The Menu: Ballyhoura Mountain Mushrooms
The Menu has an appetite, but even he hesitates when confronted by the veritable smorgasbord of events at this year’s A Taste of West Cork Food Festival, a culinary shindig with real meat on its bones. There’s food movies, theatre, opera, photography and history; trips to farms and producers; practical demos including clay oven building, GIY, budget cooking, fermenting foods and myriad opportunities to eat fabulous West Cork produce, from casual stall-grazing to more formal dining, including a special banquet at the West Cork Hotel cooked by Donegalman Gary O’Hanlon, winner of last year’s Celtic Cookoff. The Menu will be giving his tuppence-worth at what promises to be a fascinating Belling Food Forum (Sat, Sept 7) devising a promotional strategy for West Cork, but a highlight of last year’s festival was the Secondary Schools Cooking Competition which saw visiting chefs stunned by the culinary calibre of the young contestants and The Menu shall be in attendance. www.atasteofwestcork.com
The Menu gave the fragrant Neidín his head on a recent sunny afternoon for a leisurely amble around his beloved Home by the Lee and uncovered a whole host of new food-related ventures around the city — as ever, it is those with a love of food who appear most willing of all to take the risk in fraught fiscal times, starting up new businesses, and best of luck to them! Some decent ice cream (from local outfit, Happy Days) as well as crepes available in the Sugarcube on the immensely popular boardwalk where South Mall meets Grand Parade. An extremely inviting Perry Street Market Cafe in one of the more offbeat locations, is a lovely space with the very fine Pamela Kelly, late of Nash 19, cheffing up a storm, and then over the bridge to MacCurtain St and Bobas for a rather curious ‘bubble tea’, a class of tea/slush puppy all the rage in Asia with decent ‘sangidges. Across the road, Sonja, proprietor of the very wonderful Tea Shop, is selling fabulous loose leaf teas and the kit required to engineer a perfect cuppa and finally to The Fishwife for what must be a contender for best fish and chips in Cork. !
Chefs from far and wide compete for the Taste of Carlow Irish Chefs World Culinary Challenge (today and tomorrow) in the Carlow Town Hall (admission free) while The Cliff Townhouse’s 2nd Annual Oyster Festival runs for the month of September featuring a special oyster-based menu as just one of the treats on the half-shell for all mollusc maniacs. www.theclifftownhouse.com
Ballyhoura Mountain Mushrooms once again come up with the goods: Umami powder; dried, powdered porcini and shitaake mushrooms and a smidgeon of salt, its addition to any soup, stew, sauce, or whatever you’re having yourself, turns the perfectly acceptable into the acceptably perfect. www.ballyhouramushrooms.ie
