Articles

Lucy Madden longs for simplicity and a celebration of things Irish on our plates – and takes a trip to Belfast. Somewhere out there is a factory where a huge vat brims with an unctuous liquid waiting to be bottled and distributed to a restaurant near you. This ubiquitous thing called sauce appears in swirls, puddles and blobs partnered with just about anything, promiscuous as a serial bigamist. Chef may have added a sprig of thyme, some pearl barley, a dash of pernod, but we are not fooled...
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Scallops are bi-valve molluscs, easily recognisable by their pretty radially ribbed shells which (although this is out of fashion at the moment) can used for presentation; the shells are also useful for cooking and serving other small fish dishes, and there was a time when they were widely used as ash trays...They have a subtle, sweetish flavour and very dense pearly-white flesh.
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“Delicious honest wholefood” is what Nigel Cobbe promised in July 2009 when he launched his online free-range meat service SimplySourced – and that’s exactly what he delivered, by offering free-range Saddleback pork and rare breed Long Horn beef to customers in Dublin and Wicklow. “The response was overwhelming,” he says, “We seemed to tap into a demand and a frustration from our customers at not being able to source high quality, ethically produced meat. As a result we have expanded both our product range and our delivery capability to deliver nationwide. Providing a hassle-free and professional link between small passionate food producers and our customers, we now also offer free range chicken and turkey, lamb and wild shot venison.”
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We all look for change in January and that includes food – the weather may drive us to comfort food but we also crave lighter dishes and a change of tone that spicy foods from world cuisines can offer. There’s plenty of inspiration to be found in Anjum’s New Indian (Quadrille paperback, €19.50), which offers a welcome contrast to the rich festive fare of recent weeks. While Ching’s Chinese Food in Minutes (HarperCollins, hardback €25) offers a great selection of appealing, healthy and easy Chinese dishes that use everyday ingredients – and can all be on the table in under 30 minutes, making this a really useful everyday reference for those nights when you’re tempted to resort to the takeaway. Click for more and for delicious recipes for Easy Mung Lentil Curry and Garlic chilli pepper beef & mushroom pak choy
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The “Just Ask!” Restaurant of the Month winner for December is Nash 19 restaurant in Cork. Home from home for its many loyal customers for nearly 20 years, Claire Nash’s bustling city centre restaurant is just a stone’s throw from the English Market – the source of much of the local and indigenous produce they are known for, including vegetables, fresh sustainable catches and meats.
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Marion Maxwell has come up with a treasure trove of turkey facts – and an unusual cooking method for the big bird... What is gallopavophagy? Is it true that French peasants liked to eat Jesuits? Why can the turkeycock no longer perform its time-honoured function of tramping the hen? Before the coming of the railways, what were turkeys' shoes made of?
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When presenting their annual Food Awards at Dublin’s Bang Café in November, chefs group Euro-toques Ireland the called on the government to establish a ‘safety net’ support system to ensure the survival of indigenous food businesses. “What we are talking about are simple, but effective measures to defend artisan production and encourage rural enterprise”, said Chef Feargal O’Donnell, Commissioner-General of Euro-toques Ireland. “At the moment the regulatory requirements and compliance costs are making many businesses uncompetitive, deterring new food enterprises and wiping out many existing ones. In many cases producers are being asked to invest in facilities that they will never recoup the cost of. Many of these people wish to remain small and just to supply locally. We believe a different approach is needed”.
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Tradition usually rules at Christmas if you’re cooking for a large number (see our main cookery feature for the traditional Christmas feast ) – and, if you’re lucky, there will be plenty of leftovers to ease demand on the cook for a day or two afterward. You may find the following suggestions from more of the season’s best cookery books appealing throughout the Christmas/New Year holiday.
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The image of “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…” pretty much sums up the best and cosiest of winter activities, especially the sociability of the festive season. Not to be confused with the unrelated and inedible horse chestnuts which grow prolifically in Ireland, the European sweet chestnut, Castanea sativa, is actually a cousin of the beech.
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Lucy Madden ponders, among other things, the increasingly prolific (and obscure categories of) hospitality awards... We are told, and no surprises here, that airbrushed stars in magazines leave young girls stressed and wanting to drink. It's the same effect that the annual round of hospitality awards have on me, especially when we haven't received one, or even been shortlisted. They swish around, these awards, and the categories become ever more obscure. Soon there may be an award for the receptionist with the best teeth. At a stage in life when the onlv accolade I am likely to receive is a cuddly grandmother cup at the local fête, I gnash my teeth (I still have them) at pictures of the beaming recipients and sometimes wonder, in sour and bitter mood, how the hell did they get that?
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