Delicious!

Pearl and I have been our usual socialite selves, this time rubbing shoulders with fab foodies at L'ecrivan. The lovely people behind Sacla Sauces & Delicious Magazine were over from the UK and very kindly invited us to lunch as part of a group of food bloggers. What a really nice, feel good afternoon filled with fabulous food and friendly chitter chatter.

Seamus from Delicious told us all about his new magazine Healthy Food Guide and also about his Irish roots. He is indeed 'one of us'! Clare from Sacla filled us in on the amazing Italian family who have been producing the well known Italian sauces for 70 years now. Clare is our 'pesto pioneer' having first introduced it to the UK in 1991. Great claim to fame!

The party then moved onto the Taste of Dublin launch which was sadly rained on by our typical Irish weather. Just when our UK friends were over to visit too! Didn't dampen our spirits though. Here's the only snap I got on the day (having my hands slightly full with baba!)...

Some fab food blogger friends...Aoife, Clare, Moi, Imen & Sheila

Click these links to follow our new BFF over on Twitter! Sacla, Delicious Mag & Healthy Food Guide

Our Kitchen Hero

You're my hero...swoon...Pearl x

Pearly & I have been keeping up appearances and hanging out in the Westbury Hotel with super heros! We were delighted to be invited to afternoon tea by Donal Skehan, to help celebrate the launch of his fab new cookbook, Kitchen Hero.

Now, Pearly almost didn't get an invite, for fear of her upstaging himself. It was her first official appearance in the company of the coveted food bloggers & so, no doubt Donal feared the cameras & comments may not be directed exclusively at him *tongue firmly in cheek*. But, little does he know, Pearl secretly adores him & has posters of him plastered all over her nursery!

Donal tempts us with his tasty treats.

Anyhow, enough about my little hero & onto the main super hero here. Donal is a total inspiration in catapulting to foodie stardom with infectious enthusiasm. You can see for yourself tomorrow night at 8.30pm on RTE1, when his 13 part series kicks off. We can't wait. In the meantime, we have his book to enjoy cooking from & a resulting big jar of his 'fat boy peanut butter snicker squares' to tuck into. mega yum.

P.S. you too can have afternoon tea in the westbury with the kitchen hero. well, the book anyhow.

Fabulous Foodie Fixtures

Summer is a great time of year in foodie diaries. The country is brimming with abundant Farmer's Markets and Food Fairs and Festivals. Did anyone make it to Sheridan's Food Fair last week, the same day as the launch of The Point Village Market or the bank holiday weekend's fabulous Bloom in the Park? Bloom had a great 'Love Irish Food' area exhibiting some of their member brands. Speaking of which, there are also some great food initiatives going on now too. So, this is a bit of an all encompassing foodie round-up I guess.

The 'Love Irish Food' campaign has really taken off with more and more Irish Brands coming on board. They have a powerful message.. "Did you know that if just one third of households in Ireland (that’s 400,000) spent an average of €1.67 more on an Irish item each week for a year we would generate €35 million for the Irish economy". I remember the 'Guaranteed Irish' campaign launching in the 70's having a strong impact on me (and at such a tender young age!), something that is engrained in me ever since so it's good to see this surge or Irish pride and support for our own (struggling) economy once again. Just like old times eh? By the way, you can print off recessionista money off coupons on their site here.

Also, of course it's still not too late to grab tickets for next weekends Taste of Dublin. Check out their site for exhibitor and restaurant listings and chef demo timings also. Superquinn are sponsors of this years event. Check out their demo area where I believe you will be able to preview some of the snaps I worked on for their new upcoming cookbook.

Some Foodie campaigns going on at the moment include Bord Bia's Fish, Surprisingly Simple campaign. Hit the link to check out some fishy recipes. Also, their Best in Season competition for strawberry week is underway. Send a photo of you enjoying strawberries and you could win a €500 all for one voucher. The Irish Heart Foundation have linked up with Safefood and the HSE for their Healthy Heart Eat Out month this June. Their main message this time is 'small portions' (something I must admit I'm not great at but will be more mindful!). Participating eateries nationwide, which you can find listings of here, are encouraged to provide heart healthy choices on their menus.

