Archive for 'Food'
Neven watchable but not memorable
Posted on January 12, 2010, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment, Food.
I’ve always been a huge fan of Neven. Anyone who can run a successful restaurant in the middle of nowhere in rural Cavan gets my vote. His energy is always fantastic too. This new show is ok but nothing amazing.
I’m surprised to see cookery programmes still being made that refer to “dinner parties”. Does anyone still have those?
His three dishes in the opening episode were asparagus and smoked salmon tartlet, confit duck and a tiramsu variant.
Whilst I loved the look of the first dish, it seems a bit ridiculous to have an asparagus recipe in January. Or a salad with Nasturtium flowers whilst we’re on the subject. Have the producers of the programme missed every single Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall espisode ever made? Where did the idea of seasonal produce go?
The trip to the organic egg farm was enlightening and provided another one of those interesting tid-bits. The farmer supplies most of his eggs to Lidl and Aldi. Weird then that most of the organic eggs in those shops in Cork seem to have either UK or German markings on them.
The confit duck looked gorgeous but I’d love to know how much the average punter would have to pay for a few litres of duck fat. I think I’ll stick with the canned one like most French people do.
The show has great potential given the presenter involved but it doesn’t feel fully formed or thought out. The show that RTE needs to make, that would become legendary, is to have Darina do one based on her new book. Show people how to cook lovely food frugally. “Feed your family for a tenner a day” or something. Review of that book coming soon. Summary: One of the top ten cook books of all time.
Neven is on RTÉ One, Thursday, 8.30pm.
8 Comments
Good Wine Show Day 1 Fantastic!
Posted on November 14, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Cork, Drink, Food, Ireland.
We spent this evening in the Clarion Hotel in Cork attending the fantastic inaugural Good Wine Show, held by Curious Wines, Bubble Brothers and Karwig Wines.
I’m not going to say much, I’ll let all the videos I took do the talking. Suffice to say that €15 to sample over 100 fantastic wines plus cheese from On The Pigs Back, bread from Arbutus and amazing smoked Duck, Salmon and Chicken from Ummera is an absolute steal. So get on over to the Clarion tomorrow from 11am and have an absolute blast. We did!
Mike Kane and Joyce on the Curious Wines Stand:
And 13 more videos here.
A few badly taken pics here:
2 Comments
The Good Wine Show in Cork
Posted on November 7, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Cork, Drink, Entertainment, Food.
If you haven’t heard about it already, you’ll want to know about the Good Wine Show happening this Friday 13th and Saturday 14th of November. It’s a joint effort between the three best independent wine retailers in the country: Curious Wines, Bubble Brothers and Karwig Wines.
It’s on in the Clarion Hotel in Cork from 3pm – 8pm on Friday and 11am – 4pm on Saturday and only costs €15. For that you’ll have over 100 international wines to taste and buy, delicious foods and gourmet treats on offer and prize draws for wine cases and food hampers.
This isn’t a show for wine gurus at all. If you like a nice glass of NZ Sauvignon Blanc every once in a while, you’ll enjoy it just as much as those who know the difference between a 1947 and 1948 Margaux.
You can buy tickets online right now or in any of the aforementioned Wine Merchants. We’ll be there on Friday and possibly on Saturday too, soliciting your feedback on everything so have your SMS thumbs to the ready.
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Good Things Cafe should be called Awesome Things Cafe
Posted on October 31, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Cork, Food.
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?
3 Comments
Chambers Organic Pork from West Cork
Posted on October 15, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon, Cork, Food, Ireland.
I haven’t tried their meat yet but the thought of locally-reared organic pork has me salivating. They sell directly to the consumer and are based in Teadies near Enniskean. The pigs are a mix of Old Spots Gloucester & Saddleback. Give Liam a call on 086 604 1208 if you want to order. More details on their web-site.
Rough location here:
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I’m in Far Eastern Foodie Heaven
Posted on September 26, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Cork, Food, Ireland, Reviews.
The recent review of CX Oriental by Messy Chef was the final push I needed to check this place out today after months of saying I must. It’s just fantastic. If you have ever raved about Asia Market in Dublin, this is 10x better.
If you have driven past Kinsale Road Roundabout in the past few months you can’t have missed the huge signs for CX Oriental Cash and Carry. Whilst Cork has had the brilliant Mr Bell’s in The English Market for years, it suffers from lack of space and the awkwardness of getting to it so this morning I finally made the trip to the Cash and Carry.
