A few months ago, I received wonderfully exciting news that a farmer’s market would be setting up shop across the street from my apartment every Sunday morning this summer. I was immediately fantasizing about stepping outside my door and browsing the stands, choosing locally grown fruits and vegetables for the week. I already told you about my love of the Madison farmer’s market and I was hoping to rekindle that love in the River North neighborhood.  Continue reading »

This is one of the easiest and most delicious ways to cook chicken on the barbeque. Clearly the marinade is important but the cooking method is key here too.  Continue reading »

My thanks to Will Knott for this link, which varies a theme that’s been playing in the background for a while: that of reinforcing the links between Bubble Brothers’ range of interesting wines and the exuberant development of ‘food culture’ in Ireland, in the hope that the new found courage allowing lemongrass or salad potatoes or boerewors to be bought and sold might extend to, e.g., swapping the Shiraz for a Prieto Picudo, or the Veuve Cliquot for a Tsarine.  Continue reading »

There doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of interest in the food styling demonstration, but I’ll be working with Erica for the photo’s in the book, so maybe I can film a few bits and stick them up here.  Continue reading »

Here’s the scenario: your personal recession is REALLY biting, you are broke, broke, broke, the kitchen shelves are looking bare and it’s a whole 7 days till the next paycheck lands.
After allowing for absolute essentials like petrol or fares, rent or mortgage and a couple of drinks on Friday night, you have just €50…  Continue reading »

Growing up in America’s restaurants, drinking water for free always seemed like a given. I was raised with the attitude that it is my right as a customer to have water, and as much water as I want at that. Everytime I go out to eat, I fully expect a glass of water to be waiting for me at the table or that a busboy will soon be on his way with a cold glass of good old tap water. And never, I mean not once, did it ever occur to me that I was spoiled in this regard.  Continue reading »

I’m basically just going to throw this out there, just see what sort of interest it gets, but would any of the Irish food bloggers and foodies be interested in attending a Food Styling Demonstration?  Continue reading »

I made this dish last weekend with the scallops but never got round posting it. I’m still feeling a bit lazy and am knee deep in decorating so I won’t post the recipe yet unless anybody desperately requires it.
The pie was simple enough but a little time consuming making all the various components. I like a smokey flavour to a fish pie, but I couldn’t get any undyed smoked haddock or cod so I plumped for lightly smoked salmon fillets.  Continue reading »

This month for Taste and Create I was paired up with Twenty Something and Cooking – a great blog name!!!! And also a great blog by a group of 20 somethings adventuring into the kitchen. I had fun looking through this blog trying to pick recipes to try and may well try a couple more at some point, but for this event I made the Orange and Poppy Seed Cake.  Continue reading »

Unfortunately, the convenience of picking up a pre-washed bag of designer salad leaves has quickly become common place in our modern lives.  In fact in 2005, the bagged salad market was growing at 7 percent a year and was estimated to be worth over 1.2 billion dollars a year in the US.  However success stories aside, the gases and chemicals sometimes used in the production of these bags, add unnecessary toxins which our bodies can seriously do without.  A normal salad leaf will last about 4-5 days in the fridge where as some of these cut salad leaves can keep on looking fresh for a whopping 10 days!  That just can’t be right!  Continue reading »

I’ve added a nice new feature today, which is a Google map with little icons for each of the restaurants I’ve reviewed. You can see from the colours, the stars I’ve given as well as a link to each review. Click on the link to the right hand side, or click here to see it.
Log on to our news sites: irelandclick.com, irelandclick.com and irelandclick.com.  Continue reading »

Hey wow, another one of ours on the thunder show. It would really help us to keep the Saurels at Montirius happy if you could take Gary’s advice and buy some of their exemplary, biodynamic, unoaked Gigondas from Bubble Brothers. I’m afraid we can’t offer it at twenty bucks, and I don’t really understand how Mr Vaynerchuk does either.  Continue reading »

It will be quiet around here this week as I have abandoned the Irish summer for some time soaking up the French sun with the Husband, the Teacher and the Tax Advisor. We have taken ourselves camping in the Vendée and Charente-Maritime regions on the Atlantic Coast for ten days, staying in small campsites and spending plenty of time investigating brioche and pain au chocolate, moules, abricots, glaces and galettes, along with cheese and wine of every description.  Continue reading »

The perfect accompaniment to Indian food, such as Chicken Biryani, naan bread is dead easy to make. You don’t need an authentic Indian brick oven (although if you happen to have one lying around, go for it). Simply shallow fry the dough in a frying pan, and it turns out really well with nice golden colouring on both sides. If you haven’t made bread before, check out my Introduction to Breadmaking to get the basics down. This recipe will make 3 good-sized naan breads.  Continue reading »

 For those of you lucky enough to be in or around Dublin, there’s a chocolate festival on in Temple Bar the 25th-27th July. How I wish I could be there! I’d bring along some of our chocolate sorbet… More details here.
Technorati tags: chocolate, festival, Temple Bar, Dublin.  Continue reading »

I’m defining cupboard staples here as things that are so useful you should always have them in your kitchen. They can be used to rustle up almost instant meals with whatever else you happen to have to hand or make the ordinary a bit less ordinary with pretty much no effort from you.
Puszta Spice Mix…  Continue reading »

This is one of those pictures that really doesn’t need any words to persuade you how good it is. So beautiful on it’s own, I almost left you here without an explanation. But then… talkative old me decided I just couldn’t do that to you – I mean, you must be wondering just where this salad came from. Right?
I had this masterpiece in Argentina, at La Cabrera no less (the steakhouse I wrote about here).  Continue reading »

Here’s this weeks round up of Bookmarked Recipes and this week we have some more great recipes from some more great bloggers who have bookmarked them from some really great places!!!

Divya of Easycooking starts off this week’s round up with some eggless peanut butter cookies using a recipe from Food, in the main…. I absolutely love cookies and these sound like a real treat.  Continue reading »

It seems like there is alot going on in the world of wine in Ireland at present, the Irish wine map shows specialist wine shops in all corners of the country. There was a time when there was hardly any wine related content being generated from Ireland but new sites/blogs are popping up almost weekly at this point, the latest being http://www.robertfranciswine.ie/wordpress/. I was in Cork at the.  Continue reading »

So I know it’s the middle of summer and I’m supposed to be going on and on about the multitudes of basil my plants are producing and how I just cannot make enough pesto to keep up! The truth is, I wish I could be that person. But alas, my wee basil plant is recovering from the last major harvest, leaving me waiting patiently for my next opportunity.  Continue reading »