IFBA/Bord Bia/From Plate to Page Cook-Off

Dishes in competition - just before the judges got their forks into them

Every time I meet up with Kristin on Irish Food Blogger Association business we seem to manage to include plenty of eating opportunities. Take last week. Before the Bord Bia/From Plate to Page cook-off at Cooks Academy on Thursday night we had already paid a visit to Murphys’ Ice Cream on Wicklow Street for coffees and ice cream (mine’s an affrogato, dark chocolate ice cream essential).

There was a pre-cook-off get together with Bord Bia‘s Maeve and Vanessa from Cooks Academy over tapas in the Market Bar before we got to observe, smell and – finally – taste the competition entries that Catherine, David, Joanna and Mona cooked that night.

Each of the four did brilliantly – the only problem was having to decide which two people would get to represent Ireland, and Irish beef, in Germany. In fact the decision making process was so drawn out that we had to go back for several re-tastings of the four dishes, which wasn’t altogether a bad thing. See below for the list of what we had to suffer through – I’d willingly have fuller plates of any of these four dishes:

• Kitchen 72: Beef Cheek with Guinness and Soy Glaze, Wilted Mibuna, Caulifower Purée and Pickled Vegetables
• Smörgåsblog: Surf agus Turf
• The Runcible Spoon: Beef, and the beer that loves it
• Wise Words: Ribeye to die for

But we had to choose two and, after a very chilled out cook-off, the bloggers that won the tickets to From Plate to Page residential food bloggers’ photography and writing workshop, courtesy of Bord Bia, were Kitchen 72’s David and Mona from Wise Words. Special mention has also to go to the fresh pea shoots in Joanna’s Surf agus Turf and Catherine’s use of O’Hara’s Leann Folláin extra stout in her gravy.

We have to say a big thank you to all our contestants who put such an effort in to their recipes, posts and cooking on Thursday. It was delightful to meet up with you all – and to taste your dishes! Lucy from Lola-Lu’s Kitchen was indispensable on the night, the only one of us who knew her way around that particular kitchen. And what a kitchen it was. Cooks Academy’s light and airy cooking space was ideal for such an event.

Maeve from Bord Bia was busy interviewing everyone on the night so you can get a real flavour of the goings-on from her recordings on Audioboo, check out the judges (courtesy of Lucy!) here and there are more some photos from the cook-off here.