Conor’s Bandon Blog

I was given this heavy tome by the publishers to review and months later I’m finally getting my thoughts down. Whilst it is a fantastic collection of recipes and information that all Irish cooks should own, I fear that along with Darina’s Forgotten Skills of Cooking, we are looking at our past.

The author Colman Andrews is a very well known food-writer and co-founder of the famed Saveur magazine in the US. This may look like a coffee-table staple but it is genuinely jammed with lots of recipes that could easily have been lost forever.

It’s clear reading the book that Colman is not claiming to be an expert in Irish food since he defers to many of the Irish greats like Darina and profiles some of our Irish food heroes like Anthony down the road in Ummera. The only time this becomes a problem is when he refers to things being very common when I know that they are small-scale and highly-localised. The perfect example is fraughan gathering. This is presented as something many people do. The reality is that 95% of the population would have no idea what a fraughan is and most of those live in boggy country areas. Their parents or grandparents may have gathered them but they are now buying Chilean strawberries in SuperValu.

This leads to the biggest problem I ran into when reading it. Quite simply it does not reflect mainstream current Irish eating or food. It is a lens on our food history and it tells us what foodies, Slow Food people and gurus like Myrtle or Darina are interested in, but it has no relationship to where most people are now.

My mother was flicking through it recently and ran into a word I had never heard of: stir-about. It’s an old word for porridge. Neither she nor my father had heard it for decades. This is a perfect example of what we are losing as we “modernize”.

I don’t see this as a problem with the book, I see it as a problem with us. Is our future going to be 100% Tesco-ized? Everything pre-prepared, cooked and packaged? Or Tesco-Finest for those with money? Is U.S.-style obesity heading our way? Is the idea of cooking with incredibly small budgets using things like cheap cuts of meat gone and replaced with take-aways and extruded shapes?

Anyone who reads this blog know I love food and love seeing artisan produce do well but at the back of my mind I worry we have gone from “proper food” being something everyone ate, due to economic necessity, to something utterly middle-class and slightly sniffy.

The current recession should be an opportunity for this type of cooking to come back but the skills are gone. Is there any hope? What could be done in the education system to bring these skills back?

Having stupid men on the sides of buses telling us how easy it is to cook certainly isn’t the answer either. How about replacing compulsory Irish in schools with compulsory cooking? Imagine a government doing something audacious now to solve a future health epidemic whilst finally admitting failure in an 80 year language effort.

Apologies for such a negative post about such a great book but I think I’ve been depressed since watching Food Inc. Movies like that along with efforts like Jamie Oliver’s and Hugh F-W’s are mainly just preaching to the converted. How do we convert those who could benefit most from a return to the past?

Colman’s book is not the solution but at least it is helping to preserve the knowledge.

In case the review was lost in my brain-dump above, this is a superb book. If you want a broad sweep of traditional Irish cooking you should buy it.

We recently discovered this shop as it seems to be the only one in a few hundred miles of Bandon that sells Sodastream gas refills. Catherine popped down a few weeks ago to get two refills and raved about the place. I drove down yesterday to have a look and get some of the Sodastream flavours.

They are just at the top of town on the main street, impossible to miss. I went in with 4 of our monsters so couldn’t spend as much time as I’d like. Suffice to say, if you like cookware or kitchenware, you’ll adore this shop. It is jammed with tons and tons of everything you could possibly need in a kitchen. In just a few minutes I got my Sodastream flavours (highly recommend that you start using this 1970s classic again to save yourself a fortune. Also less damaging to the environment!), spatula, pouring nozzles for oil, bun cases and oven thermometer. The owners were extremely friendly and helpful too.

The highlight for us all was this coffee maker. Slightly out of our budget but a wonderful design.

The Cookware Company is worth a drive no matter where you are in Cork.

I popped into the fish shop in Bantry today and spotted these. A fully sealed pack of live local mussels. I have long lamented the lack of fresh shellfish in shops in Cork and now they have no excuse. All you need is a cooler cabinet with no need for special shellfish expertise or having to deal with smells or things going off. These could literally be sold in every garage and convenience shop in the country.