It’s pretty easy to find. Head past Harvey Normans off the Kinsale Road Roundabout, take the left at the lights onto Tramore Road and watch out for the many signs. My first surprise (and relief) was that they take credit cards. My second was that they have a noodle bar restaurant there open 7 days a week which was hopping.
The place is massive. It starts with a lot of huge freezers filled with all sorts of fish, meat and desserts. I got some tiger prawns and some spring roll sheets.
The fresh produce area and fridge is small but jammed full of stuff you just won’t get elsewhere including veg I’ve never seen before, multiple types of tofu, chillis, enoki mushrooms, mangoes and drinks. The fresh fish section looked awesome too but I didn’t get anything today.
I put together a list of ingredients from Rick Stein’s new Far Eastern book and found everything on it with no problems. They also obviously sell in bulk to restaurants and had lots of the Musgraves type things like foil containers and cups, in addition to woks, chopsticks, strainers, steamers etc.
Not much else to say except if you are doing any sort of Far Eastern cooking then it will be hard to keep you away from the place. The value is also stunningly good compared to supermarkets.
Here are some pictures I took whilst shopping:
2 Comments
Raise a glass of wine tonight
Posted on September 15, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment, Food.
Keith Floyd, RIP.
A brilliant TV chef who made great cooking look easy and enjoyable. He’ll be missed.
1 Comment
New Dianne Curtin Web-site
Posted on August 25, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Cork, Food, Ireland.
Delighted to see that food writer Dianne Curtin has launched a new web-site. If you are into food, you should check it out. She has news, tips, recipes and podcasts already. Since the site is built on Drupal, I think we can expect lots more features to appear over time.
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Ivan asks – Can we feed ourselves?
Posted on June 16, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Business, Food, Ireland.
Deeply important piece by Ivan on food security and our future. Don’t just read it, leave your thoughts too.
The ability of a country to feed itself and have a sustainable agri-business must surely have been a major motivator of Reddy Brennan and his team in Avonmore in the early 1970s. A man of great vision with incredible negotiation skills, he is one of the heroes of Irish industry. Our family will always be grateful to him. Reddy Brennan 1924-2009, RIP.
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New Competition For Amateur Cooks, Growers, Bakers and Smallholder
Posted on May 19, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Cork, Food, Gardening, Ireland.
This is just a superb idea, well done to everyone involved! Why not enter?
The inaugural Grow Bake Cook Awards Ceremony honours and celebrates the skills of amateur cooks, growers, bakers and preservers – in fact anyone with a talent for creating good food!
Supporting local communities throughout Cork city and county, these awards aim to give our hidden food heroes the opportunity, tools and encouragement to sell their wares through farmer’s markets,country markets, local supermarkets and food fairs.
Award winning and shortlisted produce will be displayed at Cork City’s Midsummer Festival Feasta market on Sunday June 28th , with the Award Ceremony taking place that evening at a city venue tbc.
For further information and entrance criteria contact Dianne Curtin 086067 6249 or Elke O’Mahony 087 3168855or email to grow.bake.cook@gmail.com.Deadline for submission is 23rd June 2009
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alphaomega Breads in Bandon
Posted on April 13, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under BandonFarmersMarket, Cork, Food, Ireland.
I love bread. Can’t put it any more simply than that. So when I hear that someone who lives just up the road from me is now making craft and organic breads and they are selling them at the Bandon Farmer’s Market every Saturday, well that make me very very happy.
Check out the alphaomega blog for a list of their current products. I’ll be checking out the bread.
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Don’t mess with the Irish
Posted on April 4, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Food, Politics.
I was enraged on Thursday whilst listening to the latest Restaurant Guys’ podcast. They were interviewing a New York restaurateur who is being picketed by fois gras protestors. These ugg-boot-wearing idiots think they can intimidate a small business owner and effectively put him out of business. These cowards don’t have the balls to go after large fast-food chains who sell industrially produced chicken and figure they’ll go for easy marks instead.
Unfortunately for these hypocrites, this restaurant owner is Irish and (like the rest of us) he doesn’t like people telling him what to do. I was then thrilled to discover who he was. The restaurant is Knife + Fork and he is Damien Brasel. He was made head chef in Peacock Alley in Dublin at the age of 20! Two of my top ten meals of all time were in Peacock Alley in its heyday before it all went pear-shaped.
