Recently in Food Events Category

Events at O'Brien's Chop House in Lismore are very well done. Long tables with lots of random strangers (who turn out to be anything but after a few minutes talking), food served family style in large dishes, beer and wine on the tables for self service: it's all very relaxed, terribly well organised and enormous fun. That's why the Husband and I leaped at the last minute chance to go along to a Beer and Curry Feast there last Friday.

The beer? From the newly established Dungarvan Craft Brewery, just down the road. Green Saffron supplied the Indian spice blends for the curries, which Chop House Chef Eddie Baguio combined with lamb from butcher Michael McGrath, saddleback pork courtesy of Ballyvolane House, Nora Ahern's chicken and vegetables from Ballyvolane's walled garden. Southern India was the focus of the night as large bowls of Lamb Korma, Chicken Vadagam, Pork Vindaloo and Sambar Podi Masala were brought to the tables, accompanied with aged Basmati rice, tiffin boxes filled with raita (the spiced banana version was worth spooning up by itself) and jars of mango chatni. We all had bottles of Dungarvan's beer in front of us, to try at will with the curries. Unfortunately I drew the short straw and it was the Husband doing most of the drinking while I was limited to small samples.

For me, the highlights were the intense, sweet lamb korma, especially good with the citrusy notes of Helvick Gold Blonde Ale, the fragrant vegetable and lentil Sambar Podi Masala, and Black Rock Irish Stout with a Vanilla Cardamom Ice Cream. Think of a rather superior, grown up ice cream float and you'll understand what I mean.

Food fantastic, beer refreshing, company brilliant. Our table, now great friends, were amongst the last to leave. A great night out - and it seems that O'Brien's is talking about continuing the beer and curry theme on the last Friday of each month. Keep an eye on www.obrienchophouse.ie for more details. For photographs of the food, head over to Cormac's account of the first curry night on his Dungarvan Brewing Company Brewer's Blog. Guess who forgot her camera?!

This year's Savour Kilkenny Food Festival will take place from Friday 22 to Sunday 25 October and the organisers are currently looking for interested food businesses to get involved. There will be a large open-air market over the weekend on the newly developed Parade Plaza, just by Kilkenny Castle, as well as a tented food village and central marquee for workshops, demonstrations, competitions and events.

If you're a food business, you'll find more information below, or - if you're an interested eater - Savour Kilkenny is online at www.savourkilkenny.com, on Twitter and Facebook. With great local producers like Goatsbridge Trout, Knockdrinna Farmhouse Cheese, The Truffle Fairy and The Little Apple Company, I'm always looking for excuses to visit Kilkenny. For more, take a look at the fabulous Taste of Kilkenny Food Trail, complete with a downloadable map and brochure.

Don't forget, the competition for a €200 cooking class voucher from Bord Bia ends today at 6pm. To be in the running, just send your favourite Irish blueberry recipe to cook@bibliocook.com.

Read more:
Competition Time! Irish blueberries and cookery classes
Blueberry time at Derryvilla Blueberry Farm

To celebrate the start of the Irish blueberry season, Bord Bia have very kindly offered a competition prize of a €200 voucher for cooking lessons at a cookery school of your choice.

To be in with a chance to win this brilliant prize, just email me at cook@bibliocook.com with your favourite blueberry recipe, be it cake or muffin, savoury sauce or salad. If you have a blog of your own, you could also put a link to your recipe in the comments below. The closing date is Tuesday 24 August.

If you want to get your hands on Irish blueberries, I would recommend Derryvilla Blueberry Farm, just outside Portarlington in Co Offaly, especially as you can go and pick your own berries - you can read my feature on Derryvilla here. There are other blueberry farms throughout Ireland so, if you're looking for contact details of your nearest Irish blueberry producer, please email info@derryvillablueberries.com.

Growing up in Ireland during the 1970s and 1980s, blueberries were a rare, exotic fruit, only read about in the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder or Roald Dahl. Years later, my first encounter with a blueberry was in a muffin but, alas, it was one of those ever-lasting, plastic-wrapped ones and the purple coloured spot in the muffin bore little resemblance to the real thing.

Now, tagged with the superfood label, there's enough demand that blueberries are available in supermarkets year round but for the real deal you need to go looking for the Irish crop. Blueberry growing in Ireland is very much a small, but healthy, cottage industry with growers selling most of their crop either directly from their farms or in local shops. As my own blueberry crop was a total failure this year, an invitation from Bord Bia to visit Derryvilla Blueberry Farm near Portarlington last Friday was a real treat.

Derryvilla, had I known it as a child, has been growing blueberries since 1965. Now owned by John Seager and his wife, Belinda, it is the largest blueberry farm in Ireland with a 20-acre operation just outside Portarlington. The high bush blueberry that they grow on their pesticide-free farm is the commercial cousin of the native Irish fraughan or, as they're called around here, the hurt. Like the Irish variety, the bush blueberry is an acid-loving shrub which thrives on the area's cut-away bog, although fortunately its fruit is much larger and easier to pick than the tiny fraughan.

Nuala, a vivacious woman whose youthful appearance and attitude belies her age, manages the ten acres of Derryvilla where the pick-your-own operation is based. Although she lived away from the area for many years her roots are here: she remembers walking to school through this farm and picking fraughans nearby. While she believes that people primarily buy blueberries because of the health benefits - they are rich in the antioxidants that may help prevent age-related diseases like cancer and heart disease - but I think it's the taste that really gets them. Sweet but tart, the thin-skinned berries pop in your mouth and a punnet can disappear far sooner than intended.

The Irish blueberry season normally stretches from the end of July to the end of September but, as with all things to do with the land, this is very weather dependent. In 2009 the rain sodden season ended on 9 September; this year, delayed by the hard winter, picking has only just started. Compared with imports - and earlier in the week I had bought a punnet of Polish berries - Irish blueberries have more flavour, are much bigger, twice as juicy, and there are no food mile issues.

While I was in the shed talking to Nuala, Derryvilla was doing a brisk trade in boxes of pre-picked blueberries but last Saturday, 7 August, they were also due to kick off their pick-your-own season. With PYO prices a full €2 less than the ready picked berries (€10/kilo instead of €12/kilo - compare that with supermarket prices of up to €16/kilo), it's very a recession-friendly option and something that the whole family can enjoy. Nuala often sees people coming to spend half a day picking the berries, complete with picnics, grandparents and children - although I wonder how much they take home compared to the amount that gets eaten there and then.

I got my own chance at picking, After talking to Nuala, I headed down a narrow, grassy laneway. The ground underneath had that lovely springy bog feel and the bushes were weighed down with a mixture of ripe, ripening and some very green blueberries. As a child I often picked strawberries, blackcurrants, raspberries and gooseberries but I had never came across a fruit that was so easy to pick. The ripe blueberries berries practically fell into my hands and my punnet was half filled within moments. I could have stayed there much longer if it wasn't for the rain that started to bucket down.

Despite being surrounded by blueberries all day, every day, Nuala is still a fan. She starts every morning with a handful in her porridge saying "it keeps you ticking over until lunchtime." When asked for her favourite way of cooking blueberries, she reels off the recipe for her Blueberry and Apple Crumble with the air of a woman who puts it together on a regular basis without thinking or needing to measure quantities.

With fresh blueberries in the car being nigh on irresistible, it's just difficult to make sure that you arrive home with enough to bake with. Nuala's solution? Just buy double the amount you think you'll need!

Derryvilla Blueberry Farm is just outside Portarlington in Co Offaly. Call Nuala at 057 8642882 or 087 2466643 for details of picking times and accurate directions. www.derryvillablueberries.com info@derryvillablueberries.com

Nuala's Blueberry and Apple Crumble
Part stew, separately, one Bramley apple and ½ kilo of blueberries. Add a small bit of sugar - no water - and a tablespoon of lemon juice to the blueberries. Put the blueberries on the bottom of a loaf tin, the apple on top, and add a light sprinkling of crumble. Bake in the oven until golden and the blueberry juice is just bubbling through. Serve with a good dollop of ice cream.

Bibliocook Podcast: Caroline Hennessy talks to Nuala of Derryvilla Blueberry Farm, Co Offaly about the blueberry season in Ireland.

Food producers throughout Ireland are now invited to enter the third annual Blas na hÉireann Food Awards. As well as the gold, silver and bronze medals in each of the 30 product categories, this year there will also be an award for the Best Irish Artisan Company.

You can see the 2009 list of winners here, including Bibliocook favourites like Lorge Chocolatier, Mella's Fudge, Blazing Salads Bread Company and Just Food.

The 2010 winners will be announced at the Dingle Peninsula Food & Wine Festival at the start of October and this year's deadline for entry is Monday 2 August. More information is available at www.irishfoodawards.com. For more updates, Blas na hÉireann is also on Facebook.

