Darina Allen: Fish in Pakora Batter with Spicy Wedges

I’VE got a whole stack of cookbooks on my desk to review, some since before Christmas when almost every post brought another title — so many it wasn’t possible to reach them all.

There were several that I was particularly taken with, one was the Lettercollum Cookbook. Author Karen Austin’s story is a particularly intriguing one; she was on her way to Australia one Christmas when she met Con McLoughlin who brought her to West Cork.

She’s not the first and certainly won’t be the last to be totally seduced by the landscape and the people — and the sun shone for the entire week. She and Con got together with a few friends to buy a dilapidated Victorian house with 12 acres of land in 1983. They planned to lead the ‘good life’, get away from pollution and traffic jams and try their hand at sustainable living — on her own admission, they had lots of grand plans and no experience, quite a combo.