megabites

  • Corrigan on pigs

    April 28, 2009 @ 11:13 pm | by Tom

    Fair play to the IFA for talking to a highly sceptical Richard Corrigan about intensive pig farming. And well done to RTE for tackling this issue head-on, which is the only way to do it when Mr Corrigan is asking the questions. Corrigan’s City Farm this evening showed precisely how debased the Irish bacon industry has become. But it made one very strange statement, viz. that the Irish market for free-range pork is “very small”. How does anyone know that? Just try buying Irish free-range pork and you will see how far behind the UK we really are. Watch the latest episode of Corrigan’s City Farm here. He’s a great mate of mine but I sure wish he would lose that hat!

  • Twite comments

    @ 9:19 am | by Tom

    I have given in and signed up on Twitter. I am told that the discipline involved in forcing your thoughts into 140 chracters or less is similar to writing haiku. Possibly, possibly. It may also have the effect of making our thoughts seem even more trite - twite? - than they really are. Anyway, I promise, no recipes. My user name is tomdoorley, odd as it may seem. Megabites was taken, dammit!

  • Belfast recipes go global

    April 27, 2009 @ 11:13 pm | by Tom

    A graduate student at QUB is publishing her recipes on Twitter and they have attracted the attention of the New York Times, no less. Maureen Evans is a creative writing student at Queen’s and you have to be very creative to get a recipe into 140 characters or less. Pretty much incomprehensible to me, I have to say, but I’m a compulsive collector of recipe books. Hard copy takes up a lot of space but at least I usually understand them.

  • A very good dinner…and almost free

    @ 11:00 pm | by Tom

    I am becoming a seakale bore. Most people have never tasted this glorious vegetable. I bought a dozen plants from Johnstown Garden Centre in Co Kildare last year but I should add that they were in the herbaceous perennials section - because most gardeners think of them as a decorative plant. Anyway, I planted them in the veg plot and let them produce lots of foliage which died down last autumn. Then, in February, I covered them with black plastic buckets (€2.50 each from the hardware store in Tallow) and let them sprout. This evening I steamed the ivory coloured shoots for about ten minutes and served them with a simple hollandaise sauce. Magic! And in the Hungry Gap too… We followed this with omellettes made from local free range eggs, all different sizes and refreshingly filthy on the outside. I folded in some blanched and chopped nettle tops and wild garlic leaves (yes, again!). I reckon the cost, per head, including a bit of grated parmesan, came to less than a euro per head but I suppose you have to factor in the time for growing and harvesting. As we finished up with salad from the polytunnel, I calculated that you can keep yourself in mixed lettuces for, at most, €3.50 a year. Mind you, if I were charging my time on the same basis as the average medical consultant or senior counsel, the cost of this meal would have been about €5,000. Heaven alone knows what it would have cost if I were a junior minister or one of RTE’s better paid performers…

  • An era fizzles out…

    @ 9:21 am | by Tom

    Many of you will be distressed to hear that Sherbet Fountains are to lose their liquorice tube through which the fizzy powder is supposed to sucked. The makers, Tangerine Confectionery, are going to start using a plastic straw instead. Already, there is uproar from sweetie traditionalists who are browned off that Smarties no longer come in those curiously satisfying tubes and that KitKats are no longer wrapped in foil. Personally, I was never a great Sherbet Fountain user but I still miss one of the great sticky treats of the 20th century: the Bobby Bar, a tooth remover that used to put Bounty Bars in the shade.  By the way, Tangerine bought the Sherbet Fountain brand from Cadbury’s last year for  - well, guess how much. Click on the link to find out. There’s clearly gold in old-fashioned confectionery, even when plastic takes over from liquorice.

  • Garden dispatches

    April 26, 2009 @ 5:17 pm | by Tom

    This is the first time we have found ourselves with a bounty in the garden in late April. We are coming down with blanched seakale (yummy) and the asparagus is pushing up in a very determined fashion. The Orla early spuds in the polytunnel are now in flower, so potatoes cannot be far behind. And the British Queens outside are starting to look good. Even the broad beans, after just six weeks, are looking strong and healthy…Planted the remainder of the onion sets and shallots today and sowed lots of stuff in modules inside, including sweet corn and, oh joy, padron peppers, the tapas staple (from Mr Fothergill seeds); you pick them when small and green and sweat them in olive oil and serve them with sea salt flakes… The tomatoes on the window ledge are now six inches high and need to be planted out in the tunnel soon, and the aubergines (Moneymaker, the best of the earlies in my experience) need potting up… The cucumbers are slow but will be ready for planting out, under cover, by mid-May…. The overwintering lettuces (Montel) have been cutting since December and the earliest ones to be harvested have re-sprouted, producing lovely small butterheads (up to four per stem) which means they offer fantastic value for the effort involved….Carrots, peas and cabbages need to be sown in the coming week…. Busy times…. And the 2009 slug population is bigger than any I have ever seen…. But the damp field in front of the house is packed with the lovely wild flower known as Lady’s Smock which is edible and peppery…. Just harvesting the last of both the celeriac (some of which we will clamp and use until the summer) and the Jersusalem artichokes which make great soup and can be “stoved” in a covered pan with olive oil, garlic and rosemary or thyme; the only trouble is that it kills all known wines, both red and white, stone dead….