Localmarkets.ie sounds like a very exciting prospect hopefully coming your way soon, unless you are in Cork, where the site has kicked off already. You can have a wide selection of local produce delivered to your door within 24 hours for €7.95. The service hopes to expand to other counties soon. Check out their site for more details.

'My chef at home' is a new to me website with contact details for the likes of chefs, cookery school, event suppliers and also artisan producers. Apparently they are going to put together a list of food bloggers also! Check it out. Also, check out the newly launched Kilkenny Food Trail for perhaps an Irish holiday this summer?

The Slowfood Sugar Loaf Club has organised a movie viewing on Sunday 27th June at 4pm at the big screen in Brookhall at Macreddin Village. "One food documentary, one food movie, together with slow nibbles, slow wine and slow friends". Contact aislingnicra@gmail.com to reserve tickets which are €10 for members and €15 for non-members.

Finally, are you all set for Streetfeast on the 18th of July? It sounds like a fantastic concept, organised by a group of young volunteers, to bring communities together through the medium of food! You can join one or organise your own, have it in a car park, community centre, your garden or well, a street. I'm loving the idea and am dreaming up decorating banquet tables with pretty fabrics, hanging bunting from the trees and of course...the food. Click the link for the lowdown.

Do you know of any other upcoming 'fab foodie fixtures' that I've missed out on?

National Fish & Chip Day

Chish & Fips in Country Living Magazine (c) Jack Caffrey

Happy National Fish & Chip Day! It's officially our first here in Ireland and what perfect timing with such fantastically sunny summery weather. Chish & Fips (as they are called in our house) are half price today from the 190 members of the Irish Traditional Italian Chipper Association. Phew, thats a bit of a mouthful! I know what I'll be tucking into later...what about you?

Gathering of Food Bloggers

food, photos, bloggers, butchers, pigs & swag

We will have to come up with a portmanteau (get me! it's the posh word for joining two names, mainly celebrity couples, together) for the recent gathering of foodie bloggers. It is such a great and enthusiastic group of people with a shared love and interest in all things, well, food.

The event was hosted by Bord Bia and was organised by the faces behind their tweets, Maeve and Klara along with the one and only, good mood food blogger Donal Skehan. The day kicked off with bloggers and tweeters brief shreeks at each other as they put faces to names (or in my case, got completely bamboozled with real names, tweeting names, blog names, faces...). Then we all settled down to David Owens presentation where he spoke on behalf of Bord Bia on all things Irish pork and the Quality Assurance Mark. Our pork industry took a hard knock in 2008 with the dioxin scare, but Bord Bia have since been doing an amazing job rebuilding consumer confidence within Ireland and throughout the world.

They didn't have to do much to persuade our room full of fascinated foodies as we drooled over Maura Dufficy's cooking. Maura cooked several pork dishes, but the one that got my tummy rumbling was the marinaded pork belly which thankfully we were served at lunch time. Yes, they fed us too. These gorgeous people at the Food Board (which is the translation of Bord Bia by the way, for any non Irish speakers) know how to throw a party! You can see some snaps of the food we ate over at the consumed foodies blog. I was quite clearly too busy eating to take any.

Douze points goes to the toughest presentation slot of the day given to Damien Mulley of social media fame. He had to keep our attention while the tongues were hanging out of our heads from the tantalising smells of all things Pork. He did a great job giving us top tips on how to feed our egos with increases in new followers, general admiration and the attention we all expect and deserve (!). Then once our tummys were full, we also gladly listened to Eoin Purcell, a publishing industry analyst. Eoin got our pig tails wagging about becoming the next big thing in the food book world. He was frank about us not being able to necessarily retire on our scooped earnings here in Ireland and the fact that the publisher obviously hoped that they would (!).

