Bibliocook - All About Food

Award-winning blog of Irish food writer and broadcaster Caroline Hennessy.

Category: Do

9

Do / Travel

Exchanging winter for summer

We left a damp, wintery Ireland last Friday morning and touched down to blue skies and sunshine in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Wednesday after a three-day stopover in Kuching with my Malaysian family. Sure beats sitting around in Ireland with the post-Christmas blues! While in Kuching we got a chance to feast on our favourite teh tarik, or pulled tea, and roti canai, layered Indian breads that are served with a runny dahl. The next day, the reheated roti are especially delicious when they reappear with kaya, an unctuous coconut spread, not unlike lemon curd. Daily feasts of tropical fruit at my aunt’s house included papaya, the hairy-skinned rambutan, several types of banana, mangosteen, sweet ripe pineapple and rich, juicy-to-your-elbows windfall mangos from the neighbour’s tree. This time round we avoided the durian, however!

4

Do

Food in films: Stranger than Fiction

Maggie Gyllenhaal in Stranger than Fiction - café not included Number three in an occasional series…Any foodie can’t help but be seduced by Ana Pascal’s (Maggie Gyllenhaal, never looking sexier than here, kneading dough in dungarees) passion for cooking in Marc Foster’s Stranger than Fiction. You can find a good review here on Confessions of a Film Critic. An anarchist baker, Ana runs a little café in New York, counters laden with tempting-looking cookies and cakes – just like the kind of café that you’d like to have in your own neighbourhood. Not amused by having to be audited by IRS agent Harold Crick (Will Ferrell, playing it straight for once), she nevertheless bakes him fresh chocolate chip cookies, serving them up with a glass of milk and a helping of light-up-the-screen charisma. She also has an amazing speech which, of course, I can’t fully remember or find online anywhere, about how she realised in law school that she was meant to be a baker, giving a litany of American cookies, traybakes and brownies that will have you salivating at the cinema. And how does the IRS agent win her heart? With a box of flours – rye, wholegrain – all in littlebrown paper bags with colour-coded stickers. Anyone stuck for an idea for your favourite foodie this Christmas?

1

Do / Eating Out

Food at the Craft Fair

Super Spelt - still my favourite! If anyone’s around Dublin for the weekend and at a loose end – although that might be unlikely given the time of the year! – the National Crafts and Design Fair is on at the RDS in Dublin this weekend. The Dublin-based Cousin and I went along last night and discovered plenty of ways of spending our money on arty, crafty bits for Christmas, plus a whole room devoted to a variety of food products, whether you’re looking for regato style goat’s cheese from Cloon Goat Farm or tubs of soft Springwell Sheep’s Cheese, to stock up for Christmas on Filligans’ chutneys, mustards and jams (make sure you check out the Irish Peach & Cardamon Chutney), mini caramel waffles from Wicklow Fine Foods and Boozeberries festive-coloured liqueur.

2

Do / Travel

Eating our way through Norfolk

Letheringsett Watermill - the only working watermill in Norfolk Last weekend’s (unexpectedly extended) stay in England included a trip to the best farm shop I’ve ever visited, the HFG Farm Shop at Beeston, Norfolk. We were in Norwich visiting the Engineering Couple and my kinswoman, their beloved Irish terrier, Bridie, who, knowing my love of food, brought us there after a morning spent tramping and on the river in their Canadian canoe. Outside the shop were long stems of brussels sprouts and sparkly Christmas wreaths but the real treasure was inside. Tables were piled with home baking – hungry from our morning’s activities, Paradise Slices, Flapjacks, Shortbread and Date Slices immediately caught our eye – while groaning shelves of jams, jellies, oils, vinegars and chocolate lined the walls. A freezer was stocked with a multi-coloured selection of loose frozen fruits and baskets of locally grown vegetables were stacked high at the end of the room. The food available was more than tempting and, although I did resist, I still managed to walk out of the shop heavily laden with the aforementioned baking, brown paper bags of spelt and wholewheat flour from Letheringsett Watermill, a warty celeriac, a selection of nobbly Jerusalem artichokes and, because I never can resist something gingery, a bottle of Great Uncle Cornelius’ Finest Spiced Ginger Non-Alcoholic Apertif.

2

Do / Travel

Cherries and chocolate from Berlin

Cherries from Berlin I didn’t have much time for shopping on my recent Berlin trip but I did manage to make a selection of purchases around the themes (although I didn’t notice this at the time!) of cherries and chocolate, mostly from the fantastic Kollwitzplatz Saturday Market.In the cherry category we have:1 x bottle of Griotka cherry liqueur from Prague Airport. Very useful when you arrive at a cold cottage late on Friday nights, especially when sips of the liqueur are alternated with sips of caramelised cinnamon hot chocolate.1 x bottle of kirschwasser or cherry brandy from Berlin. Still unopened. I’m limiting myself to one bottle of alcoholic cherry drink at a time!1 x small tin box of Pulmoll cherry sweets, also from Prague Airport.1 x bar of Nestle Noir Cerise chocolate. Decided to pass this to the family – it then disappeared too quickly for me to test it.1 x jar of amazing cherry-laden jam from Scandinavia, I think, that I ended up buying after starting a conversation with a Very Persuasive saleswoman in Kollwitzplatz Market.

2

Do / Read

Claudia Roden podcast

Claudia Roden I recently got a mail from a New York PR company about a Nextbook podcast featuring one of my favourite cookbook writers, Middle Eastern food enthusiast Claudia Roden. Nextbook’s interviewer, Hugh Levinson, visited her kitchen in London and talks to her while she prepares Poulet aux Dattes (Chicken with Dates) and Salade de Tomates et Poivrons Grillés (Grilled Tomato and Pepper Salad), both from her last publication, The Book of Jewish Food.

3

Do

Corrigan Knows Food on RTÉ

Richard Corrigan The second episode of Richard Corrigan’s show, Corrigan Knows Food, will be on RTÉ One this evening at 7pm. While I think Corrigan can sometimes go a bit overboard (his recent Late Late Show appearance was embarrassing, to say the least) when he’s on form, he’s an enthusiastic presenter and inspiring cook. Why, however, someone felt the need to shoehorn the man into a badly-fitting magazine format, is a mystery. Anne Kennedy has a good review of the first programme in the series here on Greatfood.ie and you can watch the show online here.