Bibliocook - All About Food Blog

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Lyric fm: The Sacred Harp and Dinner-on-the-Grounds

Somehow I can manage to get food into most reports that I do for Lyric fm’s Culture File.

Ireland’s first Sacred Harp Convention took place in University College Cork over the first weekend in March. I was there, recording and enjoying the singing – but also asking people about Dinner-on-the-Grounds.

Wagyu beef steaks 2

Steak for supper: wagyu from James Whelan Butchers

Steak is always a very special treat at the cottage but, when Pat Whelan of James Whelan Butchers sends a couple of wagyu beef steaks, that’s into another stratosphere entirely. They arrived in a brown paper parcel, all tied up with string, neatly labelled and sealed with red wax.

Crack Chicken: chilli chicken crunch, burnt lemon and whipped feta sauce, roast parsnip & nigella seed salad 10

Underground dining: Crackbird, Dublin

You wait for something to happen on the underground dining scene in Ireland for years – and then they all come along at once. Two weeks ago I wrote about Clonakilty by Candlelight, last week my feature on that plus Lilly Higgins’s Loaves and Fishes Supper Club was broadcast on Lyric fm. Then, on Friday myself and the Writer took ourselves for a post-gallery launch, pre-bookclub dinner at Crackbird, the pop up restaurant on Crane Lane in Dublin’s Temple Bar.

Loaves and Fishes Supper Club, courtesy of lillyhiggins.blogspot.com 4

Underground Dining: The Loaves and Fishes Supper Club

Blogger Lilly Higgins runs an underground restaurant called the Loaves and Fishes Supper Club and I interviewed her for a feature that was broadcast on Lyric fm’s Culture File last week. As the piece was very short, I couldn’t use very much of her interview but, seeing as there is so much interest in the whole idea of underground dining at the moment, here’s a podcast of the chat we had at her home in Cobh last month.

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A bit cheeky: Beef, Mushroom and Red Wine Pie

I hadn’t intended on cooking beef cheeks for a family lunch but a chance trip to the English Market to meet Clare and her MM on Saturday morning gave me an unexpected opportunity. Queuing at Tom Durcan Meats, there was a bit of banter with the man ahead of me about the lamb’s liver for one that he was picking up – like myself at the cottage, no one else in his house will eat it – and then, rather than ordering a kilo of stewing beef, I asked the butcher what would he recommend for long, slow cooking. “I have an idea,” he said, “but I’m not sure you’ll like it. How do you feel about beef cheeks?”