  • Michelin stars

    @ 1:35 am | by Tom

    Following on from comments about the demise of Mint, I’m just wondering if a Michelin star is a liability these days. It costs money to maintain the standards that Michelin seem to require and it may now be a question, for some chefs at least, of maintaining a star or staying in business. I will admit that I don’t understand the Michelin system. But it does strike me as being wildly inconsistent. Am I right in thinking that it’s a lot easier to get a star in, say, France or London than in rural Ireland? Or even, heaven knows, in Dublin? It seems to me that the Michelin Guides invest much more time in assessing restaurants in parts of the world where they are widely read rather than in seeking out excellence wherever it may be. And is it not true that Michelin stars are of much greater interest to chefs than to customers? At least one chef has allegedly killed himself over fears about losing a star. When it comes to the crunch, it’s only food and it’s only an opinion…

  • Mint

    April 24, 2009 @ 11:49 pm | by Tom

    The first I heard was by way of a phone call when I was on the high seas on Tuesday evening. It seems that Mint, Dylan McGrath’s Michelin-starred restaurant in Ranelagh, has gone the way of all flesh. I’m still hoping that the closure might be temporary, especially as I had planned a visit for next week. But the news on the street is that it has gone for good. And this is bad news. Dylan McGrath may not have the - how shall I put this? - easy charm of other chefs but the guy can really cook. And, in person, while  he has always been a bit dark and brooding he has been otherwise perfectly pleasant in my limited experience. Very talented chefs, of their very nature, are rarely normal human beings. Give me Dylan McGrath in preference to Marco Pierre White or Gordon Ramsay any day. I just hope that we don’t lose him to Dubai or other foreign parts. Surely there’s some property developer who has managed to hold on to his pile and who can give this man a place in which he can create? There’s one other Michelin-starred chef in Dublin who is always whinging about not being appreciated in the land of his birth notwithstanding his general lack of joie de vivre. Let’s hope that the…er…rather intense Mr McGrath stays here and prospers.

  • Back to our small island

    April 23, 2009 @ 9:57 pm | by Tom

    After a few days in France I find myself trying to drive on the wrong side of the road which is pretty ironic as I always have a major fear of driving on the Continong before I arrive. Suffice it to say that it was a very quick visit and that anyone who is heading there and who might be shopping in Auchan should look out for the liquide (very appropriate) special offer on a lovely Corbieres, Moulin de Chemin Salin which is going for €2.50 a bottle. Lovely stuff: lots of supple Syrah. I encountered several Irish shoppers including two blokes with a van who seemed to be spending €5,000 on Sancerre, not something you would catch me doing, but I have no doubt they had their own reasons. Chatting to a port official in Cherbourg, I was told that he could always tell the difference between the Irish and the English shoppers. The English, he said, buy cheap beer and wine that costs no more than €3 a bottle. The Irish, on the other hand, tend to stick with wine and spend between €5 and €10 a bottle. Clearly, we understand that trading up a little really yields dividends. And we are a lot more sophisticated than we sometimes give ourselves credit for. I have mentioned elsewhere that you can have a bottle of Chateau Lamothe-Cissac 2003, a decent cru bourgeois from Bordeaux, for €17.50 a bottle in the onboard restaurants if you’re travelling on the Oscar Wilde with Irish Ferries. This undoubtedly makes the French feel at home. And did you see that Tesco and Marks & Spencer believe in biodynamics? It seems that they organise press tastings according to the lunar calendar, avoiding “root” days when wines don’t taste at their best. Allegedly. Actually, there could be something in this. I once tasted, with twelve other journalists, two wines which had been grown side by side and vinified exactly the same way. But one was produced organically, the other biodynamically. We could tell the difference - or rather, a difference. We all preferred the straight organic version. Could have been a root day, I suppose, but makes you think. Mind you, it was in California.