Related Entries
2009: Blas na hÉireann National Irish Food Award winners
2009: Seafood (and Irish grapes) in Dingle
2008: National Irish Food Awards/Blas na hÉireann winners

Gardens and food in the sunshine: what's not to like? The Husband and I - Little Missy landed with the Little Sister for a day's worth of chasing the dog in my parents' garden - headed up for the Friday of this year's Bloom festival. It was a day for sunscreen and sunglasses as we sat under umbrellas in the beer garden, enjoying Dungarvan Brewing Company's Helvick Gold and, although there was an unfortunate lack of ice, Llewellyn's Double L cider. That was the Husband and his friend happy for the afternoon, and I had a place to leave the bags of food that I spent the day acquiring.

The food marquee was buzzing with crowds in search of lunch, with salads, pies and plenty of samples on offer. My first port of call was Olvi Oils. When I worked in Urru in Mallow, these fabulous pestos, vinaigrettes and relishes were used in the sandwiches we made at lunchtime. With Urru, Bandon the only Cork stockist, I appreciated the opportunity to pick up the Little Sister's favourite basil pesto and some mango vinaigrette which I use drizzled over salad leaves, topped with a sprinkling of seeds (Good4u's toasted chilli seeds are especially good with the sweet mango).

For lunch I picked up a hot smoked trout salad from the energetic Mags at Goatsbridge Irish Trout and couldn't resist taking away a pack of fillets for later experimentation. To my perishables, I added a round of Knockdrinna Snow soft goat's cheese and chunks of Knockdrinna Gold and the intensely-flavoured Knockdrinna Meadow. I also brought home a tub of their pesto, made with goat's cheese, which gives it an entirely different, and definitely moreish, flavour.

While I'll never be weaned away from my beloved olive oil, I like the opportunity to get my hands on an Irish product and Irish rapeseed oil, with its high flash point and oodles of unsaturated fats, is gradually becoming more well known. I grabbed a bottle of pleasantly nutty extra virgin rapeseed oil from Derrycamma Farm in Co Louth. I went for their plain option but they were also selling garlic, chilli and Indian flavoured oils. I also had time for a brief stop at the Living Flavour stall to admire their beautiful herb garden (pictured right), take a picture of the little chilli pepper plants they had for sale and thank them for the flourishing parsley I got to take home from the Bord Bia bloggers event.

While I didn't get to give my full appreciation to the gardens on show, I did relish the chance to have a good look at the Phoenix Park walled vegetable garden, a neat, ordered and abundant space that is simultaneously inspiring (look at the artichokes!) and discouraging (neat rows just don't work at the cottage). Happy in situ at the beer tent, it took the promise of dinner in Jaipur followed by drinks at the Bull and Castle - and a rather large man asking them to leave - to wheedle the by then very happy Husband and friend back into town. A rather fabulous day - I'll definitely be back!

Just enough time to...

- attend a dinner to celebrate 20 years of John and Sally McKenna's Bridgestone Guides and Bridgestone at the just-opened Pinot's restaurant in Sandyford. (John also blogs at The Bridgestone Guides.)

- enjoy sumptuous wines from Enrico Fantasia, the all-cooking, all-drinking, opera-singing, Venetian wine importer who - besides having a most memorable name, imagine being the Fantasia family! - brings an buttery, apricoty Arneis (Guidobono Roero Arneis 2009), rich Vignai da Duline Vivernum 2004 and refreshing prosecco (Prosecco Col Saliz) into Ireland. Reason enough, besides his name, to make his acquaintance.

- savour a thoughtful menu of great Irish produce as cooked by Thomas Haughton (ex Harvey Nichols) - the small cutlets of new season Wicklow lamb with wild mushroom tapenade was to die for, especially with the Vivernum, while I would have happily confined myself to plates of the beautifully plated McConnell's smoked salmon with mini potato blini and lemony Glenisk crème fraîche for the entire evening.

- have breakfast cooked by the Designer because he didn't have enough milk for cereal. A definite score for me!

- go raspberry and redcurrant picking first thing in the morning in the Designer's long and very productive Crumlin garden.

- meet the Murphy brothers and see the works in progress that are the two Murphy's Ice Cream Dublin shops. Exchequer Street is supposed to open this evening, just in time for a summery weekend's worth of ice cream eating. Make sure you try the affogato.

- have time for a catch up with the Daily Spud over little savoury tartlets (mine: asparagus and brie, definitely recommended) in the newly minted Pepperpot on the first floor of Powerscourt Townhouse, as recommended by Aoife Carrigy of Food & Wine Magazine. The side salad was something well worth the name, plenty of fresh, green leaves with a bite, and the accompanying chutney a spicy thing of beauty.

- linger over a shared flourless chocolate cake that had myself and Spud wondering if it was made of almonds or walnuts - as it turned out, we were both right: ground almonds in the cake, crushed walnuts on top and spread with, most delicious and elusive of all, a hazelnut chocolate ganache.

- head home on the train with redcurrants from Spud and the Designer along with a jar of the Designer's blackcurrant jam, wishing I had an ice cream maker for redcurrant sorbet.

Sometimes short visits are the best.

MyKidsTime.ie has just published a Mellow Yellow recipe booklet in aid of the Meningitis Trust. There are lots of yellow, lemony recipes contributed by chefs and cooks like Catherine Fulvio, Darina Allen, Rachel Allen and Kevin Thornton - I particularly liked Kevin's Lemon Tart with Cassis Sorbet - and it's available to download from the MyKidsTime website for just €5.

As I have previously mentioned, I write cookbook reviews for the food section of MyKidsTime. From next Thursday Monday, I will be joined by Kristin from Dinner du Jour as she shares simple family-friendly recipes and tips. She's particularly good at cookies, those large, American, generous-sized cookies that we all love to get our mits on while still warm from the oven so watch out for her Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe! Sign up for the food newsletter here to keep updated.

First Margaret and Alfie decided to get two pigs - one for themselves, one for a brother - and Alfie came home with three. Then a few sows arrived and before long there were 48 little piglets squealing, tumbling and racing around their farm at Lorrha in North Tipperary. Now they sell their free-range, antibiotic-, GM- and hormone-free Old Farm Heritage Pork through a box scheme at €10 per kilo for mixed boxes of 5, 10 or 15 kilos. These pigs are fed on barley and vegetables sourced locally, together with whey - the leftovers from making Mossfield organic cheese - from their neighbour, Ralph Haslam.

Yesterday we visited the farm to learn more about pork production, from Margaret and Alfie's tales of starting off pig farming, rubbing the heads of curious yearlings as we walked through their pen and admiring energetic piglets zooming around their mothers as they all gazed up at us, ever-hopeful for extra rations. It being a gathering of food bloggers, there was eating with the education as we all tucked into a delightful spread of Gillian's Chocolate Tart, Raspberry Chocolate jam and Barra cake from Theresa, two sets of cookies from Kristin and myself and bowlsful of Margaret's homegrown cherries and strawberries. There was also homemade elderflower cordial, both young and mature Mossfield cheese and then, after extolling the virtues of lard, Alfie went into the kitchen and came back with plates of fried bread. We practically rolled away from the table.

After much conversing, we left laden down with chunks of Mossfield cheese and jars of chunky pesto from Yvonne of Hey Pesto (last night's supper all sorted!), big bundles of just-pulled rhubarb, borage plants and, most importantly, sausages made from the siblings of the pigs that we had just met (easy dinner tonight).

A big thank you to Margaret and Alfie for being such superb hosts. You can order their meat direct from Margaret through Facebook and watch out for their forthcoming barbeque class with John Whelan of The Devil's Menu on Saturday 3 July. Thanks also to Ralph for coming along to tell us about Mossfield cheese - available locally to me in The Pig's Back, Cork - and to my fellow bloggers: Theresa from The Green Apron, Kristin from Dinner du Jour, Gillian from Some Say Cocoa and Wendy from My Chef at Home.

Now to get planning the next trip...did someone mention the Kilkenny Food Trail?!

Inspired by last month's very successful Irish Food Blogger Event, put together by Bord Bia and Donal Skehan, Theresa Storey from The Green Apron (watch out for her artisan preserve stall at Limerick's Milk Market on Saturdays) and I got together for a chat. A couple of hours later, fired up by a brace of strong espressos, we decided to organise a similar get together in this area of the country.

At the time I was in contact with Margaret from A Year In Redwood (also on Facebook and Twitter) and she very kindly offered to host at her farm in North Tipperary where she and Farmer Alfie produce and sell their own free-range Saddleback pork and bacon. So, next week - Wednesday 16 June to be precise - we are heading off on a Food Bloggers Country Outing. Funnily enough, there's a bit of a pork focus again but hopefully this time round we'll get to meet the actual pigs behind the pork! The other aim of this day is - like the Bord Bia event - to have the opportunity to meet other food bloggers in person over a cuppa and, perhaps, some cake.

What: Food Bloggers Country Outing
When: 2pm on Wednesday 16 June
Where: Redwood, Margaret O'Farrell's farm in North Tipperary which is, according to Margaret "about an hour from Limerick, similar distance from Galway, 2 hours from Dublin and I've done Cork in 2 hours too!  We are 1 mile off the Birr - Portumna road if you look at a map."

If you're interested, leave a comment below or email me directly at cook@bibliocook.com. I hope you can make it and if you have any questions, please ask!

