Articles

Continuing her series all about craft brews, our expert columnist and food blogger KRISTIN JENSEN says “This pleasant, fruity, easy-drinking red matches well with food but, at 4.2% ABV, it would also hold its own as a session beer: a good all round red.”
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This month Lucy Madden questions whether Irish food is really getting better - saying that, in rural Ireland, a good meal at a reasonable price is hard to find. It was a recycled wine bottle filled with a brownish liquid lurking on the table that alerted us to the fact that all was not well. We were a party of 8, meeting for lunch in a restaurant in the Midlands and, having pre-booked, arrived at the venue to see that we were the only customers there.
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The luck of the crop rotation draw and bad design in my veg patch means that particular veg families tend to have what might be described as ‘off years’ depending on the area they are destined to spend their growing season in. There’s a particular part of my veg patch that is hampered by being simultaneously the closest to the garden perimeter and the lowest point in the garden.
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Euro-Toques chef Martin Dwyer, is much missed in Ireland since he and his wife Sile sold their eponymous restaurant in Waterford and moved to France. They now live in the Languedoc, where they take guests - and feed them very well. This month Martin finds amusement in on the way things in another country can sometimes get lost in translation.
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Chocolate may once have seemed an unlikely speciality for artisan producers in Ireland to adopt in their droves, but it has proved a very successful one. There seems no limit to the Irish passion for chocolate and, fortunately for producers, no seasonal downs either, although there are pleasing peaks at Christmas, Valentines Day - and Easter.
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There may be nothing new about black (and white) pudding in Ireland, it’s been a great everyday food for generations. But this traditional pork product did slip a bit in the popularity stakes for a couple of decades while we were getting used to the idea of ‘being modern’ and enjoying international cuisine - and eating less of the full Irish too.
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At this stage 80 of our cows have calved. We have 26 heifer (female) calves out on grass, although we still feed them milk twice a day. Spring has been difficult. The calves got a bug, which spread, from calf house to calf house. 50 sick calves is no laughing matter. Still the hardship of calving time is now nearly over.
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Irish Food Writers' Guild President, Georgina Campbell, shares some of the stunning recipes created by Derry Clarke for the annual lunch held at L'Ecrivain to celebrate the winning foods and people at the Guild’s Food Awards
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“Our philosophy is simple, we use only the best produce from the best local suppliers and treat them with care and attention to detail” - that’s Kate Lawlor, the Euro-Toques owner-chef of Cork city’s No. 5 Fenn’s Quay, telling it as it is on the home page of their web site.
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What makes the best of our young fishmongers stand out from the crowd? Marilyn Bright talks to John Feeney of Galway Bay Seafoods at Salthill, Galway and finds that this newcomer to fishmongering has an infectious enthusiasm for fish
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