Articles

Our famously informative “glovebox bible” Georgina Campbell’s Ireland, The Best of Irish Food & Hospitality is back in print by popular demand. Having emerged from a spell as an online-only guide, this new print version is designed as a handy compact companion to Ireland’s leading independent hospitality and food website, Ireland-guide.com.
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Blogging has changed the landscape food writing in an amazingly short time - Westmeath nurse and mum of four, Nessa Robins, has a huge following for her blog Nessa’s Family Kitchen which she only started in 2010 and it has opened up other avenues for her too...
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It may seem a long time to some, but to me it seems as if Blazing Salads has always been there gracing Dubin with its wholesome presence, yet they only opened in 2000 and their first book came out in 2004. And it’s great to see another one, a hardback this time..
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It’s generally a quiet time of year for new books but, in any case, everything else can go on the back burner this month as the big news in the Irish foodie world is the much anticipated arrival of Biddy White Lennon and Evan Doyle’s foraging book, Wild Food - Nature’s Harvest: How to Gather Cook & Preserve (O’Brien Press, hardback €16.99).
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For over fifteen years from the mid-1990s, the Cork-born author and journalist, Mary Leland, had a loyal following for the erudite and beautifully written heritage and hospitality pieces she contributed weekly to The Irish Examiner - no easy task, as I know well, since her travels took her all over the country and the travel time alone must have been a considerable commitment.
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This month’s books have both been written in celebration of great Irish institutions. Firstly, Michelle Horgan’s Recipes From The English Market is another handsome food book from a division of Cork University Press. While in the North-West, and in celebration of tens years at the popular Lyons Café in Sligo Town, talented chef-proprietor Gary Stafford has published the book that his customers of this charming café have been asking for - Lyons Café, The Recipes
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Is it art, craft or theatre? All three perhaps, with food as the medium and the emphasis on art? That’s the kind of thing that diners tend to ponder on at The Cliff House Hotel in Ardmore, Co Waterford, where gifted Dutch chef Martijn Kajuiter’s astonishing food has been wowing the critics since this old hotel re-opened as an exciting contemporary destination in 2008, when it was our Newcomer of the Year.
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The Christmas crop of food books is exceptionally heavy this season - I was tempted to test this, literally, on the bathroom scales as there’s been a move towards posh hardbacks since the recession started and the difference in weight is very noticeable.
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In his foreword to the Ard Bia Cookbook, travel writer Manchán Magan ponders, “If Druid is the mind of Galway, Salthill its lungs and Tigh Neachtain’s its kidneys, might Ard Bia be its soul?”
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The world of publishing is all topsy-turvy these days and, while book sales are generally in sharp decline – due mainly, we are told, to the rise of the internet and related areas - we see a growing number of bloggers successfully publishing books.
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