Food news with Joe McNamee

Food news with Joe McNamee.

Annual RNLI fundraiser, The Ballycotton Lifeboat Gala Dinner (February 1) at Ballymaloe House, this year kicks up its heels with a Moulin Rouge theme, including live music cocktail reception before a delicious dinner, followed by more live music and other entertainment, including a roulette wheel, goodie bags, raffle and spot prizes.

Welcome to Part I of The Munchies 2018, in which The Menu salutes some of the heroes and achievements of the culinary calendar. (Next week, Part II.)

The return of the Contemporary Craft and Design Fair (Dec 5-9) to the RDS offers the opportunity to procure some edible extras for the stocking at the Christmas Food Emporium with over 100 small speciality food producers displaying their wares.

Here is what's going on in the world of Irish food.

The Menu will be taking an extremely well-travelled road out to Blarney to help launch the second annual Old Butter Roads Food Trails Festival in The Church of the Resurrection, at 3pm on May 5, a producer- and supplier-led initiative that he is only too delighted to support.

Not that The Menu ever needs an excuse to head west to the City of the Tribes but surely the return of the annual Galway Food Festival (March 29-April 2) is as good a reason as any.

Do, please, come in and sit down, 2018! Extend your palm thusly, that Mystic Menu might divine your path over the coming 12 months. As always, this Al-Menu-nac for the year ahead begins with a brief look at predictions delivered in January last year, the hits and the misses.

Welcome to Part II of The Munchies 2017, in which The Menu salutes some of the heroes and achievements of the culinary calendar.

Welcome to Part I of The Munchies 2017, in which The Menu salutes some of the heroes and achievements of the culinary calendar. (Next week, Part II.)

Looking for gift ideas for food lovers? Strap yourselves in for a Christmas shopping spree with The Menu.

Here’s what’s going on in the world of Irish food... 

Here’s what’s going on in the world of Irish food. 

Peter Mulryan will give a day long Gin Distilling Workshop at the West Waterford Festival of Food which takes place next weekend (April 21-23).

The Menu has always found Castletownshend in West Cork an intriguing spot and relishes the prospect of an evening there for some fine dining courtesy of one of his most beloved chefs, Caitlin Ruth, of Deasy’s Harbour Bar & Restaurant.

The Menu has to cast his mind back to the literal and metaphorical dark days of boarding school to recall the last time he regularly ate in total darkness, scoffing biscuits under the covers after lights out, the better to supplement the school canteen’s daily deep-fried offerings of items that may or may not have contained actual food.

The Menu has long been meaning to make mention of the wonderful little Garden Café, sited in a Victorian glasshouse perched just above the heart of Blackpool, and a wonderful combination of pop-up supper and photo exhibition has given him ample reason to do so. 

The Leeside ladies Ali Honour of Ali’s Kitchen and Kate Lawlor of Fenn’s Quay head for the Big Smoke for the third in a series of dinners to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the formation of Euro-Toques Ireland, all cooked by the chef-members themselves. 

The Menu enjoyed a splendid repast, cooked by some of Ireland’s finest chefs, including Eurotoque Ireland General Commissioner, Graham Neville, of Dublin’s Restaurant 41, at Ballymaloe House this week. 

Several years ago, while raising six offspring and also working with husband Denis in their shared business, Sheila Kiely found the time to write (and photograph!) her first cookbook, Gimme the Recipe, and the follow-up, Enjoy! Food You’ll Love (Mercier Press) has hit the shelves.

As well as being a wonderful restaurateur, running two fine Dublin-based establishments, Cake Café and Slice, The Menu’s weekly colleague Michelle Darmody has always operated above and beyond the base requirements of the industry.

The Menu can highly recommend a bracing walk on the beach followed by a visit to the East Cork Christmas Market (Dec 13, 11.30am-4.30pm) for some delightful festive treats, handmade crafts and a chance to order your Christmas poultry, baking and local veg with all voluntary admission donations going to ARC Cancer Care Support.

Film Festival signals return of Lasse Hallstrom’s Chocolat

Those beards will certainly need a liberal dousing in flame retardant as The Big Grill BBQ & Craft Beer Festival (Aug 13-16) returns once more to Dublin’s Herbert Park. 

One of Myrtle Allen’s lesser-hymned but no less commendable achievements is her role in co-founding Euro-Toques, in 1986, the European chefs organisation dedicated to guiding chefs in preserving traditional culinary cultures and in the value of using the very best of local, seasonal produce. 

The menu consents to being showered by Father’s Day gifts from his progeny; less grudgingly, if those gifts are designed to appeal to his innate gluttony.

THE UNION OF GOOD FOOD AND WINE

With a saddlebag full of chocolate and a straw bonnet on the bould Neidín, The Menu is taking to the highways and byways once more.

While Mrs Menu informs him that he is not currently in the market for true love and will wind up in traction if he takes to acting otherwise, the feast of St Valentine is nigh upon us and the only route to a man’s heart, through the belly, is a longtime and exceedingly well-worn path for The Menu.

The Menu returns once again with his Yuletide roundup of the very best of 2014 to fill the Christmas Hamper as well as his food awards, The Munchies, a tip of the hat to those who labour long and hard to make local, sustainable Irish produce to a world-class standard.

Though it had been some time, at least a couple of Ice Ages, since The Menu had last trod barefoot through the fields to school, several years ago he returned to the groves of Academe.

Not since the heady days of 1846-7 when El Batallón de los San Patricios (The St Patrick’s Battalion) assembled south of the border to take up arms in the Mexican-American War, has your regular Gael displayed such an enthusiasm for things Mexican.

If ever there was a time to visit the Garden County of Wicklow, then it is in early November as woodlands and forest swap summer green for the unspeakably beautiful autumnal palette, one of nature’s finest shows and a most exquisite closing act to the wild food foraging season.