The Munchies Part 2: Culinary heroes & achievements of 2016
The Menu has long history with farmer’s markets, both as stallholder and punter, having first manned stalls at the outset of the Irish farmer’s market revolution back in the early 90s.
He returned as a stallholder for a spell in 2006/07 and Bandon Farmer’s Market, in its infancy, offered his fledgling new food business a home alongside a scant handful of other stalls.
That first day, he met several fellow traders who remain amongst his finest friends in food to this day and though this particular professional flirtation was brief, he retains fond memories and even then its potential was obvious in what was historically once one of Munster’s greatest market towns.
Ten years on, Bandon Farmer’s Market is in a new location with a full complement of excellent producers and retailers serving up the very finest of Irish produce to the citizens of Bandon and beyond. Long may it continue to prosper. www.facebook.com/BandonFarmersMarket
This was the year The Menu went back on the ‘pints’, once more guzzling a liquid he had long foresworn. No, he speaks not of porter, rather pints of the ‘white stuff’, organic, raw milk in gorgeous little ‘old school’ pint bottles with a bright red foil cap, brought directly to market by farmers Ann and Dan Ahern, from Ballysimon, in East Cork.
Writing earlier this year, The Menu described it as ‘a creamy draught that rolls around the mouth like liquid silk leaving in its wake an impossibly delicious sweetness, a sure sign that the lactose is surrendering its place to an infinitely richer fat content’. Not only is it a splendid product but also a wonderful example for other farmers of the potential of the ‘direct-to-market’ route in a country where State agricultural policy appears more concerned with the needs of the industrial agri-biz sector over those of actual farmers, most especially the small family-run dairy farms currently feeling the full wrath of the turmoil on the global commodity markets.
Only the future can tell whether the Athrú conference on gender equality in the hospitality industry, held last summer in Galway, will leave a lasting legacy but, either way, the ‘conversation’ was very much worth having and The Menu wishes to acknowledge the vital role played by several women in particular.
An article by Irish food writer Trish Deseine’s on the subject was the original catalyst. Based on two decades and more of experience in the food world, Deseine’s questioning of the status quo in the industry drew a huge reaction and much of it was negative and derisory, the temper of the denials rather reinforcing her initial point.
The fact that many of her professional detractors, both male and female, claimed never to have experienced or witnessed gender discrimination is a positive but certainly did not give them the right to extend that to making blanket assumptions about the industry at large, most especially when certain hard and incontrovertible statistics on wage and status parity completely contradicted that assumption.
Noting this reaction, Kai Chef/Proprietor and human whirlwind Jess Murphy took on the mantle and set about organising the conference with the help of some other very special women, most especially Maria Canabal, who has been leading the posse on this issue at an international level for several years through her Parabere forum. Hats off to them all and as the proud pops of his own fine young woman, The Menu trusts this is a ‘conversation’ that will continue to run into the future.
READ MORE: The Munchies Part 1: Culinary heroes & achievements of 2016