After the excitment of Bloom last weekend, don't forget that the fifth Taste of Dublin event will be taking place from this Thursday, 10 June, to Sunday 13 June. It's again located in my favourite Dublin park, the fabulous Iveagh Gardens, just off Harcourt Street - just a stroll (or stumble!) from Stephen's Green.

This year there are 16 restaurants participating - see below - but my own personal picks would be modern Indian food from Jaipur, Oliver Dunne's Michelin starred-cooking at Bon Appétit, Conrad Gallaher's new Salon des Saveurs and the intriguing Pichet, especially after taking a look at their menus on the Taste of Dublin website.

As well as the eating side of things, there will be cooking demonstrations from Darina and Rachel Allen, Catherine Fulvio, the ever-interesting Conrad Gallagher, Clodagh McKenna, Oliver Dunne and Donal Skehan of Good Mood Food. Fellow blogger Lilly Higgins will also be doing a demo with her sister, comedian Maeve Higgins and, if you're a European celeb chef fan, Jean Christophe Novelli and Gino D'Acampo will also be cooking live and in person.

Tickets, starting at €15 (plus a €3.50 booking fee), are now available online. Fingers crossed for the weather!

Restaurants at Taste of Dublin, 2010
Balzac, Bon Appétit, Chapter One, Diep Le Shaker, Eatery 120, Ely, First Floor Restaurant at Harvey Nichols, Jaipur, Pichet, Roly's Bistro, The Cellar Restaurant at the Merrion Hotel, The Saddle Room at the Shelbourne Hotel, Salon des Saveurs, Town Bar & Grill, Venu Brasserie and Wilde - The Restaurant at the Westbury Hotel

As a child, I was fascinated with our local butcher's shop. Every time I was sent in there, I'd have my fingers crossed that there would be a big crowd ahead so that I'd have more time to watch, enthralled, as the big men behind the wooden butchers' blocks speedily and expertly dissected carcasses of meat, saws and knives flashing, all the time keeping up their end of the conversation with their customers. The sawdust on the floor, the posters of cuts of meat on the wall, the chunks of lamb or beef hanging from hooks behind the counter - it all held me so spellbound that I would often forget what I was supposed to be buying for dinner.

Now it's not that easy to find this kind of butcher, the sort that will have an abattoir out the back and a farm of their own. Old-fashioned in the very best way. Luckily for me, in Mitchelstown we have Hanleys, my brown paper-wrapped source of meat for cookery demonstrations. Just down the road in Kanturk, McCarthy's Butchers is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, regularly winning awards for their innovative products. At a Slow Food event last Thursday, accompanied by the Writer, I added another to the list when I met Michael McGrath of Lismore.

This fourth generation butcher opened up his shop before dinner at O'Brien Chop House, telling us - under cross examination from SF president Darina Allen - about where he sources his meat, the difference between breeds of lambs, problems with regulations and an old recipe for drisheen (50:50 cows' blood and milk, seasoned with salt and pepper). We were also conducted back into the coldroom, festooned with hanging lamb and beef carcasses. The abattoir, three cows' heads on display, was our last stop before we trekked up the road to eat roast leg of McGrath's spring lamb with a punchy salsa verde, new potatoes and moreish creamed spring greens.

Other producers that were displaying their wares were the new Dungarvan Brewing Company (also at DBC Brewer's Blog). I thoroughly enjoyed their refreshing, full-flavoured, IPA-style Helvick Gold but, with car keys jangling in my pocket, could have no more than a brief taste. Wolfgang and Agnes Schliebitz were on hand to talk about their Knockalara sheep's milk cheese, a perfect match with the roast asparagus, toasted hazelnuts and mint salad that started our meal. We also ate an exquisite piece of Blackwater wild salmon, the first I've tasted in years, that Justin Green of O'Brien Chop House had painstakingly tracked down.

Dinner finished with a tangy Rhubarb Mess, the rhubarb - as all the other vegetables - sourced from the walled garden at Ballyvolane House, Justin's other establishment. It, like the rest of the meal, was served family-style, from a big bowl in the centre of the table. There were seconds all round, as we thoughtfully decided to clean the bowl out for the wash-up staff. A superb meal - and a chance to discover another local butcher.

It was (almost) pig all the way at Bord Bia's Irish Food Bloggers Event yesterday as 30 people - some strangers in the flesh, yet already intimates online - gathered together for a day of demonstrations, discussions, and attempts at matching faces to personalities. As the ripples from 2008's dioxin scare are still being felt throughout the industry - only today has the Chinese market reopened to Irish pork - the focus was on the pig, specifically Bord Bia Quality Assured Irish Pork.

Following David Owens' information about the Bord Bia quality mark and the calm preparation of spelt bread and miso pesto by Lorraine Fitzmaurice of Blazing Salads, GMIT butchery lecturer Pat Conway's animated antics with a loin of pork really set the ball rolling (you can watch him in action here and here). For all the world like a cheery model for the butcher mannequin which stands outside shops around Ireland, Conway proceeded to cut up the meat with gusto, punctuating his sentences with strokes of the knife. Pork dissected, Maire Dufficy of Bord Bia took center stage for a demonstration of simple, mammy-style, pork recipes which whetted appetites for lunch.

Besides the pure food side of things, there was also a brief presentation from The Damien Mulley of FoodFight.ie and the Irish Blog Awards (bow down!) on blogging and its crossovers to traditional media, while Eoin Purcell, formerly of Mercier Press, spoke about taking a blog to a book, speaking with honesty about what he called the Irish "boutique" publishing industry.

Food stylist Erica Ryan and photographer Jocasta Clarke finished off the day with a fascinating - and intimidating - presentation on their jobs which, with all the talk of glycerin droplets and apertures had many of the audience (well, me anyway!) too intimidated to take out their cameras for the obligatory shots of the presenters. Of course, us being bloggers, during the rest of the day there were photos aplenty; of the pork loin wrestled about by Pat, Maire tossing noodles, the bread being mixed by Lorraine, and Jocasta Clarke putting shiny balls on psychedelic cupcakes. Cameras flashed right, left and centre at lunchtime to take pictures of the plates of roasted pork with roasted vegetables that we could barely eat for talking on all sides.

Informative and educational as the day was, it was also very much a day for meeting (well-known) strangers. Initial awkwardness only lasted as long as it took to start talking about the last blog post/twitter conversation as we realised how many connections we already had to each other.

It was a pleasure to catch up with Aoife from The Daily Spud again (check out her piece in The Irish Times' biodiversity supplement today) as well as an opportunity to meet Kristin from Dinner du Jour (watch out for herself and Kelly on the next MyKidsTime food newsletter) and the American representatives from AnAmericanInIreland and I Married An Irish Farmer. The day wasn't long enough to talk to everyone but it was a pleasure to meet the ladies and gentlemen behind CheapEats.ie, Smörgåsblog, Friendly Cottage, SupperSatisfaction, Mangos with Lime, Adventures in Veg and I Can Has Cook.

A huge thank you to the ladies - Maeve and Klara - at Bord Bia and Donal Skeehan for all the emailing, namebadging, tweeting and organising that happened in advance and on the day. Thanks also to Good4U whose sprouts and seeds were the perfect additions to a noodle salad on the bus home. Desert came courtesy of Lilly Higgins (a morish Macroom oatmeal ginger biscuit) and a fruit bowl from The Orchard Garden. Judging by the ever-increasing numbers on Donal's list of Irish food bloggers, we'll have to get a far bigger room next time!

(* with apologies to Stéphane Reynaud's Pork and Sons)

If you're interested in gardening, food - or both! - make tracks to Bord Bia's Bloom 2010 festival, which is taking place in Dublin's Phoenix Park over the June Bank Holiday weekend, from 2 to 7 June. Alongside the show gardens and an expanded artisan farmers' market, Bord Bia's Best In Season will be displaying a marquee-ful of fresh produce to highlight the fruit and vegetables in season in Ireland (check out the Best In Season website for some printable calendars to stick up on your fridge), the members of GIY Ireland are growing vegetables for an Edible Garden, and Bloom meets SeptemberFest with a Craft Beer Garden for the ever-growing number of fine beer aficionados.

A cookery stage will feature demonstrations from Darina Allen, Catherine Fulvio of Ballyknocken House, Neven Maguire, Jenny Bristow and fellow blogger extraordinaire Donal Skehan of Good Mood Food.

Should you wish to brush up on some old-school basics there will also be talks and demonstrations on lost and forgotten food skills over the weekend, including butter churning, fish smoking and apple pressing. Plenty to keep everyone in the family occupied! There is more information in the press release below, on the Bloom website, Twitter and Facebook. Tickets, without any of those annoying booking fees, are also available online or by phone (0818 300 260). Discounts will be available for tickets booked in advance and kids go free.

Donal Skehan, over on Good Mood Food, has been putting a list of Irish food bloggers together in advance of tomorrow's Bord Bia bloggers event and there are now - count 'em - more than 40. It's a long way from the empty slate in March 2005 when Bibliocook took its first tentative steps into the world!

I remember the excitement when I first discovered early bloggers like Ice Cream Ireland, Bubble Brothers, Val's Kitchen, Italian Foodies and Martin Dwyer, many of whom I have also met in person since. In the first couple of years of the Irish Blog Awards, there was no need of a special food and drink section but, by 2008, there were more than enough of us to warrant our own category. Now it seems like there are more people to discover every day and, thanks to Damien Mulley, FoodFight.ie is a great way of keeping up with what's happening.

