Articles

This month Martin recounts a very special experience: Dinner in El Celler de Can Roca It was a chance remark thrown out at a dinner party last Christmas here in our village in the south of France which started this particular ball rolling.
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This month Martin recounts their first proper holiday since they set up business in France - A Fortnight in Italy. When we moved to France and therefore onto the Continent of Europe I imagined that we would be popping into the car every weekend we had free and tripping down the road to Italy, or Germany or Switzerland...
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This month Martin recalls their connections over four decades with Chateau de Teildras, near Angers. This adventure in France which Sile and I are involved in at the moment was not our first. In 1974, a year after we were married we decided to give up all - I was a chef in Snaffles restaurant in Dublin, Sile a primary school teacher in Dublin’s Basin Lane - and move to France.
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This morning is one of the very few mornings we have woken up to a guest free house this summer and I imagined I would luxuriate in the bed until a sinful 8 or 9 o clock before going to the kitchen, in the dressing gown, for coffee. I woke however at 6.45 as usual, just before the bells start ringing in at seven, and the thought of drinking coffee in the cool of the terrace before the sun warmed it from the east seemed far more attractive than another snooze.
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This month Martin reveals ‘A Day in the Life…’ One of the things people are curious about our life here is how we manage our days, especially in the heat; the average temperatures here at the moment are bordering the early thirties.
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This month Martin revels in the pleasure of favourite fruit grown in the right climate - and the perfect Greenhouse Salad
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This month Martin takes time out from his enjoyment of food and drink and, instead, revels in the great engineering feat that is the The Canal du Midi - and the entertainment that it can provide.
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Euro-Toques chef Martin Dwyer, much missed in Ireland since he and his wife Sile sold their eponymous restaurant in Waterford and moved to France. They now live in the Languedoc, where they take guests - and feed them very well. This month Martin shares a recipe for a very special drink with us: Vin de Noix
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This month Martin shares a very special recipe with us: Tranche St Remy. Last year I had a special dinner on my terrace for twelve people and I decided I wanted to produce a killer starter. I had a memory of an extremely delicious hors d’oeuvre which we used to produce in The Wife of Bath in Kent where I worked in the seventies under chef Michael Waterfield.
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This month Martin reflects on an essential difference between the way the Irish and the French behave: La Politesse. I think that the question most often asked of us by Irish people here on holidays is as to how well we fit in with the village and its people here in France.
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