His response to these lazy cause-of-the-week nitwits? Put a fois gras tasting menu on! The outcome? His business has improved. Result
If you are in New York and wondering where to eat, can I recommend you try Knife + Fork? Bring some chicken nuggets with you to throw at the wastes-of-oxygen picketing outside at the weekend.
3 Comments
How not to waste an hour
Posted on March 29, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Food, Gardening, Health.
We’ve just had the third annual waste of time known as Earth Hour where millions of people worldwide pretend to do something useful about global warming and turn off lights for an hour. For 99.999999% of those people, that’ll be it for another 365 days. End result for the Earth, big fat zero. Perhaps if we take all the energy expended by the media covering this story, we may even have a net negative?
Imagine if, instead, those millions of people went outside, dug up a square metre or two of their perfect lawns and planted some vegetable seeds? Or if they lived in an apartment in Ireland, they contacted Irish Allotments about organising patches in their locality?
Then instead of some silly hour-long nonsense they could:
- Reduce CO2 throught the action of the plants
- Reduce petrol consumption through less shopping
- Reduce fuel miles by not buying foreign vegetables
- Save money
- Get their kids outside
- Take part in Seed Saver schemes
- Eat healthier
- Get fit
We could call it Gardener’s World
Of course taking care of this veg patch takes a wee bit longer than one hour a year and isn’t news-worthy so maybe we should just turn off the lights and keep playing mushroom instead.
21 Comments
Pork & Sons Review
Posted on January 11, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Food, Reviews.
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.
4 Comments
Return of the Porki
Posted on January 8, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon, Food.
The Empire may have done its best to kill the pork industry in Ireland but the producers are fighting back. Barrie Tyner from Slow Food Ireland just let me know that the West Cork and Cork City Conviviums are coming together to bring us ‘The Pig Extravaganza’.
I was disappointed to find that this did not include dancing pigs but it’s the next best thing To celebrate National Pork Weekend, an evening of eating and great chat is planned down west on Sunday, the 18th of January.
Speakers include award winning butcher Martin Carey. Willie and Avril Allshire of Caherbeg Free Range Pork Farm and Rosscarbery Recipes, Frank Krawcykz, salami maker and artisan, Anthony Creswell of Ummera Smoked Bacon plus guest chefs.
Over the years I’ve driven past many signs for the Ballyjamesduff Pork Festival. I hope we could have something like that down here every year too. Imagaine a giant cook-out with BBQs and Smokers going all day? Yummmmm!
I’ll post an update it when the venue (probably in Bandon) is confirmed. If you love anything made from pork and you want to show your support for fantastic local producers, then I hope to see you there.
UPDATE: The details of the day have been finalised:
Time: 12.00 Noon, Sunday January 19th. Location: Heron Court, Market Quay, Bandon. A 3 course lunch will be served with talks and demonstrations from artisan food producers including award winning Bandon butcher, Martin Carey, Willie and Avril Allshire of Caherbeg, Frank Krawcykz of West Cork Salamis, and Anthony Creswell of Ummera Smoked Products. €30.00 for Slow Food Members, €35.00 for Non-Members. Booking essential as numbers limited. slowfoodwestcork AT gmail DOT com or 086 067 6249.
4 Comments
Foodtalk on Newstalk
Posted on January 7, 2009, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment, Food, Technology.
I just got a mail from the lovely people in The Good Things Cafe in Durrus to tell me that the awesome Carmel was on the Foodtalk programme on Newstalk Radio.
Foodtalk is hosted by one of the best food bloggers anywhere, Caroline Hennessy from Bibliocook.
If you want to listen online and subscribe so that you get each broadcast, then there are a bunch of different ways of doing it.
On your PC, one of the best tools is MediaMonkey. Install it, tell it about Foodtalk, leave it running in the background and it’ll automatically download the new episodes so you can listen at your desk.
If you have a newer car stereo or (like us) one of the replacement Lidl/Aldi ones, then you can copy those audio files onto a memory card or USB stick and play them in the car when you like.
Lots of the newer phones with Wifi also have podcasting capabilities. The Nokia N95, N95-8GB, N96 etc come with the software built in. Owners of the E51, E63, E71 etc can download it from here. You have to manually tell the application to check for new episodes but it takes care of the download etc once you do that. You can listen directly on the phone or plug it into the line-in on your stereo or car-stereo.
If you have an iPod, I’m sure it’s all very similar.