I'm looking forward putting more faces on the names, recipes and writing tomorrow - and a great deal of thanks is due to Bord Bia and Donal Skehan for all the organising! Anyone interested in car pooling from North Cork?

So, we didn't win last night - but, as my producer said, that doesn't mean that we aren't great! An Australian show - The Main Ingredient: New Years Day, which was presented by Kelli Brett and produced by ABC Radio - took the 2010
Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Award for Best Food/Drink Radio Programme.

Disappointed? Yes, of course. But I'm still fiercely proud of the Foodtalk series and we didn't do too badly to make it onto a shortlist of seven out of all the food radio shows in the world. Better luck next time, hopefully.

Today's the day when the results of the 2010 World Food Media Awards will be announced in Adelaide. Fingers crossed for Foodtalk: Spices and the other Irish nominees.

Don't forget - Dine In Cork Restaurant Week starts today, Friday 30 April, and runs until next Saturday, 8 May. A total of 25 restaurants in and around Cork, including Bibliocook favourites Star Anise, Liberty Grill, Fenn's Quay, Jacques (all in Cork city) and Over the Moon in Skibbereen are offering a three course dinner, plus tea or coffee, for just €25. You'll find more details, including menus, here and on Facebook/Twitter. Book early, book often!

After I recovered from the excitement of the Foodtalk: Spices nomination in the Best Food/Drink Radio Programme for this year's Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Awards - it's taken a while! - I found a few fellow Irish nominees on the list.

Two RTÉ-produced television programmes - Catherine's Italian Kitchen with Catherine Fulvio (one of the few dark-haired female chefs working in a sea of blonds!) and Trish Deseine's Trish's Paris Kitchen - are competing against each other for Best Television Food and/or Drink Show. The other Irish nominee - although categorised under United Kingdom - is Darina Allen for her hefty Forgotten Skills of Cooking (Kyle Cathie) in the Best Hardcover Recipe Book (over €35) category. One of the books that Darina is up against is the heartbreaking Secrets of the Red Lantern by Pauline Nguyen (Murdoch Books), which I've just finished, a book on Vietnamese food as told through a prism of pain and miscommunication.

Also on my bookshelves is one of the nominees for Best Soft Cover Recipe Book, KOTO: A culinary journey through Vietnam by Tracey Lister and Andreas Pohl (Hardie Grant). I picked this up in Hanoi while doing a cookery class at the Hanoi Cooking Centre and, with my recent purchase of a corriander plant, I'm hoping to actually use some of the recipes! Andrew Pern's magnificant Black Pudding and Foie Gras (Face) is up for a Best Food Book award, as is the thought provoking Bottom Feeder by Taras Grescoe (Harper Collins).

It's also good to see New Zealand's Cuisine Magazine nominated in a total of six categories, between photographers (Aaron McLean, Ken Downie), writers (David Burton, Ralph Kyte-Powell), as well as being up for Best Food Magazine and Best Drink Magazine for their Cuisine Wine Country publication. 

But, naturally enough, the most important category is my own! Here is a list of my fellow nominees, with - when I could find them - links to their radio programmes.

BEST FOOD/DRINK RADIO PROGRAMME
Foodtalk: Spices - Presented by Caroline Hennessy and Kevin Thornton, produced by Soundsdoable, IRELAND
Talking Food with Lyndey Milan - Presented and produced by Murray Wilton and Lyndey Milan, AUSTRALIA
Kathmandu Kitchen: Spiritual Sustenance - Presented by Elaine Corn, Produced by Capital Public Radio, USA
Cooking with Lynne Mullins - Presented by Lynne Mullins, Produced by Fairfax Media, AUSTRALIA
Cooking with Kindness - Presented by Kate Nelson and Geoff Hutchison, Produced by ABC Radio, AUSTRALIA
Sue Zelickson Holiday Special - Presented by Sue Zelickson, Produced by WCCO Radio, USA
The Main Ingredient: New Year's Day - Presented by Kelli Brett, Produced by ABC Radio, AUSTRALIA

There was big excitement at the cottage when I learned that Spices, one of the Foodtalk documentaries that I presented for Newstalk, is a nominee for the 2010 Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Awards! These awards celebrate the very best in international food publishing and broadcasting. With a total of 700 entries across 21 categories, now whittled down to 181 nominations, it is a true honour to make it this far. Spices is nominated in the best food/drink radio programme category alongside six other programmes from Australia and America.

The programme, which was presented by Kevin Thornton and myself, featured Carmel Somers of the Good Things Café in Durrus together with Green Saffron's Arun Kapil. Spices was just one of the six programmes in a documentary series that was first broadcast on Newstalk from December 2010 to January 2009 and produced by Soundsdoable, a small, inspirational independent production company. Gents, I love your work!

I was fortunate enough to be involved in the Foodtalk series from an early stage. Together with Soundsdoable, I worked on putting the pieces together during the non-summer of 2008 and spent that golden autumn driving around the country to interview amazing people about the food that they love. That was occasionally stressful - sometimes journeys took far longer than anticipated! - but also a fascinating learning experience and enormous fun.

We also spent two incredible days in Kevin Thornton's kitchen, recording the sounds of him cooking: cream boiling, knives sharpening, the sizzle of frying tuna, the crunch of a lobster shell being penetrated by a knife. It was like having a personal cooking class from the best chef in the country, with the added benefit of getting to eat the finished product. Noisettes of venison, flambéed with Madeira? Yes please!

The recordings gathered together, my producer got to work and I have to credit him with having the vision to produce such an amazing finished piece. He wove the interviews with the people featured, evocative introductions that I wrote and recorded, chats between myself and Kevin and the sound of Kevin's kitchen with beautiful original music into a dream-like, seamless whole. I loved working on this series, getting to talk to many amazing people and - always important - getting to eat the very best food.

Fingers crossed for Monday, 3 May, when the results will be announced at an awards ceremony in Adelaide.

If you haven't already heard it, you can listen to the Foodtalk on Newstalk Spices programme here and there is more information on the rest of the Foodtalk series here.

There was sunshine and crowds at the Mallow Food Festival on Easter Sunday morning, the street thronged with people wandering at the early event before heading home for Easter lunch. I abandoned the Husband and Little Missy at home for a quick zoom in and out as we were heading down to Gort-Na-Nain Guesthouse that afternoon, with a side trip to Cork so the Husband could peruse the offerings at the Franciscan Well Easter Beer Fest.

Mallow Food Festival: There were sweet things aplenty, including a couple of stalls - Cupcake Cottage and Crafty Confections - concentrating on beautifully decorated cupcakes. For those who wanted to preempt their lunch, Green Saffron were doing a brisk trade dishing up bowls of fragrant curry, Anne Bradfield's Taste a Memory pies were going down a treat and there was a busy-looking stall serving up baked potatoes and vegetarian chilli. There were also gorgeous aprons, in adult and kids' sizes, on sale from Coco Chico. I was very restrained, just picking up some Ballyhoura apple juice, cider and cider vinegar and a couple of jars from the Rebel Chilli stall: a sweet but spicy jalapeno and raspberry relish and a HOT jar of chillionaire sauce.

Franciscan Well Easter Beer Fest: The Husband, after a few considered pints - sorry, tastings! - was most impressed with the hoppy, refreshing Óir (he thinks) from new Kildare company Trouble Brewing.

Although I wasn't drinking, I was impressed with the range of microbrewery beers on offer, the stalls arrayed around a small courtyard with a well-produced brochure listing all the breweries and beers. It's a great sign of the times when there's such a variety available and it looks like Ireland's microbrewery revolution is finally taking off.

Franciscan Well Brewery, North Mall, Cork. www.franciscanwellbrewery.com

Gort-Na-Nain Guesthouse: staying at Gort-Na-Nain is like staying with that couple of really cool friends that you have - you always get a comfortable room, ready-equipped with great music and books, a chance to walk around the five-acre organic farm and observe how things have been progressing, and, to top it all off, they are also amazing cooks.

For dinner: tartlets of Jerusalem artichokes, chard and feta - little stacks of crispy polenta discs, sandwiching borlotti beans with mature Ardrahan goat's cheese - muscavado meringue with stewed rhubarb and cream. And we don't even have to do the wash up! Is it any wonder that we return year after year?

Gort-Na-Nain, Ballyherkin, Nohoval, Kinsale, Co Cork. www.gortnanain.com

The Mallow Food Festival has taken a move this year and will be taking place in the town on Sunday morning as part of Racing Home for Easter. We've had a great time at the festival for the last two years (despite last year's torrential rain!) so will be heading there bright and early, trying not to spoil our appetite for Easter lunch. More information below.

10am - 1.30pm: Food & Craft Fair in Mallow Town: a showcase of Munster's best produce and crafts with children's entertainment including Stilt Walkers/Clowns, Lungi the Travelling Puppeteer, the Hakuna Matata Aerobic Performers and the fabulous Mobile Farm. Contact Claire Ryan on 022 53257 or Roisin Lucey on 087 0554382 for more info.

