quality magazine or the nationwide interest in food? And where have we in Ireland gone wrong? New Zealand is a country which constantly gets compared to Ireland. It has a similar population and, in places, a similar climate. Not too similar, however. There's a decided lack of vines in the midlands and the people at Athena Olives in Waipara, where I spent a day olive picking, were very surprised that we don't have olive trees in Ireland. Perhaps it is our reliance on imported fruit and vegetables that strips us of the interest and pride in cooking? After being able to buy such a range of local produce in Christchurch I was amazed to see how much of the organic fruit and vegetables on sale at the Temple Bar Market was imported. For a small country, New Zealand does punch far above its weight in the food world, both in producing and in consuming creatively. We're not doing too badly - I am always encouraged when I read Darina Allen's weekly letter in The Examiner - but we've a long way to go before we've the kind of food culture which would support a publication like Cuisine.

When I started Bibliocook in New Zealand almost a year ago, there weren't that many NZ food blogs. Barbara at Auckland's Winos and Foodies was in contact early on and I've since enjoyed reading her posts about Real Mexican Hot Chocolate, pumpkins, wine and books - I have to especially credit her with introducing me to remarkable Australian chef Gay Bilson. On one of my regular wanders over to Winos and Foodies I suddenly realised that there was a list of new food blogs on her side nav. After spending a couple of hours wandering around their sites, I now introduce you to several of the (blogging) foodies in NZ...

Nationwide is a thrice-weekly Irish television show which consists of a collection of pieces on life in the country. Covering art, music, photography and - to my delight - food, it's the kind of programme much loved by grannys and parents who believe that RTÉ is altogether too Dublin-centric. Although I don't have a television, I keep an eye on the foodie side of things through the Nationwide website as they've been particularly good at highlighting artisan producers. I've mentioned it before in relation to the Fergusons of Gubbeen and last Friday's show also had a couple of pieces worth checking out.

Since coming back to Ireland I've been hearing a lot about the Good Things Café and Cookery School down in Durrus, West Cork. It crops up in the Bridgestone Guides as well as Georgina Campbell's The Best of the Best and I've also been impressed with owner Carmel Somers' avowed obsession with local, seasonal, organic and free range ingredients. Being in an area where customers are few and far between in winter, she's also started a cookery school and that was the focus of last Friday's interview.

The show also featured Sarah Hehir and Emily Sandford of Cocoabean Artisan Chocolates in Limerick. Despite my post about their chocolates in December, I must admit that I still haven't got round to trying some of their fabulous-sounding flavour combinations. And it's not often that I procrastinate about chocolate tasting!

The piece on last Wednesday's programme about traditional butter-making is also well worth a look, especially as Jean Beattie gives instructions for making your own butter at home in a jam-jar! First making my own bread, then cheese. What's next? Perhaps butter...

You can read about and vote for your favourite macaroon around the world at Glutton Rabbit's brilliant round-up of Hay Hay It's Donna Day #2 - Macaroons. It's all illustrated with nice pictures (making my macaroons look even more cow-pat-like in comparison to all the others!) and it is interesting to see how different people interpreted the idea of macaroon-making.

My favorites have to be Baking Soda's Almond Espresso Macaroons from Bake My Day and I'm loving the idea of Bron's Wasabi and Black Sesame Macaroons on Green Eggs and Spam. The Dark Chocolate and Orange Macaroons by Haalo from Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once are also very tempting. And I love the picture (that pink background rocks!) of Barbara's Lime Macaroons from Winos and Foodies.

Hmmm...who to vote for? The winner gets a set of Japanese cookie cutters and he or she will also get to host the next Hay Hay It's Donna Day event. Anyone feel like voting for my cow-pats?!

It's been a while since Maman Poulet - sorry Suzy! - tagged me for the Weird Meme. For this meme I have to write five weird things about me. Well, one person's weird is another person's absolutely normal so I'm not sure how weird (or sane) these are going to appear to anyone else. I just know that they're things to do with cooking and food that people have pointed out as being somewhat strange.

1. I like to wash dishes by hand rather than use a dishwasher. While in New Zealand we had a lovely dishwasher that, even after the Boyfriend bought powder for it, was used only once for it's proscribed purpose. The rest of the time I found it handy - much to the amusement of the Boyfriend's family - as a storage place for plastic bags. Well, there's no point in leaving it empty, now, is there?

2. When leaving NZ I packed all my spices (especially my packets of Aji's cinnamon and chilli) into an envelope that I bribed the Boyfriend to post to me in Ireland. Sorry customs...

3. I love second-hand crockery and bakeware. One of my prized possessions is a large blue-flowered oval china plate that I picked up in a charity shop years ago and, while in NZ, I amassed a large quantity of "pre-loved" (such a great phrase) plates, pans and cooking equipment that would have, otherwise, been very expensive. Of course, pre-loved sometimes also means pre-battered and some of my removable-base tins had bases that were a little too easy to remove which led to a few leaking incidents.

4. A considerable amount of my luggage home to Ireland was taken up by cookbooks, including Zarbo Zest, and cooking utensils, including my beloved nut-cracker, dough scraper, pastry blender, zester... I was gutted to have to abandon my small cast-iron frying pan though. For some reason the Boyfriend didn't think that it was such a good idea to carry a cast-iron frying pan in my hand-luggage.

