Articles

This time of year is always deceptive, the days are getting longer and everybody starts talking about spring but it’s often the coldest time of all. What’s needed in the kitchen is recipes for some fine big meals with plenty of good Irish meat and vegetables to keep out the cold.
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January is synonymous with comfort food - and where better to look for ideas when the weather turns chilly than Ireland’s great old traditional dishes? You’ll find these a-plenty in Michelle Horgan’s book ‘Recipes From The English Market’ (Atrium, €25).
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Even if you’re very pressed for time coming up to Christmas, cooking a few bits and pieces is very satisfying, gets you into the festive mood - and it makes the house smell lovely too. And it needn’t take a huge amount of time either, as these tried and trusted recipes show – they’re all from that old favourite, my 1996 book The Best of Irish Breads & Baking, which is still in print (€15) and I use it all the time.
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Neven Maguire has a special place in Irish food and in the hearts of Irish food lovers, and it is well earned. Whether through the family business, MacNean House & Restaurant in Blacklion, Co Cavan, his TV and competition work (including representing Ireland at the Bocuse d’Or in 2001), or the many events and individuals he has supported down the years, he has done many great services to Irish food – perhaps most notably through his dedication to his own area and the best of local seasonal produce, which (despite the fact that he is still a young man) he has vigorously supported for many years.
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It may not have been the best of summers but there’s a pleasing seasonal abundance of most foods nevertheless. And there’s even an over-abundance of some, particularly tunnel-grown crops, presenting the annual challenge to time and ingenuity if you want to avoid waste and enjoy them over the coming months.
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Lamb may be synonymous with spring but, while tender, the small joints that make it to the Easter table are not a patch on the fuller-flavoured (and better value) meat that comes onto the market later in the season. The size, texture and flavour of lamb varies depending on the breed and how it has been raised. Broadly this divides into the large lowland lamb and mountain lamb....
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Once the summer begins to kick in the annual drift towards the seaside starts too, so fish and seafood soon take pride of place on menus and home dinner tables alike. There are great goings-on in the world of seafood at the moment and, although the underlying reasons for a lot of the activity may be alarming – global warming, over fishing, depleted stocks of many species – it is heartening to see attention focused on finding solutions.
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What is Irish cuisine – or is there any such a thing at all? There’s been a lot of talk about it in recent years and the idea has often been scornfully dismissed, as too has the concept of associating Ireland with good food at all - until recently at least.
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Artisan producers are the unsung heroes of the food industry in Ireland, but need support from the commercial sector to ensure their survival. This was the view of Myrtle Allen, one of the pioneers of the movement to promote locally produced Irish food, who addressed guests at the Irish Food Writer’s Guild Food annual awards last month (March 2012).
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Home baking has settled so comfortably back into our collective psyche that it’s hard to believe it ever went away - and also back, by popular demand, is our vintage cookbook, The Best of Irish Breads & Baking (Epicure Press paperback, €15) which has just been reprinted and is available once again, from bookshops and directly from us online.
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