Not only is it easier for shops but mussels are the ultimate fast food. All I did this evening was open the pack, rinse them, throw out the ones that were still open and cook them. Cooking consisted of chopping some garlic and onion, cooking that for a sec, lobbing in a ton of wine, one more minute, lob in the mussels, 4 minutes, add some cream, serve. Probably less that 15 minutes from taking pack out of fridge to eating my dinner.

And wow were these fresh. I could still smell and taste that seaside ozone without a hint of fishiness.

Demand these from every shop you frequent that limits itself to selling fish fingers.

Two days of fantastic fish recipes by a wonderful teacher in a perfect setting. Not much more to say than that. But I will.

Three years ago I did a cookery course down in Good Things Cafe with Carmel Somers. It was honestly two of the best food days I’ve ever had. The relentless pressure of start-up business life meant I didn’t get to return until this month. Now I can’t wait to go again.

Durrus is a gorgeous little village just at the start of the Sheep’s Head Peninsula. Good Things is just out a bit on the Ahakista Road looking out over the bay and the mussel farms. It is a cafe during the summer and a cookery school for the rest of the year.

A collection of maybe 10 of us there on the first day. A mixture of individuals, friends and mother/daughter. Only two of us were blokes. What is it with men? It’s 2009, not 1959.

Click on the image for the full album of pictures that I took:

There is always a worry that demo-only courses can be tiring to concentrate on for two days. I have the attention span of a gnat and generally have to be doing things to stop my mind wandering. I needn’t have had any concern. Carmel kept us engaged and entertained for the entire thing. Each day was over in the blink of an eye and I wanted more each time!

The recipes are all simple, tasty and doable by anyone who can wield a knife. OK maybe not by those two nutters on the opening episode of The Restaurant this week who tried to open a coconut with a knife and rolling pin

The recipes included:

• Alioli
• Brown Rice with garlic
• Fish Stock
• Omelette Arnold Bennett
• Fish Ceviche
• Kedgeree
• Fish Cakes with Salsa
• Chowder
• St Emilion au Chocolat
• Brown Soda Scones
• Crab Tart
• Short Crust Pastry
• Garlic Croutons
• Fish Soup
• Braised Fennel with Cumin and Ginger

As each thing was cooked, we all got to taste it and sip on a glass of wine. They were all winners. I only saw one person react negatively to one dish in two days and that was the squid which I know some people just have a problem with.

Carmel’s assistant Joy also deserves a special mention for all her hard work and friendly attentiveness on both days.

Those on the course were all lovely and extremely friendly. This wasn’t a bunch of foodies trying to out-do each other in their knowledge of single-estate extra-virgin olive oils. Just normal folks who like food and wanted an interesting weekend away. There was even someone living in Ratoath where my mother is from who knows my Aunt’s shop really well.

Carmel was a big meanie and wouldn’t let me record video like the last time. I had hoped to post a bunch of stuff to Qik and YouTube. Hopefully her daughter will get her doing video now that they are on Twitter too.

Just like the last time, all I can say is, just do it. They have a wide range of courses and it’s a wonderful part of the country. It’s not expensive and you’ll come away excited by food again. I described myself as a lapsed cook that weekend and it looks like Carmel has brought me back into the flock

She has also just launched her first cookbook called “Eat Good Things Every Day”. It looks brilliant and I’ll definitely be buying a copy.

Learn how to eat good things everyday. This book will get your kitchen sorted and to make the task of cooking less daunting and more enjoyable. From a ‘once a week’ shopping list there’s something to cook every night for eight weeks plus a list of what you need in your store-cupboard is provided and a surprisingly short list of kitchen utensils. By planning our meals in advance we can eat better, tastier food that will give us more enjoyment and doesn’t cost the earth!

You can buy it on the Cork University Press web-site.

Now which of her courses will I do next?

I was given this lovely book for Christmas 2007 and finally finished it last month. What initially appears to be a coffee-table resident turned out to be one of the best books on food I’ve ever read.

The title says it all. This is a book about pork. Every single bit of the pig gets a mention and use. The author, Stéphane Reynaud is the grandson of a village butcher from the Ardeche plateau in France. He runs a restaurant near Paris that specialises in Pork. I want to eat there!

