The Menu: Garryvoe Hotel goes medieval and workshops for fermented food lovers

Plus — today's special includes great Galway grub

In aid of Breakthrough Cancer Research, Garryvoe Hotel managing director Stephen Belton putting his ‘head on the block’.

A Knight for charity

Garryvoe Hotel in east Cork goes medieval with a Knight to Remember (January 21) in aid of Breakthrough Cancer Research, with the hotel’s managing director Stephen Belton putting his ‘head on the block’ and offering up his lustrous locks for charity, with a full head shave.

The night begins with medieval demonstrations by the historical combat and living history society, Bran Dubh, who along with the Wobbly Circus, kick off the evening’s entertainment. After an aperitif, it’s on to the Grand Ballroom for a three courser, including live music and dancing.

All proceeds from all of the ticket sales, raffle sales, and donations, go to charity including the full ticket price of €60 each and are available to purchase from the Garryvoe hotel on 021-4646718. For those unable to attend, there is a fundraising page for all donations, large and small,

• www.idonate.ie/garryvoehotel

Garryvoe Hotel managing director Stephen Belton will have a full head shave for charity next week

Fermentation workshops

One of The Menu’s favourite new food discoveries of last year was Terra Ignis, currently based in the startup stall in the English Market and producing a very splendid range of fermented food products. Now proprietors Linda and Ivo have set up the Terra Ignis Fermentation Collective, offering workshops for a maximum of six people at a time, creating and sharing ferments.

Each workshop will show how to create three different ferments, with ingredients and equipment sufficient to make six portions assigned to each participant. After the workshop, there is a comprehensive follow-up with the group throughout the process of creating the ferment, sharing your own and receiving five others. All taking place in Cork city centre, the first workshop is on January 30 at 6pm and costs €75 per person.

• To contact, see Instagram: @terra_ignis

No more bread from Moray

The Menu is sad to once more have to lower the flag to half-mast, this time for one of Cork city’s very fine real bread bakers, Moray Bresnihan’s Bread and Roses, which he ran for over half a decade, supplying hospitality businesses and retail outlets around Cork as well as operating a regular stall at the Coal Quay Farmers’ Market. Once again, the huge increase in overheads, particularly the rising energy costs, played a major part in Moray’s decision to call it a day as he returns to his original calling, working in the arts sector, and he is also looking forward to ‘having a life’ once more, for a real bread bakery eats up all the hours going and then some.

• Moray will be selling off a list of pro baking equipment and can be contacted online, www.breadandroses.ie

Fermented foodstuffs at Terra Ignis. Picture: Miki Barlok

Twenty-five years of baking

On a more positive bread-related note, The Menu would like to issue a belated 25th birthday congratulations to Sheila Fitzpatrick’s Alternative Bread Company which hit that mark just before Christmas and The Menu well recalls its first fledgling steps in the English Market, then itself in the throes of a modern-day reinvention that has made it the national attraction it is today, and The Menu says fair play to Sheila for all she has done to keep the real bread flag flying in Cork.

In more good news, The Menu is delighted to learn that Gautham Iyer has re-opened his nationally renowned Iyer’s Cafe, on Pope’s Quay, comparatively recently the subject of yet another Menu elegy when he had to close some time back.

Well, it turns out that what promised to be a far longer hiatus has in the interim become no more than what might be termed an ‘extended holiday’ and Gautham’s many fans, The Menu not least among them, will be delighted to once more squeeze into the bijou little riverside space and reacquaint themselves with the chilli burn.

Today’s Special

Once the first lockdown was lifted in 2020 and the nation staycationed to beat the band, The Menu and his little tribe headed up the west coast in a camper van, a magical odyssey in a time that required more than a bit of magical thinking.

The best eating of all was the food they cooked over the camp fire grill each night from a larder freshly replenished each day on their travels. Sullivan’s Country Grocer, in Oughterard, in Co Galway, was one especial trove of fine fare and it was where The Menu first encountered Builín Blasta’s truly wonderful Smoked Onion Mayo which became the condiment of choice for the remainder of the holiday. While Builín Blasta, an Irish language cafe in the heart of the Galway Gaeltacht, also carry a smart little range of their other chutneys, relishes, and salad dressings, the Smoked Onion Mayo stands proud of the crowd, one of the best new additions to the national larder in recent years.

A lush, smooth, and creamy emulsion, the smoked notes are wonderfully subtle, more of a gentle kiss rather than a bruising bear hug, mindful of its primary role to enhance rather than overpower whatever primary foodstuff it is adorning. It adds additional savoury intrigue to all the traditional pairings with which an ordinary mayo is partnered with, and is also ripe for more experimental combos as a spread, dressing, or dip, and was a natural bedfellow for prawns grilled over the ashes one evening in Achill but The Menu’s most favourite application was an exercise in the elegant simplicity of a timeless classic: with a lovely boiled egg and a sprinkling of chopped chives on a slice of crusty buttered sourdough, washed down with a mug of good, hot tea.

• www.builinblasta.com