  • Wine campaign

    April 18, 2009 @ 9:01 pm | by Tom

    Lots of restaurants seem to be trying quite hard to make eating out a bit more affordable but I’ve noticed that this commendable attitude seems to be confined to the food. What about the wine list? Not much radical thinking there, it would seem. La Maison’s willingness to serve a decent glass of wine (decent wine, decent measure, decent glassware) for €4.50 is very radical by Irish standards. May I appeal to readers to share their news, if any, of great wine offers in Irish restaurants? After all, any restaurateur who is dropping margins in this area deserves a bit of support…

  • All change at La Maison

    April 17, 2009 @ 12:43 pm | by Tom

    I am sitting very contentedly in La Maison on Castle Market. It used to be La Maison des Gourmets but is now transformed into a bistro with crisp table cloths, proper wine glasses, waiters in black waistcoats and a short but very sweet menu (andouillette, skillet of seafood, tartine of goat’s cheese, pot au feu…that kind of thing). And the wine list is compact too, sourced from Charles Derain, Simon Tyrrell and Enrico Fantasia. It opened last night and I am sipping a glass of bloody good Sauvignon Blanc (€4.50) waiting for my Tarte Provencale (€15.50). The man behind it is Olivier of Oliver’s (sic) Eatery in Terenure - a fact that bodes well. I will report in due course in the usual place but it’s small so you might like to pay a visit in the meantime. That tarte smells very good… and so to eat…

  • Happy birthday, Thornton’s

    April 16, 2009 @ 10:06 pm | by Tom

    More good news… For the coming month Thornton’s will be doing a lunch special for €25 to mark their twentieth birthday.

  • Dinner Times

    April 15, 2009 @ 9:50 pm | by Tom

    Rejoice! The Dinner Times promotion is upon us! You may remember - you may even remember the taste - when The Irish Times ran the Lunch Times promotion some time ago. Well, now there’s a very special offer for readers who want to dine outside the capital. Watch the newspaper for details but the gist of it goes like this. You can have a three course dinner, including half a bottle of wine, in ten of the country’s best restaurants for €45 - for a limited time, of course. None of the participating restaurants will be offering bog standard house wines and some of them will be really pushing the boat out. Seamus Sheridan of Sheridan’s on the Quay in Galway has promised to come up with something really good and Bill Kelly of Kelly’s in Rosslare is offering his brother-in-law’s Clos des Papes Chateauneuf-du-Pape, both white and red. This is one of the greatest wines of the southern Rhone. But do, please, book early. I had emails during Lunch Times which, had they been snail mails, would have been written in either green ink or blood. Why? Because the writers thought that a €20 lunch, including a glass of wine, at the likes of Chapter One or L’Ecrivain could be booked on the day. The readers of The Irish Times are not stoopid… Nor are they mean. Please, please remember that the object of this worthy exercise is not just to spread a little much-needed joy but also to raise money for the Hospice movement. You will be given an envelope in which to place your contribution. During the Lunch Times promotion one gentleman (and I use the word advisedly) declined mineral water, coffee and anything else not included in the €19.95 all-in price (at Bentley’s, as it happens) but stuffed €200 into his envelope. And thanks to people like him we raised over €16,000 for a cause that is so worthy we would rather not think about the time when we ourselves might need its services.

  • The demon drink

    April 14, 2009 @ 10:16 pm | by Tom

    “You go into some restaurants and see a third of a bottle being emptied into a glass – that’s the equivalent of two pints. We have this fantasy that wine is wonderful stuff but it needs to be remembered that this is not a health food.” This is a quote from a spokesperson for Alcohol Action Ireland who are understandably concerned about our complex and not always healthy relationship with the demon drink. But I’d love to know what restaurants are being so generous. A third of a bottle in a glass? I have yet to see that…There are calls for a standard measure of wine - not a bad idea in itself. But I’m amazed that some people should think that this will help us calculate how much alcohol we are getting. The alcohol content of table wine varies from about 9%abv to 15.5%abv and, alas, wines in general are getting stronger. The argument is that this is down to climate change but it’s hard to ignore the fact that higher alcohol levels flatter the palate. And it’s unusual to find any bottle of wine these days with less than 14%abv. Wine being a wonderful thing is not a “fantasy”. We just have to keep an eye on the small print on the label. And we also need to keep an eye on the killjoys who want to wag fingers at those of us who continue to enjoy it. Doubtless there are those who abuse wine. But alcohol abuse is largely conducted through the media of spirits, beer and cider - and that’s not just because wine tends to be imbibed with food. It may not be a “health food” (although there is some evidence that it can have health benefits). But wine, broadly speaking, is still good for you. The nannying finger-waggers would probably feel much better, and more at peace with themselves and the world, after a glass - or even two - of good Burgundy