Two other presentations that were actually in very stark contrast to each other, were Lorraine from Blazing Salads who is a shine to all things fabulously vegetarian and then the GMIT butchery lecturer, Pat Conway. My god, is this man a butcher?! He could cut you into 6 or 8 different parts in under five minutes. Thankfully he used Mr Porky to demonstrate. Check out some photos of him in action over at The Daily Spud.

Finally the day ended on a high with a food styling and photography presentation from Erica Ryan and Jocasta Clarke. As I said before, I hadn't ever met fellow stylist Erica, so it was lovely to meet her at last. I think she did a fantastic job and had lots of oohs and aahs from the audience on the day (and ever since with lots of tweeting going on). It's funny that you forget what you do on a daily basis is actually fascinating to other people. Erica had put together a comprehensive list of food styling tips and secrets, and likewise, reading through I thought, oh yeah, I guess this is impressive. Even though Erica and I have never met and both picked tips up as we went along I imagine (rather than doing the same course or anything), it's funny how we seem to do all of the same things (yes, kitchen roll and cotton buds are my best friends too).

Anyhow, as if we weren't overwhelmed by all that we had been pampered with already, we turned to leave to find tables brimming with what has been endearingly tagged as 'food swag'. I came home with a gorgeous rosemary plant from Living Flavour (which I have already used over on my home blog), some yummy looking smoked trout from Goatsbridge which I have yet to feast on, chutney from sheridans cheesemongers (I was one of those unfortunates who missed out on the cheese sadly though), lovely shoots from Good4u which I have been nibbling on non-stop and a delightful oat and ginger cookie from fabulous blogger Lilly Higgins, who totally standard pushed with ultra cool, machine sewn packaging!

So my head is still spinning from it all. A really fab day, packed full of pork, info, tips, recipe ideas, food swag, all round good feeling and of course lots of great new foodie friends. I have updated my blogroll over on the right (and will do so over at friendly cottage soon also) to include as many irish food bloggers as I could steal in a hurry from the great list Donal compiled. Let me know if I've missed you out! I promise to follow you all too...

...and a portmanteau? floggers? boodie floggers? foodles? bloodies?...Any other suggestions?

Wexford Food Fair 2010

Keep the diaries free for Wednesday May 19th for the second Wexford Food Fair. The exhibitors list is brimming with Wexford pride with companies like Thai Gold, Wexford Home Preserves, Phelim Byrne's Cookery Academy, Greens Berry Farm and a couple of neighbours of mine down home, Stable Diet and Zanna Foods.

Yes, being a Wexford lass, ok yella belly as we're called, I'm proud to promote and be part of it. In fact this year I'm hosting fun interactive food workshops with 8-10 year old local school children (God help me!) on behalf of Safefood, which I am really excited about. My cutsie morning slot getting down with the kids is going to be big news and no way will I let it be overshadowed by the evening demonstrations from celebrity chefs (& friends) Neven Maguire and Phelim Byrne. Put down the milk lads, the apron is on and the knives are out!

Irish Restaurant Awards 2010

Congratulations to my parents, Ciaran & Anne (Mr. & Mrs. H) for scooping the best Gastro pub award for Co. Wexford for their seafood bar & restaurant, The Lobster Pot. The Irish Restaurant Awards held their Leinster awards on Tuesday evening at a glitzy affair, which I attended on behalf of the oldies (who couldn't make it as they were quite clearly too busy maintaining their high standards!). It was a great night and all the better for winning the award of course....never mind that I went on stage to Lady Gaga blaring out....rock on! I'll post the full winners list once it's published (can't remember due to wine brain). Everything is crossed now for the Award finals to be held on the 9th of June...

Denny bang on trend

Denny are bang up to date with connections on Facebook, Twitter and You Tube and with an army of followers to boot. To top that though, you can download this hilarious (in a 'going out of your mind' kind of way!) app to your iphone for free...

Another app I hear is well worth the few euros it costs to download is Jamie Oliver's. With easy recipes to follow with step by step instructions with photos and even a shopping list you can tick off too. Man-proof apparently!

