Conor’s Bandon Blog

With a single episode, the greatest TV show RTE have made about food in at least 25 years. Martin Shanahan jumps out of the screen, grabs you by the scruff of the neck and demands that you watch him and start loving fish.

After decades of dreary formulaic yawn inducing food programmes on Irish TV or worse, the “crayzzzzze kooky” shows, someone in RTE finally saw an episode of Jamie Oliver and realised what was missing – personality.

Where has Martin been hiding all this time? In the kitchens of the rightly legendary Fishy Fishy in Kinsale? He’s a force of nature. He is everything that made Darina a legend – knowledge,passion, humour. But he goes far beyond that, he’s an absolute TV natural. He belongs in front of the camera. Dammit he _owns_ the camera.

Honestly, I was rivetted for 30 minutes. It is perfect food TV. This show doesn’t just have potential, this could go global. With sub-titles of course. Joke joke!

And the fish, lord the fish. We’re not having our regular Friday Chicken Tikka Masala tonight, we are doing the mackerel dish that Martin showed instead. He had that much impact. And that’s the other thing, every bloody RTE food show tells you how to do dinner party food. Who the hell has dinner parties? Martin shows you how to cook gorgeous tasty healthy food quickly, for you!

If you missed the first episode, kick yourself hard and just be thankful RTE now has it on the RTE Player (even if it built on the proprietary dying Realplayer technology, but that’s a topic for another blogpost).

Hopefully this show will also be the kick up the arse Kinsale needs to start living up again to its long-undeserved 1970s “Gourmet Capital of Ireland” tag. Quick, name five places in Kinsale you would travel an hour to eat in. Exactly.

Top Chef is the only food TV show for years that I actively look forward to seeing each week. Martin Shanahan has created a second.

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.

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.

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:

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?

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: