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Any trip to Kanturk is a good excuse to call into McCarthy's Butchers and see what new treat Jack McCarthy has dreamed up for his many meat-loving customers. I can't resist the air-dried Sliabh Luachra Beef scattered over big bowls of salad leaves with shavings of parmesan and the North Cork Pancetta makes a great savoury blanket when wrapped around fish or even chunks of haloumi cheese before baking.

On Saturday we were also able to pick up a chunk of Jack's new black pudding. Cut from an enormous fat log which I could just about span with both my hands, this Putóg Ceann Toirc is a dense, rich spicy mixture with fresh cream and a drop of whiskey. A slice of this, fried up with potatoes, a few slices of apple and served with dollops of Green Tomato Chutney is an meal in itself. Saturday night supper sorted.

It's the same black pudding that took a Gold Medal last week in France at the annual awards held by La Confrérie des Chevaliers du Goûte Boudin in Mortagne-au-Perche, Normandy. In English? It's the Brotherhood of the Knights of the Black Pudding. Arise Sir Jack!  

If you're not located near Kanturk, you can get your hands on McCarthy's wares online through their smart new website at www.jackmccarthy.ie. Orders over €100 are delivered free in Ireland.

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

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

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

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

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

Before I came to New Zealand I had only vaguely heard of Kiwi chef Peter Gordon. From articles that popped up every so often in the English newspapers that I read, I knew that he cooked at The Sugar Club (still, I think, a truly brilliant name for a restaurant) and that he was designated king of what became known as fusion cuisine. That all changed when I made my first batch of his Tomato and Chilli Jam. Now he is known as the person responsible for coming up with the recipe of this addictive addition to sandwiches, sausages, noodles, patés, cheese, cold meats or just about anything that needs a little zip. I discovered it through an article in Cuisine magazine and you'll find the recipe right here.

It's not difficult to make, even if you don't have a blender. I just chop everything up as small as possible and throw it all in together. Don't be tempted to leave out the Asian fish sauce (aka nam pla). It may smell disgusting when you open the bottle but it really adds depth to the flavour. The first time I made this Tomato and Chilli Jam was during the autumn glut of tomatoes. They didn't cost too much and, most importantly, were ripe. If you make it during the winter as I did the last time (we ran out - I was desperate!) you'll be simmering the mixture for far longer than 30-40 minutes but it will eventually come together in the end. Well worth spending a Saturday morning on.

I've always been a lover of peas, beans and lentils - things that are cheap and can be turned into something delicious without too much effort. But, in Ireland, a hectic schedule prevented me from really getting involved with these in their dried form. Instead I had to content myself with their tinned equivalents which, although not hugely expensive, do prevent you from using them with too much abandon. Since coming to New Zealand, however, and discovering that dried peas, beans and lentils are readily available through the Bin Inn chain and also through the self-serve bins in all supermarkets, I've been putting them to good use.

In Dublin I had cooked dried chickpeas a couple of times with great - almost too much - success. When soaked overnight in too small a bowl, chickpeas have a tendency to start taking over the kitchen. And they don't stop expanding then, so make sure you have a big saucepan for the cooking. The problem, besides me cooking too big a bag on my first attempt, was that we didn't have a freezer in our Dublin flat so we had chickpeas in everything for a few days - stews, soups, couscous - and I even made a big bowl of hummus. At least we're blessed with a large fridge-freezer in New Zealand so I can cook and freeze to my heart's content. For a little work in the morning, you've got a supply of pulses for the next few weeks and they are delicious added to stews, soups and the like when you want to, as opposed to when you have to.

To cook pulses you do have to do a small bit of forward planning as most of them need to be soaked the night before you intend to cook them. Lentils, whether brown, split or Du Puy, are the few exceptions to this rule. Proper soaking, rinsing and cooking also help to prevent gas or wind, thus avoiding the truth of the old rhyme (taught to us as children by our father, much to our mother's annoyance!):

"Beans, beans,
They warm your heart.
The more you eat,
The more you fart."

Enjoying Moroccan food as much as I do, I am a big fan of preserved lemons. Years ago, when I was living in a flat in Dublin, I made a jar of preserved lemons which I didn't have the nerve to use. So they just sat there and sat there on top of the cupboard looking like, as one visitor put it, preserved babies heads - I really don't know what he was drinking at the time!

That batch of preserved lemons ended up the dustbin but I'm not a person to let one failure cause me to stop trying, especially when I had a lemon tree outside the door. Before we moved, I gathered a selection of ripe lemons and, using a variety of methods from a variety of places, made myself a jar of preserved lemons. They're currently sitting on the top shelf of my pantry, happily maturing away (I hope), getting ready to be chopped into couscous, tagines, risottos, stews...

Being flat stony broke these days, I like to try and bring my lunch to work with me rather than be dependent on cafés. Sometimes the lunch is leftovers from dinner the night - rice or pasta with some kind of sauce - but other days I am forced to rely on sandwiches.

Having eaten plain ham sandwiches for years as a secondary school student my boredom threshold is quite low so I try to ring the changes as much as possible with different breads, fillings and spreads. One thing that really lifts a sandwich, be it ham, cheese, pate or chicken, beyond the ordinary is this sticky and savoury Red Onion Marmalade. It's a great standby to have on hand. You can put it into jars if you want to keep it for a while but mine doesn't get a chance to hang around. I just put it straight into a covered tub in the fridge. It's great with any kind of sandwich, I have often pressed it into service as a relish when I've been eating cheese and crackers and, in her Cook's Companion, Stephanie Alexander suggests stirring a spoonful through cooked pasta.

Red Onion Marmalade is not difficult to make but it does involve some time. I find that it is a good thing to cook while you're doing other things around the house. Peeling the onions is probably the worst part of the job and, no matter what evasive action you take, you'll be shedding bucket-loads of tears before you get the last onion chopped! I try to stand by an open window or at least make sure the kitchen is well ventilated. After peeling each of the onions, rinse it under cold water and leave it to drip in a colander in the sink until you start chopping. This won't prevent the tears but it might lessen them somewhat.