Anyone know of any other fun foodie apps?!

UPDATE 20/APR/10: Nigella launches her new iphone cooking app today, Nigellas Quick Collection. Thanks to Pacific TV's tweet for the tip off!

Gourmand Cookbook Awards

Huge congrats to chef Neven Maguire for the award he collected in Paris at the recent Gourmand International Awards. 'Homechef' won the best chef cookbook for Ireland which is a great achievement. I'm still trying to burn off the calories from eating every recipe in the book last year when testing, but I can vouch that everything is most definitely worth trying!

Also, congrats to Ely restaurant who's cookbook came 2nd in the world for best book on matching food and wine, as well as best book in Ireland for matching food and wine and then best wine book for Ireland too!

Denny Breakfast Competition

When drifting through blogesphere and the 'book of faces', I keep coming across the Denny Ad below. It links you to Denny's 'Home Is' site which currently has a competition where you can win a free breakfast. Cliona, Aoife and I created the shot above as part of the Denny repackaging project posted about previously.

I hadn't mentioned before about the propping for the shots - nothing like a good excuse to trawl auction houses and second hand and charity shops *squeels of delight*. Parents cupboards were also raided looking for those perfectly mismatched and homely looking table settings. Loving those egg cups!

And see, real people....Richard from Denny, Nik from Wonderland and fab assistant Aoife tuck into a Denny home(see, not studio!)-cooked brekkie!

Have a great weekend! I'm looking forward to having Sunday off to hang out in the Hamptons ;)

HOMECHEF

A quick turnaround from when we filmed Neven Maguire's new cookery programme HOMECHEF only a couple of months ago (as per this post and this post), but the 13 part series starts at 8.30pm tonight on RTE1. So get the fire toasty and snuggle in from the frost and snow. Here are some more snap shots from filming, this time of some of the food to expect. Enjoy!

hhmmm...Neven, what on earth have you been up to?!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year to you. I hope you had lovely celebrations over christmas and new year. I have had a lovely time and a really great break.

Now, I'm currently easing myself very slowly back into the real world. I'm not officially back to work until next monday but I've been chipping away this week at the annual office overhaul. It's no mean feat this year as I've recently had an office move which never really got unpacked and am setting up a new computer system too so lots and lots of slow and tedious stuff to do.

So with this spring clean to be distracted from I have found this game online...it's food related and more to the point it's making me feel a little less guilty for my greedy over-indulgences over the holiday. You simply answer questions (good for gearing the brain back up!) and for every correct one a grain of rice goes to the UN World Food Programme towards helping reduce world hunger. A good way to start the new year me thinks....CLICK TO PLAY

safe food turkey

Well, it's that turkey time of year again and where better to turn to for advice on preventing killing off a family member with some dodgy cooking than safe food. Once again, chef Neven Maguire gives top advice on all things turkey. Here are some snaps taken while filming some commercials for the safe food website a while back (of which I can't now seem to find, so perhaps they ended up on the cutting room floor?).

Neven's kitchen being transformed into a winter wonderland in warm weather

Neven learning his lines. Is that Dustin the turkey watching on from the roasting tin?!

TV Christmas Specials

I was just watching Gordon Ramsay's F-word when I spotted the trailer for 'Kirstie's Homemade Christmas' in the ad break. So book your seat on the sofa for three indulgent evenings in a row next week...tuesday 8th - thursday 10th on Channel 4 at 8pm. I'm guessing the food sections I worked on (as per this post) will be in the final episode (more about that later).

Speaking of Gordie, I have insider info from my friend Lisa that she is off to LA with him to film a Cook Along Live Christmas Special in a couple of weeks time. I'm guessing it will be aired on our screens at some point though. I wonder will his LA pal Vicky Beckham make an appearance?!

