Articles

In recent times, new season spring lamb has become traditional at Easter in Ireland, but it is a much better buy in summer when it has had more time to grow larger (making it more suitable for family meals) and to develop more flavour. Bord Bia recently launched a series of interactive video demonstrations featuring top chef Neven Maguire, and a also new range of tasty Irish lamb recipes...
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A new product which looks set to play an important role in Ireland’s agriculture and cuisine is RAPESEED OIL and, while the changes this crop brings to the landscape are not universally welcome, the product itself is proving to be a very acceptable alternative to imported olive oil.
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Stevie Parle is an interesting young chef who is making waves on the London food scene - and he was one of the youngest students we ever had on our 12 Week course. Stevie was just 17 years old when he signed up for the January 2002 Certificate Course. He, like many young people, was fed up with ordinary school – he just wanted to cook.
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Lucy Madden reflects on the life enhancing power of festivals – even when it rains. “We’re not coming to stay” said the woman at the front door. “But the parrot is.” So began the 2011 Flat Lake Arts and Literary Festival here in Co. Monaghan. What is it that makes festivals, events that expose one over a number of days to the vagaries of the weather, a monotonous diet and the stern gaze of Security, so utterly compelling?
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Did a lot of transplanting this weekend, which is always a fun activity for a GIYer. There’s nothing like the satisfaction of planting seedlings – bare beds transformed in an instant with neat rows of little plants. There are always a few days of fretting after transplanting however – will cold nights set the plants back? Will slugs or rabbits try and munch on them?
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In June Jenny Young is seeing the fruits of her labours in the Castlefarm garden – but still has to keep predators at bay. I spent a lot of May planting, maintaining and protecting the garden and many of our vegetables are coming into in season this month, making it a perfect time for visitors to Castlefarm shop to come and enjoy them fresh from the garden.
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Of all our Irish fruit the gooseberry has the earliest natural season and is ideally suited to our climate - yet it seems to be inexplicably underused. Admittedly the bushes tend to be thorny and the most commonly grown green varieties need a lot of sweetening to make them palatable, but it’s a very versatile fruit and this harbinger of summer is delicious in many traditional puddings, cold sweets and preserves...
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Young Kilkenny chef Edward Hayden is a busy man: not only does he have a regular cookery slot on TV3’s popular Ireland AM programme and a column in the Sunday World, but the day job finds him teaching in the Cookery School at Dunbrody House in Co Wexford – and he also gives classes at Waterford Institute of Technology.
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There is nowhere like Ashford Castle - and, thanks to an exceptionally talented and dedicated team headed up by Executive Head Chef, Stefan Matz, in the kitchen and Maître d’ Robert Bowe front of house, the dining experience matches up to the magnificent backdrop.
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As Lucy Madden mentions in this month’s Insider View, the magnificent Great Western Greenway in Co Mayo opened in 2010. The longest off-road walking and cycling trail in Ireland, it meanders 17.5km along the line of the famous Newport/Mulranny Railway, which closed in 1937...
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