Menu: Chocolate and herbs, Breton crêpes, and a gin distillery raffle
Irish presenter, Maia Dunphy, launches the Energia and GIY Get Ireland Growing initiative, giving away 1,000 free large starter GROWBoxes worth €45,000 ahead of the first national Get Ireland Growing Day
The Menu’s much loved GIY has teamed up with Energia to offer 1,000 free GROWBoxes worth €45,000 to be won as part of the Energia and GIY Get Ireland Growing Initiative.
The Waterford-based non-profit social enterprise has partnered with Energia to launch the first-ever national Energia Get Ireland Growing Day (June 19) to encourage people throughout Ireland to get down and dirty in the soil and start growing their own fruit, vegetables and herbs. And they're providing the kit to get started — including a bag of Irish Wildflower Beebombs to help re-create bee habitats, absolutely vital to the continued survival of this threatened species.
Designed to suit all garden sizes from apartment balcony to suburban backyard, the GROWBoxes contain five seed packs (beetroot, carrot, peas, mixed oriental greens, basil), a hessian sack of Irish wildflower bee bombs (15/bag), compost, fibre seed trays, rice husk pots and Get Ireland Growing tips and recipe cards.
The sublimely talented Galway-based Gráinne Mullins, pastry chef and chocolatier extraordinaire and creator/producer of some of The Menu’s most favourite of all Irish chocolates has teamed up with her green-fingered mother, Esther, to create an exquisite and limited edition range, Herbalicious.
Gráinne is allying her exquisite technique and visual eye to Esther’s consummate horticultural skills. The woman is even growing wasabi, for heaven’s sake — viewed as one of the most difficult plants in the world to grow outside of its native Japan.
They will marry unique herb flavours with the finest chocolate confections to create masterworks of edible art. Flavours include fennel, lovage, blackcurrant leaf and lemon balm and each bonbon takes three full days to produce, from hand polishing of individual moulds, to the blending of luxury ingredients (often local and ethically sourced) to the final hand-painting of each chocolate.
Have you ever fancied opening the drinks cabinet to fix yourself a gin cocktail and reaching into the cupboard to haul out a bottle of ‘your own’ to backbone said beverage? In a novel move to building their business, Listoke Distillery are raffling off 5% of their family business, with each entry costing less than the price of a bottle of gin.
Located in the Boyne Valley, in Co Louth, the award-winning family-run business has picked up global accolades in recent years as well as expanding successfully into the USA, Russia and most recently China. With tickets retailing at just £20 each, one lucky winner will become a board member, receive 5% shares in Listoke Distillery plus yearly dividends (2020 valuation was €1.7m), along with a range of tasting benefits and samples via the exclusive First Sip Society tasting club.
Crucially, that 5% will equate to 5% of the profits should the business ever be sold. Second and third place winners will receive £10,000stg and £5,000stg in cash, respectively. Tickets are only available to over-18s.
Speaking of distilleries, The Menu doffs a cap and also sweeps quite low to the floor in humble courtesy to one of his more favoured such enterprises, the ever-innovative Dingle Distillery, in West Kerry. They have just released a very fine single malt — a rare enough bird in these parts.
Using their own whiskey, triple distilled, non-chill filtered and matured in PX sherry and bourbon casks, it is clean and bright with notes of apples, vanilla and raisins and a caramel honey that resolves in a lingering smokey spice.
Whenever out and about in West Cork, most particularly at one of several farmer’s markets (Bantry, Skibbereen and Schull), The Menu’s wallet takes a regular and mighty hammering on foot of the constant pleas of his progeny for ongoing sustenance.
And more than a few of his shekels have gone into the coffers of Nolwen’s Street Food stall. French-born Nolwen Milot moved to West Cork as a child and, with a mother who is a fourth-generation Breton crêpier, it is hardly surprising Nolwen’s own stall first majored in crêpes and galettes, though that range has since expanded, including pizza kits (also available through Neighbourfood.ie).
The Menu was especially taken with the flavours of his Breton heritage and, for a spell during lockdown, The Menu’s progeny had him knocking up a batch of crêpe batter every other day in order to serve up these delicious wraith-like cousins of the more robust pancake each morning with Nolwen’s Caramel au Beurre Salé — an authentic, rich and buttery salted caramel sauce which they drizzled onto piping hot crêpes and topped with creme fraiche.
And if that weren’t tempting enough for the sweet-toothed among you, The Menu has just learned that Nolwen is now turning out another traditional Breton delicacy, the kouign amann, which The New York Times once dubbed, ’the fattiest pastry in Europe’.
Nolwen uses 1lb of butter and 1lb of sugar to produce just 15 of these caramelised confections, which pretty much tells you all you need to know about yet another quite delicious occasion of sin.
