Bibliocook: All About Food

For two years now we've had sunshine - during some very dodgy summers! - for the Mallow Food Festival and hopefully this year will make three in a row. At the last festival myself and the Mallow Girl had a great laugh manning the Urru stall and now, despite the fact that Urru Mallow is gone, she's already got the preparation for this year's festival well in hand. See below for a press release and mark Sunday 23 August into your diary!

The 23 of August - the day of the Mallow Food Festival - is the day that all foodies in North Cork look forward to. On Sunday 23 August, from 12 noon until 3.30pm, Mallow's main street will be lined with food stalls offering all kinds of tasty treasures. The previous years have been extremely successful with traders selling out long before the 3.30pm closing time.

This year the organising committee are hopping to increase the number of traders that participate in the festival. If you currently hold a regular stall at a farmers market or if you are involved in the catering industry and would be interested in getting involved please contact Claire on 085 1211004 or Roisin on 087 0554382 or via email at MallowFoodFestival@gmail.com.

Driving to Galley Head Lighthouse is a bit like a magical mystery tour. Although easy to see from a variety of locations along the West Cork coast, the lighthouse - like an ever-receeding mirage - seems to disappear from sight the closer you get. Eventually, however, after driving constantly south of Clonakilty, past numerous private property signs and along a low-lying road, protected on either side by stone walls, you get to where you can drive no further. The lighthouse stands at the tip of a peninsula, surrounded by the sea, and the lighthouse keeper's house that we were staying in is part of a two-sided structure that shelters the parking area at the front from the northern and western winds.

We got the perfect weather, opening the window shutters - no curtains could blot out the lighthouse beams - to sunshine every day. Hours were spent lying on the near-deserted beaches nearby but we got just enough of a sea mist in the evenings to justify lighting the sitting room fire. With such a fabulous place to stay, there was no point in going out for dinner so we shopped in Clonakilty, especially in the well-stocked Scally's SuperValu, and cooked in every night.

The Husband came up with this Lighthouse Ling, which was so good that it made an appearance two nights during our stay. You can also try using any other firm white fish but ling, which I like for its good flavour, was also the cheapest on offer on Scally's well-stocked fish counter. They also had Spanish asparagus so we tucked the spears into the cooking dish alongside the fish to roast at the same time, serving it with a chunky vegetable stew (thanks to my Kildorrery Aunt who gave us a box of veg left over from a post-wedding barbeque!) and some crusty bread for mopping. This is also good with some chopped chorizo scattered on the base of the dish along with the garlic.

Things will be quiet about here next week as the Husband, Little Missy and myself are heading down to West Cork for a few nights. We're staying in one of the Irish Landmark Trust's restored properties on Galley Head, just south of Clonakilty, and I'm hoping to do lots of eating!

I'd love to make it to Durrus to eat at Carmel's Good Things Café, check out the Friday market in Bantry, visit Baltimore for lunch in the Glebe Gardens (and to see what Jean has done with the garden since we were there in February) and eat some more Ardagh Castle Goats' Cheese.

Any suggestions for food-orientated things to do in the area?

Tablefuls of tapas, full English breakfasts, bags of cherries, good coffee aplenty, savoury bacon baps and decadent brownies - just a few of the things that Little Missy enjoyed, albeit second hand, while in London at the weekend. After a hissy fit at Cork Airport - yes, we were that couple carrying a screaming baby through the plane as the other passengers turned their heads, hoping that we wouldn't sit near them - she settled into enjoying her first trip abroad.

As we were over for a brief, all-too-short meeting with her Kiwi grandparents, we didn't have our usual list of things to do and eat. We just took it easy, spending quality time with Nana and Poppa, taking time out when LM wanted to eat to relax over a coffee ourselves. When not feeding, she spent her time travelling on my hip in a sling or in the pouch on her father's chest, looking around with big blue eyes and charming the inhabitants of London.

We stayed near Spitalfields so, although I didn't to get to St John Bread and Wine this time, we did manage a dinner at Meson Los Barriles with the Artist. Tapas and babies turned out to be a good mix and meeting up with the Artist, a former housemate during our Dublin years, was an unalloyed joy. She knows me well, presenting LM with a baby-sized pink spatula for future cooking adventures, with instructions to make sure she gets to lick the bowl out properly!