Also on our list of things to do this Easter Sunday is the Beerfest at the Franciscan Well Brewery in Cork City. Alongside their own Shandon Stout and Rebel Red, they will be featuring craft beers from ten microbreweries around of Ireland. As far as I know, it starts at 2pm but, frustratingly, the Franciscan Well website hasn't been updated with event details. Still, I'm sure a lot of the Husband's fellow homebrewers will make it along!

LBS

In 2006 I wrote an article in reaction to the announcement that US magazine Saveur was about to publish a piece on Ireland as a foodie destination, wondering just what these "mythical gastrotourists" would find if they ventured off the beaten track. The quotes from that piece used in Saturday's Irish Times Magazine article on Colman Andrews' The Country Cooking of Ireland made me revisit it and wonder about what's changed.

Since then, I've moved out of Dublin. While I no longer have such a selection of food on my doorstep, I've also discovered that Avoca isn't the only decent eating port of call for people travelling around the country! While we're still a long way from getting to where you can confidentially walk into any café or pub and be assured of finding a good meal, there has definitely been a change for the better in the last few years. I still do think that the Georgina Campbell and Bridgestone guides make life a lot easier to find good eating opportunities, now joined by Good Food Ireland's touring maps and website.

When I talked to Country Choice's Peter Ward recently, he had lost none of his passion for encouraging producers to sell directly to consumers. He also pointed out that everyone has their own role to play, supporting "the butcher, the baker and the artisan" today rather than bemoaning their loss tomorrow, and realising - especially at the moment - that cheap does not equal value.

Recession aside, the fact remains that people are still willing to pay for good food and a significant amount of them are actively going looking for it, be it in a local café, restaurant or farmers' market. There are a more markets than ever before and a greater range of foods and products available. My weekly shop gets divided between nearby supermarkets (SuperValu, which I like for its focus on local producers, and Aldi, now stocking a selection of Irish produce) and the markets that I frequent, while - like half the rest of the country - trying to grow my own veggies and keep a few hens.

We still have a long way to go, but at least we're on the road.

Pancake Tuesday came early at the cottage this year. I always love to have friends come over to eat pancakes but with the Husband getting home from work late and a Little Missy who is decidedly not at her delightful best in the evenings, lunchtimes are a much better time to entertain. Sunday became our Pancake Tuesday so we were able to invite our three Rockmills Neighbours and, as one of the Husband's English Engineer friends was staying with us for the weekend, he - as well as doing a lot of washing up! - also got fed.

This year I made a break from the old routine (ie Spinach and Ricotta Pancake Bake) and, inspired by Julia Child's Gâteau de Crêpes à la Florentine from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, made a Gâteau de Galettes avec Poireaux aux Champignons or Buckwheat Pancake Cake with Leeks and Mushrooms (reads so much better in French!).

Although it may look like there are a lot of steps in the recipe below, it is easy to break it down over a couple of days. For instance, for dinner on Sunday I made the pancake batter and tomato sauce the previous Friday afternoon while Little Missy hung out at my ankles. On Saturday, child on my hip, I cooked the pancakes while the Husband and English Engineer went to the pub to watch the rugby match. During LM's nap on Sunday morning, I made the Béchamel and fillings, assembling the entire thing a couple of hours before our guests were due to arrive and landed it into the oven at 1pm for a 1.30pm lunch. (The washing up was all done, of course, by the Husband and English Engineer!)

This is a very filling main course so I just made a zesty Carrot and White Cabbage Salad and Beetroot Yoghurt Salad to accompany the gâteau. For desert? What else but plain pancakes, cooked to order and served with the traditional lemon and caster sugar. Enjoy your own Pancake Tuesday!

Never mind flowers and forget about going out for dinner, with Valentine's Day tomorrow, get baking for your sweetheart with this Chocolate Caramel Shortbread.

This recipe makes plenty to devour - and share - but it's so good that your biggest problem will be not eating the entire thing today. Perfect with a cup of tea and a love mug!

PS If you have to buy a Valentine's gift, then some first class Irish-made chocolates will go down a treat: my pick are Benoit Lorge's truffles, definitely the best chocolates available in Ireland.

Last night I was at the launch of the Good Food Ireland Week Cork in, naturally enough, the English Market. An array of Good Food Ireland producers had teamed up with restaurant, hotel and café members to showcase their products and there was a multi-course feast lined up on the Farmgate Café balcony overlooking the fountain.

There was a scrum around Kinsale's Fishy Fishy who were first in the firing line with their delectable fish pies and langoustines in lemon cream sauce but there was plenty more to eat and savour: perfect Mini Benedicts with quails' eggs on Gubbeen ham from Liberty Grill; pig's tongue in cheek on slivers of tart apple from Ballymaloe House; on home turf, the Farmgate Café had a hearty warming venison stew using some of Jack McCarthy's superb venison; sweet treats from Urru favourites Mella's Fudge, Lorge Chocolates and Seymour's shortbread; and, for anyone with a few corners left to fill, Declan Ryan from Arbutus Bread and Jeffa Gill of Durrus Cheese offered samples of their own wares.

The whole event, which was packed with a loudly appreciative audience from the 7pm start to the finish of the food, was highlighting the fact that more than 30 Cork restaurants, hotels, cafés and bars are offering a plate of Irish artisan food and glass of wine for just €15 until Friday 12 Febuary. Selected hotels in Cork, including Hayfield Manor and Ballyvolane House, are offering three nights accomodation for the price of two this week. If you're heading towards Ballyvolane House, it is also a superb place for dinner and make sure to check out their Lismore restaurant O'Brien Chop House, recently awarded a Michelin Bib Gourmand for good, affordable food.

More information and a list of participating venues are available on www.goodfoodireland.ie. If the quality of food on offer last night is anything to go by, customers are in for a treat. Don't forget - the offer closes on Friday!

There are lots of lovely food orientated events taking place over the next week to celebrate Slow Food's Terre Madre Day, including meals in East and West Cork. These feasts will be taking place in the Grain Store at Ballymaloe House on Sunday 6 December and at the fantastic Blue Geranium Cafe at Hosford's Garden Centre on Wednesday 9 December. Both events will feature local foods and producers, including - in East Cork - plum puddings from Arun Kapil (his Green Saffron mixed spice is worth travelling miles for), chocolates from Casey O'Connaill and breads from both Arbutus and Scott Walsh. More information below...

When I lived in New Zealand, cooking was my way of getting to know the (then Boyfriend, now) Husband's family and friends. Three of his sisters lived nearby in Christchurch and they, together with a boyfriend and various cousins, were regular visitors to our house. When I look back on the recipes that I gathered in those days, they rarely were for dining à deux; instead I cooked roasting tins full of Chicken with Garlic and Lemon, made overflowing pans of Beef and Chorizo Pie and baked large dishes of Chocolate Bread and Butter Pudding.

Of all those recipes, this one for a Moroccan Lamb and Apricot Tagine, is one that I have returned to again and again and it was my first choice of dish to cook for Glenroe Ladies' Group last week. A tagine, is quite simply, a stew by another name, with plenty of warming spices and a sweetness from the apricots. It's one of those cheap and cheerful recipes, easy to make ahead of time - the flavour is, in fact, much improved by making it the day before you intend to eat it - and, as it uses a cheap cut of lamb (€11.50 a kilo from Hanley's butchers in Mitcheltown) , this is a meal that won't break the bank.

The suspense was growing. There is an element of hope in cooking an upsidedown cake at the best of time but cooking one for a demonstration in front of 35 members of the Glenroe Ladies' Club was, perhaps, asking for trouble. Throw in anirregularly used gas oven - I live in a world of electricity, rarely cooking on gas - and a demonstrator who, while distracted, managed to turn the oven off instead of up (ahem) and you're adding a whole new layer of problems to the mix!

Normally I cook this cake at 180ºC, or Gas 4, but the oven was barely warmed to half that temperature by the time I was ready to put it in. What to do? Whack the oven up to Gas 8, leave the cake on top and get the nearest ladies to monitor the (hopefully) rising heat. It's always convenient to have mother and a few relatives in the audience in these situations! After I landed the cake into the slightly warmed up oven, a cousin kept an eye on the timing and I crossed my fingers.

When it was cooked, taking about 50 minutes instead of the usual 30-35, I held my breath as I turned it out. When I gingerly lifted the cooking pan away from the cake it, amazingly enough, looked fantastic despite all the messing about. Looks are one thing but the real proof is in the eating and there wasn't a crumb left to bring home. Enjoyable as it was, the evening wouldn't have been half as much fun without the cliff hanger ending!

The cake recipe is below - if you don't have an ovenproof frying pan, you can of course make this in a 25cm (10 inch) baking tin like these ones from The Kitchen Dresser.

My first local cookery demonstration - as reported in our local paper, The Avondhu!

The days are getting colder, nights are drawing in and it's time for some warming homecooked meals. Fancy trying out a few new tastes and flavours? Have you ever wondered what to do with butternut squash or sweet potato? Wanted to try making a Moroccan Tagine but not been sure of what it involves?