5. I often keep a bar of dark, dark chocolate in my cupboard for weeks, eating it after dinner, a square at a time. That's until the Boyfriend finds it. We now have to buy cheaper chocolate for him to eat in volume while I savour the more expensive sort over a long...slow...time...

Who to tag now? I rather liked Suzy asking for five weird cooking/food things about me so I'd like to turn the foodie spotlight on to:

eatstuff.net
Gluten-free Girl
my little kitchen
pearl of the orient
She Who Eats

Rules of the game: The first player of this game starts with the topic "five weird habits of yourself", and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don't forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says "you are tagged" (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours.

For anybody with more than a passing interest in food and/or blogs, check out the 2005 Food Blog Awards at the Accidental Hedonist's own blog. As Kate points out, the list of nominees is one of the best ways of discovering blogs that you might not have come across otherwise, such as the five-times nominated The Travellers Lunchbox and Gluten-free Girl. There's also tried-and-true names such as the inimitable Chocolate & Zucchini, 101 Cookbooks and the new, improved Too Many Chefs. Voting is open now and continues until 18 January so, if you'd like to have your say or even if you're just interested in discovering new food blogs, click over to Accidental Hedonist.

Before we took off for our year in New Zealand, the Boyfriend was really getting involved in bread-making. There was an ongoing, sporadically successful, sourdough project but where he really hit his stride was in making bagels. A birthday present of Bread by Ursula Ferrigno and Eric Treuillé (never let it be said that I didn't encourage him!) inspired him to try their recipe. Do you know how they get the holes into their bagels? You take a small ball of dough, stick your finger through the centre of it and then work your finger in a circle to stretch and widen the hole. It's rather like doing the hula hoop, but with your finger instead of your waist! We were in fits laughing that first morning that he tried the recipe as our fingers hula hooped their way through eight bagels.

You don't get many bagels from 500g of flour but they're so good that you really don't mind. While often erratically shaped (hula hooping may not be the most precise way of producing them), the Boyfriend's bagels are nicely browned with an appropriately dense and chewy interior. We used to sprinkle sesame and poppy seeds on top but, given the Boyfriend's pumpkin seed fixation (the reason that I started adding them to my Brown Bread recipe) we've started brushing the bagels with egg and sticking pumpkin seeds on top. These are not something to make when you're in a hurry but, if you've got a currently unemployed boyfriend, you could do a lot worse than encourage him to take a look at Ursula and Eric's recipe for bagels over on Swiss food blog Rosa's Yummy Yums. They're perfect toasted with a dab of cream cheese or, if you want to go for a fancier bagel, try some of the fillings mentioned on Dublin's Itsabagel website. Personally, I would strongly recommend The Mountaineer.

While looking at the RTÉ website the other day I came across a piece on the Nationwide programme about the Ferguson family of Gubbeen, outside Schull in West Cork. Tom and Giana Ferguson have worked Gubbeen Farm for more than thirty years, starting to produce their delicious prize-winning Gubbeen Cheese in 1978.

Their son Fingal recently started The Gubbeen Smokehouse, where he produces a range of smoked bacon, rashers, sausages, salami, chorizo and lardons, as well as a smoked version of the Gubbeen Cheese. As if that wasn't enough, his sister Clovisse grows organic herbs and vegetables and sells them to local chefs and, as far as I could gather, another daughter Rosie is also involved at the farm end of things.

With all the gloom and doom that is being talked about Irish farming recently it is very encouraging to see this second-generation of artisan food producers, all working on businesses developed from the family farm.

You can watch the clip here, read more about the Fergusons and food producers in Cork in the Observer Food Monthly and the Gubbeen Farmhouse Products website is here.

Back at work in Ireland, I have access to a much faster internet connection than I was used to - meaning lots more scope for radio listening! I'm still tuning in regularly to Eat Feed but it is particularly nice to discovered an Irish radio show called Winter Food. It's presented by Slow Food activist - and editor of the very useful Slow Food Ireland Guide to Producers - Clodagh McKenna and I'm listening to her fascinating Irish farmhouse cheese episode, including a pasteurised versus un-pasteurised debate, at the moment. The whole series is archived online and it's well worth a listen. You'll also find an article by Clodagh McKenna on Farmer's Markets here.

While I was meandering around the Galway branch of Sheridans on my recent trip to the capital of the West, I came across some beautifully packaged chocolate from a Limerick company called Cocoa Bean. The blocks first caught my eye as I thought they looked more like gorgeous notebooks than chocolate bars. And then I looked at the flavourings...oh, they were truly mouthwatering! From spice, rose and pistachio to star anise and earl grey tea, they just sounded like my kind of (dark) chocolate. But, what with the chocolates not having any prices on them (always a bad move, when you've to actually ask the price of the product) and having to purchase food for dinner, I forgetfully managed to leave without grabbing a few bars to test drive.

I was even more annoyed when I went to their website and discovered some more of the chocolate flavours: lime zest and black pepper, tamarind with star anise and ginger, jalapeño with oak. Their site says that they have plenty of stockists in Dublin so I must take myself on a trip to Avoca or Donnybrook Fair and see if I can spy those bars again. I swear I'm not getting obsessed with chocolate these days...

