Award-winning blog of Irish food writer and broadcaster Caroline Hennessy.
We were slow off the mark this year with our planting but now – finally – we have some produce from our garden. The salad seedlings that the Husband set in large pots (they are easy targets for the slugs and whitefly if planted out in the garden) are taking off so we now get to have more than just the one leaf per meal.
A quick trip to the first Killavullen Farmers’ Market of the year last weekend produced an unexpected treasure. I pounced on a pile of just-scrubbed nobbly tubers on the Nano Nagle stand – Jerusalem artichokes. Also known as fartichokes (in my house anyway) they’re not vegetables that you come across too often. We tried to grow them last year but, as with so many of the things that we planted, the rabbits thought otherwise. Having read a lot about how they are a virtual weed in many gardens, I have high hopes of them turning up again but, until now, it has been an artichoke-free winter.
Although fish has never been one of my favourite foods, this trip to New Zealand and the Kiwi dependence on fish and chips as a fast food while travelling is changing all that.