Glenroe Ladies' Club is holding a Winter Warmers demonstration evening with food journalist, broadcaster and Ballymaloe-trained cook Caroline Hennessy on Wednesday, 4 November in the Community Hall, Glenroe at 8pm. On the night we'll be starting with a Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Soup, moving on to a Moroccan Lamb and Apricot Tagine, served with a Nutty Lemon Couscous, and finishing with a Caramelised Plum Upsidedown Cake.

There's nothing pricy here: using vegetables and fruit in season means cheaper shopping, slow cook some inexpensive stewing lamb until it melts in your mouth and jazz it all up with a few warming and easily accessible spices. Looking forward to seeing you there! Everybody welcome.

"Try not to drool too much!" That was the Husband's parting shot as I left the cottage, en route to interview Willie Harcourt-Cooze at the Temple Bar Chocolate Festival on Saturday. It's not that I have the habit of going weak at the knees with my interviewees, no matter how charismatic - while at Savour New Zealand I managed Anthony Bourdain without so much as a missed heartbeat - but the Husband knew how much Willie's Channel 4 programmes had drawn me in, had witnessed my initially fruitless search for the 100% cacao bars in Ireland and had sourced a very well-received stash of those and the just-released chocolate bars for my birthday.

Did I mention that I also bought a copy of Willie's cookbook as soon as it came out? And that his hot chocolate is the afternoon pick-me-up of choice at the cottage? And that his cacao gets grated into and on top of many dishes (especially eggs fried in chilli oil) as we, as exhorted to by Mr Harcourt-Cooze, keep one of the bars on the worktop, next to the olive oil, salt and pepper? Hmm...maybe the Husband did have a point.

After the calm of the cottage, there was a real buzz on the streets of Temple Bar on Saturday with the weekly food, book and design markets taking place alongside the weekend-long chocolate festival. It had started on Friday with a variety of workshops, including one on truffle making with Gillian from Some Say Cocoa, Some Say Cacao, and a screening of the original Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The workshops continued on Saturday, alongside master chocolatier Benoit Lorge's cooking demonstrations and Willie's own talk on his adventures in making chocolate, from bean to bar.

While a lot of the events took indoors, the festival was made visible on the streets on Saturday by MaSamba Samba School's Chocolate Caravan, drumming oompa loompas (pictured) roaming the streets of Temple Bar. Sunday was Chocolate Fair day but I was long gone by the stage, my interview with Willie on tape and the transcription started. He was a pleasure to talk to, the encounter sweetened by the fact that he turned up with some of his new chocolate releases for me to try. I'm a sucker for good chocolate, even when it's not delivered by a charming man. And the interview? That's coming up soon in the Mail on Sunday. I'll let you know.

A perfectly seared scallop and a mouthful of Asian 'slaw, some crispy chilli squid on a sesame fried ricecake, a cone of battered smoked haddock with chunky chips and homemade tartare sauce, barbequed prawns, a pile of pickled seaweed alongside tuna carpaccio and fish pâté: it was a full-on seafood feast at the weekend's Dingle Peninsula Food and Wine Festival.

While our personal food trail seemed to lead us unerringly to the fish-orientated stops along the way, there was also some time to enjoy a glass of Bubble Brothers' sparkling Veuve du Vernay and the Husband got to sample some of Beoir Chorca Dhuibhne's cask conditioned ale.

We finished off the eating (at that stage) with a couple of scoops at Murphy's Ice Cream: the Brown Bread Ice Cream with Caramelised Orange Marmalade is definitely worth returning for and I loved the Dark Chocolate Ice Cream topped with a dollop of Irish Whiskey Cream. Given that we had Little Missy in tow this year, there was no trip to Out of the Blue but, after a day spent eating, we couldn't really have justified another meal.

We didn't feel too hard done by as we were staying at the comfortable Heaton's Guesthouse which offers - just in case you might get the feeling that we weren't getting enough seafood - fish for breakfast. Choose from the fish of the day (my haddock was spanking fresh and impeccably cooked), undyed meaty Dingle Kippers (one mouthful was enough to make me rethink my life-long hatred of kippers) or Ted Browne's smoked salmon in any number of ways. And that's after a first class selecton of fresh fruit salads, stewed fruits, yoghurts, juices, at least three different homemade breads (not counting two different kinds of scones) and a cinnamony bread pudding.

All that, and a farmers' market around town too but I was terribly restrained, just a bag of Paddy's O'Granola, a jar of Magpie Cottage Goat's Cheese and some Green Apron Cracked Pepper Mustard, plus a bottle of cider from David Llewellyn and, the pièce de résistance, a punnet of his sweet, musky Irish-grown grapes. Who would have thought that you could grow decent grapes in Ireland, especially in North Dublin?

All the weekend's fishy offerings got gobbled up so fast that there was no time for photos, hence this picture of the Irish grapes, grabbed right before we devoured these too. Sometimes the more good food you eat, the more you want to have. Dingle is good like that.

The An invitation to participate again in the judging of the Blas na hÉireann National Irish Food Awards in Dingle on Friday gave me the opportunity to discover a range of new products - as well as stick around for the rest of the weekend's Dingle Food Festival festivities! This year's judging was quick and efficient as the initial judging at UCC had slimmed almost 800 entries down to three in each category; all we had to do, in a series of blind tastings, was choose the gold, silver and bronze winners.

I was fortunate enough to have to taste Minihan's rich Chocolate & Hazelnut Torte (gold winner in the Functional & Health Foods category), one of only two dishes that my fellow judges and I were interested in having more of. The other was the well-spiced Chicken Korma from Bombay Pantry (gold winner in Ready Meals), which served as an early lunch.

Friday evening's award ceremony turned up lots of favourites amongst the award winners, including Nibbles Food Emporium's Pear and Almond Tart, Glenilen Farm's handmade butter, Mella's Chocolate Fudge, Benoit Lorge's nougats, McCarthy's black pudding and Blazing Salads breads. Irish sourced products from SuperValu, Superquinn and Aldi made a strong showing and Country Choice's Peter Ward, the evening's MC, made a heartfelt plea to the big supermarket buyers, many of whom were in the room, to treat artisan producers well.

This year's Blas na hÉireann Supreme Champion was a product from Fermoy, Silverpail's SuperValu Supreme Truffle Fudge Ice Cream, and you can see all the winners in each category here.

Blas na hÉireann National Irish Food Awards have announced the shortlist for 2009. The products in each of the 28 categories - ranging from soups and cheese to biscuits and sausages - were chosen from a blind tasting of almost 800 entries, which must have been a whole lot of fun for the first round of judges!

The winners will be announced this Friday, 2 October, at the Dingle Peninsula Food and Wine Festival (personal pick for the weekend: Sunday's cheesemaking course with Maya Binder) but, in the meantime, you can see the full shortlist online here.

Just got a message from one of the researchers on RTÉ's The Restaurant. At the moment they are looking for diners for the next series of the television show. If you're interested, read on!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A mixture of stories and demonstrations around the theme of Irish pork made up the afternoon workshop at the Mitchelstown Food Festival on Friday. Carol O'Brien spoke about her pig farming family's experiences of the dioxin scare and how this incentivised them to become involved with the setting up of Truly Irish. A national cooperative, Truly Irish represents pig producers from the entire island and products - rashers, sausages and ham - sold under the brand will be sourced in Ireland. Truly Irish will be officially launched at the Mitchelstown Food Festival producers' market on Sunday and the products are available from Superquinn, Centra and SuperValu outlets around the country.

John Finn of Finn's Butchers arrived in with half a pig carcass and proceeded to demonstrate why you should buy meat from your local butcher, as he explained how to cook the various cuts. His experience and passion was evident as he entertained and educated, pointing out how much of the pig that we waste in this country and the value of a joint like the shoulder. He helped Paddy Ward of Teagasc to demonstrate how sausages are made, followed by Mervin Hodgins describing how Hodgins' Sausages (their herbal sausages are great in this Baked Stuffed Cabbage dish) started out and Caroline Rigney's account of how she embarked on producing Curraghchase Free Range Pork (watch out for the Slow Food open day at Rigney's Farm on Sunday 27 September).

A demonstration from Catherine Beary, head chef at O'Callaghan's Deli in Mitchelstown filled the room with savoury aromas as she cooked a glazed loin of bacon with a delicious creamy mustard sauce, a roast pork steak stuffed with pear and almond stuffing (this disappeared so fast that I only got to taste a few piquant crumbs) and a sticky Asian pork on a fresh bed of herb salad.

The Mitchelstown Food Festival continues with an open air barbecue on Lower Cork Street on Saturday evening and a producers' market tomorrow, Sunday 30 August, at the Coolnanave Business Park. After my afternoon, I'm now inspired to make a trip to Finn's Butchers - it's about time I got around to trying out Jamie Oliver's Six Hour Slow Roasted Pork Shoulder!

The Mallow Food Festival may be over, but the local focus on food continues. This year's Mitchelstown Food Festival will take place this coming weekend, Friday 28, Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 August and the theme is, very appropriately after last year's pig-meat debacle, Bringing Home the Bacon.

