Compiled by MARIE CLAIRE DIGBY
FINGERS ON BUZZERS
Sharpen your Sabatiers for the second annual Great Irish Foodie Quiz, which takes place on Wednesday, March 2nd at 7.30pm at the Grand Canal Theatre in Dublin. Tables of four cost €80 and must be booked in advance at mycharity.ie/event/ thegreatirishfoodiequiz.
The format will include some general knowledge as well as food and wine questions, and practical challenges such as wine and chocolate tastings. Prizes include an overnight stay and dinner at the Cliff House Hotel, a side of dry-aged beef from Ennis Butchers, and a €200 voucher for Chapter One. Proceeds will go to Down Syndrome Ireland.
WEBWATCH holymackerel.ie
Aoife Carrigy, former deputy editor at Food & Wine, has launched a lively food blog. Her daily reports from the four-week cookery course at the Dublin Cookery School make riveting reading, and she has lots to say on what we eat.
Book of the week
Remember Dhruv Baker’s Asian spiced dishes that earned him last year’s MasterChef title? And actress Lisa Faulkner’s elegant compositions, and Christine Hamilton’s accomplished old-school dishes on Celebrity MasterChef? You can revisit the triumphs from last year’s amateur, professional and celebrity competitions in MasterChef at Home, published by Dorling Kindersley (€25), which has 200 of the best recipes from last year’s series. The new one begins on BBC One on Wednesday at 9pm.
TV dinners
Our appetite for food TV seems to be undiminished and there will be some new Irish faces on screens this year. Paul Flynn of the Tannery restaurant has just finished filming an eight-part series with RTÉ Cork, for transmission in June, and Donal Skehan’s first cookery show, made by InProduction for RTÉ, will be shown at Easter.
Paul Flynn’s Irish Food Adventure, directed by Rory Cobbe and produced by Janet Frawley, takes the chef out of the kitchen and goes on location, cooking with the monks at Mount Melleray, and at the dog track in Waterford, among other places. There are also in-studio cooking segments filmed in Cork.
Donal Skehan’s show, Kitchen Hero, is being made by David Hare, who has also worked with Neven Maguire, Clodagh McKenna and Rachel Allen. It is being shot in the kitchen of his home in Howth (above), as well as on location, and there will be an accompanying book, due out in April.
Martin Shanahan’s second TV series, Martin’s Still Mad About Fish, is also in production with RTÉ Cork. Catherine Fulvio has two TV projects on the go, including a daily cookery show along the lines of BBC’s Saturday Kitchen, called Lunchtime. Her other RTÉ project, a family cooking show, has been confirmed for screening on Friday evenings, starting in September.
