The Menu: Cork is the country's breadbasket and that's official
English Market-based butcher Tom Durcan, one of this year's recipients of the prestigious Irish Food Writers' Guild Awards. Photographer Paul Sherwood
It is probably not the greatest pandemic-related hardship by more than a country mile, but The Menu is genuinely disappointed to once more miss his annual trip to the Big Smoke for the Irish Food Writers’ Guild Food Awards, when he gathers each year with his fellow food scribes to pass a wonderful day of wining and dining to celebrate an always splendid collection of Irish food producers and personalities.
Selected and voted upon anonymously by the Guild members, winners only learn of their success after the decision has been made, ensuring they are amongst the most reputable and highly regarded such awards in the country.
This year’s winners maintain the usual impeccable standards and, as always, reflecting the county’s position as the country’s breadbasket, Cork producers are once more to the fore, winning three of the eight awards. The Menu was also especially pleased to see one of his great cheesemaking heroes, Marion Roeleveld, receive a lifetime achievement award and to see one of the growing band of Irish native grain-to-flour farmers, James Kelly, of Ballymore Organics, also honoured.
Neighbourfood, the Cork-based online farmers’ market network with outlets all over Ireland and also in Britain, and founded by Corkonians Jack Crotty and Martin Poucher, was just about the only choice possible after the massive positive impact it had on the livelihoods of small producers when the lockdown initially wreaked havoc on the livelihoods of so many of them. Ballymakenny Farm’s excellent Irish heritage and specialty potatoes, featured several times in this column over the past year — and nothing goes better together than Irish spuds and butter — and handmade Abernethy Butter is one of the very finest to be found in this country.
The winners of the 2021 Irish Food Writers’ Guild Food Awards are:
- Abernethy Butter, Co. Down (Food Award)
- Ballymakenny Farm Irish Heritage and Specialty Potatoes, Co. Louth (Food Award)
- Tom Durcan’s Spiced Beef, Co. Cork (Food Award)
- Kinsale Mead Wild Red Mead, Merlot Barrel Aged, Co. Cork (Drink Award)
- NeighbourFood, Co. Cork (Outstanding Organisation Award)
- Ballymore Organics, Co. Kildare(Environmental Award)
- The Green-Schools Food & Biodiversity Theme (Community Food Award)
- Marion Roeleveld, Killeen Farmhouse Cheese, Co. Galway (Lifetime Achievement Award
The Menu is very much looking forward to getting stuck into a meal kit from one of Leeside’s most iconic restaurants - a true locavore practitioner for 30 years and more will be putting on bib and tucker to address dinner from Jacques Restaurant. And if it is anything comparable to their usual in-house fare, he is in for a special treat.
To date, they have offered a range of delicious options from a weekly changing menu featuring three options, including, traditional whole roast duck, BBQ'd Moroccan lamb pie, fish bouillabaisse, whole Castletownbere lobster, spatchcocked chicken with Muhammara, Middle Eastern lamb shanks. Menus go live each Monday at midday, with ordering taking place online or by phone (0214277387).
Cobh’s Commodore Hotel is an institution in the town and is these days overseen by highly experienced hospitality practitioners, John and Anne Gately, so The Menu is looking forward to a return visit after quite some years since his last visit.
In the meantime, the hotel kitchen is offering an extremely reasonably priced menu (most expensive dish is €6.95) of popular dishes to eat at home, along with sides and cakes, cookies and scones. Call or mail to order, open 10am to 7pm, Mon to Sat.
The Kingsley Hotel has expanded its coffee and snack stall, Bean & River, by the weir on the River Lee, alongside the very popular public amenity, the Lee Fields, in Cork, to offer a mini ‘street market’ on Saturdays and Sundays from 11am offering food straight from the barbecue along with freshly-baked breads and boxes of homemade cakes from the hotel’s pastry kitchen.
The Menu is a long-time fan of splendid Deise artisanal baker Sarah Richards and her Seagull Bakery in Tramore so word of a second outlet, on Patrick St, in Waterford City itself, is most splendid news indeed, offering their truly superb range of breads and patisserie along with 30 different bio-dynamic and organic natural wines, My Goodness vegan and fermented foods, hand-made artisan Corleggy Cheeses, charcuterie from The Wooded Pig farm and a selection of antipasti from The Real Olive Company.
Seagull will also be offering premium filter coffee and kombuchas along with fresh pasta handmade from Irish stoneground heritage grains.
Following a recent food foraging expedition to Midleton, The Menu spied a gorgeous linen bread bag — the traditional means of storing bread in many other countries. The Menu has been using one for many years to store his own sourdough loaves, having procured it from the West Cork Baking Emporium, many moons ago.
This linen bag allows the bread to ‘breathe’ while the natural oils in the fabric keep it from drying out. This lovely pale eggshell blue bag was crafted by the enormously talented fashion designer, Zoe Carol.
Zoe has also unveiled a range of very gorgeous linen napkins, available in packs of six. Suitable for day-to-day use, and equally for dining with friends and family, they make for a casually stylish addition to any table.
