Award-winning blog of Irish food writer and broadcaster Caroline Hennessy.
Food Events / Irish beer & cider / Read
by Caroline · Published May 8, 2015 · Last modified October 25, 2017
Counting down the days? I am! The Kerrygold Ballymaloe Literary Festival of Food & Wine (and other good things!) is kicking off this day week, Friday 15 May, and running for that entire weekend. I’ll...
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:...
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...
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...
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 on RTÉ Lyric FM / Do / Radio / Read
by Caroline · Published January 15, 2014 · Last modified June 15, 2016
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.
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
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.
