The Country Cooking of Ireland - dig in

Thought I'd show the lovely image from the front cover of Colman Andrews book, it makes you want to dig in and start cooking right away.
He really has done a great job, really getting to grips with the essence of Irish food. The cooking collated here is the type of stuff that reminds me of my nana's kitchen, especially with his focus on the traditional staples such as soda breads which has almost spurred me into taking them on again. Any attempts I have made in the past have yielded brick-like disappointments, and even when I got the consistency right, the taste just wasn't there.

I think my soda bread standards have been ruined by memories of being a little girl and getting out of bed on cold wet mornings in my nana's house in Donegal to find slabs of warm soda bread dripping in butter on the table. Oooooh how good it tasted! I would eat my soda bread, and perhaps if I was motivated, spread it with some honey from the hives outside. I remember every detail of the scene; the blue and white crockery, the milk jug with rose blossom and the Sacred Heart looking dolefully down from the wall. As I ate my soda bread the mist would clear in the field that lay on a hill overlooking the garden, and the cattle would began to graze again and enjoy some early sun on their backs.

My nana baked bread every morning of her life, in a range oven, fired by burning peat from the strip of bog that they cut every year. The smells of that time will never leave my head, nor my nana’s cooking which was about using the food she grew yourself and whatever few bits she could buy on top of that with the household money she made from keeping poultry and selling eggs. She was a typical Irish woman of her time and learned to cobble together great cooking in often very austere times. But there was always plenty of butter. Like rural France, butter is the make or break ingredient when your foodstuffs are limited.
Again, really wonderful publication from Andrews and great to see Peter Ward involved in setting him on the right road in his exploration of Irish food. He couldn't have a better guide x

Donovan's family butchers

Just a shout out to a new food business in Enniskerry, County Wicklow - it's always heartening to see a supermarket alternative arrive in any town and this butchers is a great little shop and unexpectedly, very very good value for money.

The Donovan family have a well known shop in Rathgar and have won a slew of food awards. Their Enniskerry outpost is packaged meats rather than a carcasses hanging behind the counter type of butchers (there are less and less of these which is regretable).

When they opened recently I had a good poke about and asked loads of pesky questions which probably marked me down as worst customer ever. Nevertheless my research paid off as

I thought they had really good value for money on good quality burgers, lovely puddings and bacon. And every morsel was eaten, believe you me. The black pudding in particular is the lovely old style product - not the current vogueish pudding which has more barley in it than pig's blood. It also does Italian style breads from a bakery on the Northside and plenty of deli type stuff; pestos, salamis etc.

Together withh the greengrocers across the road, people in the area could get most of their food shopping done with little effort and support local businesses rather than the multiples. This is the type of thing we need to be supporting, and regrettably it’s the type of shop that is disappearing fast from so many Irish towns. Bray has virtually no food shops left, perhaps two butchers remain in the entire town, Greystones has gone the opposite way and become very food centred - there is Cavistons, Butlers Pantry, the Happy Pear veg shop and loads of other really good food outlets and cafes. It really is a model for how small Irish towns can keep footfall and offer an attractive food retail experience.

Enniskerry has another farm kitchen shop about to open, two coffee shops and another food business at the bottom of the town which I have yet to check out. I know that in villages such as this, particularly when they are within spitting distance of two monolith Avoca Handweavers, retail can have real problems competing, especially in the foodstuffs or gifts area. I hope these businesses do well and we’ll be keeping an eye on their progress, sourcing of Irish goods and hopefully good value for money.

Battery farmed cows, itsa comin.....

Oh God, even reading about it is making me feel slightly uncomfortable, and this is from someone who got through Jonathon Safran Foers Eating Animals pretty much unscathed. Yes it’s Britain’s first factory dairy farm – or rather, proposed dairy farm.

The plan is to open a facility which will house 8,100 cows in sheds year-round at Nocton in Lincolnshire. It’s battery chicken farming, only with cows. The usual suspects have come out against it - Compassion in World Farming calls the plan disastrous, the Soil Association says it is “beyond reason”; over 70 MPs have signed a motion condemning it, while the Facebook group Oppose The UK’s Biggest Factory Farm had 3,500 members last time I looked. However the UKs farming minister is supporting the project and many think the £40 million facility will go ahead, bringing badly needed employment to the area.

Essentially, factory farms aren’t good for animals or for anyone who eats meat (see post on the above book coming soon). Even if they are treated thoroughly humanely, I don’t like the sound of cows living a warehouse all year. Bovines are programmed to graze and despite the fact that grazing is about getting food, being out in a field filling their gob with grass is basically their central activity. That’s why horses who are stabled for too long with box walk, wind suck, eat the walls etc, because they are being confined away from what they are programmed to do. Being outdoors in a grazing situation is essential to what a cow is.

