Articles

Tom Durcan Meats was established in 1985, so this is far from being one of Ireland’s longest-established butchers - but it is one of the most highly-regarded and, being right next to the fountain at The English Market, also very easy to find.
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Although collecting wild hazelnuts from hedgerows was a common activity in Ireland until recently (and has perhaps seen a resurgence due to the current popularity of all kinds of foraging), commercial nut growing has never been a significant aspect of Irish food production.
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Georgina Campbell reviews several recently published books - Clifford & Son, New Irish Cooking From Michael & Peter Clifford, With Joe McNamee. (Liberties Press, paperback €29.99 / £24.99); The Natural Food Kitchen, Delicious, globally inspired recipes using only the best natural and seasonal produce, by Jordan Bourke with photographs by Tara Fisher (Ryland Peters & Small, hardback160pp; £16.99), and, Food For The Soul by Gary O’Hanlon (Bluebird Care, hardback 144pp RRP €19.95)
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Little did the people of Carrigaline know what a business dynamo they had in their midst when local fishmonger Denis Good opened a small fish shop here in the mid 1980s. Far from being a flash in the pan, it's still there today - but it’s now just one of The Good Fish Company’s six shops in the Cork area and part of a company that supplies Tesco stores nationwide and employs over 60 staff in fish processing and retailing.
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The special qualities of the Bramley’s Seedling have made it the most popular cooking apple in Britain and Ireland - and those grown in Northern Ireland’s ‘Orchard County’ are extra special: Armagh Bramley Apples are among a very small number of Irish products to have gained the European Commission for PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) status - the other two in Northern Ireland are Lough Neagh Eels and Comber Early Potatoes.
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DINNER The Irish Times Selection, by Domini Kemp (Gill & Macmillan hardback, €22.99)
Fans of Domini Kemp’s brilliant weekly column in the Irish Times Weekend Magazine will be delighted to have so many of her best recipes brought together in a book, where they won’t be getting lost any more.
Sláinte, The Complete Guide to Irish Craft Beer and Cider, by Caroline Hennessy and Kristin Jensen (New Island, hardback 232pp, €19.99)
This is a book that couldn’t have been written ten, five or maybe even a couple of years ago. The resurgence of craft beers and ciders in Ireland has been one of the most exciting aspects of the ‘real food revolution’ that is currently taking the country by storm.
The Nation's Favourite Food Fast! by Neven Maguire, with photography by Joanne Murphy (Gill & Macmillan hardback 256pp, €22.99)
A new book from the nation’s favourite chef is always welcome and this one is bound to be snapped up by the many people who feel challenged by the clock when it comes to getting a nutritious meal on the table.
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Very much with the zeitgeist for wild and foraged foods, Lucy Deegan and Mark Cribbin's enterprising north Cork company grows a unique range of speciality mushrooms - comprising everything from shiitake and oyster mushrooms to velvet pipionni and nameko. Spores are inoculated into local wood including oak, birch and elder; and, harnessing the light and pure air of their location, the mushrooms thrive.
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Everywhere we've travelled in recent weeks the cooks of Ireland have been hard at working preserving this year's heavy crops of fruit and, especially, plums and damsons, or prunus domestica
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The goat is the most widely used farm animal in the world for its milk, the cheese and its meat - yet, astonishingly, we hardly use it at all here, except for cheese.
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Toby Simmonds is a legend of alternative thinking in the Irish food world - in 1993 he started a venture that many said would never work, The Real Olive Company, at a stall in Cork’s English Market. It was a huge success.
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