The menu: nibbles with a cultural bent
But there remain other intriguing opportunities for nibbles with a cultural bent, including: Picnic in the Park at Fitzgerald’s Park (June 14);
Conflicted Theatre’s site-specific Come Dine With Charles Mee, in the excellent Barden Private Dining Club (June 12-14 and June 19-21); Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector, at Blackrock Castle, sees splendid new music Crash Ensemble perform at dawn followed by post-performance breakfast buffet ( www.corkmidsummer.com ).
If hooked by the idea of al fresco urban dining, why not host one’s own Street Feast, a day of local lunches across Ireland designed to foster community interaction, ranging from a simple front garden gathering to an event involving the entire neighbourhood. Details including the street feast pack at streetfeast.ie.
The Só Sligo Food Trail (June 10-14), as part of the Só Sligo Festival and Yeats Day 2015 celebrations, features a belly-bursting 26 restaurants offering all manner of tapas-sized dishes for in or around €5 ( www.osligo.ie ) and while in that neck of the woods, The Menu recommends, Eala Bhán and Tra Bhán, two sister restaurants providing their new nutritious children’s menus including Tubbercurry beef and homemade soups and nary a chicken nugget in sight ( www.trabhansligo.ie ).
The Menu may well tune into Neven Maguire’s Home Chef (RTÉ, June 10) to see him visit Christ King Girls’ Secondary School, in Cork, to see how they tackle healthy eating in the school.
The humungous Taste of Dublin festival (June 11-14), in Dublin’s Iveagh Gardens offers the usual array of superstar chefs with Chapter One’s Barry’s Tea-inspired desserts one tempting option ( www.dublin.tastefestivals.com ).
The IMMA Festival 2015 includes Picnic Bindles (June 14), a pre-bookable lunch for two featuring fabulous Irish fare, while the free food workshops cover fermentation, herbal flowers, butchery and Cliodhna Prendergast, of Breaking Eggs, hosts Food fanzine workshops, resulting in a family-produced concertina book of recipes and other food-related renderings ( www.imma.ie ).
Serendipity, passing itself off as Florence Nightingale, recently paid a call to an ailing Menu beset with the sniffles in the form of West Cork Garlic’s scapes, the flowering stems of hardneck garlic, best removed before an actual energy-sapping flower is produced, leaving a long slender green stem with a bulge (the imminent flower) near the top.
They are only around for a few weeks and herald the arrival of the garlic crop proper but The Menu is currently evolving a whole scape-based cuisine.
Slender and sylph-like they may be but they pack a mighty punch, a sharp, clean rendition of the more intense flavour to be had from the bulbs still below the soil.
A raw one soon had The Menu breathing freely once more, sufficiently revitalised to attempt a pesto recipe supplied by new WCG supremo Bryn Perrin and very fine it was too but The Menu has decided to pickle the remainder of his precious horde, the better to expand the short ‘season’ throughout the year ( www.westcorkgarlic.com ).
Stonewell Esterre Sparkling Cider, €16.99
Stockists: No 21 Off-Licences, Bradleys, Matsons, Grange and Bandon, Ardkeen Stores, Gibneys
This is a new cider from the always interesting Stonewell Cider based near Kinsale. Made from Elstar apples grown in Waterford and Tipperary, this is modeled on Champagne.
In a blind tasting I suspect it would fool a few people, although it doesn’t have the yeasty autolysis found in Champagne (and disliked by many).
Fine light mousse with tiny bubbles and aromas of apple pie, roasted pears and a touch of spice (cinnamon). Bright fresh fruity apples on first sip, but bone dry and crisp on the middle palate with a clean lemon fresh acidity on the finish.