A couple of days after I arrived back in Ireland my foodie cousin called round with a thoughtful bag of kitchen basics for me. Pasta, rice - my favourite basmati - olive oil and balsamic vinegar, a bottle of wine and, piling luxury upon practicality, two bars of Green & Black's organic Fair Trade chocolate.

Their Maya Gold is an old favourite but I hadn't come across their extra-special Luxury range before. My cousin had bought me the Butterscotch bar, an mighty chunk of milk chocolate blended with crispy, crunchy pieces of butterscotch. While the rest of the kitchen basics are living down home at the moment (difficult to stock a kitchen which you don't yet have, such are the trials and tribulations of a flat-hunter) I couldn't leave those bars of chocolate at home - especially as there are a pair of sweet-loving teenagers in the house, not to mention my parents.

The chocolate travelled up to Dublin with me to brighten, piece by piece, many a dreary evening - the little comforts make all the difference! While I thoroughly enjoyed the Maya Gold, the Butterscotch is on another level. I'm not normally a fan of milk chocolate but Amnesty's Fair Trade chocolate and now the (slightly darker than normal) Green & Black's milk chocolate used in the Butterscotch bar may move me slightly away from my the-only-chocolate-worth-eating-is-dark-chocolate stance.

Green & Black's Luxury chocolate range also includes espresso, cherry, ginger and almond varieties. Plenty to try out - after I get through my current stash!

Last weekend I was in Galway to visit the Schoolfriend and her husband and, almost as importantly, to see their new kitchen. They had moved into their house some time before I went to New Zealand but the kitchen remained to be sorted out. I heard that this had been completed while I was away and last weekend was my first opportunity to see it for myself. It is gorgeous - all granite work surfaces and light painted woods with dual ovens and a large five-burner gas hob - and I got a chance to take it for a test drive when the Schoolfriend and myself cooked dinner for nine on Saturday night.

After perusing this site, she decided to cook my Chickpea and Chorizo Stew so off with us to town on Saturday morning to track down the ingredients. There's a great market on at weekends in Galway city centre, beside St Nicholas' Church - many's the time during the summer when I've picked up some yummy hummus, olives and good bread there for a picnic by the sea on a sunny day. Last Saturday wasn't a day for dawdling but we managed to get our hands on some fruit and vegetables, flowers, the Schoolfriend tried on a hat and I grabbed myself some warming hot chocolate.

One of the great things about the market's location is that it is right beside the fabulous Sheridans Cheesemongers. The cold morning ensured that it was not too busy so the Schoolfriend and I had plenty of time to browse their piled-high shelves amidst the pungent aromas of cheese and salami. We picked up some dried chorizo and a packet of chunky-looking garlic and basil sausages for the stew that night, some bread (including a richly tasty walnut and raisin loaf), a box of smoked paprika and, the crowning glory, a large chunk of Coolea Extra Mature cheese. One taste of this sweet nutty cheese and both the school friend and I were sold. A quick run to Galway's famous McCambridges for tinned chickpeas and tomatoes and we were on our way home...to that gorgeous kitchen.

The kitchen not only looked good, it worked brilliantly. The Schoolfriend and I, with the help/hindrance of a two-year-old visitor, had plenty of room for preparation and I thoroughly enjoyed the expanse of space at my disposal. The gas hob - after I learned how to turn it down! - simmered the stew to perfection. There was plenty of room in the ovens underneath to roast some carrots and bake a Plum and Apple Crumble (plums substituted for the feijoas in my recipe for Feijoa and Apple Crumble). An easy meal to make - especially in such a well kitted out kitchen.

I have always been a fan of Bonne Maman's delicious range of jams and preserves. It's the taste and lovely runny texture that sold me - no surprise that it bosts 45g of whole fruit per 100g of jam. In distinctively shaped jars, topped with a homey-looking imitation-gingham lid, I have worked my way through their range over the years, apricot, blackcurrant and peach being particular favourites. And the jars themselves have also come in handy, housing many of my range of spices and herbs.

So, it was no surprise that I couldn't resist when faced with the range of Bonne Maman chilled desserts in the supermarket the other evening. I don't often buy pre-prepared foods but being a bag lady (I'm currently looking for a place to live in Dublin) does make you lower your standards. Besides, they were on special and came in the most dotey little glass pots. I just couldn't walk away! The choice was between crème brûlée, crème caramel and chocolate pot de crèmes and, after a bit of pondering, I decided on the crème caramel, swayed in no small part by the fact that the ingredients list just contained fresh whole milk, sugar, fresh eggs and caramel.

Last night I was very glad that I had succumbed to temptation. Each wee pot - there were two in the package - was topped with a little plastic gingham cover, à la the pots of jam. There was a thin skin on top, which I broke through to reach spoonfuls of smooth creamy custard. On the base was a layer of runny caramelised sugar which had a distinctively nutty flavour. I was happy, nibbling away at spoons of custard, interspersed with spoonfuls of custard and caramel. All I needed was a crisp biscuit to scoop it out of the jar and then life would have been near perfect. As it is, I've still another one to go. And then there's the rest of the range to try out...

