Menu: Gifts for dads who love cooking — and for dads who just love good food
Smoked paprika: Hederman's Smoked Paprika comes highly recommended by the Menu
As most men tend to leave gift-buying until the very last minute, it is somehow appropriate that The Menu has to revisit the whole Father’s Day (June 20) gift schtick to include a couple of late entries. And pick of the bunch is a raffle ticket for a prize that would be ideal for any food-loving father who fancies himself in the kitchen. Sam Gleeson of Clare based company This Is What We Do is putting up two of his own hand-forged knives, a small santoku (traditional Japanese general purpose chef’s knife) and a petty knife (as in ‘petit’, for paring, chopping and cutting jobs too small for a standard chef’s knife).
Sam hand-forges and finishes all his knives to an extraordinary level of craftmanship, and was recently named as one of five recipients of the RDS Craft Award 2021, with a bursary of €10,000 per winner — making it the largest and most prestigious craft award in Ireland, recognising a serious talent and enabling them at a crucial stage in their burgeoning career.
The pair of knives are made from a combination of high carbon steels for cutting quality and colouration and mono-steel, and then after heat treatment, are etched in acid and strong instant coffee to reveal the patination. The handles are made from reclaimed tropical hardwood which Sam brought back from his travels in Thailand and bolsters (between handle and blade) are made from antique Irish stag antler and Indian buffalo horn, with nickel silver detailing. And if that last bit all sounds a bit dry and technical then read it out to your Dad — he’ll be quivering with excitement.
Tickets are €15 — part of a crowdfunding venture to be revealed later this summer which will go towards opening Sam’s knifemaking school in Co Clare, in 2022. It will be the first such school in Ireland, offering bladesmithing and knife making classes at their forge, nestled in the forest on the Wild Atlantic Way.
thisiswhatido.ie
Second prize is a €100 voucher to attend classes at the school and third prize is to have 10 native Irish hardwood trees planted in your name as part of the highly commendable Grown Forest environmental project. Competition closes on June 19, with the winners announced on Fathers’ Day, June 20.
Meadows and Byrne is offering one of those currently very hard to locate garden pizza ovens, the Ooni Pro 16, which can turn out a pretty fine pizza in 60 seconds once it hits optimum heat. It’ll certainly set you back a sight more than the price of a pair of socks or a bottle of Old Spice but a lifetime of fine pizzas is more than worth it.
If your pater is more inclined to sit around and leave others do the heavy lifting when it comes to finest food and drinks, his greatest exertion limited to shouldering a fine G&T, then Poacher’s, producers of a very splendid Irish range of mixed drinks, have launched two new summer gift boxes, The Poachers Mixers Gift Box and the Poachers Spirits Gift Box with Stillgarden Gin, delivered nationwide in a most stylish presentation box.
The Menu is very anxious to return once more to Spain, most especially for some very fine food and wines, but in the meantime will more than make do with a series of online classes delivered by Spanish food specialist Bianca Valencia on behalf of Instituto Cervantes (the cultural and language wing of the Spanish Embassy). The Gastronomy Workshops (first class, June 15) run every two weeks for eight weeks and offers a comprehensive and fascinating journey into the history of Spanish cuisine, covering Galicia, (and the Camino de Santiago), and the Basque Country, before heading south to Andalucia and then West to Catalonia.
There is probably no more room left on Frank Hederman’s shelf for yet another encomium hymning his praises as a world-class smoker of fish and seafood. And, indeed, The Menu has supplied his own such tributes on these pages in years past. Today, however, The Menu wishes to focus on Hederman’s ability as a smoker, full stop, when he abandons the oceanic larder to turn instead to the produce of the land. Specifically, we're focusing on the extraordinary alchemy applied in the Belvelly Smokehouse to one of The Menu’s most favourite of all spices: paprika — most especially, smoked paprika.
The Menu has always taken care to purchase premium versions of same but it seems he had only ever been toying around in the foothills of flavour for Hederman’s Smoked Paprika is of a different order again. Certainly, it is punchy, warming and sweet, as would be expected of a good paprika but here potency is reined in by a refined delicacy that is down to Hederman’s preference for beech over more usual, more robust oak.
Furthermore, Hederman only fires up the chips when the spice is already ground rather than following common practice and smoking whole peppers. It all makes for a very versatile ingredient — excellent added to Iberian dishes such as paella and a dead cert for BBQ marinades and rubs. But it is that aforementioned delicacy that has The Menu applying it as a finishing condiment — a gentle dusting through a small sieve as pinched paprika can clump — for simpler fare such as buttery mash potato and his current favourite, fried sausage meat with creamy, barely curdled scrambled eggs with flat-leaf parsley.
