Award-winning blog of Irish food writer and broadcaster Caroline Hennessy.
by Caroline · Published February 2, 2006 · Last modified January 30, 2019
Ilva at Lucullian delights – an Italian experience tagged me for the Common Cold Remedies Meme. This was started by Raquel over at Raquel’s Box of Chocolate when she asked what people do when they have the sniffles – and to pass on any remedies. This is a particularly good time of the year to be investigating ways of killing a cold but – fortunately – I’ve not had this problem yet. That doesn’t mean that I don’t know what to do, however…
You can read about and vote for your favourite macaroon around the world at Glutton Rabbit‘s brilliant round-up of Hay Hay It’s Donna Day #2 – Macaroons. It’s all illustrated with nice pictures (making my macaroons look even more cow-pat-like in comparison to all the others!) and it is interesting to see how different people interpreted the idea of macaroon-making.
While the internet has undoubtedly simplified the matter of finding holiday accommodation, it’s never at hand (unless, of course, you’ve got your portable internet device nearby) when you’re on the road, looking for a decent bite to eat and somewhere to stay at short notice. Situations like these that make you thankful for having a guide book into the glove-box of your car and Georgina Campbell‘s guides to Ireland are useful tomes for such eventualities.
Last weekend – the macaroon-making one – I was down home cooking dinner for my mother’s birthday. As we farm beef cattle, roasts are a regular part of life at home so, as the kitchen was in my hands on Saturday, I decided that it was a good opportunity to make something completely different. On Friday night I dug out the cookbooks that haven’t yet made it to Dublin – they’re the ones that got co-opted by my little sister – and started leafing through them, looking for inspiration. One of the Avoca books had an interesting-sounding Beef and Guinness Stew so I bookmarked the recipe for consultation the following day.
It’s been a while since Maman Poulet – sorry Suzy! – tagged me for the Weird Meme. For this meme I have to write five weird things about me. Well, one person’s weird is another person’s absolutely normal so I’m not sure how weird (or sane) these are going to appear to anyone else. I just know that they’re things to do with cooking and food that people have pointed out as being somewhat strange.
Having missed the first Winos and Foodies Hay Hay, It’s Donna Day – and you all know about my love of Donna Hay! – I had every intention of making a real effort for the second episode in what looks like becoming a long-running series of worldwide bake-ins. Glutton Rabbit at Pearl of the Orient chose Macaroons for Hay Hay It’s Donna Day #2 but I’m not a huge macaroon fan. Besides, I was down home and my little sister took one look at the recipe that I’d printed off from Pearl of the Orient and went “ugh! There’s coconut in it.” I have memories of making coconut macaroons when I was a child and they were never a great success – unlike anything involving chocolate. Then I remembered a recipe for Chocolate Almond Macaroons that I had come across in Taste: Baking with Flavour by Dean Brettschneider and Lauraine Jacobs. Although the book is back in New Zealand, there’s still the internet and the Cuisine website came up trumps with just the recipe that I had noted in the cookbook.
Having missed the first Winos and Foodies Hay Hay, It’s Donna Day – and you all know about my love of Donna Hay! – I had every intention of making a real effort for the second episode in what looks like becoming a long-running series of worldwide bake-ins. Glutton Rabbit at Pearl of the Orient chose Macaroons for Hay Hay It’s Donna Day #2 but I’m not a huge macaroon fan. Besides, I was down home and my little sister took one look at the recipe that I’d printed off from Pearl of the Orient and went “ugh! There’s coconut in it.” I have memories of making coconut macaroons when I was a child and they were never a great success – unlike anything involving chocolate. Then I remembered a recipe for Chocolate Almond Macaroons that I had come across in Taste: Baking with Flavour by Dean Brettschneider and Lauraine Jacobs. Although the book is back in New Zealand, there’s still the internet and the Cuisine website came up trumps with just the recipe that I had noted in the cookbook.
Although already the author of two well-received memoirs – Kitchen Confidential and A Cook’s Tour – as well as a couple of not so popular detective novels, it has taken American chef Anthony Bourdain a little while to embark on his own cookbook and he throws himself into the undertaking with commendable vigour.