In the twelve months that I spent in New Zealand, most weekends of which were involved in exploring a variety of markets, there seems to have been a mushrooming of farmers' markets in Ireland. Or maybe it's that I'm more aware of it now! Last Saturday, after just two days in the country, and my mother suggested that we go to the Fermoy Farmers' Market. Although we only had the directions "it's down by the river" - and there are four sides to the river in Fermoy - we didn't have too much difficulty in finding the place where the stallholders had set up shop and plunged in.

It was a small market, just ten stalls but, as my little brother pointed out, we bought from eight of them. Amidst my jet lag and travel tiredness I didn't get anyone's names but I did enjoy chatting to many of the stallholders and I came away with some fabulous produce. Quality, rather than quantity, seems to be the key in this small but well-appointed market.

The spoils...
Sweet things - with a good try-before-you-buy policy, we purchased a couple of glorious chunky Mud Biscuits, a few Italian biscuits, pieces of an Oaty Apricot Crunch, Cheesecake and Lemon Slice. All fresh, homemade and very reasonable.
Cheese - a piece of young Cáis Dubh for the little brother and a chunk of the same, except more intensely mature, for myself from the lovely lady at Fermoy Natural Cheeses.
Bread - a sundried tomato loaf and a lovely big loaf of Brown Soda Bread.
Eggs - you can't go wrong with a dozen free range eggs for €3.
Plants - organically grown Welsh onions and flat leaf parsley from a very interesting man with plenty of knowledge to share.
Fruit and vegetables - bags and bags worth, although I don't think that they actually grow any pineapples around the Fermoy area!
Marmalade - a bitter sugar-free orange marmalade.
Sausages and pudding - this stall had a variety of sausages so we bought a pair of each. They looked distinctively different when raw but when we cooked them that night it not so easy to distinguish the Cumberland from the garlic and herb. All tasty, though, and the portion of black and white pudding that we bought was especially good. I've been missing decent black pudding over the last year.

Well, all good things come to an end at some stage. I've left New Zealand - not without many regrets - to return to my job in Ireland. I will continue writing about food from this side of the world with, perhaps after my 12 months away, a new perspective on what I may have formerly taken for granted. Nor have I abandoned New Zealand totally. I intend to go back at some stage in, I hope, the not-too-distant future and today I paid for a subscription to my beloved Cuisine magazine. I'll need something summery to keep me going through the grey Irish winter! It's been a fabulous year, getting to know the Boyfriend's country, friends and family and New Zealand food has been a true eye opener.

Things I'm going to miss...

After some discussion about Fair Trade goods, green LA girl challenged me to take the Starbucks Challenge. In their policy document - Starbucks, Fair Trade, and Coffee Social Responsibility - they say that "Fair Trade Certified coffee has been promoted by Starbucks as a brewed "Coffee of the Week" and can be brewed by coffee press during store hours upon customer request." The challenge was to ask for a cup of Fair Trade coffee in Starbucks and see how easy it was to get served.

Last Thursday afternoon I felt the need for a cup of caffeine and, it being after 4pm, most Christchurch cafés were shut. This I will never understand. Why shut up shop at the time most people desperately need coffee? Still, it did give me a good opportunity to finally go into one of those not-very-well-patronised-by-me branches of Starbucks which seem spread like a rash all over the city. I wandered along to the best located Starbucks in Christchurch, slap bang central in Cathedral Square, and said the magic words: "Could I get a cup of Fair Trade coffee, please?" But no! Obviously the staff at the aforementioned Starbucks had not read their own policy document. They did point out that they had bags of Fair Trade coffee on sale - not exactly what I was looking for.

Seeing as I was feeling rather wimpy that day and I REALLY needed the caffeine, I took a mug of whatever coffee of the week that they were offering (I don't even remember what it was!) and slunk off to the corner to sip in peace, mentally kicking myself for not being more pro-active. Still, it doesn't look like I'm alone - other people taking the challenge around the world seem to be having similar problems.

Last weekend being a long weekend, the Boyfriend and I decided to abandon Christchurch and open our personal camping season with a trip to the small town of Geraldine. For me, camping is a challenge to see what I can cook with limited ingredients and resources and this, the first camping trip of the year, was an opportunity not to be passed up. The night before we took off, I dug out Nigel Slater's Real Fast Food - the perfect camping cookbook - and started studying the recipes. So intent was I on packing the bag of food and so concentrated was the Boyfriend on getting us out the door on Saturday morning that no one thought to pack those camping essentials - the sleeping bags.

All happily oblivious, we were on the road at a good time. As we headed down south towards Geraldine, we took time to stop on the way to check out the Darina Allen-recommended The Store at Dunsandel. Annabel Graham of Camla Farm has turned the main post office and dairy of this wee village into a welcoming and thriving café. Tempting foods, ciders and wines are stocked alongside the bleach and plasters necessary in any village store while a shelf-full of cookbooks kept me entertained during lunch. We picked up a couple of bottles of Camla Farm cider for quaffing later and our food - crumpled Iraqi flatbread with humus and olives for me and a lamb pesto fichelle for the Boyfriend - was a far tastier option than the normal pie-stop.

