The Menu: The Seeds of great bread in Kinsale - and fine fare at Organico

Plus: good stuff around Ireland, including Dublin Cookery School's Summer BBQ Series

Kinsale's Seeds Bakery

Boyne Valley belles

As we take to the highways and byways over the coming weeks to staycation, an ever more attractive holiday option on foot of appallingly high temperatures and their consequent impact on holidaying in Southern Europe right now, The Menu notes plentiful edible attractions and events around the country for holidaymakers.

The Boyne Valley Food Series continues through the summer and for genuine fans of our national tuber, the venerable spud, a visit to Maria Flynn’s Spud Shack on Ballymakenny Farm will prove surprisingly enjoyable, a chance to learn all about their wonderful heritage potatoes, with a host of varieties to remind you of its South American origins, including Mayan Gold and Rose.

The Causey Farm Summer Experience in Kells, Co Meath, is chock-a-block with child-friendly activities.

Sheridan’s Cheesemongers and Farm Shop (Monday to Saturday) is always a splendid port of call, especially for their Saturday market offering local produce and some of the finest cheese to be had in Ireland.

Dublin Cookery School's Summer BBQ series

Putting soul in smoke

In just a few weeks' time, The Menu will be heading east to wonderful Waterford, specifically to Portlaw, to host his Grub Circus food extravaganza — with much more detail of that to feature here next weekend — over two days at Ireland’s finest music festival, All Together Now (August 4-6) and chief among his pleasures will be the prospect of a reunion with the ever splendid Pat Conway and Jim O’Brien, of Wexford-based Smokin’ Soul, who are fast becoming veterans of the Grub Circus posse. 

In the meantime, they are in collaboration with Dublin Cookery School, in Blackrock, Co Dublin, and their fingerprints are all over some superb masterclasses, delivered using some of the Smokin’ Soul handcrafted BBQ grills.

The remainder of an ongoing Summer BBQ Series which can be booked individually, is equally suited to carnivores and vegetarians and runs on Saturdays (10am-3pm) throughout July and early August. Mornings are devoted to preparing accompanying sides and sauces while learning a whole host of live-fire cooking techniques and then feasting on choice meats, fresh fish, seasonal veg, traditional bread, and more cooked over some stunning Smokin’ Soul grills, including an Argentinian-style Santa Maria parrilla grill. 

Australian BBQ: Sweet Food & Sunshine (July 29) is heavy on seafood along with grilled fruit desserts while Ultimate Feast BBQ (August 5), is a full-blown BBQ bonanza event including Sunday roast cooked on the grill.

• www.dublincookeryschool.ie

Fair Days at Camus Farm

One of The Menu’s sole regrets when it comes to the August bank holiday staging of Grub Circus is that it clashes with what otherwise would have been his destination of choice that weekend, the most magnificent Camus Farm, outside Clonakilty, in West Cork, where they stage once again their Fair Days Folk Festival (August 6), a boutique gathering in the delightful surroundings of their 30-acre organic farm, near Ardfield, with a one-day programme of music, beginning at 3pm with Gamelan Spréacha Geala, a non-professional, community music group based in Skibbereen, followed by up-and-coming artist Éadaoin, Mark Geary, Katie Phelan, and then, topping the bill, Kila, absolutely incendiary live performers when the fuse is properly lit. 

In addition, the festival offers a bar, coffee shop, food hatch and restaurant with all dining overseen by two of The Menu’s most favourite chefs in the land, Bob Cairns and Simon Kershaw.

• www.eventbrite.ie/e/fair-days-folk-festival-tickets-617564290417

From little Seeds...

Finally, a new kid on the block, Seeds bakery, in Kinsale, where The Menu’s venerable comrade in flour, baker Ben Le Bon, maker of some of the finest real breads to be found in these parts has opened up his first retail outlet proper, a delightful little spot just off the town square, offering his excellent range of sustainable, highly nutritious and, crucially, very, very tasty breads, including the signature Seeds loaf, packed with fermented milled lentils, packing a real protein punch, proper staff of life stuff. 

But The Menu’s sweet tooth is equally tickled with a selection of traditional pastries and cakes, including tarte tatin, financiers, and crumble, and if you happen upon that Breton classic, the Kouign Amann, from Ben’s own native region of France, Bretagne/Brittany, buy two and have your cariologist on speed dial. 

In addition, future plans including making bread from cereals grown and milled in Co Cork and at some stage opening a bakery school. Running it with his co-owner and sister-in-law, Ingrid Kelly, the dynamic duo are also selling Tony Speight’s wonderful West Cork Coffee and a gradually increasing range of choice Irish deli products.

• www.instagram.com/seeds_bakery_kinsale/

Sourdough bread from Organico.

Today’s special

A lightning raid down to Bantry last week to take part in the West Cork Literary Festival was both brilliant and brief, the ever-splendid festival a national treasure and The Menu’s own stint in the salubrious surroundings of Bantry House, for a public interview with another pair of national treasures, Darina Allen and Rory O’Connell, was an absolute pleasure to partake in. 

And, of course, no trip to Bantry is ever complete for The Menu without dropping into Rachel and Hannah Dare’s very splendid Organico food emporium where after enjoying a delightful frittata and Asian slaw and as well as picking up some excellent local salad leaves and cucumbers for evening supper, he also grabbed three very fine organic sourdough breads from their in-house bakery.

A wheat wholemeal sourdough with a toasted five-seed mix was nutty and very flavoursome while there was both atin’ and drinkin’ in the spelt quinoa sourdough, with cooked quinoa, oats and more of that toasted five-seed mix which felt like a truly substantial and nutritious meal when The Menu had it for lunch later in the week with just a knob of butter and a couple of slices of Templegall cheese.

But winning out on the flavour front by a country mile was the olive wheat sourdough, a deeply flavoursome blend of white and granary flours with a three-olive mix, fresh thyme and fresh lemon zest, and sporting a delightfully airy crumb and craggy textured crust. 

The Menu is especially fond of a roasted olive and these ones added meaty pops to a quite delicious bread which he grilled and then slathered with a concasse of tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, and basil to have with some lovely fresh salami and a green salad of the aforementioned West Cork leaves and cucumbers.

• www.organico.ie