Articles

With summer well underway Castlefarm is a hive of activity. We have a blooming garden of vegetables and of course too many weeds. We are harvesting silage and oats, and our young pullets - that I reared from day old chicks since May - have just started laying eggs.
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I’m sitting with my back to a stone wall on Inis Meáin – on Ireland’s western seaboard – watching islander Padraic McDonagh hand threshing rye in the time honoured way. He chooses a flat lime stone area and then he makes a little circle of sheaves to catch the seed.
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A friend has presented me with a packet of recycled plastic clothes-pegs. Not a gift to set the pulses racing, you will agree, but one for which I am very grateful. These pegs, unlike their competitors that snap in the first breeze and gather on the floor of the yard, are capable of keeping a wet carpet on the washing line while the weather does its worst.
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Turbot is a flat fish with pure white flesh that is highly prized for its texture and flavour – a delicacy since Roman times, it is a favourite of that great seafood chef Rick Stein. A large left-eyed flatfish, wild turbot (Scophthalmus maximus) is mainly found in sandy shallow waters throughout the Mediterranean, the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the North Atlantic, where it lives quietly on the ocean floor.
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A domesticated form of the wild carrot Daucus carota, an umbelliferous plant which is native to Europe and southwestern Asia, this everyday root vegetable is usually orange - although purple, red, white, and yellow varieties exist and are currently more widely grown, due to demand from chefs.
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Annabel Langbein is one of New Zealand’s most popular food writers and it’s easy to see why. Her message is bang on trend – she’s ‘on a mission to get people into the kitchen with fun, no-stress recipes that make the most of what nature has to offer” - and her down-to-earth approach to cooking has made her a phenomenon.
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Widely acknowledged among the great gardens of the world, Mount Usher Gardens are very easily accessible just half an hour from Dublin with the main entrance in the centre of Ashford village.
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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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