After setting up the tent in the central Geraldine Holiday Park more foodie pleasures were in store for us. I browsed through the fruit juices, jams, toppings, sauces and jellies in Barker's shop, trying spoonfuls of chutney, smelling jars of mustard and limiting my spending to blackcurrant fruit juice syrup and passionfruit curd. A quick look around Talbot Forest Cheese (I was sorry to miss out on a chance of tasting their goat's milk mozzarella) and Fellmann's chocolate shop and it was time for coffee and a shared piece of Citrus Slice at the relaxed Easy Way Café.

It was only that evening, after a hearty meal of Nigel Slater's Sloppy Joes, as we ate homemade shortbread from the local market, topped with spoonfuls of Barker's passionfruit curd (a truly great combination of sweet and tart, crunchy passionfruit seeds and crumbly shortbread) that the Boyfriend suddenly realised that we had no sleeping bags. Worst still, we had also managed to leave our camping whiskey in Christchurch. Despite digging out the car boot liner to serve as a blanket, Saturday night wasn't the warmest and that was the end of camping for that weekend.

Still, without that night under canvas I might have never got around to making Sloppy Joes. Fast and intensely savoury, this is a perfect one-pot meal for camping. Make sure that you have plenty of kitchen paper to hand because, as Nigel says, this will run down your chin and up your arm. Ideal for a casual environment!

Continue reading "A tale of camping food and missing sleeping bags" »

Although I'm not a huge fan of her bare basics books, Delia Smith's website is a very useful reference point. She has a helpful table of conversions here that are especially good when you're trying to convert a recipe using American cup measurements to metric but, alas, there are no references to the New Zealand or Australian cup. I didn't initially realise that these measurements were different - a cup is a cup is a cup, right? - but apparently not.

Apparently the US standard cup is smaller than the NZ/Australian one, about 240ml as opposed to 250ml (depending on who you're reading). Also, just to really confuse matters, the tablespoon in Australia is 20ml instead of the international standard of 15ml! Unless you are baking with a very precise recipe (and mine tend not to be), these differences shouldn't cause too many problems - after all, I've gotten away with using Kiwi cups for American recipes before this - but it's just something to be aware of. I think the best way around it is to have two sets of cups. Then you've no excuse for bellyflopping cakes and the like!

One night a few weeks ago the Boyfriend and I accompanied our Scottish physiotherapist housemates to a celebration of International Physiotherapist Day. Now, going to celebrations of other people's careers is not something that we would normally do but, as this was taking place at Christchurch's Canterbury Brewery, we decided to make an exception - just this once, you understand.

Canterbury Brewery, now owned by the Australian based company Lion Nathan, is pretty old. First named Ward's Brewery, it was founded in 1854 - not long after the first settlers arrived in Christchurch. The heritage museum in the brewery reflects this, telling the history of beer making in general, as well as concentrating on the brewing in New Zealand.

The physiotherapists of Christchurch, plus ourselves, were conducted to the heritage museum first. After wandering through that our guide - a very enthusiastic brewer who occasionally does these tours at night - explained the whole process of brewing and took us around the parts of the brewery which are open at night.

As soon as we walked out onto the brewery floor we could smell that rich barley/hop scent that will always remind me of Dublin's Guinness brewery. Unsurprisingly, this is the company that also brews New Zealand's Guinness. The most interesting part of this tour - there's not actually too much going on at night time - was when our guide led us into the large room, complete with massive gleaming copper vats which contain the malted barley, where they were actually making the beer. The brewing is a 24-hour operation, with brewers working in shifts, but the bottlers seem to get nights off.

Continue reading "Beer and food matches" »

A couple of days ago I got tagged for the 23/5 Meme by my favourite Melbourne Plum. Unlike the last meme I was involved with, it is not a difficult one - you just have to go digging around the archives, find your 23rd post and ponder on the meaning of the 5th line. Hmm...

Finding my 23rd post wasn't too difficult. I had just discovered this wonderful New Zealand fruit and was pretty eager to tell people all about it in Feijoa Frenzy. My 5th line? "The hallmark of the feijoa, apparently, which has its own unique taste." Well, it doesn't do so good as a standalone line - you'll just have to go read it in its original situation and see does it look better!

Now begins my real problem. The most difficult part of this meme is who to tag as most people I know online seem to have already participated! I think that may be a question to ponder for a little while longer.

Updated Tuesday 18 October: I've finally gotten around to figuring out who to tag next. From the amount of thinking I've put into it, I'm starting to feel that this meme has become a little like those chain letters that used to go around when I was in school! Anyway, my choices/victims are:

No Eggs Or Nuts
life begins at 30
Zen Foodism
and, in the non-foodie related angle of things...
Year of the Big Drought
Adam Fields (weblog)

Here's hoping none of them have been tagged already...

After a stressful week, all you want to do at the weekend is get out of the city (without driving too far), stay in a comfortable place (without paying too much) and eat some good food. In search of just such a place, the Boyfriend and I stayed at the historic Governors Bay Hotel last weekend. Although it is only about a forty minute drive from Christchurch, once you emerge from the Lyttelton tunnel, which cuts through the Port Hills directly south of the city, you feel like you're arriving in another, more relaxed world.

With the outward appearance of an old New Zealand country pub, the Governors Bay Hotel has a level of comfort and service that would shame most city hotels. The fact that the bedrooms aren't en suite may be off-putting for some but, given that their Winter Escape Package - bed, breakfast plus two-course dinner - only costs NZ$150 for a couple this is a small quibble. What's more important is that the rooms, though small, are cosy and come equipped with solidly comfortable beds, something all too rare in overnight accommodation.