Note that most of the radio stations, in particular RTE, have a ton of podcasts you can get like this. I recently listened to all of a year-old series about De Valera I grabbed from the RTE site on my N95-8GB.
9 Comments
Having some nice rashers for breakfast
Posted on December 7, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Food, Health.
So 47 farms used contaminated pig feed. Unless the FSAI confirms that Gubbeen or Caherbeg are two of those farms, I’ll be having a lovely bacon sarnie for my breakfast.
If the State’s Chief Medical Officer says that dioxin is only dangerous if a person is exposed to it over a long period of time, then why the hell are we destroying millions of Euro worth of food?
We all eat chicken that spends its life sitting in its own faeces in the dark and lots of the pork we eat is dosed up to the eyeballs in sub-therapeutic antibiotics, so how is a slight possibility of a touch of PCB going to make our health any worse?
Related to this, I’ve met with a few small food producers recently and I don’t know how they stay in business with the nonsensical levels of paperwork and measurement that they have to deal with. Is this actually part of the problem? An unbelievably bloated bureaucracy unable to measure and react quickly because they are drowning in irrelevant form processing? A bit like Sarbanes-Oxley in the US causing people to be so obsessed with process, they forgot about the intent and allowed the banks to trade recklessly for years.
Finally, I thought we had full meat traceability from field (or concrete pen) to fork? Why not just release the tracking codes of all the individual batches we need to destroy? Or are we all a bit too thick to manage that?
This Sunday’s rasher sandwich brought to you by the letter P and the Caherbeg Television Workshop:
20 Comments
Blog post of the year
Posted on November 19, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Cork, Food.
When the Irish Blog Awards nominations open early next year, I’m pretty sure Ivan McCutcheon’s recent post about local West Cork abbatoirs and butchers will be the one I pick.
If you care about the food you put in your gob and appreciate the work of people with a passion for their craft, read Ivan’s piece, print it off and give it to those you know.
For so many reasons, it is imperative that businesses like Dan Maloney’s in Bandon survive and thrive. Supporting local food production is good for community, business, the environment and the economic independence of the country.
6 Comments
Oh Mio Mai-o
Posted on October 3, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Cork, Food, Restaurants, Reviews.
We’ve had a couple of very good reviews of Mio on LouderVoice and finally got a chance to try it out last Sunday. A brilliant meal in a beautiful but shockingly empty restaurant. We’ll be back soon.
Granny Mary shooed us out the door at 5pm on Sunday and we tootled down to Clon to Mio’s. Owned by the same people as the brilliant Gleenson’s, it is two doors up and upstairs.
The room is beautifully done with a nice Italian feel to the whole place. It was empty on arrival so we got the full attention of the very friendly waiter. A couple of Italian Moretti beers saw us through the meal and we had a hard time deciding what to pick. Both the main menu and specials looked good but with quite run-of-the-mill descriptions, which as as discovered when the food arrived, didn’t do it justice at all.
Catherine had a fantastic pate to start and I had pasta-wrapped prawns with a saffron aioli. Both with very good salad with a tasty dressing.
For main I had the Capricciosa pizza which had anchovies, capers, olives and an egg. One of the best pizzas I’ve eaten in the past ten years. Catherine had a classic Caesar sald with chicken. She couldn’t finish it, it was so big. Lovely leaves and dressing, beautifully moist chicken. She didn’t go for the whole anchovies in it tho. Might be best to mention as an option to people.
Two excellent double espressos finished the evening and we were out off home, fully sated.
Unfortunately not one other person came in whilst we were there. I so hope this was a timing thing and not a regular occurrence since Clon needs a place like this that serves great food in a relaxed setting. I am concerned that the menu outside gives no hint of the high quality of the food and could be mistaken for an Eddie Rockets style place. The prices are a little high but then I say that about everywhere.
If you like great pizza and great food in general but want it in a lovely relaxed welcoming setup then Mio is worth a detour. Next time I’m trying the burger.
5 Comments
Food Culture in West Cork
Posted on September 2, 2008, by Conor O'Neill, under Cork, Food, Ireland.
I’m thrilled to see more and more great Irish food blogs being created and I was recently told about a real cracker.
Ivan McCutcheon, who works as a rural development officer with West Cork LEADER Co-Op and is heavily involved in the the Fuschia Brands initiative, has started Food Culture in West Cork. A must-read as far as I’m concerned. Check out his great piece on Fishy Fishy and Ummera.
