This has been a rather mixed year in the garden. Despite all my busy sowing early in the year, there wasn’t a whole load to harvest after those pesky rabbits got stuck into all the tasty green shoots. Still, the arrival of four cats (and the occasional extra stray or two) has put a stop to the dozen or so rabbits that we used to see in the mornings, carvorting in and around the raised beds, and we have managed to get our hands on some of our own garden produce.
There was a rich, savoury smell in the autumn air as a band marched down the crowded streets of Kanturk, leading a white and crimson velvet-gowned troup. The members of the Brotherhood of the Knights of the Black Pudding had travelled from France to pay tribute to the gold medal-winning black pudding of father and son butchers Jack and Tim McCarthy.
I’ve been a Domini Kemp fan since she and her sister, Peaches, opened the first Itsabagel in Dublin’s Epicurean Food Hall. I fell in love with the Mountaineer bagel at first bite and Itsabagel became a regular port of call as well as the unanimous office choice when I was picking up lunch for everyone. I loved her first 2002 cookbook, Real Food, Real Fast, especially the sweet side of things: the Sticky Toffee Pudding makes masses and is a well-tried-and-tested large crowd dessert, the gooey Pistachio and Chocolate Biscuits never linger long and White Chocolate Berries is a great bring-along-dessert for dinner at a friend’s house.
These turkeys have legs! After a call from a Newstalk researcher on Friday, I was on the Tom Dunne show yesterday morning, talking about keeping – and harvesting – turkeys for Christmas.
They may not be recognisable from the shrink-wrapped fowl that you can pick up at the supermarket for your Christmas dinner but these awkward-looking animals are actually turkeys. Bronze turkeys, to be precise, and they came to live down the bottom of my garden a month ago. They are not pets: they are dinner and, especially when they’re misbehaving, I’m already dreaming about a golden roasted turkey, complete with all the trimmings, quietly steaming away on the Christmas table.
Ahem! Now, I know that the theme of tonight’s cookalong is actually autumn fruit and I know that a courgette isn’t exactly what you might call a fruit but as it grew in my garden and I’m turning it into a Very Good Cake, I thought I might get away with it. Besides, this is the kind of recipe that should need no apology although you will find yourself, all afluster, trying to justify it when people look and say, “Courgette Cake, really!” in a doubting tone of voice. Just tell them it’s a bit like Carrot Cake – that will convince many of the-you-can’t-put-vegetables-into-a-sweet-cake crowd – or simply cut them a little piece and try not to look smug when they come back for seconds.