We arrived in the afternoon of a miserable Saturday so the view at that time was nothing to write home about although the roaring open fire in the bar did lift our spirits. Still, the rain lifted enough to allow us a good ramble along the shoreline directly underneath the hotel before we wandered upstairs to our room, legs aching, to read several of the glossy magazines that were piled high in the corridor.

Continue reading "A weekend hideaway" »

Yesterday morning was miserable. It was wet and stormy, I hadn't slept well and I woke up with a nasty sore throat. I was lying in bed, feeling sorry for myself (I had to cook dinner for nine last night) when the Boyfriend said "there's a parcel here for you!" A parcel in the post is never something to be sniffed at, especially when I had a suspicion that it was sent from America by my Mail Blogging partner, Deborah. Before I knew it, I was out of bed and tearing open the wrapping to receive a veritable avalanche of goodies! And that was only the start. When I checked the proper post (as opposed to the parcel post) later I found a card telling me that there was another parcel to be collected at the post office. This morning, the third - and final - parcel was delivered, along with a lecture from the postman as the bottle of porter (yes, porter! Alaskan Smoked Porter, actually) it contained fell out as he took it out of his sack. He was not impressed - apparently the New Zealand post office take a dim view of bottles of alcohol falling out of parcels. Thankfully it survived, although I don't think I'll be opening it for a while. Mr Postman said it had survived a lot and it should be put on display.

Thank you SO much Deborah - your parcels made me almost forget about the sore throat and cooking dinner was much easier when I could bribe myself with a few of the luscious Lemon Caramels made by the Little Flower Candy Co. I think they'll be accompanying the Boyfriend and myself to the cinema this evening.

Continue reading "Blogging by Mail 2: The arrival of the parcel..." »

I've always loved getting parcels in the post (hence my involvement with Blogging by Mail 2!) and this year in New Zealand has only accentuated that fact. When you're far away, it's always nice to know that your friends and family at home are thinking of you, something which is even more appreciated when there's chocolate involved! My mother is great for sending on bars of Butler's Irish Chocolate and chocolate Santys at Christmas time - I even got a (very squashed) box of Black Magic for my birthday and a slab of Bournville (especially useful for bach hot chocolates).

But a recent package from my Monaghan friend really hit the spot combining, as it did, my love of chocolate and books with my current interest in all things Fair Trade. Her Italian boyfriend works with Amnesty International in Dublin and he's behind their range of Amnesty chocolate which is made using fair-trade cocoa. Three bars of that (two plain, one praline) plus a yummy looking book called Pomegranate Soup by Marsha Mehran - is it any wonder that I feel spoilt! Now I just have to find an evening at home so I can curl up in the armchair with my new book and do some taste tests on all that lovely chocolate...

I was just taking a look round the Cork Film Festival website when I came across their Slow Food on Film event. Slow Food Cork are behind this amalgamation of food and film which is in its third year. It always sounds amazing but, as I'm normally based in Dublin (when I'm not in New Zealand!), I haven't yet managed to attend.

This year they're showing five short films - from Cuba, Switzerland, France (x2) and Mexico - at the cosy Kino Cinema on Washington Street accompanied by a selection of foods from Cork producers. It's a mouth watering line-up - Frank Hederman's smoked fish, chorizo from Fingal Ferguson (both of whom got a great write up in the OFM recently), Desmond Cheese and Ardsallagh Goats Cheese from Bill Hogan and Jane Murphy respectively plus, just in case you're still nibblish, a selection of patisserie and tapas.

The Slow Food evening is a veritable bargain at €10 and it takes place on Monday 10 October at 6.30pm in the Kino Cinema. The Cork Film Festival booking office (021 4272263) is now open at 15 Grand Parade.

Due to the vagaries of the post between Ireland and New Zealand, my reading of the Observer Food Monthly is always a few weeks behind. Seeing as we're never in season with the produce it doesn't really matter and it's always a red letter day when the most recent edition arrives, along with recipes and restaurant reviews torn from Irish publications - thanks again Mum!

Today's arrival was long awaited, ever since I saw on the Observer website that they were publishing extracts from Nigel Slater's new book The Kitchen Diaries. I commented in an earlier post that this day-by-day account of what he eats sounded like a blog - and it certainly does share certain similarities although, unlike many blogs, you'll never catch Nigel saying that his recipes were inspired by other cookery writers! The article is a very enjoyable read and almost has me wishing that we were still in fresh sweetcorn and plum season as opposed to sailing blithely through spring.

If you're outside the areas where the Observer is available, and not so lucky to be sent regular magazine packages, you'll find the text here. As for me, I'm off for crunchy toasted sourdough bread, tart lemon marmalade and coffee, while poring over a few unexpected treats in the OFM - Rachel Cooke's account of eating and drinking her way around County Cork in the company of Lindsay House's Richard Corrigan and Jay Rayner's tour of San Francisco with blogger extraordinaire Pim Techamuanvivit.

