Articles

Castlefarm is starting to get very festive looking. We decorated the farm shop last week and nearly all our organic turkeys have been sold. These come from the Colchesters’ organic farm in Kilkenny. I have also ordered Irish hams from O’Neill Foods, cranberry sauce from Gees Jams, candles from Derrynine candles, potatoes from John O’Brien, confectionery from Wicklow Fine Foods and lots more yummy festive Irish food.
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I had a bit of a panic last weekend when it occurred to me that I hadn’t sown anywhere near enough spinach or chard when I did my ‘winter sowing’ back in September. I’m a big fan of spinach, particularly in the winter months when there are few other sources of leafy greens in the vegetable patch. I love using tiny little spinach leaves in salads and larger ones in stir-fries, soups and the likes. But problem is, I reckon I only have enough left in the veg patch to see me up to Christmas.
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This may be the season of goodwill but Lucy Madden’s feet are still very firmly on the ground as she reflects on an ‘interesting’ year and shares some incredibly awful (and hopefully isolated) dining experiences that seem inexplicable in a country where good food and hospitality are seen as fundamental to our national recovery - Christmas will be a welcome break, but there’s certainly plenty of urgent work to get stuck into come January!
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Although only open in this characterful Donnybrook premises for a year, O'Connells Restaurant has held a unique position on the Dublin dining scene for over a decade. In 1999, Tom O'Connell and his brother Rory (brothers of Darina Allen of Ballymaloe Cookery School) got together to open a new kind of ingredients-led restaurant...
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The short days of November and December are brightened by festivals, and also the abundance of wonderful seasonal produce that we have at our disposal – fruit, vegetables and foraged foods, also game to add to our usual range of meats.
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Despite the fact that the Minister for Agriculture is determined to ban the sale of raw milk, all is not yet lost – a few thoughts on the subject. I was reared on raw milk, originally from our own little Kerry cow and later from our neighbour’s dairy herd. When pasteurised milk eventually came to our village in the late 1950s it tasted strange and unappetising to our palate.
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The Castlefarm orchard looks bare. We spent the last few weeks of October picking quince, apples, pears and hazelnuts. This month I will be busy transforming this fruit into jams and chutneys. We planted our orchard four years ago, with fruit trees from Seedsavers and English’s Nursery.
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It was World Food Day last month and as I always do with these vast global events, I tried to think about it down at the only level that makes any sense to me – my vegetable patch. One of my main motivations for growing my own food is that supermarkets just don’t provide any real variety when it comes to fruit and vegetables.
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Print publishing may be in an uncertain place right now, and book shops feeling the force of the move towards e-publishing but, judging by the bumper crop of books that have come in for review this autumn, there’s nothing to beat seeing a handsomely produced book on the shelf – and books still make the greatest Christmas presents.
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Lamb is widely produced throughout Ireland, but the size, texture, flavour and season vary considerably depending on the terrain and climate, with the main division being between lowland lamb (large breeds, typically with the familiar creamy wool, early season) and upland or mountain lamb...
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