Cookbook award

How very exciting that a cookbook I worked on last year (as per this post), 'From Tide To Table' by Georgina Campbell, was recently announced as the winner of the Bord Bia / Listowel Food Fair 'Irish Food Book of the Year'. Pat on the back for all the team!

food for thought

With the continued frustration of not having a proper kitchen at home still (due to long suffering renovations!), I have just realised my bedside stack of reading material is littered with food mags, articles and books....The husband is going to be one well fed man once that kitchen is fitted! Anyhow, not on the light side of the reading are these two thought provoking books. Really interesting (if not shocking) reads that I've been dipping in and out of lately. They certainly give you a conscience about the impact the food industry and your own shopping and eating habits are having on the world....Not very light bedtime reading but very interesting.

A really big Taste of Dublin

Marty & I had a really fantastic time at Taste of Dublin in Iveagh Gardens this weekend. The weather was fab, the atmosphere was infectious and the food (and drink!) was to die for.

If you have never been before, as well as food and drink producer and supplier stands, lots of top Dublin restaurants are there too. Each restaurant has a simple menu of three dishes usually one starter, main and dessert. The portions are small sample sizes rather than full courses and each is individually priced between €5-8. The stands don't accept cash so you buy currency called florins (like monopoly money) from stands around the event and basically 1 florin is worth €1.

looking a bit happy on pink bubbly!

We sampled lots and lots but it's unanimous that a dish from Indian restaurant Jaipur was our top favourite...tandoori chicken with potato chatt, chutney & minted yoghurt...sounds simple but the flavours were amazing (and the racket from the Indian guys brought us back to our mad travels in India). Everyone seemed to be going crazy for the soft centre chocolate pudding with vanilla ice cream from Roly's Bistro..it did look absolutely amazing but we just couldnt fit it in by the time we got there. By that time we had stocked up on lots of gorgeous Parisian macaroons from Laduree (who by the way are soon to open up a fab tea shop in Brown Thomas following their successful few weeks with a stand there). Here's a snap from their display...

take me to your leader..

I bumped into lots of people I know while there also...Rory O'Connell & Pam from Ballymaloe cookery school where beavering away teaching lots of punters, Avril & Mary from Brand Events (the organisers) were lapping their success, Kevin Dundon from Dunbrody House was about to start yet another dem in the Miele kitchen and then old school friend Paul Lambert, Mixologist for Bacardi & Saba was setting up for a dem too.

I also tried lots of drinks, including Bulmers Pear which I hadn't yet tried (and have to say much prefer the apple!) and a chilli beer which was pretty nice (considering I don't like beer!). Oh and for all you 80's chics out there - word on the street is that West Coast Cooler are launching a rose version of the drink to be served in tall glasses with a strawberry - I can see hen parties all over the country going crazy on this!

Anyhow, altogether a very fun and filling foodie event!

Jo is in The Mood for Entertaining

Congratulations to my friend Jo Pratt on her new cookbook, In the Mood for Entertaining, which is being published today. It's a follow on from her other fabulous book, In the Mood for Food. Both books show off Jo's effortless, gorgeous style and taste, both herself and her food! You can buy them from her publishers, Penguin, here. Also Jo, even bigger wishes for the soon to be born bump! xx

Rachel's Home Cooking

I was having a browse on Amazon, as you do, when I was shocked to come across Rachel Allen's next new cookbook (which I worked on here)...I only saw the first proofs of it last week, so was a little confused. Harper Collins are well ahead of themselves in that you can pre-order the book now...very speedy as the front cover was only shot a few weeks ago, so well done! A few different titles were bounding around so looks like they settled on 'Home Cooking', sounds lovely. The rough print looked fab so I really can't wait to see the finished book (but will have to until the 1st Oct)...

wexford food fair

I'm just back from Wexford where (after having a sneeky much needed couple of days R&R) I was at a school fund raising Food Fair. Local food producers and suppliers had stands there, including Thai Gold and Carrigbyrne Farmhouse Cheeses as well as companies such as chef Phelim Byrne's fab cookery school and also Good Food Ireland. Phelim did a great demonstration to kick off the evenings events, followed by good buddy Neven Maguire who received a great welcome to Wexford. Hopefully plenty of money was raised for the local school.