One of the things that I do enjoy about living in New Zealand are all the cookery classes that are on offer. Not only the usual night courses at the various schools around Christchurch, but also food shops offering classes in the use of their goods à la the Mediterranean Food Company and Café and tonight I'm looking forward to a class with Judith Cullen of Judith Cullen's Cooking Classes fame.

That cookbook is particularly focused on cooking with seasonal produce, something that I've found much easier to figure out by buying my vegetables at Christchurch markets rather than having to depend on supermarket permaseasons. Apparently Judith is going to cook her September menu, "full of great North African flavours". Sounds good to me! And then, if I'm not all cooked out, there's a pasta workshop tomorrow night at the Mediterranean Food Company and Café...

Barbara at Auckland-based Winos and Foodies has tagged me for the foodie leg of Basic Juice's meme with two tails - The Best in the Last 30. You can read more about the meme here. Basically, the idea behind it was to write about the most wine-friendly dish I had eaten over the past month.

To be honest, I am not a very discriminatory wine drinker. I've always figured that I spend enough money on food without going overboard on the wine. I do enjoy a good wine but I'm afraid of learning too much about it and spoiling my palate for cheap bottles! There's plenty of time to get properly involved with wine in a slightly more monied future.

Having said that, I have been hording a little bottle of Giesen's Canterbury Late Harvest Riesling Reserve 1999 for the last six months after embarking on a fantastic food and wine tour with Vin de Pays. Twisting the rules of the meme a little, I decided that I could test it with some food and write about that.

That in mind, I trotted off to Canterbury Cheesemongers for some blue cheese recommendations. After a couple of tastings, I came away with a delicious sliver of Windsor Blue from Whitestone Cheeses in Oamaru. Partnered with some Scottish oatcakes - a rare treat in New Zealand as they're quite expensive - and some of the wild walnuts (I finally got a nut cracker!) that I bought at the farmers' market in Lyttelton, I had a feast fit for a (not so hungry) queen.

Not having a whole wine vocabulary at my disposal, I'll just say that the pairing of intensely creamy blue cheese and sweet - but slightly acid - wine was successful. The freshly cracked walnuts were a lovely addition but the oatcakes were too sweet and crumbly to be a good contrast. In future - if this is to happen again! - I'd use plain water crackers instead.

Later: I've just been reminded that I've to tag a pair of fellow bloggers so I name Plum at My Favourite Plum for the food leg of things and green LA girl for the wine angle. Best of luck!

Last night I went to see Tim Burton's faithful, yet curiously unsatisfying, adapation of Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Reviews aside - you can find a good one here - what fascinated me was the audible crack! every time someone bit into a Wonka bar in the film. It shows that Mr Wonka was indeed making fine chocolate, unlike the sweet pappy muck that bears his name at a sweet counter near you these days.

Food aside, it's also nice to see David Kelly, who plays Grandpa Joe getting a chance to play a decent role rather than another drunken old Irish sot - as in The Calcium Kid.

Anyone who knows me is well aware of the fact that I do not like potatoes. I am not a fan of the mashed potato, nor do I like boiled potatoes, potato cakes, potato croquettes, potato salad, baked potatoes or potato gratin. I avoid any dish which involves the word aloo in Indian restaurants and I don't like potatoes even if they are disguised as Shepherds Pie or hash browns or slipped into a soup or stew. In short, you may say, that I detest the common spud. The only two potato-based products that I do eat are chips, not wedges (too potato-y), and crisps, preferably Tayto Cheese & Onion, although I also have a sneaking, if unpatriotic, fondness for Walkers Ready Salted crisps.

This dislike of potatoes, the staple of Irish dinners, goes back into the distant past. My mother, despairing that her eldest child refused to eat most health-giving foods - at different stages I wouldn't touch vegetables or any sort or meat - entered into a battle of wills with me at an early age. My dinner, including a portion of the hated potato, would be put in front of me and I would not be allowed to leave the table until I had eaten it. Of course, being a terribly stubborn kid (poor Mum!), I would sit there…and sit there…and sit there…and sit there. This sitting for long periods in front of the loathed potatoes did nothing to improve our acquaintance. As a result, even though I now eat and relish all the other things that I wouldn't touch when I was small, there's still one big exception - the potato.

This causes some difficulties when the Boyfriend and I are invited to dinner. "Is there anything you don't eat?" we are asked. My reply: "I'll eat anything - except for potatoes" always seems to cause consternation. Of course these days there are a plethora of starchy foodstuffs - rice, pasta, noodles - that have replaced the potato as the main carbohydrate of choice in Ireland but my non-spud eating seems often to be the cause of some hostess heartache (my mother would empathise). In New Zealand the reaction is even funnier. "But you're Irish!" is the normal exclamation, "you all eat potatoes, don't you?" The Great Irish Famine in Ireland, caused by the potato blight in the late 1840s, has indelibly marked the Irish as potato eaters, despite the fact that a lot changes in 150 years.

Continue reading "Potatoes - the whole sorry story..." »

The opening film in the Date Palm Film Festival in Christchurch on Thursday night was an engrossing study of Moroccan life entitled In Casablanca Angels Don't Fly. The three main characters are economic migrants, dreaming of their home villages, as they work at a minimum wage job in a bustling Casablanca café. It is a tragic tale, although occasionally shot through with moments of humour, of the struggles faced by village men who have to leave their families to work in a big city.

