The Menu: Wilkie’s Organic Chocolate
The Menu is a great man for a spot of culinary travelling, experiencing the world from his own kitchen. When the wherewithal for a plane ticket is in short supply, a ticket for the palate is easily procured and one of The Menu’s favourite gastronomic destinations is Italy. And when The Menu is stocking up on supplies necessary for the cooking of fine Italian fare, most especially a decent ‘00’ flour for the production of his legendary fresh sage butter ravioli, he pays a courtesy call to former Neapolitan-turned-Corkonian Pasquale De Vivo in his Boot Specialities Emporium. Alongside the courtesy ‘defibrillator’ otherwise known as espresso given to every single customer, there is a quite astonishing range of Italian goodies, including the best dried pasta in the city at quite possibly the keenest price in the country. Viva Pasquale!
www.theboot.ie
It is with great reluctance that The Menu shares details of a new competition as he rather fancies hogging the prize for himself, a weekend for two with dinner at popular TV chef Neven Maguire’s MacNean House, Blacklion, Co Cavan. Fans of Maguire’s new RTE series, Neven Maguire: Home Chef, can submit an original recipe featuring ingredients carrying the Bord Bia Quality Mark (beef, chicken, duck, lamb, pork products, turkey, fruit, vegetables, eggs) to Bord Bia by Feb 22, winners announced Feb 27.
www.bordbia.ie/homechef
Back in the days when The Menu was knocking out some of his splendid homecooked concoctions from a stall, he could be found pitched up at the Blackrock Farmer’s Market and a most becoming and lively place it was to pass a Sunday morning, by the bustling pier. Should any prospective marketeer fancy a crack at doing the same, there are now stall spaces available.
Enquiries: Natural Foods Bakery, Blackrock, Cork 021-4614555
Of late, the only figure The Menu finds himself watching is his own and that dread state of affairs has brought about a draconian prohibition on all things sweet and toothsome, so his recent sampling of Wilkie’s Organic Chocolate was undertaken in a spirit of sheer professionalism — that is, until the first mouthful of Shana Wilkie’s stunning product, the very first chocolatier in the country to work with actual cocoa beans, roasting and grinding carefully-sourced single origin Criolla beans from a Peruvian Co-op to produce her award-winning bars. Thereafter, The Menu indulged in the class of bacchanalian excess not witnessed since Caligula on the school trip to the Cadbury’s factory and though The Menu relished the rum-hit of cane sugar in the Amazonas 60%, was startled by the yoghurty-lactic kick of the Amazonas 75% and revelled in the deep cherry-fruit of the Tumbes 75%, he … announced himself unable to arrive at a clear-cut winner and went all the way back to the start. The Menu may be some time before getting back to you on this one, a good 12 bars or so at the very least!
www.wilkieschocolate.ie