  • Hoe, hoe, hoe…and other thoughts

    April 13, 2009 @ 10:19 pm | by Tom

    Phase one of the onion plot… I managed to plant 108 onion sets today and there are about 400 more to go in soon. Despite the fact that the plot had been thoroughly dug over in recent weeks there was much weeding to be done. Our problem weed, for the most part, is creeping buttercup which, despite its propensity for clinging on to life, has the virtue of being fairly easy to dig up. But because of the recent rain, soil tends to cling to the roots. The solution? Making a pile of the weeds and covering them in black plastic for a few months. I’m hoping that they will decompose and provide good, rich, earthy compost by late summer. At least, that’s the plan. The first sowing of leeks (under cover) is looking good and they will need to be planted out soon. The spuds (Orla) in the polytunnel are well up at this stage and the foliage is starting to look positively luxuriant. But what stuck me most today was that hoeing really works. The great John Seymour, apostle of self-sufficiency and one-time Wexford resident, said that “the hoe is the herbicide of the future” and I hope he was right. The thing about organic weed control is that you have to clear by hand and then hoe like hell. We all think that the hoe’s role in our arsenal is as a cutting implement, beheading weeds as it goes. In fact, the hoe works best when it’s used gently, just to disturb the top inch of soil every two or three days so as to prevent weed seedlings from taking hold. As I nurse my sore back this evening I have to remind myself that the weeding was worth it - but only if I can get my myself disciplined to the gentle wielding of the hoe on a very regular basis. Slugs are a different story. The first tender shoots of asparagus are being decimated as soon as they poke their heads above the soil - so my organic credentials will be destroyed by the deployment of slug pellets. Otherwise, it’s just too bloody depressing. However, as soon as the soil warms up I’ll be using the biological control called Nemaslug. I have never seen so many of these pesky beasts as I have this spring. They are legion at the moment and it’s Them or Me. And it’s got to be Me… Finally, I rewarded myself for much digging, planting, mulching, pruning and what have you by opening a bottle of vintage port, Dow’s 1977 which was made the same year as I left school. It was only starting to stretch its long legs and has another twenty or thirty years to go. Fortunately I have another few bottles to keep, which makes me feel unbearably smug especially as I bought them in 1994 when vintage port was about as fashionable as men’s hats or pipesmoking. I think it was less than a tenner a bottle…

  • Looking forward to asparagus

    April 10, 2009 @ 10:50 pm | by Tom

    Last week, I managed to hoe off the first green shoots of recovery. Actually, they weren’t really green; they were kind of purple. And the recovery, from the depths of winter, refers to our asparagus bed, grown from seed and now four years old. This will be the first season in which we can pick as much as we like until the first week of June. And, boy, are we looking forward to that… But yesterday I bought some new season asparagus, grown in the Wye Valley in Herefordshire, at Marks & Spencer. It was fresh, very tasty and a harbinger of things to come (if I’m careful with the hoe). But why buy English asparagus? Well, they do it very well and even if it’s not local at least it’s not from Peru. Not that I have anything against Peruvian farmers but, well, you know… Peru is now the largest asparagus producer in the world thanks to US encouragement and a climate which, with a bit of fiddling about, gives a year-round crop. The US encouragement, aimed at weaning Peruvian farmers off lucrative coca production, seems to have wiped out the American asparagus industry in places like Washington State. It has also had damn all impact on coca farming for the simple reason that coca and asparagus don’t share the same soil and climate requirements. Our year round asparagus supply comes largely from Peru with a little coming from Thailand and Chile. And even if you eat asparagus only in season (April to June) in restaurants, the chances are that the stuff has thousands of air-miles. In supermarkets, you can check the label of course. And if you happen to be buying scallions at the moment you may be surprised to see that they come from Mexico (at least they seem to do so in the major multiples). Scallions? Those things that are known, elsewhere, as spring onions? No, I don’t understand it either. Scallions sown in late summer in Ireland are ready now. So, where are they? Self-sufficiency in energy may be still a long way off, but surely to God we can manage year round scallions? Anyway, while I’m looking forward to scoffing my first major asparagus crop, I’m not sure I’ll have enough. Where can I buy Irish asparagus? We have the perfect climate for it. I have an idea that there is at least one producer in Co Wexford but there must be more. And, by the way, growing asparagus from seed is cheap and easy. If you buy crowns in the garden centre you will save a year but seed-grown plants are much sturdier. Mine is an all-male F1 variety called Marte and I have a conventional sort called Martha Washington which will be ready next year. 