Events over the festival weekend include a workshop on Irish Pork from Farm to Fork on Friday, an open air barbecue on Lower Cork Street Saturday evening and a producers' market, with local and national food products, at the Coolnanave Business Park on the main Dublin road (across from the Firgrove Hotel) on Sunday.

The workshop looks particularly interesting. It's taking place at the Firgrove Hotel, from 2pm to 5pm, and will be hosted by Eddie O'Neill, the local Teagasc Artisan Food Specialist. A flyer that I recently received (and promptly lost!) had more details about the participants, including producers from all aspects of the pork industry.

There's more information online at www.mitchelstownfoodfestival.com, via email (mitchelstownfood@gmail.com) or telephone (085 8003095).

Updated 26 August 2009: Just found the flyer and here's the line-up for Friday.
Pig Farming from Farm to Fork - Carol O'Brien
Recession Busting Butchery - Finn's Butchers
Traditional Sausage-Making Demo - Paddy Ward, Teagasc
Hodgins' Sausages Achievments - Mervin Hodgins
Cookery Demo: Pork Belly - O'Callaghan's Deli
Artisan Food Discussion - Caroline Rigney

Despite the weather, there was a good turn out at the Mallow Food Festival on Sunday, plenty of people around to eat at the stalls that lined the main street. Our pick of the lot was the fresh fish and chips from West Cork, fish caught that morning and battered as we watched, decent chips and homemade tartare sauce for dipping. The Husband declared it the best fish 'n' chips that he had eaten since we were last in New Zealand, it being practically a national dish there.

An unhappy baby, sodden Husband and damp guests (the Husband's cousin and her husband were staying with us for the weekend) made our trip a short one. I still managed to grab a bag of (slightly muddy!) borlotti beans, some Old Millbank Smokehouse smoked trout, a jar of homemade pesto from a Mallow Farmers' Market stalwart, a couple of Green Saffron spice blends and, most exciting of all, a bag of some very fine coffee from a new local boutique coffee roasters called Badger & Dodo.

I only drink coffee at breakfast but, especially after Little Missy decides on a middle-of-the-night-waking, it is an essential part of the day. Owner Brock Lewin recommended the Ethiopian Harrar for use in stove-top moka pot and ground it specially - I'm already addicted to sniffing the bag and hope to progress on to opening it soon, having been promised plenty of blueberry flavours!

Well done to all involved in organising this year's Mallow Food Festival - fingers crossed for better weather next year.

...Mallow Food Festival on tomorrow, Sunday 23 August, from 12pm to 3.30pm. See you there!

I wrote last week about the smoked trout from Old Millbank Smokehouse in Buttevant. If you're interested in picking some up, Geraldine will have her stall at the Mallow Food Festival on Sunday 23 August with plenty of trout, salmon and some of her fantastic pates and fishcakes. Many of my favourite traders will also be there, including Arun Kapil's Green Saffron, wafting gorgeous smells of curry down the street, Gudrun Shinick's Fermoy Natural Cheese, the Baking Emporium (make sure you pick up a pack of their fantastic spelt cheese crackers) and skin care products that are good enough to eat from Shirley's Herbal Care. There will also be baking from Nibbles Food Emporium, tasty snacks from Allan's Crepes and Tom's Sushi alongside a selection of ethnic foods from the Caribbean (The Joy Store), Lithuania (Vias) and Thailand (Thai Lanna).

I had a great day working (and meeting people) at last year's festival: this time round I'm going to take the opportunity to land Little Missy in her sling and introduce to the sights, smells and sounds of yet another market. Fingers crossed for another sunny festival Sunday!

The Mallow Food Festival takes place on Sunday 23 August.

The third part of The Wine Geese radio documentary is on Lyric FM tomorrow morning at 8.30am. In this show, Tomas Clancy meets the far-seeing Francis Mahoney, devotee of Pinot Noir and the man who pioneered it in California 35 years ago. You can read more about Mahoney here and the programme will be online after broadcast on the Lyric FM Features page.

At the moment, just in case you missed it last week, you can listen to part two of the series on that page, with Jim Concannon of the Livermore Valley in Southern California and Jim Barrett, the man whose Chateau Montelena chardonay topped the blind tastings in the 1976 Judgement of Paris. That tasting - fictionalised and filmed as 2007's Bottle Shock - put Californian wine firmly on the map.

Last summer, when we had the Mallow Farmers' Market running outside Urru, we saw a lot of Patrick Frankel, a local organic vegetable grower. When he started coming to the market he had just started producing vegetables on his family farm near Doneraile and customers were delighted with the early fruit of his labours: spring onions, yellow and green courgettes, an assortment of tomatoes, new potatoes, peas and, my favourite, mangetout. I bumped into him a few times at the Killavullen Farmers' Market, always making sure to stock up on the mangetout - great shredded and tossed raw into salads or briefly steamed and served as a side - but hadn't seen him around for a while so I was delighted to see that the North Cork Organic Group had organised a farm visit.

The NCOG take their meetings out and about during the summer months. In June there was a visit to the Secret Garden Centre near Kanturk which we unfortunately missed. August's outing - the Sunnyside Fruit Farm in Rathcormac - is already up on the calender. After getting a total of 17 gooseberries off two bushes this year I need to pick owner John Howard's brains for some soft fruit- growing tips.

Although we had plenty of sunshine and showers last Sunday, luckily the rain stayed away for our walk. The four acres Patrick cultivates are situated on his family farm so alongside two busy polytunnels and many neat rows of outdoor vegetables are his father's working Percheron horses, a collection of pigs - one of which, much to the delight of the children on the walk, was nursing a couple of tiny piglets - a fabulous old walled garden, and, in the stables, a magnificant black Percheron stallion. He grows garlic in the walled garden alongside the old apple trees and a variety of other fruit and, in a one-for-everyone-in-the-audience-stylee, we were all allowed to pull a bulb to take home. Wet garlic - yum!

While admiring the neat rows of vegetables, the appreciative audience picked up tips on avoiding carrot fly infestation (Patrick uses a ground cover material to keep down weeds which doesn't give the flies anywhere to lay their eggs) and found out where he sourced the movable electric fence that keeps his hens away from the growing area. We've found our hens (now, sadly, down to two) happily digging up seedlings and making a nuisance of themselves around the raised beds, especially after an afternoon's weeding. The fence that Patrick uses might also give us a chance of keeping the rabbits away from targeting the few cabbage, kale and bean plants that are left.

Patrick, who is making tentative noises about a future vegetable box scheme for the area, is currently selling at the Coal Quay Market in Cork every Saturday. Watch out for the mangetout...

If - like me! - you didn't make it up early enough to catch The Wine Geese, the first part of the series is online here (I can't seem to find it on the Lyric podcasts page) and there's more information about the documentary on the Lyric FM website here. Well worth a listen.

And, staying on the wine theme, there's a competition over at GreatFood.ie to win a trip to Bordeaux, staying at Château Magnol, the home vineyard of Barton & Guestier. When you listen to The Wine Geese, you'll hear more about the Barton family and their ties to Ireland from Lillian Barton.

Soundsdoable, the independent production company behind Foodtalk, the documentary series that I presented for Newstalk earlier this year, has a new series starting on RTÉ Lyric FM this Saturday. The Wine Geese is presented by Sunday Business Post wine correspondent Tomas Clancy and it looks at the role of the Irish in the world of wine.

While Ireland may never take a place amongst the serious wine-producing regions of the world, the Irish diaspora have played a disproportionately large part in international wine production and development. The Wine Geese is the name given to emigrant Irish families - and their descendants - who became involved in the wine trade in the countries where they settled. Names such as Hennessy and Lynch will be familiar to many from areas of Old World wine production. However, Irish emigrants also work in some of the principal wine-growing regions of the New World, including North America, Chile and New Zealand, and they often stand out for their innovative approach.

For the first episode, Tomas travels to Fountainstown, Co Cork, to meet Ted Murphy, wine historian and author of A Kingdom of Wine. He proceeds onwards to the vineyards of Léoville-Barton, to talk with the dynamic Lillian Barton, descendant of the great wine business genius, Thomas Barton, whose family still run the company that bears their name. The picture to the right is of his grave in France, with the château's vines in the background.

I was lucky enough to transcribe some of the interviews that Tomas did in France and America before the arrival of Little Missy and I'm really looking forward to hearing the finished product. The first programme in the four-part series will be broadcast on Saturday 11 July at 8.30am, with a second outing at 5.30am on Sunday 12 July.

For two years now we've had sunshine - during some very dodgy summers! - for the Mallow Food Festival and hopefully this year will make three in a row. At the last festival myself and the Mallow Girl had a great laugh manning the Urru stall and now, despite the fact that Urru Mallow is gone, she's already got the preparation for this year's festival well in hand. See below for a press release and mark Sunday 23 August into your diary!

The 23 of August - the day of the Mallow Food Festival - is the day that all foodies in North Cork look forward to. On Sunday 23 August, from 12 noon until 3.30pm, Mallow's main street will be lined with food stalls offering all kinds of tasty treasures. The previous years have been extremely successful with traders selling out long before the 3.30pm closing time.

