Food file

The Bees' Cheese: Organic cream cheese with honey..

The Bees' Cheese:Organic cream cheese with honey . . . sounds like the Bees' Cheese, exactly what these students, winners of the University College Cork new food product development showcase, thought when they dreamed up their winning product, Milóir.

The winning team (above, left to right) Sinéad Hone, Aisling O’Connor, Gráinne O’Donoghue, Eve Mulcahy, Miriam Crowley and Declan Coughlan are students at the popular and productive School of Food and Nutritional Sciences at UCC, and the competition was part of their final year research project. The runner-up product was a goat’s milk ice cream, Giddy Goats. Best marine-related product was Super Spuds, a potato and fish dish, and best packaging was awarded to the team that devised Dare, a carbonated alcoholic drink made with rice and millet. We tasted a sample of Milóir, and gave it an A-plus.

Baa, baa dinner

Easter, as Domini Kemp says (page 18), is synonymous with lamb, and you can buy spring lamb – anything from a couple of chops (€5.25) to a half lamb (€106.50), from Nigel Cobbe’s online sales and delivery website, simplysourced.net, which has expanded its offering greatly in recent months. The lamb, Texel and Suffolk breeds, comes from Sean, Derek and Brendan Allen’s Castlemine Farm in Roscommon. You can also buy lamb online direct from castleminefarm.ie, and from kettyleirishfoods.com. Roscommon town hosts its third annual lamb festival from April 28th-May 3rd, and will feature such diverse events as a barn dance, a lamb cook-off, a sheep farm walk, cheesemaking demonstrations, sheep racing, international sheep dog trials and a Brazilian/Irish barbecue. For the programme, see roscommonlambfestival.com.

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Irish food wows the French

It has been a big week for young food blogger Donal Skehan, who was invited by Parisian magazine Le Fooding to cook an Irish tasting menu for 700 people at its music and food event, Foodstock, at the Chalet des Îsles, on an island on a lake in the Bois de Boulogne, on Wednesday evening. “It was my first time to cook for such huge numbers and we got a fantastic reaction to the Irish food,” says Skehan.

Jameson was part sponsor of the event, Bord Bia provided some of the ingredients, and more than 700 people paid €10 a head to attend, with proceeds going to Action Against Hunger. Skehan, whose involvement was set up by Paris-based Irish chef Trish Deseine, served Fire and Ice Jameson cocktails (with ginger and mint syrup); Kelly’s of Newport black pudding and Cashel Blue cheese salad; Irish seafood chowder with Burren smoked salmon; and mocha meringues with whiskey cream, chocolate sauce and toasted hazelnuts. Adding to the excitement, Skehan’s blog – thegoodmoodfoodblog.com – won best Irish food blog at the Irish Blog Awards last weekend. The other food and drink blog finalists were icecreamireland.com, thebeernut.blogspot.com, thedailyspud.com and the Grapes of Sloth (pauljkiernan.wordpress.com).