Cook your books:Do you ever find yourself Googling a recipe because you can't remember which book you saw it in? Eatyourbooks.com is a new website that allows you to create an indexed virtual library, using the books you already own. Find your books in the Eat Your Books online library of more than 16,000 titles and create a personalised catalogue that can be searched by categories including author, book title, recipe title, ingredient and cuisine type. If, for example, you want to cook a leg of lamb, you'll be able to generate a list of all of the relevant recipes in your books and even print out a shopping list once you've made your selection.
Eat Your Books was set up last autumn by sisters Jane Kelly and Fiona Nugent, who live in the US and New Zealand respectively. Their library is weighted in favour of American writers at the moment, but there are lots of familiar names too, including Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers, Jill Dupleix, Bill Granger and Gordon Ramsay. Eat Your Books is subscription-based ($25 a year/$50 life membership), but there is a 30-day free trial period. This is an innovative site that will provide hours of amusement, as well as being very useful – but it might be a good idea to remove the testimonial from “Delores from Skull [sic], Ireland”!
Heavenly recipes:It's amazing what you can do with a tub of cream cheese, apart from make cheesecake. Chef Kevin Dundon has developed an interesting selection of recipes in partnership with Philadelphia, which can be accessed at philadelphia.ie. The extra-low-fat variety is a great way of introducing a creamy texture to diet dishes, such as the website's pork chops with cider, Philly and spinach.
Create a winning dish and cash in
Your creativity in the kitchen could earn you some valuable prizes in two recipe competitions open to non-professional cooks being run by Silver Hill Foods, creators of this lovely cinnamon and orange spiced duck leg dish (pictured), and from Flahavan’s, makers of porridge oats. Silver Hill Foods is offering a prize worth €750 (a mix of kitchen equipment and some of their duck products) to the creator of the best starter or main course recipe using duck as the main ingredient. Send entries by post, e-mail or fax to Silver Hill Foods, Emyvale, Co Monaghan; fax: 047-87655; email silverhill@eircom.net. More details at Silverhillfoods.com/blog.
You’ll have to get cracking to be in with a chance of winning the Flahavan’s porridge oats challenge, as the closing date for entries is tomorrow. There are two categories – best porridge dish and most innovative recipe using Flahavan’s oats. There is a winner’s purse of €1,500 and a runner-up prize of €500 in each category. Enter at flahavans.com, and remember to attach a photograph of your dish.
Discover Ireland's foodie gems
In a year when businesses are closing at a record rate, it’s encouraging that the Irish food industry appears to be bucking the trend, according to John and Sally McKenna, publishers of the Bridgestone Irish Food Guide. The bumper ninth edition of the guide has just been released and running to 623 pages, it contains 300 more entries than the previous edition, which hit the shelves in 2007. The discovery of “exciting things in unlikely places: Roscommon, Longford, Leitrim” and finding “true diversity in our specialist food culture” are features of this edition, according to John McKenna. “Artisans and good restaurateurs are bucking the economic trend. It may seem hard to believe, but many of the people featured in the latest edition – whether they are artisans, shopkeepers, restaurateurs or marketers – have had their best ever year in business,” he says. The guide is available in bookshops nationwide, €15. See also bridgestoneguides.com.
