Menu: Healthy food - homegrown or prepared by chefs and juice-makers
The exclusive 1824 Bar at the Shelbourne Hotel, in Dublin, hosts a special evening of Hennessy cognacs and cocktails
The Menu has been out and about in his garden, for the moment only putting manners on various beds, but a monthly seed subscription from GIY sounds just the ticket for when he begins planting proper. Especially as part of the overall offering includes an expert food growing podcast, .
GIY aims to make growing your own food as easy as possible with a new monthly seed subscription service accompanied by full access to their online growing guides, regular interactive Q&A discussions and a new podcast offering a deep dive into food systems and growing your own. Each month brings three different seasonal seeds arriving just in time for sowing.
The very wonderful Organic Centre, in Co Leitrim, has some excellent upcoming courses. 'Growing for a Restaurant' (Planning the year’s production, selecting and growing varieties of salads, herbs and micro-greens, successional growing, soil requirements and fertility) that sounds as appropriate for the home kitchen as for anyone growing for a restaurant.
'Growing Fruit' covers best site location, preparing ground, orchard layout, rootstock selection, planting techniques, feeding and protecting plants. And for anyone with a polytunnel, then growing maestro Klaus Laitenberger delivers the first of their seasonal polytunnel workshops, covering crop rotation, composting, sowing and planting, tips, pest and disease.
Hearth and Community (March 4-6) taking place on Achill Island, explores the anthropology of Irish food by taking an in-depth look at how food has been central through the ages in creating community, conceiving traditions and providing a unique identity to the West of Ireland, the weekend’s highlight being the recreation of the traditional Fulacht Fiadh, dating from the Neolithic period, and which Connemara native and tourism professional Eileen Davis will use to cook the meat of a Maol cow, a rare, ancient Irish breed of cattle.
The weekend also includes academic lectures, looking at Food and Ecology, traditional food demonstrations, seanós evenings and tours of the significant historical and archeological sites. It's a free event but booking is essential.
Anyone fancying a midweek jaunt might consider chef and broadcaster Mark Moriarty’s culinary collaboration with Derek Kelly, head chef of Kathleen’s Kitchen, the casual dining restaurant at Carton House, as the pair deliver two nights of a collaborative menu (March 3 & 4) with the open kitchen encouraging interaction between diners and chefs.
This ticketed six-course tasting menu of contemporary Irish fare features excellent produce used with imagination, dishes including: cured Irish mackerel with yuzu koshoand ponzu jelly, Castletownbere ray wing with caramelised onion and dashi broth, aged Feighcullen duck with turnip, potato, citrus, shiso, liver & toast, and yoghurt mousse with blood orange and corncake and Guanaja chocolate with yuzu, coffee and salted black truffle sorbet. Kat with petits fours to finish.
An ongoing series of exclusive evenings in Dublin’s Shelbourne partnering with Hennessy, sounds just great, with places possibly still available for the March 3 event. It's limited to just 20 people per session in the gorgeous and intimate 1824 Bar, tucked away at the top of the grand staircase in The Shelbourne.
Led by Paul Tuohy, Moët Hennessy brand ambassador, guests will taste Hennessy V.S.O.P. Privilège, Hennessy X.O. & Hennessy Paradis and sample some very excellent Hennessy-based Fire & Ice cocktails, also available in the Shelbourne throughout February and March.
The Menu's morning smoothie — a Trojan horse for getting all manner of nutritious foodstuffs into the progeny — became turbocharged thanks to Perfectly Pure Juices, a range of fresh fruit and vegetable juices with no added sugar, preservatives or chemicals, made by Kath McCausland, in Dungannon, in Co Tyrone.
Kath initially created the juices as a means of supplying vital nutrition to her ill brother, at the time unable to eat solid food, and subsequently expanded the range to include an Immune Support anti-inflammatory blend to alleviate her father’s discomfort after treatment when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
The range can be enjoyed as part of a planned cleanse or simply as an easy source of nutrition but what sold The Menu was the lovely fresh flavours. A ‘green’ number included spinach, kale, cucumber, apple and pineapple and was most refreshing while a carrot, orange and raw beet carried the heft of an earthy tuberous sweetness alleviated with citric tang; both were most excellent enjoyed on their own but used as the liquid component of overnight oats, served with grated apple and homemade natural yoghurt made for a breakfast of champions.
A longtime fan of aloe vera juice, The Menu adored most of all his early morning pick-me-up of a shot of the PPJ version, sweetened with berries, a most delicious and healing draught — if it was good enough for Hippocrates, the ‘father of medicine,’ then it’s more than good enough for The Menu!
