The Menu: Food traditions in the splendour of All Together Now

Plus: Ballymaloe, Lodestars food 'zine and Flahavan's gluten-free oats

Sat, 01 Jul, 2023 - 02:00

Joe McNamee

Up There at Grub Circus

The Menu predicts one of the breakout stars of his Grub Circus programme at All Together Now music festival (August 4-6), in Co Waterford, will be Max Jones of Up There The Last, a traditional food conservation endeavour dedicated to preserving disappearing artisan food traditions.

Having worked with Sally Barnes, in Woodcock Smokery, in West Cork, and in the Italian Alps, making traditional cheeses, he has opened his own little ‘school/hub’, The Booley, near Leap, and The Menu is hightailing it down West for what promises to be a splendid evening (July 8) with renowned cheesemaker David Asher, of The Black Sheep School of Cheesemaking, which Asher describes as a “a traveling cheese school that offers cheese outreach at food-sovereignty-minded organisations around the world”.

The evening will comprise some quite extraordinary, even challenging food, superb wine and stories of more unconventional traditional food practices, and natural wines from Brian’s Wines, with discounted prices on wines to take home as well.

uptherethelast.com

Cheesemaking at Ballymaloe

David Asher, a raw milk champion and natural cheese expert, also fetches up two days later (July 10) at Ballymaloe Cookery School for a comprehensive five-day introduction to natural cheesemaking.

exa.mn/bmaloe

Soup for summertime

Rachel Allen’s book Soup Broth Bread (Penguin) is from last year, and part of an ever-growing mountain of cookbooks on The Menu’s to-review list, yet you might be wondering why on earth we are talking ‘soup’ in ‘summer’.

First response is, ‘gazpacho and vichyssoise’, two iconic summer soups both served cold.

What’s more, does anyone around these parts ever recall an Irish summer during which it remained too hot and humid to ever put away a bowl of nourishing and nutritious soup?

The book is divided into four seasons but first comes a very concise and straightforward introduction to kitchen kit, potential ingredients, and the storing, freezing, and presentation of soups, delivered with an easygoing simplicity that is a hallmark, chock-full of highly achievable yet rewarding recipes for the domestic cook.

Soup Broth Bread is also bookended at the tail with a varied cluster of breads from all corners, achievable recipes for the ordinary domestic cook.

There is a big focus on fresh, local, seasonal, and even foraged produce but she is very comfortable melding those to international flavours, and a carrot soup in summer makes a whole lot more sense when it is a North African-style Carrot & Harrisa with Za’atar Croutons.

Anybody who ever first tasted a Mediterranean-style Fish Soup with Rouille most likely did so on a sweltering southern European summer vacation and relished every spoonful; ditto with a Provencal Soupe au Pistou or a Bisque (lobster, crab, or prawn).

Delicious and refreshing Beetroot & Dill Gazpacho inserts Irish ingredients into the classic Spanish recipe to remind us that ultimately this book is about base technique and with a little imagination, you can make great soup out of just about anything.

www.rachelallen.com

Low and slow travel journalism

Lodestars Anthology is an independent magazine-cum-journal aimed at discerning travellers, especially those keen to create their own brand of bespoke vacation.

Focusing on one country per issue, Lodestars offers what was becoming something of a dying art, a personalised, in-depth, low and slow approach to travel journalism that captures character, quirks, and food flavours of a destination, a deep dive encompassing landscape, food, architecture, people, and traditions.

Beautifully photographed and gorgeously designed, it is very much an objet d’art you’ll spend as much time looking at as reading, and the most recent issue is dedicated to Ireland, an exceedingly handsome production that travels the length and breadth of the island and features the aforementioned Max Jones and another Menu favourite, JR Ryall, head pastry chef, at Ballymaloe House.

Produced by an indie Bristol-based press, ordering, thanks to the vagaries of Brexit, is not entirely straightforward, so needs to be done through a third-party website — PicsAndInk, containing a wide collection of other indie mags also well worth perusing — but is very much worth the trouble.

picsandink.com/collections/lodestars

Today’s special

The Menu has hitherto hymned the praises of Flahavan’s oats on these pages and he returns to that most iconic of Irish food brands to herald a new addition to their range, gluten-free oats, regular and jumbo.

There are still those out there who scorn the notion of ‘gluten-free’ and there are certainly consumers whose dietary preferences in this regard are all about fad and very little to do with a genuine intolerance or even full-blown coeliac disease, which is an awful dose altogether for those thus afflicted, including a number of The Menu’s extended family and friends — to be honest, The Menu, who is part man, part bread, wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy.

But, says you, being a fierce knowledgeable type altogether, there is no gluten in oats.

True that, replies The Menu, but the issue is cross-contamination, whereby the oats are processed and packed in a facility that also works with products with gluten.

Therefore, the gluten-free guarantee means Flahavan’s are working with this new gluten-free range in an entirely separate and fully certified gluten-free facility offering total peace of mind to sufferers. So, the oats taste exactly the same as before as The Menu can testify on recent sampling.

It being too hot and muggy for a bowl of porridge, he made a bircher with freshly pressed Irish apple juice and cinnamon, which he then greatly enjoyed the next morning with garden raspberries and homemade yoghurt, firing him up to run on all cylinders for the rest of the day.