Award-winning blog of Irish food writer and broadcaster Caroline Hennessy.
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 the birthday cacao over. Mouthfuls of intense, savoury yumminess, and plenty of lovely runny egg yoke to mop up with homemade fennel-aniseed-caraway bread.
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 Julie & Julia. Meryl Streep plays a suitably patrician Julia, while the lovely Amy Adams takes on the role of Julie. Check out the trailer below 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’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).
For anyone who uses their freezer as much as I do and is always looking for tips to keep it more efficient:The Minimalist – Freezer Helps Make Cooking Cheaper and Easier – NYTimes.com
While I may not be able to do quite as much cooking and baking these days while tethered to the couch by Little Missy and her demands for food, I can always read about it and – as every new mum knows – online shopping is your friend. The results of a few precious uninterrupted minutes with the computer earlier this week landed on the doorstep today for my reading pleasure over the long weekend: Willie’s Chocolate Factory Cookbook and Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking.
I am fortunate enough to still have a Granny and, until I was 12, I also had a Nana. Nana, my mother’s mother, was sick throughout my childhood so we spent a lot of time at her home in Oldcastletown. Some of my early memories revolve around her Aga-warmed kitchen – the centre of the house – where there were always a selection of queencakes in a tin or fruitcake slices to be buttered for afternoon tea. Saturday was the baking day in that house. I remember being wrapped up in an apron before being shown how to fold in flour to a sponge cake or slicing apples to fill an enormous roasting tin-sized apple tart. That was the house of mushroom gluts and energetic jam making as us grandchildren were sent down the fields to pick mushrooms or into the orchard to gather windfalls and blackcurrants. Even when Nana wasn’t able to do the work herself, she kept an eagle eye over my mother and aunts as they completed the work to her satisfaction. I pored over her old cookbooks – subsequently having to buy Maura Laverty‘s Full and Plenty in homage – learned baking skills at her kitchen table, inherited her interest in hens and now live in a cottage just the other side of the hill from Oldcastletown.
…beautiful, solemn-eyed, unexpectedly straight-haired, long fingered little girl! Little Missy is a week old today and we’re gradually getting the hang of each other, just enough so I get to actually turn on my computer for five minutes while she sleeps for a while.
