The Menu: Good things in small packages at the end of food festival season

"...there is probably no finer selection of Irish food producers to be found than at the small but perfectly formed Sheridan’s Irish Food Festival..."

Sat, 16 Sep, 2023 - 02:00

Joe McNamee

As another year of Irish food festivals draws to an end, it is very much a case of leaving some of the best until last and there is probably no finer selection of Irish food producers to be found than at the small but perfectly formed Sheridan’s Irish Food Festival (Sept 24, 10am-6pm) which takes place each year in Sheridan’s HQ in Virginia Rd Station, Co Meath.

Regular readers will of course be well acquainted with The Menu’s great grá and respect for the cheesemonger brothers Sheridan, Seamus and Kevin, and for their enormous contribution to the world of Irish food, not least through their national chain of outlets retailing finest Irish and world cheeses along with a superb selection of other deli products.

The festival itself has the atmosphere of old country fairs, offering a family-friendly gathering of Irish speciality and artisan foods, drinks, music, and activities in the Meath countryside.

There are over 100 stalls from which to sample and buy 100% Irish made products and to meet the producers, featuring everything from farmhouse cheeses to home-baked desserts, wild food preserves to locally milled flour, along with butchers, meat curers, beekeepers, and cider-makers.

The Boyne Valley Food Series Marquee features some of the finest producers from the region and food trucks offer breakfast, lunch and dinner on site with hot and prepared food including rare breed pork sausages, curries, barbecue grill, crêpes and more.

Children’s entertainment goes well beyond the token, including a free play area and free workshops with The Cool Food School, along with a ‘pay as you go’ ride area for kids of all ages. (Entry: €5; children free, dog friendly. Free parking.)

sheridanscheesemongers.com

An apple a day...

Clonmel has long been one of the country’s great breadbaskets, superb agricultural land yielding some very fine produce, not least the fruit of its orchards and Clonmel Applefest (Sept 21-24) is very much a celebration of this edible heritage along with local culture and nature.

The ever-popular Harvest Fair on Saturday is extended this year to include more food trucks and apple pressing, along with arts activities, performers and craft and community stalls and is followed by an evening Harvest procession.

Other events include a Big Bake-Off, a guided introduction to mushroom foraging, jazz and tapas at Bodega 1830 Restaurant with music from Fresh Air Collective and a Honey Show, hosted by the South Tipperary Beekeepers Association, with a range of honeys, beeswax products, mead, wine and cakes, as well as a honey-based cookery demonstration and a talk on planting for bees.

clonmelapplefest.ie

Ferment to be

Menu favourites Terra Ignis have another upcoming duo of collective/workshops, (Sept 25 and Oct 9; 6pm-8pm), both taking place upstairs in L’Atitude 51, with a small exclusive gathering of just six participants creating and sharing ferments and knowledge, as Linda and Ivo demonstrate three different ferments, with the ingredients and equipment supplied, and including a fermented supper.

A follow-up programme ensures you get to sample all of the other five ferments created along with your own. Cost €75

terraignisireland@gmail.com
Instagram: @terra_ignis

TODAY’S SPECIAL

Nobó has developed a reputation for a range of plant-based food but these nut-derived concoctions are of a different order altogether: Sumptuous, luxurious, and destined to become an integral part of the Irish epicurean’s arsenal of essential foodstuffs and The Menu predicts they will also become a staple in luxury Christmas hampers.

The Menu has always been fond of chocolate hazelnut spread and a jar of Nutella was vital for sustaining him through the deprivations of boarding school in a time before dinosaurs but, over the years, not only have his tastes become substantially more elevated, he is also as concerned with ingredients’ provenance as much as he is with flavours and tastes and could no longer countenance, for example, eating a product such as Nutella, so substantially derived from palm oil.

Nobó ticks all the right boxes in this regard using premium raw ingredients, such as superb hazelnuts from Piedmont, in Italy, and zero processed additives or refined sugars.

The Nobó range comes in four flavours. Piedmont Hazelnut Drizzle and Roasted Almond Butter contain just a single ingredient each — nuts — and The Menu has taken to adding either of these very fine nut butters to all manner of sweeter partnerships, from fresh fruit to compôtes to
premium single-origin chocolate.

Roasted Pistachio Caramelly Spread is sublimely sweetened with a little unrefined coconut sugar that hovers on the right side of saccharin excess while extra virgin olive oil adds to the silky lush texture that very nicely ferries bright nutty notes onto the palate.

Finally, the pièce de résistance, Piedmont Hazelnut Chocolate Spread, — up there with some of the very finest he has tasted, all about the complex rich flavours of the lightly toasted nuts and with none of the overly sugared ‘doping’ of cheaper chocolate hazelnut spreads, relying instead on a restrained application of coconut sugar.

This one, he didn’t bother partnering with anything else at all after a while, requiring only a teaspoon with which to administer a spoonful of the finest ‘medicine’ The Menu has been treated with in many a long year.