Articles

Household names including Darina Allen, Neven Maguire (MacNean House & Restaurant), Ross Lewis (Chapter One), Derry Clarke (l'Ecrivain) and Guillaume LeBrun (Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud) feature among the 180 or so member chefs of Euro-Toques Ireland. Yet it is their annual Young Chef competition that has done most to give the prestigious international chefs and cooks association a high profile in this country...
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Tucked away in Stepaside village, near Leopardstown race course, ‘The Box Tree by Eamonn O’Reilly’ is the latest venture by one of Ireland’s foremost chefs, whose city centre restaurants – the fine dining destination, One Pico, and its more casual sister, Bleu Café Bistro - have a well-earned reputation for consistently good, ingredients-led cooking.
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The fight to preserve the right to produce, sell and buy raw milk in Ireland is entering a critical phase. In response to a letter protesting the proposed ban from Georgina Campbell to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Mr Simon Coveney, TD, a reply was recently received from The Department, explaining the background from their viewpoint and stating that...
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Gardens are really beautiful at the moment and, as the days are getting noticeably shorter, this is the time to celebrate late summer with a tea party to remember. Pick a lazy sunny afternoon and invite family or special friends to enjoy a treat that they will remember with pleasure when the autumn starts to bite.
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Like many of us in Ireland today, Lucy Madden is asking, What Went Wrong? Some 20 years ago my daughter was the first generation of Trinity graduates who did not, as she said at the time, “get straight on the plane”. For the first time in decades young, educated Irish people had the possibility of making their lives on this island and many of them did...
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Harry's Restaurant has been getting rave reviews and much-deserved plaudits of late. Run by Donal Doherty, the restaurant is bucking the recessionary trend by attracting people in their droves to the remote Inishowen peninsula in Donegal. How are they doing it? By serving only the freshest, local and seasonal produce, and by growing their own grub.
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Castlefarm is thriving. In our pastures, the organic grass is growing a little slower than we would like but clover is plentiful. This is good news for our cows, as well as the bees that are busy feeding on the flowers. Our oats are nearly ready for harvesting, as is our arable silage.
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'Sarah's Wonderful Honey' is the brainchild of Sarah Gough, who is General Manager of her family’s business, Mileeven Fine Foods, in Kilkenny. Founded in 1988 by her mother, Eilis Gough, the company is renowned for its quality produce - honey, organic preserves and other fine foods - and is one of the few mother-daughter run businesses in Ireland.
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Now widely recognised as a ‘superfood’, blueberries are bigger cousins of the native Irish bilberry or fraughan and thrive in similar peaty habitats. Grown on cutaway bogland in Co Offaly, Irish blueberries are in season in August and September, when they are available in shops. Along with many other Irish fruit and vegetables, including strawberries and rasberries, they’re distributed by...
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For anyone suffering from allergies or intolerances to dairy, wheat and gluten, the main problem is that they are the most commonly used ingredients in food manufacture, so most ready-made foods contain at least one of these products. This means you will have to cook for yourself – and you could not ask for a better, or more experienced guide than Michelle Berriedale-Johnson.
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