Articles

The Castlefarm garden is beginning to yield vegetables. Due to an especially busy spring calving this year sowing was delayed. However at last we are enjoying lettuce, courgettes and rocket. Cucumbers are appearing in the poytunnel as well as the first tomatoes.
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What makes the best of our young fishmongers stand out from the crowd? Marilyn Bright concludes her current series of interviews with some of Ireland’s best by talking to the winner of the inaugural Young Fishmonger of the Year, James Kirwan of East Coast Seafood in Naas, Co Kildare.
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“Quality Food Sourced Locally” has always been the mantra at Padraic Frawley’s Cornstore Restaurants in Cork and Limerick, and this innovative restaurateur cites "Sourcing local suppliers and producing fresh quality ingredients in-house” as key to the success of the two restaurants - and of the newer Cornstore At Home, in Limerick, which offers restaurant quality ready meals (‘take home dining’, made across the road in a dedicated kitchen at the Cornstore Restaurant) as well as an exciting collection of speciality foods.
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Time was, before the advent of year-round everything in the food world, that eggs were associated with spring - and especially Easter, of course. Maybe something of that instinctive seasonality remains, as it still seems an ideal time to think about eggs.
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On the countdown to the second LitFest at Ballymaloe, Darina lets us in on some of the hot tickets - and also the free events to be enjoyed by all. The excitement is really mounting, it’s just a week to this year’s Lit Fest at Ballymaloe , 16th -18th May. We’re particularly delighted that Kerrygold has come on board as our festival sponsors so the event has been renamed Kerrygold Ballymaloe Literary Festival of Food and Wine.
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It's May and things are relatively settled at Castlefarm. With calving over, breeding season begins. This means six weeks of intensive AI to ensure suitable calves for easy calving next year and a good blood line for our future dairy herd.
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Slow cooked Lamb Shanks in Rioja with pearl barley and wild garlic oil

This is a wonderful way to cook lamb, much better cooked the day before allowing the wonderful flavours to develop overnight. The wild garlic oil is a great early summer addition to any dish – except maybe pudding!!
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Each month, I try and think about my seed sowing in two categories. The first category is those veg that we must sow pretty much every month to guarantee a consistent supply (without gluts) – so for example: lettuce, spinach, oriental greens, calabrese etc. Between March and August, I sow a little of these at the start of every month.
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This series is all about Irish craft brews and, for May, our expert columnist and food blogger KRISTIN JENSEN introduces a Beer of the Month that’s made in north Cork by a couple of quality driven entrepreneurs from down under - and it’s going down a storm
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If you haven’t come across a ‘Stitchelton’ before, the Northern Irish cheesemaker Mike Thomson of Newtownards, Co Down, would be happy to perform the introduction.
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