This year the organising committee are hopping to increase the number of traders that participate in the festival. If you currently hold a regular stall at a farmers market or if you are involved in the catering industry and would be interested in getting involved please contact Claire on 085 1211004 or Roisin on 087 0554382 or via email at MallowFoodFestival@gmail.com.

I am fortunate enough to still have a Granny and, until I was 12, I also had a Nana. Nana, my mother's mother, was sick throughout my childhood so we spent a lot of time at her home in Oldcastletown. Some of my early memories revolve around her Aga-warmed kitchen - the centre of the house - where there were always a selection of queencakes in a tin or fruitcake slices to be buttered for afternoon tea. Saturday was the baking day in that house. I remember being wrapped up in an apron before being shown how to fold in flour to a sponge cake or slicing apples to fill an enormous roasting tin-sized apple tart. That was the house of mushroom gluts and energetic jam making as us grandchildren were sent down the fields to pick mushrooms or into the orchard to gather windfalls and blackcurrants. Even when Nana wasn't able to do the work herself, she kept an eagle eye over my mother and aunts as they completed the work to her satisfaction. I pored over her old cookbooks - subsequently having to buy Maura Laverty's Full and Plenty in homage - learned baking skills at her kitchen table, inherited her interest in hens and now live in a cottage just the other side of the hill from Oldcastletown.

My paternal Granny lived alone nearby and she was a constant presence in my childhood. She was the person who minded us whenever my parents went off on their child-free holidays, cooking good plain meals that her granddaughter often refused to eat (that was when I was on my 30-years-long no potatoes diet). Granny's apple tart was often held up by my father as an example of how much better Mammy could do it. It's to my mother's credit - and her own relationship with Granny - that she never took offence! Granny made our Christmas cake every year but she didn't need to use a mixer or anything like that, instead putting her hands into the bowl of ingredients and squeezing the butter and sugar between her fingers until they were amalgamated better than any appliance could manage. She's had to give up the baking in the last few years and is now living with one of my aunts but we're lucky to have her with us to welcome Little Missy, her great granddaughter and namesake.

My am one of the lucky ones. I had the opportunity to spend time with and learn from both my grandmothers and, even now, can sit down - Little Missy permitting - and have a great chat with Granny. This Saturday, 25 April, Slow Food Ireland will celebrate Grandmothers' Day. Activities are taking place all over the country - see below - but, most importantly, take the time to catch up with your own Granny or Nana.

With meat so easily available from the supermarket in bloodless plastic packs, we seem to be moving further and further away from knowing where our food is coming from. Going to the butcher as a child - I always loved the queues so I could watch the butchers at work for a few minutes - at least I got to see the carcasses hanging up and the hard physical work that goes into preparing them. When the Little Sister (I predate supermarkets, she's rarely been near a butcher) caught sight of sides of beef hanging in a truck recently she almost got sick.

After the pork scare before Christmas, there's a new interest in traceability and - with purse strings tightening by the day - in making the most from cheaper cuts of meat, something your butcher is particularly well placed to help you with. When I worked in Mallow, Lucey's Butchers was where I always went. Now, finding myself nearer to Mitchelstown, Hanley's is my first port of call, especially for their superb black pudding - and, in an eco-friendly manner, all their packages come expertly wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string so your supper of lambs' kidneys looks like a mysteriously shaped gift.

If you're interested in learning more about meat, Urru in Bandon is hosting a series of Slow Food Master Classes all about meat, starting tonight. The Slow Food West Cork Convivium, Urru Culinary Store, Dan Maloney Meat Centre and Martin Carey Butchers have got together to facilitate the classes, which will start in Urru, moving onwards to the butchers' shops for butchering demonstrations, instruction on identifying cuts, characteristics, matching cuts to cooking methods and budgeting. The evenings will end with refreshments in Urru, combined with discussion on meat issues, traceability, food chain, organic, free range, freezing and recipes.

The classes will be running for the next four Tuesdays, apart from St Patrick's Day (3 March, 10 March, 24 March and 31 March), from 7.30pm to 9pm. Each class, including refreshments, recipes and special offers, costs €25 per night (€20 for Slow Food Members) or €80 for all four Master Classes. For more information and to reserve your place call Urru, Bandon on 023 8854731 or email slowfoodwestcork@gmail.com.

Congratulations to The Daily Spud who won the Best Food/Drink Blog on Saturday night's Irish Blog Awards - I had to leave a little early and was driving but it looked like an evening and a half was about to be had by many of the people who were attending! There's a full list of winners here.

Sabrina's Ladies' Tea Party was well attended, with plenty of wine (Curious Wines), nibbles (Look and Taste) and the most delectable chocolate and carrot cake cupcakes from Jo at Pinosa Cake. A big thank you to Damien and co for all the organising - what a great choice of venue!

If you're based in or around Cork and interested in growing your own food, take a look at the Cork Food Web. It's been described as "facebook for foodies" and is dedicated to encouraging and facilitating local food production, with a series of groups for members interested in poultry, seed saving, compost, growing vegetables and all things garden related. I missed their seed swap last weekeend but one of the very helpful organisers is going to send me some of the left over seeds, including my favourite pumpkins, as we try to get the garden up and running for 2009. With all the sunshine today, it really feels like a day for getting out and planting.

In a slightly related manner, RTÉ Cork are looking for people in Mahon and Blackpool who would be interested in running an allotment in Cork City. Richard Corrigan is on board for this programme - Corrigan's City Farm - which seems to be going down the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall route, showing city dwellers that they can grow their own food and also raise chickens and pigs. More information is available from the RTÉ website.

Congratulations to the five who are shortlisted for the Best Food/Drink Blog at this year's Irish Blog Awards. I'll be looking forward to seeing who walks away with the award on the Saturday night! Click any of the links below for lots of good reading and there's lots more in the other shortlisted categories over here.

Best Food/Drink Blog - Sponsored by Bord Bia

• tast.ie
• thedailyspud.com
• cheapeats.ie
• italianfoodies.wordpress.com
• sourgrapes.ie

After a relaxing, sunny weekend in Baltimore we've returned home with headfuls of ideas, lots of notes, a handful of mail order catalogues and lots of inspiration for our garden in 2009. Jean Perry, who owns the five acres and house at Glebe Gardens with her artist husband Peter, was our teacher for the two day course. They run a popular café on site, producing most of the organic vegetables, fruit and herbs that they use there from the raised beds and polytunnels in the gardens.

With just a dozen friendly participants from a range of backgrounds and locations, there was plenty to discuss and learn - our rabbit problem was a bit of a teaser but two of our classmates brought in a list of plants that aren't particularly tasty to rabbits and now we're looking at planting box hedges around this year's veggie garden. We're also hoping that the pair of tom cats that we got to replace our late lamented Puddy will soon go into action against the rabbits - although, judging by the look of them at the moment (asleep indoors), they don't seem to be getting themselves in shape for any serious rabbit action.

Jean uses the no dig method, with raised beds and plenty of mulching. I've read - with skeptcism - about this system before but it's much easier to get your head around it when you're standing in front of the beds and eating the produce (a delicious lunch of soup and cheese was provided, along with copious amount of biscuits that were partaken of at regular intervals to keep the brain active). I now know how to replant my seedlings properly (hold the leaves, not the stalk when moving them), the kinds of insects to attract so that the aphids don't eat most of my salad crops (ladybirds all the way) and that I can use a shredder and my left-over newspapers to make some extra bedding for the hens.

It was a great excuse to visit Baltimore and, particularly, the lovely Glebe Gardens once again, as well as getting energised about the coming year's gardening. Jean is running more courses in March - take a look on the site to see the dates - and the two days, plus your lunch (and lots of biscuits!), just costs €100. Time to dig out those seeds and get chitting seed potatoes!

In yesterday's newsletter from the North Cork Organic Group one of the events flagged was a cookery demonstration. It will take place at the Killavullen Farmers' Market in the Nano Nagle Centre tomorrow, Valentine's Day, between 10.30 am and 1pm, using produce from the market itself. Geraldine Bass' Old Millbank Smokehouse smoked fish, quality organic meat from Knockatullera Farm Produce, a range of cheeses from Gudrun Shinnick of the Fermoy Natural Cheese Company, great vegetables and eggs from the Nano Nagle Centre itself are just a few of the foodstuffs that you should see represented. The entry fee for the demonstration is €5 and the market will be taking place at the same time.

Take a look over at Irish Blog Awards for the 2009 longlisted blogs, including Bibliocook! There are several rounds this year - nominated, longlisted and shortlisted - before the actual award ceremony at the Cork International Airport Hotel on 21 February. Check out the longlist for the Food/Drink Blog - with thanks to sponsor Bord Bia - below.

Best Food/Drink Blog - Longlist 2009

• Italian Foodies
• iFoods.tv
• Littlebird Eats
• A Food Journey in Korea
• Well done Fillet
• Ice Cream Ireland
• The Good Mood Food Blog
• Sourgrapes
• The Daily Spud
• Just Add Eggs
• Cully and Sully
• Cheap Eats
• Tast.ie
• Bibliocook
• Food and Drink in Ireland
• Bubble Brothers
• Val’s Kitchen
• Robert Frances Wine
• Curious Wines
• Messy Chef

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.

Italian School of Cooking