The recipes themselves are fantastic but so too are the notes, anecdotes and pictures and people. This is a book centered on the relationship between a community and its food. The way it is sectioned up is unusual but it works. The “chapters” are as follows:

• Pig-killing time at Saint-Agreve
• Black Pudding Recipes
• For the love of Sausages
• Sausage Recipes
• Hamming it up
• Ham Recipes
• Pates and Terrines
• Jacquy’s terrine
• Granny Pig
• Barbecued Pig
• A piggy Party
• Wild Boar

It’s been quite a while since I’ve read a cookery book which stirred up such desire to cook but this did it. Whilst I know recession-talk is starting to wear people down, this book will hopefully be part of a return to cooking cheap tasty food with a bit of soul.

A brilliant gift of a cookery course in Dunbrody by my fabulous sister-in-law Paula led to one of the best day’s out I’ve had in ages.  Interesting and enjoyable in every way without a dull moment in a gorgeous location.

We did our annual extended family meet-up on the August Bank Holiday weekend in Rosslare recently. On Friday morning I borrowed my mother’s car and drove the 45 minute journey to Arthurstown near the ferry in Ballyhack.

For some silly reason I thought Dunbrody was just a cookery school and restaurant but soon discovered it is a hotel and spa too. I arrived on the dot of 9.30 to find just two other people there; a B&B owner and a GP, both of whom were very friendly. A moment later, Edward, our teacher, swooped in to start our day of “Light Lunches”. I have to say that the guy was just wonderful for the whole session. Tons of energy, knowledge and anecdotes. He’s just finished a cookery book which will be launched soon. Keep an eye out for it: “Entertaining with Edward”. I wish I had been that accomplished at the age of 26!

My only tiny disappointment on the day was realising that it was all demos with no hands on. This is inevitable given the size and layout of the room but I do love to get stuck in. My concern that I might get bored just watching proved totally unfounded. Edward’s manner and approach made sure we didn’t even suffer the mid-afternoon lull.

The list of things he made was extensive and there wasn’t a clunker among them. I would just love to be able to multi-task the way that he did. He did the following:

Traditional Brown Soda Bread: This was lovely and nutty. Not as good as my mothers but still great.

Fresh Basil Pesto: For some reason I have never made pesto. This was one of the best I’ve had.

Crab Croquettes with Sweet Chilli Jam: Whilst I’ll definitely be making the croquettes again, the jam just made me feel stupid. I cannot believe how easy it is to make and how much better it was than any bought jar. This is going to be one of my regular creations from now on.

Smoked Haddock and Rocket Tart: One of the absolute highlights of the day. If you love fish pie, this makes a quicker and lighter alternative

Cheese and Bacon Quesadillas: Simple and tasty as hell. Will be trying this on the kids. Total winner.

Fish en paupilotte: This genuinely shocked me. I love smoked salmon, I detest cooked fresh salmon, it makes me gag. Yet somehow, this tasted beautiful and I scoffed the lot. Another ultra-easy meal which will be a future regular.

Mild Cajun Chicken: Lovely and juicy in a yoghurt coating
Classic Italian Meatballs: Excellent but not a patch on my own The mince mix would make fantastic burgers or meatloaf.
Vegetarian Roulade with Spinach: The least favourite for the three of us but still good. Some of the intended ingredients were not delivered on the day which is a pity as I can imagine how much better it would have been.

Mediterranean Pasta Salad: Using roasted veg and some of the pesto, this is perfect BBQ food.
Meringue Roulade with Summer Berries and Toasted Almonds: Should be illegal. We had it for our elevenses and it was light as a feather and totally delish.

Edward also gave us two tours of the kitchen gardens which were a joy to see. Jammed with every sort of veg, fruit and herb. If only I had the acerage and the time!

I was chuffed to get a branded apron and Kevin Dundon’s latest book as I left. This course won’t teach you amazing new techniques if you are already a solid home chef but it will give you tons of ideas for tasty interesting family meals. It’s also a perfect day of relaxation and fun.

Full set of photos from the day including geo-tagged ones on Flickr.