Country comforts

DRIVING through Mitchelstown, a town whose easy traffic is still hard to get used to after being bypassed by the M8, I turn up a cul-de-sac and pause at the gates of Ballinwillin House.

Waiting for them to open, I see a red deer through the trees. Then another. Then an entire herd.

Pat and Miriam Mulcahy’s family farm is one of the prime producers of venison in the country, I subsequently learn. Not only do the deer look pretty in the Cork countryside, but they taste pretty good too, dished up in one of Miriam’s one-pot wonders later that evening.