A few favourite Irish cookbooks of 2014
Last shopping weekend before Christmas and if you’re looking for an Irish cookbook for someone special, here are a few ideas. Also check out my posts on books that came out earlier this year:...
Category: Read
Five favourite children’s storybooks for cooking inspiration
Summer holiday time is fine when the weather is good and we’re all outdoors with sun hats and shorts. But, when the wind changes, the showers arrive and a general air of grumpiness pervades...
Three Irish books for summer eating: No-Bake Baking, Wholesome, Where to Eat & Stay on the Wild Atlantic Way
Summer’s here, kids – what are we going to eat? There are a few Irish books floating round at the moment which might help you to make some decisions in that regard. 1. The...
Chocolate Nut Swirls and Bread on the Table by Valerie O’Connor
I have measured out my life with homemade breads. From “helping” my mother make brown soda loaves on Saturday mornings, through to my teenaged attempts at yeast baking with orange and raisin scrolls, coming...
Culture File: Limerick Food Trails with Val O’Connor
Limerick is Val O’Connor’s hometown and she showcases its food to perfection on her Limerick Food Trails.
Early one Saturday morning in November I met herself and a collection of fellow food tourists at Cornstore at Home for a little pre-tour tasting – think Limerick vs Cork via two platters of breakfast meats, one from Caroline Rigney of Curraghcase Meats, the other from Kanturk butcher Sir Jack McCarthy.
Irish Cookbooks for Christmas 2013 – part 2
Old school Irish publisher Gill & Mac has been taking cookbook production up a notch in the last few years and both of these hardbook books are lovely to look at as well as to cook from.
If every small town in Ireland had a Dream Deli selling fabulous brunch dishes like Fruit Tabbouleh, Weekend Waffles and Welsh Rarebit, we’d all eat out a lot more. Perhaps it’s best that this doesn’t happen – because instead you can have the fun of cooking your way through Lilly’s book, which includes (my favourite!) inventive devilled egg variations like beetroot and fennel, spiced coriander, wasabi and sesame seed. There are great salads (Mango and Shredded Chicken with Garam Masala Yoghurt, Quinoa with Pistachio and Pomegranate) and an assemble-on-the-spot Sicilian Wedding Cake that could set a new trend. lillyhiggins.ie
Christmas Baking with Stork
Anyone remember this booklet? Stork – yes, the Unilever margarine brand – has always been brilliant at putting together the kind of recipe collection that people return to again and again.
So many of us grew up baking and cooking our way through the Paula Daly series of McDonnell’s Good Food Cookbooks in the Seventies and Eighties. As far as I remember, you had to collect a certain amount of tokens from the marg packets – imagine opening the messy envelopes in Stork HQ! – and send them off with some money (probably that vintage thing, a postal order) to get the books.
Cookbooks for Christmas 2013 – Part 1
Shuush…you may not realise it but Christmas is coming. Or, like me, you may have small people in the house.
It took until June this year until I managed to distract them away from singing Christmas carols; now we’re back in full flow with Frosty the *blinking* Snowman. Sigh.
Still, with all this early concentration on the season in question – we had our first Christmas dinner two weeks ago before the Little Sister headed back to life in Aus – I’m hoping to get well ahead with my preparations. No allowing the Little Brother to order my cookbook presents on 21 December. He’s based in Austin, Texas for the moment.