  • Children and restaurants

    April 7, 2009 @ 7:20 pm | by Tom

    Just following on from comments on a separate post… With the First Communion season about to kick off - if that’s the right word - maybe we should share thoughts on restaurants that welcome children. MPW/Fitzer’s may be great for steak but few under 8s are quite so carnivorous. It does, however, do very good fish and chips.

  • Old Muscadet doesn’t die…and it doesn’t seem to fade

    April 5, 2009 @ 10:16 pm | by Tom

    Years ago, I atteneded a tasting of aged Muscadet hosted by Gregory Alkin of Febvre, the wine merchants. And, yes, the remarkable thing was that these wines, which we all think of as being for early drinking, showed really well at up to ten years old. I was reminded of this last week when I rooted out a bottle of Guilbaud Freres Muscadet sur Lie Le Soleil Nantais 2004. It was as a fresh as daisy. Not in the first flush of yeasty youth, of course, but it had developed a lovely bone dry, minerally quality, very grown-up, a bit austere but with no signs of oxidation. I’ve never aged a bottle of Torrontes, that lovely grapey white wine from Argentina which, like Muscadet, begs to be consumed young and fresh. But I did taste a 20-year old example from Etchart which was a revelation. It may not be in the same league as Hunter Valley Semillons, which can go on for ever, but longlived and still fairly cheap.

  • Steaks and dry martinis

    @ 9:53 pm | by Tom

    I think it was Oliver St John Gogarty who said “there is no such thing as a large Irish whiskey”. Well, I’m not sure about that but I’ve always believed that there’s no such thing as just one dry martini. Having said that, my constitution can manage only two. Beyond that lies madness. I indulge about three to four times a year and did so this evening (and it was shaken very throughly, not stirred; shaken means a reasonable amount of dilution; stirred means lethal).However, circumstances dictated only one. The reason? I was attempting to cook striploin steaks (21 days aged) over hot coals in the barn as the wind drove rather cold rain at me. For the first time, I had abandoned charcoal and was using wood - well-seasoned ash. This led to a serious conflagration but after the flames had died down there was a window of about 10 minutes in which the meat could sear to perfection. Each steak was anointed with olive oil, a lot of crushed peppercorns and just a little sea salt immediately before being slapped on to the grill. Using a wood fire, as against charcoal, imparted a glorious smoky flavour. AND it was all carbon neutral. Quite delicious and a useful way of limiting the intake of dry martinis (Ketel One, Bombay Sapphire, a smidglet of Martini and a twist of lemon zest).

  • Wild garlic again

    April 4, 2009 @ 10:06 pm | by Tom

    Laid somewhat low by an infection I sought solace, once again, in wild garlic for therapeutic reasons and sheer comfort. I decided this afternoon to make wild garlic pesto and this is how I did it. I blitzed 200g of wild garlic leaves with 75g of walnuts, 50g of Parmesan, the juice of half a lemon, a little water and enough olive oil to make it all…well, pesto-like. And a little salt. It’s good: not nearly as spicy-hot as the conventional pesto, very green tasting and wholesome. Tried it tonight with some grilled lamb which was marinated with cumin and coriander; not bad. But tomorrow, having developed a bit more flavour, it will be tossed with some pasta for lunch. Incidentally, I tried nibbling some hawthorn shoots as I was gathering the ramsons. Hmm… They tasted…er…green and not terribly interesting. Maybe I’ll try incorporating them into a salad. They must be full of goodness but they are not exactly a must-eat treat. On the other hand, the young nettle tops, just sweated with a little butter, pepper and nutmeg are better than spinach. Unfortunately, I have enough of them to feed the entire country… 

  • MPW - too reformed for TV?

    April 2, 2009 @ 8:27 am | by Tom

    Poor old Marco Pierre White, whose name now hangs above the door of Fitzer’s on Dawson Street, has had a pretty severe blow to the notorious pride. His US reality TV show The Chopping Block has been suddenly dropped by NBC after only three episodes. The reason? Apparently he didn’t get his hands dirty and, worse still, failed to swear on air. His old sparring partner, Mr Ramsay, is still delivering multiple bollockings (a phrase explained by the New York Times to bemused Americans) and is on to his fifth series of the US version of Hell’s Kitchen. Read my review of MPW’s Dawson Street manifestation tomorrow.

  • The day that is in it

    April 1, 2009 @ 10:16 am | by Tom

    Waylaid by a delicious story in today’s Guardian. Seems a bit obvious at first but worth reading down to the very end. Now, back to work…

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