Given my love of Moroccan cuisine, the food depicted in the film made an immediate impact on me. I found myself peering behind the characters as they did their marketing in a colourful souk and wanting to look into the pots that the female characters stirred in their basic mud homes. Mint tea, an the national drink of Morocco, appeared on a regular, almost fetishistic, basis. The long narrow spouts of the teapots pouring a thin stream of hot sweet fragrant liquid into small glasses. I could feel the Boyfriend beside me, longing for his own glass of the brew.

Food aside, In Casablanca Angels Don't Fly is a haunting and engrossing story. Worth checking out at an art house cinema near you.

After enjoying a visit to the Nelson branch of the Mediterranean Food Company, I had intended to visit their shop in Christchurch, which also includes a café, for quite a while now but, somehow, it just never seemed to happen. But when I did finally make it I had a very pleasant afternoon, browsing through the shelves of this Aladdin's Cave, piled high with ingredients from the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

I had to limit myself - being broke again! - to just two things which I hadn't been able to source anywhere else: a bottle of pomegranate molasses and a bag of smoked Spanish paprika. As I slowly wandered towards the counter to pay for my purchases, I was distracted at every turn by glorious spices, unusual pastas, varieties of risotto rice and polenta galore, piles of Amaretti biscuts and beautiful boxes of Turkish Delight. My attention, though, was eventually caught by a sign which had details on it about a Tapas Evening taking place at the Mediterranean Food Company and Café in the near future. Being a sucker for any kind of cookery demonstration, it wasn't long before I signed up for the class, especially since it was only $20 - a veritable bargain.

Continue reading "Tapas experimentation" »

My local Oxfam Fair Trade shop here in Christchurch has started stocking Fair Trade spices, including ground ginger, cinnamon - ground and sticks, whole cloves, whole and ground black peppercorns and chilli powder, all from Sri Lanka. I've only bought the black peppercorns so far - they're really pungent, after they spent a night in my handbag it all smells of pepper! Each little package comes with a little flyer giving information on the origins of the spice and some ideas of how to make the most of it in cooking.

The Oxfam Fair Trade shop also stocks many other Fair Trade products including Thai jasmine rice - not my beloved basmati, alas - tea, chocolate, coffee (beans and ground as well as, I was interested to see, an instant version), hot chocolate and a huge variety of handicrafts. All prices are very reasonable, my peppercorns were only $2.95, for instance - a small price to pay for a clear conscience.

Find out more about Fair Trade here.
Oxfam Ireland have their website, including information on where your local shop is situated, here.

When I recently received an email from Mia at Eat Feed telling me about their weekly foodie podcasts I was delighted. Having spent years involved with Cork Campus Radio, I love listening to radio, especially when I'm working from home, and RTÉ Radio 1 is the station I most miss while here in New Zealand. Although familiar with the whole idea of internet radio, being a regular listener to Seattle music station KEXP, this was my first introduction to the Eat Feed show which is presented from Chicago by Anne Bramley.

The first show I downloaded and listened to was their most recent broadcast, Revolutionary Taste. The opening interview, with Sheri Brooks Vinton, co-author of The Real Food Revival, really caught my attention especially after my recent involvement with the Eat Local Challenge. In her interview Brooks Vinton talked about how important it is for consumers to become aware of the food that they're eating, where it comes from, and how it is processed. I was also interested to hear about how to make good shopping choices even if you only have access to a supermarket and her recipe for making your own (non-alcoholic) ginger beer sounded like it was worth a try! That show also had an interview with food historian Jan Longone and Mark Prince of the Coffee Geek website talking about home espresso machines.

It wasn't long before I moved on to their Patrick's Day broadcast, Feeding the Celtic Tiger. As I write now I'm listening to Darina Allen waxing lyrical about the Ballymaloe Cookery School and food in Ireland and looking forward to hearing Giana Ferguson on her famous Gubbeen Cheese from West Cork. It looks like Eat Feed has acquired another fan - thanks Mia!

*****

Talking about Darina Allen, while looking for more information on Camla Farm apple cider recently, I came across this link to an interesting piece that she wrote on the food that she encountered on a recent trip to New Zealand. She has some great recipes on the page and now I have an idea, other than soup, for using the pumpkin that has been sitting on the top of my fridge for the last few weeks.

Even though yesterday was a miserable day in Lyttelton, it looked like the farmers' market was successful. The Boyfriend, his sister and I made our way out there around 11am and the Supervalue Carpark was pretty busy by that stage, with a few of the suppliers already running out of supplies. We wandered around for a while, tasting Ground Foods delicious dips and observing the huge queue at the Tuahiwi Organic Produce stall but the cold wet day ensured that we had little inclination for dawdling. We did manage to pick up a few things, however, before we legged it to the warmth of a local café.

12 - eggs from Annie's Free-Range Eggs.
9 - beautiful handmade chocolates, three of each Baileys, peppermint and Cointreau/orange, from a woman called Victoria who had the biggest and most desirable-looking chocolate and carrot cakes on her stall as well. Perhaps next week...
2 - small punnets of mustard and rocket seedlings for planting in the garden.
1 - pot of mizuna salad leaves for the same purpose.
1 - bottle of Brayburn apple juice from Annabel of C