News and a recipe from Marie Claire Digby.
Jamie gets hot and spicy
The jury is out on the new Jamie Oliver food products currently jostling for shelf space at a supermarket near you. We weren't won over by the jars of pasta sauce (€3.09), which taste really artificial, but in my local shop they're so popular they can hardly keep them in stock.
But we do love the spice mills (€3.29), filled with cleverly composed spice mixes, including spicy Szechuan pepper, chilli and ginger salt, and oak-smoked chilli and paprika pepper.
There's also a grinder filled with lovely pink Himalayan salt crystals.
Thumbs up, too, for the sun-dried tomato and red onion "posh bread spread" (€3.19), a sort of tapenade thingy that is incredibly tasty and makes a useful store cupboard standby.
Get active, learn to cook
FoodActive, an innovative summer camp that combines hands-on cooking lessons from professional chefs, with nutritional advice and sporting activities, returns to St Conleth's College in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 this summer (June 23rd-August 1st).
The standard of tuition given by chefs Garth and Mark McColgan and Paul Quinlan is superb, and they have a really good rapport with their students. This camp cannot be recommended highly enough, and as well as being thoroughly enjoyable for the kids, parents can count on a few nights' release from cooking duties, thanks to the substantial take-away portions the kids arrive home with, and their enthusiasm to show off what they've learned.
The end-of-week barbecue lets the participants play host to friends and family.
A two-course lunch, cooked on-site every day, is included in the fees of €325 (one week) or €595 (two weeks).
The camp runs from 10am to 4pm daily, with after-camp supervision available until 5.15pm. FoodActive is suitable for ages 11 to 17 years, and places can be booked at www.foodactive.ie or tel: 086-8066111.
Cake Café cupcakes to buy or bake
You can't be a true Sex and the Cityfan without sharing the gals' appreciation of cupcakes - the US version of what we might call a fairy cake or, simply, a bun. But, like many US-style interpretations, cupcakes are bigger, brasher, and often topped with an avalanche of butter-cream icing. As if that's not enough, there is a new trend to make cupcakes with hidden fillings.
Daily Telegraphfood writer Xanthe Clay suggests using a melon-baller to scoop out a cavity in the baked cakes, inserting a filling and using the (trimmed) ball of cake as a plug.
Too much trouble? Buy a box of six gorgeous mini cupcakes (€5.80, see right), cutely presented in an eggbox, from the Cake Café in Dublin's Daintree Building, off Camden Street. Or you could try proprietor Michelle Dermody's foolproof cupcake recipe:
200g caster sugar
200g soft butter
8 free-range eggs
200g self-raising flour
1 tsp vanilla essence or the zest of a lemon
Icing sugar, to decorate
Cream together the sugar and butter until the mixture is light and fluffy. Slowly add the eggs and flour, using a mixer (on a slow speed). Add either the vanilla essence or lemon zest to taste. Spoon the mixture into paper cupcake cases. You will probably need around 16 cases (depending on their size).
Bake for about 18-20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. When the cakes are cool, drizzle with icing made from icing sugar mixed with a little water.
Berry good news
National Strawberry Week, a new initiative from the Irish Soft Fruit Growers' Association and Bord Bia, begins on Monday, just as the Irish season gets going. Imports cannot replicate the smell and sweet taste of an Irish-grown strawberry, so now is the time to indulge.
Domini Kemp's strawberry tart with a strawberry shot, on page 30, will tempt many of us to put a punnet or two in our baskets this weekend, and ensure that soft fruit sales continue to soar - strawberry sales were worth €46million last year, which represents an increase of 25 per cent on 2006. It must be all those smoothies we're consuming.
WEB WATCH:www.takeaway.ie
Mislaid the menu from your favourite takeaway again? This website has a list of places that deliver. You can read the menus, make your choice, place your order and sit back and wait. How easy is that?
Ciara Traynor and Anthony Kauffmann's food delivery website is the best we've seen of its kind, and although they are only getting started, they aim to have listings from takeaways countrywide.