Menu: Cocktail workshops in Cork city just the ticket for Christmas

Plus - a look at fermented-food producers Terra Ignis

Foxglove Cocktail Co's Make-Your-Own Mulled Wine Kit

Make your own

The Menu reckons the very excellent Foxglove Cocktail Co’s pop-up Christmas Cocktail Workshops on Lancaster Quay, in Cork city, are just the ticket for celebrating the season with friends and colleagues without resorting to the base-level antics of the 12 Pubs of Christmas. 

Running throughout December (2, 3, 8, 10, 15, 16, 17, 22 and 23), workshops begin with mulled wine on arrival before heading for the festively designed workshop to learn how to make Christmas cocktails from scratch, including non-alcoholic options. 

Cork company Foxglove Cocktail Co has made a name for itself for its range of mixers made from 100% natural ingredients and all participants will learn to make their own cocktails, using homemade syrups, fresh ingredients, and locally sourced spirits. 

With a minimum of six per class, cost of €50 includes alcohol, fresh ingredients, homemade syrups, cocktail equipment, and more. 

• Email: [e-mail] or DM on Instagram @foxglovecocktailco. 
• Large corporate groups welcome with different dates also available.
• www.foxglovecocktails.ie

A welcome arrival

While the closing of the Crawford Gallery Cafe after more than three decades as one of the finer lunching options on Leeside still tugs a little at The Menu’s heartstrings, he is delighted to hear that a new operation ensures that a dining tradition continues in the city’s premier art space.

Beth Haughton and Harold Lynch, formerly of Docklands, on Lapp’s Quay, are taking over and opening The Green Room, and The Menu promises further tidings as soon as he packs up his easel and canvas and pulls up a pew in The Green Room.

• www.crawfordartgallery.ie

Greene's Restaurant, MacCurtain Street, Cork. Picture: Joleen Cronin

Take a break

Isaac’s, on MacCurtain St have a tidy little hospitality package for anyone heading to Cork city for a little pre-Christmas R&R or, better still, an offer that might hold equal attraction to Leesiders contemplating a night out on the town with none of the hassles of trying to get a cab home at the end of the night, currently a very tall order indeed on busy evenings.

For the rest of November and all of December, for just €150 per person per night, the package combines an overnight stay in Isaac’s, breakfast for two, a pre-dinner cocktail at Cask, and a three-course prix fixe dinner at Greene’s restaurant, all located in the same complex, thus also saving on shoe leather. Book online, email [e-mail] or tel: [phone].

• www.hotelisaacscork.com

Terra Ignis. Picture: Miki Barlok

TODAY’S SPECIAL

Linda O’Flynn and Ivo Duarte of Terra Ignis are a young couple producing a range of fermented products using wild, foraged and cultivated organic, local, seasonal produce, resulting in a whole smorgasbord of vibrant, new, life-filled probiotic flavours to pep up your dishes.

The Menu has made more than a few ginger bugs over the years, a simple fermentation of sugar, ginger, water, and natural wild yeasts and bacteria and it can either be consumed as a tonic or used as akin to a sourdough starter, to kickstart a whole host of fruit juices and teas a-bubblin’ into naturally carbonated, probiotic sodas.

Terra Ignis Plum & Laurel Soda, just one of many seasonal variations, combines mild sweet stone fruit and bay with creamy soft textures, a delightfully refreshing non-alcoholic fizz.

Lemon Verbena Kombucha Vinegar is low on acidity to the point that it makes for a very palatable booster shot but it’s high citric funk works well with steamed root veg, dressed in extra virgin olive oil and finished with a spritz of vinegar.

Wild Fire Cider Vinegar is an infinitely more muscular blend of ingredients flavouring an apple cider vinegar base (sage, clover, plantain, wild rosemary, wild violet, thyme, lemon, garlic, onions, horseradish, ginger, and chilli peppers) but a shopping list of ingredients present as a rather more singular hit of sweet, woody umami, a gorgeous finishing touch to sautéed wild mushrooms.

Fermented Hot Sauce, made with lacto fermented chillis and blended with garlic-infused olive oil, is a punchy little paste, sweet, tangy and still clinging on valiantly to the fresh vibrant flavours of raw chilli, highly recommended with creamy, buttery slow-scrambled eggs and sourdough toast.

Wooster, their take on Worcestershire sauce, is made with Irish Atlantic wakame and wrack. The Menu is sure readers are very familiar with Worcestershire sauce and its myriad applications. 

Certainly, it can be successfully splashed into sauces and marinades but The Menu believes Terra Ignis’s version deserves to be treasured and used more thoughtfully, rather than diluting its impact. 

It makes for a potent little finisher in an otherwise simple, clean butter/cream sauce for fish but — and trust The Menu on this one — there is even more scope for using this to create some very intriguing desserts, and The Menu had great success using it as a trace note in a steamed toffee pudding and also as a more pronounced grace note in a hot dark chocolate sauce.

Top billing in the range surely goes to Oak Bark Fermented Ketchup, a blend of tomatoes, garlic, turmeric, some of the aforementioned Wooster, all fermented with charred oak bark, resulting in a sweet tomato paste with a slight lactic fizz and a pleasing rumour of smoke that The Menu is almost applying to the furniture for a quick snack, such is its alchemically transformative properties.

Absolutely superb for creating superior seasonal vegetarian canapés that will knock the socks of the carnivorous version every time, The Menu using it last weekend to crown a crisp herbed toast, garlic confit oyster mushroom and homemade lemon mayo combo to glorious effect. 

• Online shop should be ready in a few weeks, also available on neighbourfood.ie, so in the meantime check out their English Market stall which runs until January or on Instagram, @terra_ignis.