Posted on Nov 7, 2010 in Food Events, IFBA | 8 comments

Playing with your food – and eating it: IFBA in Dublin

Playing with your food – and eating it: IFBA in Dublin
“He burns his nuts, I bake my rocks” Sharon Hearne Smith on the tricks (and Donal Skehan‘s occasional mistakes!) of the food styling world. Donal came out about his love for Cath Kidson, Sharon admitted that she was an OCD control freak and twenty food bloggers got tips on playing with...
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Posted on Aug 7, 2007 in Bake, Kitchen | 21 comments

My very own KitchenAid: Passion Fruit Cake for afternoon tea

My very own KitchenAid: Passion Fruit Cake for afternoon tea
I have a confession to make: I’ve just bought myself a shiny, glossy red KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer! The workhorse of many American kitchens and beloved by cooks like Nigel and Nigella, I’ve been lusting after one of these babies for quite a while. I first fell in love with one I saw in the...
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Posted on Jul 1, 2006 in Cookery Books, Read | 1 comment

Real Flavours: The Handbook of Gourmet and Deli Ingredients by Glynn Christian ****

Real Flavours: The Handbook of Gourmet and Deli Ingredients by Glynn Christian ****
This is the perfect book for any foodie who’s ever spent hours puzzling over unfamiliar ingredients in their local delicatessen or ethnic food shop. Glynn Christian, originally from New Zealand, has been a food writer and broadcaster in England for many years, and as a result, has a rare international...
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Posted on May 16, 2006 in Cookery Books, Read, Return to Ireland | 6 comments

Monica’s Kitchen by Monica Sheridan

Monica’s Kitchen by Monica Sheridan
Cookbook sections in secondhand bookshops can be a little hit or miss. There’s always a pile of microwave cookbooks – no one, for some reason wants to hang onto these dodgy and dated texts – a scattering of horrible diet books and often lots of ancient Family Circle publications, with their...
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Posted on Apr 14, 2006 in Cookery Books, Eating Out, Lovely Lunches, Travel | 1 comment

Books for Cooks, Notting Hill, London

Books for Cooks, Notting Hill, London
In London there is a wonderful shop called Books for Cooks. A bookshop, filled with – what else – cookbooks, it is situated at 4 Blenheim Crescent in Notting Hill and is the kind of place that Sunday supplements wax lyrical about. As does anyone who visits the shop. It is small, not so very...
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Posted on Apr 4, 2006 in Cookery Books, Read, Return to Ireland | 31 comments

An old favourite: McDonnell’s Good Food Cook Books

An old favourite: McDonnell’s Good Food Cook Books
One of the big advantages of being settled back in Dublin, with book shelves once again, is having all my old cookbooks to pore over and rediscover. Although I did manage to build up a fair collection in New Zealand, it couldn’t really compare to my beloved older stacks of books by Nigel Slater,...
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Posted on Oct 1, 2005 in Do, Read | 0 comments

Observer Food Monthly – September 2005

Due to the vagaries of the post between Ireland and New Zealand, my reading of the Observer Food Monthly is always a few weeks behind. Seeing as we’re never in season with the produce it doesn’t really matter and it’s always a red letter day when the most recent edition arrives, along with...
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Posted on Sep 15, 2005 in Read | 3 comments

Nigel Slater newsflash

Nigel Slater newsflash
Ooh! I’ve just been on the Observer Magazine website – a great treat to browse though when you’re sitting by the computer with a cup of coffee and don’t have the real OM to hand on a Sunday – and I discovered that they’re running a series of extracts from Nigel...
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Posted on Aug 7, 2005 in Food for Friends, Living in New Zealand | 8 comments

Pies in New Zealand: Chicken and Mushroom Pie

Pies truly are a New Zealand classic. Maybe it’s because of the British influence and their Pork Pies, although colonisation of Ireland didn’t leave us with any such culinary heritage. As I mentioned the other day, pies are eaten by Kiwis on long road trips – the guarantee of a good pie...
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Posted on Aug 3, 2005 in Food for Friends, Living in New Zealand | 3 comments

The Boyfriend’s birthday dinner: Beef and Chorizo Pie

Yesterday was the Boyfriend’s birthday so I decided to throw a small surprise birthday dinner – just us, three of his sisters, one sister’s boyfriend and our two Scottish Housemates. The plotting and planning for this has been going on for a couple of weeks but, after pondering various...
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Posted on Jun 15, 2005 in Food for Friends | 2 comments

Old faithful: Chicken with Garlic and Lemon

Old faithful: Chicken with Garlic and Lemon
Sometimes familiarity breeds contempt and that has surely been the case with one of my trademark dishes – Chicken with Garlic and Lemon. This is a dish that I have been cooking for years. It gets trotted out at regular intervals if friends are coming round for dinner and for many years it, and a...
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Posted on Apr 1, 2005 in Cookery Books, Read | 0 comments

Feast: Food That Celebrates Life by Nigella Lawson ****

Feast: Food That Celebrates Life by Nigella Lawson ****
I’ve been a fan of Nigella’s writing since Nigel Slater (my other favourite cookery writer) gave his readers a tip-off about her first cookery book How To Eat. In fact, How To Eat was so beloved in our house that both I and my housemate had a copy – just in case we parted ways and one of...
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