The Menu: Feast on the finest Leeside fare at Cork on a Fork festival

Aishling Moore, chef and partner at Goldie restaurant, and Brian Murray, chef and owner of The Glass Curtain join Caoimhe (7) and Naoise (5) O’Leary-Kinnerk (from Castlemore) to launch the programme of events for the upcoming Cork on a Fork Festival. Pic: Joleen Cronin

This year’s Cork on a Fork is commendably proving to be infinitely more ambitious and wide-ranging than last year’s more tentative inaugural event which arrived when the lingering influence of the pandemic on Irish hospitality was still very much in evidence.

Ongoing over the course of the weekend, The Menu himself is up to his oxters in several events today (Aug 19) and would very much welcome any readers along, including a stint in the Cooking Demo Festival Marquee on Emmet Place where he hosts Only in Cork Mystery Box Cook-Off, what promises to be a riotous on stage cook-off between renowned Cork chefs Ali Honour (Sketch, Imperial Hotel), Brian Murray (Glass Curtain) and Darren Kennedy (most recently Sage Midleton), charged with creating a compelling dish from the Rebel County Mystery Larder Box.

Also appearing on the same stage will be other Cork culinary stars Takashi Miyazaki (Miyazaki, Ichigo Ichie), Aishling Moore (Goldie) and Clare Condon (Good Day Deli).

The Menu will also be joining his esteemed fellow scribes of scoff, Kate Ryan, Caroline Hennessy and John McKenna, in the Crawford Gallery for a discussion on the pleasures of eating in Cork City and its future prospects, before The Menu retires to the Metropole Hotel for what promises to be a splendid night of mollusc-related madness as he hosts a wonderful evening of oyster shucking including the Cork Oyster Shucking Championships with master shucker Paddy McMurray, from Canada, and plentiful bites (of the non-oyster variety as well, for the oyster-ambivalent), beverages and all-round entertainment, including a hunt for Cork’s first Oyster Virgin.

Sunday (Aug 20) continues with multiple and fabulous dining opportunities to be found all around the city with The Menu’s pick of the bunch going to Responsible Good Food Talks and Demos (3pm to 5pm) in Good Day Deli at Nano Nagle Place, featuring four talks/demos from their own producers and two new Cork-centric special small plates (available all weekend), created especially for Cork on a Fork Fest by Good Day Deli’s new head chef, the very wonderful Mark Ahern, most recently of Pigalle.

• corkonaforkfest.ie

Seeds of knowledge

There are still spaces to be had on a very splendid Ballymaloe Cookery School day course, Introduction to Seed Saving with Madeline McKeever of Brown Envelope Seeds (Aug 22, 9.30am-5pm), as one of the great heroes of the Irish food world uses the Garden Room at the Cookery School and the main glasshouse on the organic farm as classrooms for a discussion on seed security and sovereignty and then a practical demo on saving seeds of a wide variety of cereals, herbs and vegetables. 

Course participants will learn all about plant reproduction and pollination and how to select plants for seed production and how to harvest, save and store seeds for the future.

Also includes a guided tour of the farm and gardens and refreshments and lunch.

• ballymaloecookeryschool.ie

Trigon Hotels is to celebrate its ongoing partnership with Cope Foundation at a gala event where guests can sample local and artisan dishes created by Trigon chefs. Pic: Brian Lougheed

Dine for a great cause

Trigon Hotels celebrates its ongoing partnership with Cope Foundation at a gala fundraising event, The Garden Table (Aug 24, 6pm-9pm) offering guests the opportunity to sample local and artisan dishes created by Trigon chefs, for a dinner taking place at the Beech Hill Garden Centre in Montenotte.

Cope Foundation is a not-for-profit voluntary organisation supporting over 2,000 children and adults with an intellectual disability and/or autism throughout Cork city and county, and they will be joined by Trigon team members to serve up a selection of refreshments, including prosecco and non-alcoholic mint & cucumber cordial, followed by a meal guided by Trigon Hotels Group Executive Chef Alex Petit, with each dish featuring freshly harvested fruit and vegetables from Cope Foundation’s sensory garden, a collaborative project established by the charity in Montenotte in 2021 with the support of Trigon Hotels.

• eventbrite.ie

Poachers' Grapefruit Soda with Irish Sea Salt

TODAY’S SPECIAL

The summer may be rapidly gurgling away in torrents down the drainhole but that has not for a moment altered The Menu’s seasonal sipping as he is more than content to raise the gazebo and grab another geansaí rather than admit defeat at the hands of the meteorological mayhem and, very naturally, cocktails are still high on the agenda. 

When it comes to adding bottled mixers to spirits, The Menu has one favourite above all others, Poachers, made and bottled in Co Wexford, a county where The Menu has enormous familial ties to this day, but it is the contents of the bottles rather than any emotional links to home of the Yellow Bellies that fills his glass and floats his boat every time.

With two new products added to their already excellent and wonderfully liveried range, The Menu wheeled his sterling silver cocktail cart out to the terraces of Menu Towers and took to experimenting with gleeful abandon.

Grapefruit Soda with Irish Sea Salt and Lemon Soda with Irish Mint are first and foremost excellent libations in their own right, crisp, citric, full of flavour and very refreshing but once they start marrying with spirits, all manner of possible pairings arise, beginning with simple shots of vodka, gin, whiskey and tequila (in an Irish take on the classic Paloma), and, eventually, all bets were off when The Menu conjured up a concoction combining both sodas, grapefruit and lemon, along with egg white, Ornabrak gin and a tincture of his own homemade cherry sugar syrup for a drink appropriately dubbed the Magic Monsoon.

It may or may not prove to be a cocktail for the ages, but it most certainly went down faster than the torrential rain running down the side of the gazebo and acted at the time as a fine replacement for the erstwhile absentee sun.

• poachersdrinks.com