Award-winning blog of Irish food writer and broadcaster Caroline Hennessy.
Last year’s Lit Fest was – officially – a blast. Three whirlwind days of ideas and education and inspiration from cookbook heroes. I learned how to ferment cabbage from Sandor Katz, make Claudia Roden’s...
Culture File on RTÉ Lyric FM / Do / Food Events / Radio
by Caroline · Published January 21, 2014 · Last modified March 2, 2018
Joe Fitzmaurice, from the family behind Blazing Salads in Dublin, runs the Cloughjordan Wood-fired Bakery in North Tipperary. The bread he makes there is a thing of beauty, meant to nourish and feed in...
Cookery Books / Food Events / Read
by Caroline · Published October 9, 2013 · Last modified October 25, 2017
In 2007 I did the 12-week cookery course at Ballymaloe. I only had to come down the road for it; many of my classmates had travelled much further, coming from England, Spain, Sweden, Australia and America to study in this internationally known Irish cookery school. It was an intense, hard-working, food-filled transition time for me, a hiatus between full-time work in Dublin and freelancing from a country cottage.
It was also pure luxury, three months spent immersed in a kitchen. We cooked all morning, ate the results for lunch, watched demos in the afternoons and – hungry again – queued eagerly to devour what had been produced. Just as well there was some time spent hoovering the demo room, carrying buckets of scraps to the hens (two of the students’ chores) and walking to the pub (not such a chore!) to balance it all out.
Culture File on RTÉ Lyric FM / Food Events / Radio / Work
by Caroline · Published June 7, 2013 · Last modified October 25, 2017
Cabbages empowering people? Stranger things have happened, especially in the bubbly, fizzy, pungent world of fermentation legend Sandor Katz. His demonstration at the recent Ballymaloe LitFest was one of the hottest tickets of the weekend,...
It’s a simple thing: pay a fiver in to the local primary school on a sunny Sunday for a purple wristband, a bowl and fork. Wind your way through the throng in the main...
When I lived in New Zealand, I was exposed to lots of unfamiliar ingredients and food terms. Things like kumera and feijoa were unknown, Egg and Bacon Pie and Ginger Crunch new taste sensations,...
Time to grab some beer and head out for a couple of events with Eight Degrees Brewing. First up, I’m taking part in a Slow Food East Cork event at Ballymaloe Cookery School tomorrow...
Bake / Food Events / Irish beer & cider
by Caroline · Published October 25, 2012 · Last modified December 1, 2020
Standing on a wobbly kitchen chair to reach the mixing bowl, apron wrapped twice round my middle and my tongue taking a snatched opportunity to explore the rough texture of a well-used wooden spoon: food memories....