We were back at the Spitalfields market the following morning to try out Leon for breakfast. Much of the menu was familiar from the my well-used Leon cookbook, the baps were good and we finished up with a yummy Black Forrest Knickerbocker Glory while LM slept on the bench beside us. We also wandered over to the famous - and crowded - Borough Market for a quick look but, with baby, Husband and suitcase in tow, I did no more than check out the busy stalls and grab provisions for a picnic in Hyde Park.

We didn't get to cover as much ground as we normally do on our London trips but it was more than made up for by the fact that Little Missy seemed to thrive on the experience. Hopefully this is a good omen for New Zealand at Christmas time!

We were slow off the mark this year with our planting but now - finally - we have some produce from our garden. The salad seedlings that the Husband set in large pots (they are easy targets for the slugs and whitefly if planted out in the garden) are taking off so we now get to have more than just the one leaf per meal.

Herbs that I thought were dead - tarragon, marjoram, lovage, garlic chives - have resurrected themselves to be repotted and join the little container garden that lives outside my kitchen. I already have bay, rosemary, thyme, lemon thyme, both curly and flat leaf parsley, chives, sage and a large fennel there for the picking. The mint is taking over a damp patch near the ditch, we have high hopes for the corriander this year and the two basil plants that we got at the Killavullen Farmers' Market are recovering from a somewhat bumpy trip home.

Being able to use handfuls of herbs in cooking is one of the great joys of growing your own. I never could be bothered with those measly supermarket packets, especially after living close to Middle Eastern shops in Dublin that sold parsley, mint and corriander by the large bunch rather than the stalk.

The four raised beds out in the garden are playing host to a variety of vegetables, including beetroot, cucumber (a Siberian variety, hope it can cope with Ireland!), tomatoes, carrots and some very healthy looking shallots. So far, at least, they've survived the demise of Little - we don't seem to have much luck with cats - and the resurgence of our rabbit population. The Husband went to town with the potatoes, which are divided between one of the raised beds and several adjacent ridges. It's looking like we won't have to buy spuds for a while to come.

The most prolific edible crop, so far, has been the radishes. A variety from Brown Envelope Seeds called Scarlet Globe, their skin is a vivid red colour, a gorgeous contrast with the snow white flesh. We've been eating them tossed in with all leaf salads, they make a crunchy addition to my Warm Potato and Chorizo Salad on cooler nights and I'm loving Clothilde's combination of radishes, mashed avocado and smoked salt. I still have a little garlic and chilli manuka smoked salt from our last NZ trip which goes particularly well with this line-up of ingredients.

Clothilde also has a Radish Leaf Pesto recipe, although our leaves are a little too hairy to be really palatable, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves. If you also have a radish glut - some day we really will learn about successive sowing! - you can find some more recipes here.

Ever since Louise Sowan of Sowan's Organics put me on to Cork Coffee Roasters I've been a fan. Their full bodied Rebel City Espresso is a fixture in my kitchen and I rarely manage to go past their stall at the Mahon Point Farmer's Market or events like the Mallow Food Festival without getting my hands on a caffeine fix. The Sister is even worse. She is luck enough to live around the corner from the Cork Coffee Roasters café. As a result, weekend phone calls between us are punctuated by her frequent stops at CCR to order yet another cappuccino. Meanwhile - especially since Urru Mallow closed down - I'm stuck in the sticks with nothing to comfort me except my stove top espresso maker.

While I was pregnant with Little Missy I suddenly, to my absolute horror, went right off coffee. I had to turn to hot chocolates (not too much of a problem if it's from Urru or the Ó Conaill Chocolate café but horrible most other places) for my caffeine highs during those months. Cork visits were more likely to involve a trip to French Church Street for a dark cardamom at Ó Conaill Chocolate than a visit to CCR. Fortunately, not long after LM was introduced to the outside world, I was back on the black stuff with a vengeance.

Today's trip to Cork made me realise, once again, how much I love Cork Coffee Roasters. Firstly, there's the coffee which is dark and rich and tastes so good, even when I make it at home. CCR is owned by Master Coffee Roaster John Gowan who, after 20 years in Seattle, returned to his native Cork to specialise in hand-roasted small-batch coffee blends. Not content with producing the best coffee in Cork, John then opened the café on Bridge Street. It's a simple set up - great coffee with a few good things to eat (courtesy of the Natural Foods Bakery) - but there's a relaxed, friendly feeling about the place that adds up to far more than the sum of its parts.

