Articles

It’s not as easy as it sounds to give visitors ‘a real taste of our Irish produce’ - but Darina has the answer to this common problem. I got a wonderful letter recently, beautifully hand-written by a woman who described herself as an octogenarian.
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This month Darina talks about one of the most anticipated restaurant openings in London for several years, a place where “beautifully fresh ingredients shine through with the minimum of interference”. How good is that.
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Darina says there are worse things to be addicted to than her new pedometer - and her other health resolutions this year include cutting the sugar content in Ballymaloe Cookery School recipes, and adjusting the balance of vegetable to meat consumption
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The scent of spices is synonymous with Christmas, so what better time for Darina to think back over the changes she has seen in our use of spices over three decades at Ballymaloe Cookery School - and to welcome Arun Kapil’s recently published cookbook, ‘Fresh Spice’.
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IFEST, the first major celebration of Irish culture and food was held in Boston recently - and Darina was there. It’s the brainchild of Rachael Kelly, the young entrepreneur who was behind the Taste of Dublin festival for many years. Her vision is to take IFEST to all the American cities where there is a strong Irish diaspora and not just to celebrate Ireland but to generate both business investment and tourism.
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There's going to be a great crop of blackberries this year, says Darina, and she has some terrific recipes for you to try
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The trend towards people growing their own food has sprung from a desire to eat healthily, says Darina, and she has some interesting seasonal recipes to tickle your taste buds
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We've gone crazy for seaweed in recent times, says Darina, and now she's really woken up to phenomenal variety of sea vegetables around our coast. We were always big fans (and still are) of carrageen moss and dillisk, but that was pretty much the limit of my knowledge of seaweeds up to relatively recently.
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A sense of discovery for Darina this month, as she recounts a wonderful Slow Food trip to Northern Ireland. If you’ve never taken the train from Dublin to Belfast put it on your ‘must do’ list immediately; it’s certainly one of the loveliest train journeys I have ever experienced, all along the North Dublin coast into Dundalk.
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On the countdown to the second LitFest at Ballymaloe, Darina lets us in on some of the hot tickets - and also the free events to be enjoyed by all. The excitement is really mounting, it’s just a week to this year’s Lit Fest at Ballymaloe , 16th -18th May. We’re particularly delighted that Kerrygold has come on board as our festival sponsors so the event has been renamed Kerrygold Ballymaloe Literary Festival of Food and Wine.
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