Articles

MARILYN BRIGHT talks to the folk behind Howth’s busiest and buzziest harbourside restaurant, The Oar House – a relatively new restaurant but part of along-established business, and one with its own fishing boat to boot.
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This dish is a great favourite in our house with the young and old. I am constantly being asked for the recipe - so here it is. The tagine is best made the day before allowing the wonderful warming aromatic flavours to develop. This is a wonderful dish to feed a crowd, I often serve it in bowls; hot tagine poured over cous cous at room temperature, lots of coriander, with a sprinkle of crunchy toasted almonds, and the surprise of pomegranate seeds.
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Neven Maguire has a special place in Irish food and in the hearts of Irish food lovers, and it is well earned. Whether through the family business, MacNean House & Restaurant in Blacklion, Co Cavan, his TV and competition work (including representing Ireland at the Bocuse d’Or in 2001), or the many events and individuals he has supported down the years, he has done many great services to Irish food – perhaps most notably through his dedication to his own area and the best of local seasonal produce, which (despite the fact that he is still a young man) he has vigorously supported for many years.
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Gubbeen Farmhouse Products are made by the Ferguson family at their beautifully located dairy farm near Schull in West Cork. Tom and Giana Ferguson are the fifth generation to care for this lovely place, which is now synonymous with their beautiful semi-soft Gubbeen cheese - and, increasingly, the Gubbeen Smokehouse products made by their son, Fingal.
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It was a Friday afternoon when I arrived in Austin, the capital of Texas. I was teaching an Irish cooking class at Central Market. I was early. The Capitol Building was calling me. I had visited once before, ever so briefly but had this urge to go back. Upon entering the building I noticed quite a few tour guides eagerly waiting to share their knowledge.
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As a restaurateur in Ireland it often happened that a customer would shyly come up to one and confide that they “Always had an ambition to run a restaurant”. This was always a moment which required supreme tact. Without somehow giving the idea that one was a total martyr to the cause I always felt obliged to deliver the message that the restaurant business is not at all the glamorous one that people imagine. It requires large measures of stamina, tact, stoicism as well as the more expected flair for entertaining and genius in the kitchen.
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This month Darina focuses on the value of growing your own fresh food – and the huge impact that Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden at the White House has had in a country where the connection between eating habits health is a particularly challenging issue. Following Barack Obama’s re-election, this small but mighty force for good is now set to continue for another four years.
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There are a lot of apple trees at Castlefarm and Jenny Young explains what they do with the excess fruit. At Castlefarm we have two orchards beside our house. The old orchard was planted by Peter’s grandparents nearly a century ago. The newer orchard was planted by Peter and I during the winter of 2007. We received a small REPS grant to plant this orchard of 26 trees. We sourced old Irish apple varieties from Seed Savers.
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Back in late summer when the broad beans, early peas and early spuds were finished cropping, I cleaned up the beds and sowed a green manure called phacelia in the beds (the seeds were broadcast liberally in the soil and then raked in). The seeds germinated within a few days, and within weeks we had a lovely carpet of light green plants covering the beds. This week, the phacelia was ready to be cut down and dug in to the soil.
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The Christmas crop of food books is exceptionally heavy this season - I was tempted to test this, literally, on the bathroom scales as there’s been a move towards posh hardbacks since the recession started and the difference in weight is very noticeable.
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