And before I get called a hairy toe vegan, while I believe in the happiness of livestock, I also believe in eating them. I want anything I eat to have lived a half decent life and be killed humanely. That’s the contract that human beings have with animals, or correction, should have. Most of the problems surrounding the welfare of farm animals actually lie with us the consumer. If we want cheap food, food will be produced under conditions that are less than ethical. Not only this, but human health which is at the end of that chain will eventually suffer from lower standards and cheaper production methods applied to everything we eat. Look at what came out of the pig farms in La Gloria Mexico. We really don’t want this to be our food future, trust me.
The row over the Lincolnshire farm is set to continue, watch this space...

Food porn, Dahl style

I still can't make my mind up about this one - the BBC's food show starring ex-model Sophie Dahl. Made by Jamie Oliver's Fresh One Productions, the series will no doubt be hugely popular but in many ways it’s a bit of an oddity; I spent most of the first few shows frowning at the TV wondering when Sophie was going to quit flouncing around antique shops and actually start cooking.

You get the sense BBC are looking for a sexy Nigella replacement; plenty of finger sucking and close ups of eyelashes. The similarities are obviously not lost on Dahl either - speaking to Andrew Marr on BBC One, she was forced to dismiss suggestions by the broadcaster that she was “irritated” by the comparison with Nigella and the desire for it to be seen as a “catfight”.Like Nigella, Dahl is not a trained cook or chef – these kind of programmes make me feel really sorry for the professionals who’ve spent long apprenticeships in steaming kitchens, do they watch these series with their fingers half covering their eyes? Is it horrendous or liberating to see someone fry fish who can’t obviously handle a pan with any kind of skill? Does it want to make them leave cooking altogether and become a runway model?

The fact that untrained food fans have their own programmes is in one way liberating and opens up what can be an intimidating set of skills to a wider group of people. However, how much of the Sophie Dahl series is actually about food remains to be seen. In essence it’s about a very pretty girl faffing around a very pretty kitchen spouting a lot of literary references - they seem to interrupt the cooking a lot of the time. The dishes she prepared were simple and attractively themed along the lines of self indulgence - halibut, dirty martinis, chocolate mousse, that sort of thing.

It was entertaining to a degree and while I give out about celebrity-led broadcasting, I still watch the stuff. Hey I’m a divil for food porn, whatever about the quality of the programme. In fact anything on telly remotely connected to food and farming.... I’m on it. I even watch One Man and His Dog for Gods sake.Good luck with it Sophie, just make sure you spend more time in make-up than in the kitchen x

Welcome to my blog

It's a funny thing starting a blog. You feel like the 13 year old version of yourself throwing your diary open to the whole school with the inevitable cringetastic terror and possible beatings that may result. For many years I was resistant to blogs, but it's like that bottle of Barolo in the wine rack, eventually you cave.

Following our book "Basketcase; What's happening to Irish Food?" I feel it's important to continue the debate and bring together many strands about Irish food and the countryside that currently don't exist in the same place. The blog will also provide links to my food and farming journalism. There will be food of all colours and all quality featured here, from Supermacs to Guilbauds to Tesco's tikka masala. We'll also have information on Kevin Thorntons hair, a fungus that looks like Britney Spears and a non-leathal method of stopping pheasants waking you up at four in the morning. We'll also laugh at efforts at growing your own, and the do's and don'ts of feeding small children (no Grey Goose Vodka).

I hope the site will function as a place to keep up with what's new and good in Ireland; the upcoming stars whether it be new cheeses, new restaurants, shops, markets, farm shops, cakes, courgettes and cafes.... where you can find them and where the best deals are. I hope that those who read the blog will contribute on what they're loving or hating putting into their gob, and where they're finding great quality and value. Basketcase loves the countryside. We need more countryside issues on the web! After all food grows out of the ground, or is born from an egg in a vast chicken unit. We need to be real about food, how important it is to this country and how good we are at producing it. Rural Ireland seems to be shrinking in importance, but if we continue to produce quality food, and futhermore, actully buy the stuff, we can keep rural Ireland vibrant and very much alive.

Farming may be a dirty word, but so are lots of other fun words. So if you keep your own pigs, potter about with herbs, love your pets, fall off horses or dip your Manolos into mud occasionally, this is the place for you. Hope you enjoy it. Blogging is strange, embarrassing, narcissistic and why is there no spell check? At least my labrador might condescend to read this. She is a useless guard dog but fabulous on her laptop. Till next time x