If you're not doing the dive-and-roll quick takeaway coffee, Cork Coffee Roasters is a great place to sit in while watching the world go by. Little Missy gives it the thumbs up too, having had her second breakfast there today, nursing away while myself and the Sister were downing our coffees. There's also a changing table in the bathroom for any nappy emergencies. Now all I need to do is persuade John Gowan to open a CCR outpost in Mallow, Fermoy or Mitchelstown.

A quick marinade to make, with herbs from the garden, while someone else is lighting the barbecue. Avoid chicken breasts - overpriced and tasteless pieces of cotton wool that they are - and grab yourself some cheap and tasty chicken thighs instead.

I normally allow two per person or one if I have a lot of other edibles on offer. Because I have a tiny barbecue, I always finish the cooking in the oven to make space for other things - and to make sure that the chicken doesn't dry out too much.

Great research is the key to Mark Kurlansky's The Food of a Younger Land. The subtitle - A Portrait of American Food--Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal - explains the what of the latest book on food from the author of Salt, Cod and The Big Oyster.

The why stems from the 1930s. The Federal Writers' Project, part of President Roosevelt's New Deal, sent writers out across the country to write about and record the food of the land. This project, called America Eats, was shelved after America became involved in WWII and never fully completed. Although untouched for years. Kurlansky takes the bones of the research, some more fleshed out than others, and puts it in context, explaining who the writers were - some were just typists, others authors in their own right - as well as giving more information about food and customs mentioned in the text.

I grew up on classic American children's literature like the Little Women series by Louisa May Alcott, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie books, and the What Katy Did books by Susan Coolidge so the descriptions of sugaring-off, baked beans, spoon bread and pop corn are richly evocative. The Food of a Younger Land fills in the fascinating back stories of many dishes that appear not only in children's books but also in American novels and films. Parts of it will also be familiar to fans of the Kitchen Sisters' Hidden Kitchens radio series.

The Food of a Younger Land is an epicurean tour of a time long disappeared. Wend your way, in Kurlansky's friendly company, along the backroads of a different America, a land where squirrels were regarded as game, the mint julep causes controversy and hush puppies come from Florida. A book well worth savouring.

The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky is published by Riverhead Books.

Since Little Missy arrived on the scene, the breadmaker has been working at full tilt. The loaves aren't the most beautiful but, then again, looks aren't everything and the convenience and flavour more than make up for it. A few mornings a week, before the Husband heads out the door to work, he loads it up with the ingredients for a Fennel-Aniseed-Caraway Loaf and, as Little Missy and I snooze away, it kneads, proves, knocks back and bakes a loaf of warm, sweet-smelling bread. At least, that has been the routine.

This morning, though, I did a bit of disasterous fiddling with the mixture - thought it was too dry so added some water then figured it looked wet so put in some more flour - and left it to go on its own merry way, or so I thought. I didn't realise that the amount of mixture added up to a little more than the machine could cope with until, a few hours later, I smelled burning and caught sight of smoke pouring from under the lid.

Fortunately I was there in the house to catch it before it caused too much damage, and it was promptly switched off, plugged out and emptied outside. The bread had flowed over the sides of the internal baking tin and was burning, creating copious amounts of acrid-smelling smoke, onto the cooking element that heats the breadmaker. There'll be no upping the quanitities of ingredients in future, always presuming that I'll be able to use it again!

Here's the recipe for the Fennel-Aniseed-Caraway Loaf that we make at the moment. My midwife recommended I take the fennel, aniseed and caraway seeds in a tea to help my milk production when I started nursing Little Missy but they taste far better in bread. You don't need to be producing milk to enjoy this bread: it's especially good toasted and eaten with boiled, scrambled or fried eggs.

My breadmaker is a Cookworks Signature Stainless Steel one from Argos that I got via Gumtree and I normally use it, as below, to make a 2lb loaf. For this machine, you put the liquid in before the flour but I know some machines are different - just check the manual for your own machine.

Mornings have gotten spicier in recent times, not to mention more chocolaty, as I've been using some of Carluccio's hot chilli oil to fry my breakfast egg (ah, maternity leave: time - Little Missy willing - for a full breakfast!) and grating lots of birthday cacao over. Mouthfuls of intense, savoury yumminess, and plenty of lovely runny egg yoke, courtesy of our ever-productive hens, to mop up with homemade Fennel-Aniseed-Caraway Bread.

