Award-winning blog of Irish food writer and broadcaster Caroline Hennessy.
Proper flat whites. Failing that, proper long blacks with CMOS (aka cold milk on the side, according to the bill!). Camping breakfasts of bacon and eggs on a sunshiny Saturday morning. Brewpubs like Wellington’s...
It all began with a few pints in New Zealand. When the Husband and I lived in Christchurch there were about three brewpubs within 15 minutes walk of our house. We could stroll down...
A bag of butter beans on the kitchen shelf was the inspiration for this month’s Irish Foodies’ Cookalong. Soaked overnight, then thrown into the pot by themselves – or with some onions, carrots and celery – for about an hour the next morning, the beans needed little attention other than checking the water level every so often. And that’s the hard work done for this Greek Bean and Tomato Stew, which is based on a recipe by great Australian cook Jill Dupliex. The rest of the prep just involves making a simple tomato sauce, adding the beans and serving with some feta sprinkled over.
Nicola Galloway may be based in Nelson, New Zealand, but this no-nonsense, practical cookbook will appeal to parents in any hemisphere. From first tastes and flavors to school lunches and dinnertimes, there are plenty of ideas here for feeding children of every age group as well as recipes you can adapt for the entire family.
I love experimenting with and learning different cooking techniques, especially if they involve playing with yeast. No Knead Bread? Yes please! Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Made that. Sourdough from my own starter? Still bubbling quietly away in the fridge. But grilled or barbequed pizza? Not yet – that was until I got my hands on a copy of Craig Priebe’s Grilled Pizzas & Piadinas. Craig developed his grilling technique, using a barbeque, when he ran his own pizza restaurant in Atlanta and this book explains it in detail. When we did the pizza day in Ballymaloe, Darina cooked one of her creations on the barbeque outside the demo theatre door but, more fascinated by the wood-fired oven, I didn’t hang around in the rain, instead directing my attentions indoors so I never got to investigate the barbequed pizza properly.
Although there has been lots of salad planted in the garden on recent weekends, including mustard greens, rocket and mizuna (at least I’ll be able to distinguish between the plants after cramming in Ballymaloe for the salad leaves and herbs exams!), it’s going to be a while before any of the leaves are big enough to eat. Then, of course, because our planting in succession routine is not entirely developed – despite best intentions – we’ll have another glut to work through. But that’s all ahead of us and, until then, I’ve been growing my own salad on the windowsill.
Lacking my once-easy access to a variety of shops, providing me with a large assortment of ingredients to play with, these days I tend to concentrate on the products available in Urru and have also become a habitué of my local health food shops. After finding some cacao nibs in The Granary (Mallow) and picking up a bag of buckwheat flour from Horan’s Health Store in Fermoy, I decided to make a batch of Alice Medrich‘s Nibby Buckwheat Butter Cookies that had come to my attention through 101 Cookbooks.
Woo hoo! Bibliocook got a brief mention in Marie-Claire Digby’s Webwatch in the food section of yesterday’s Irish Times Magazine. Unless you have a subscription, you can’t view it online so here it is (told you it was brief!)Webwatchwww.bibliocook.comRead about the culinary adventures of former entertainment journalist turned Ballymaloe-trained cook and food writer, Caroline Hennessy.Published: Sat 19 April 2008 – The Irish Times – Magazine