I've also had these, like Willie suggests in his book, with beans, using some of the Mexican Beans that I always keep stashed in the freezer. Well worth trying out.

I've just been enjoying the trailer for Julie & Julia, a film based on two books: My Life in France by American chef Julia Child and Julie Powell's laugh-out-loud memoir. Meryl Streep plays a suitably patrician Julia in post-WWII Paris, while the lovely Amy Adams takes on the role of modern day Julie. Check out the trailer below, read my review of Julie Powell's book here and watch out for the film, which should be out in Ireland on 11 September. I just might have to smuggle Little Missy in to the cinema!

After watching all the programmes and getting my hands on the book, the Husband turned up trumps for my birthday with a selection of Willie Harcourt-Cooze's chocolate blocks and bars.

I now have a couple of his 70% Peruvian dark chocolate bars, another pair of the 72% Venezuelan dark chocolate bars and, most especially, two blocks of the 100% pure cacao for cooking with. We've only opened the Peruvian bar so far - a dinky little square box that contains two slabs of fruity, full-flavoured eating chocolate. This isn't chocolate for the fainthearted or those that prefer milk chocolate but, for me, it is heaven in a box!

We spent the weekend trying out the cacao à la Willie: grated over eggs fried in chilli oil, with a spicy tomato mince sauce, on top of scrambled eggs. He recommends that you use the cacao as if it were salt, to accentuate flavour, and the smell of chocolate over meals is getting to be a familiar one. I'll have to try some of the sweet as well as savoury recipes in his cookbook now.

Willie's chocolate isn't very widely available but, for Cork readers, the Husband managed to track it down in the English Market's Chocolate Shop and I've also seen it on sale at the Gubbeen stall which goes around to various markets, including the one in Mahon Point on Thursdays.

I've been getting out and about a good bit recently - Little Missy always in tow as she doesn't like to let her food source out of sight for too long - and I've noticed that lunchtimes have suddenly become more complicated. It's not as easy to hop on a bus and head down to Cork as I used to do regularly, meeting up with one of the Sisters or the Small Brother for lunch at The Continental (Ballymaloe-style food, never as busy as it should be), Annie's gastropub (the walk up to Sunday's Well will work up an appetite for their fantastic food) or The Liberty Grill (close to UCC for the Little Sister, with enough big burgers and chunky sandwiches to keep any errant student happy).

Now, with pushchair attached and car a necessity, it's not as easy to manoeuver our way into the city centre. A trip to Limerick's Crescent Shopping Centre - H&M there is one of the few places that stock a choice of reasonably priced nursing tops - led to a horribly burnt O'Briens' toasted sandwich, eaten in the car as I fed Little Missy. A trip to Mahon Point on a Wednesday led to me getting a horrible bagel at The Bagel Bar in their food court, after which I vowed never again to rely on shopping centre food offerings.

An abortive journey - someone forgot their essential photo id - to Cork to get Little Missy registered was made up for with a very pleasant, relaxed lunch at Jacobs (make sure you order the D&B - Date & Butterscotch Pudding - for pudding). After you get past the four steps at the entrance, the airy spacious room is very easy to manage with a pushchair and, if you choose well, lunch need be no more expensive than the rubbish served at O'Briens.

Second time round, registration went without a hitch so, as it was a Thursday, we took the opportunity to meet up with the Husband for lunch at the Mahon Point Farmers' Market. We arrived there first so there was plenty of time to look around at our lunch options. I picked the steak sandwiches that were being sold by Gar's Sandwiches, a stall that also had proper spicy ginger beer, brewed down Dingle-direction. The Husband went for a chicken wrap, with juicy roasted peppers and onions although, as some rugby players turned up to order armloads of wraps before him, his wait was much longer than mine. Little Missy insisted on her own lunch as I was eating, something that was easy to facilitate at one of the many tables and chairs scattered around the market.

Free parking, a choice of good food for a sociable lunch and plenty of other stalls for stocking up makes the Mahon Point Farmers' Market a great lunchtime choice, especially as I get to catch up with friends and family there. Any other suggestions for baby-friendly lunch venues welcomed!