Every Friday at Chew on That, we test your foodie vocabulary by quizzing you on a new foodie word and supply delicious recipes to match!
This week’s word is: panzanella (noun).
Please choose the most appropriate definition for a panzanella. (No cheating!)
a.) A pan-fried Italian stir fry with tomatoes, onions and noodles.
b.) A type of Italian omelette, either simple or enriched with additional ingredients like meats, cheese or vegetables.  Continue reading »

“If anyone orders any Merlot I’m going home!” said the rather fanatical Miles in the influential film from 2004, Sideways.
This fanaticism, though comic and for some a little strange, is a common aspect in the production, consumption and critical analysis that surrounds the wines of much of North America.
In particular focus, however, is one place and in North America it is the USA and in the USA it is California.  Continue reading »

Happy Friday, lovely readers.  What have we been up to for the past seven days?
We ate out in Bobo’s and Sushi King in Dublin, the overpriced Farmgate Cafe in Cork and the sublime Tea Rooms in Wicklow.  Jean was lucky enough to attend a lovely ice-cream party, courtesy of the Murphys of Ice-Cream Ireland.
This week’s…  Continue reading »

Pinot Noir is a fussy grape. It needs the right conditions and the appropriate care in the vineyard to really flourish, and when it does, you may not come across a better red wine. The world’s top wine critics view Riesling as the best white grape. The black skinned Pinot Noir is considered the best red wine grape.
Like Riesling, Pinot Noir has an incredible knack for taking on the flavours of the land in which it was grown. “Terroir” would be the term used by wine buffs.  Continue reading »

Visit any participating Jack in the Box today with a receipt from any gas station and receive two free tacos!
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addthis_title = ‘Free+Tacos+from+Jack+In+The+Box’;
addthis_pub = ”;.  Continue reading »

Seafood fans might want to head along to the Howth Peninsula Festival this weekend, where there’ll be a ‘Sumptuous Seafood Sampling’ event with the local fish shops.  There’s also a Taste of Howth gourmet event.
Thanks to our reader Nanazolie for tipping us off about this event.  Continue reading »

I wrote a short time ago about how certain things have been so hard for us to find and the joy at finally sourcing items like decent waffle cones. This year seems to be the year of the find, for we’ve also come across an Irish company who does small print runs of custom printed takeaway coffee cups. Up until now, the smallest print run we could find was 10,000 units.  Continue reading »

Some recipes for the weekend from some of my favourite Irish food blogs.
First up, to reassert my manliness – grrr! – I can swagger around while making these Manly Spuds from the Daily Spud food blog.
If you’re having a barbeque or a picnic, check out Donal Skehan’s Red Cabbage and Carrot Coleslaw, or his Warm…  Continue reading »

Some of my friends won’t eat out with me anymore. I spend a lot of the meal poking them and asking if their food is good.
The problem with reviewing restaurants, of course, is that you spend a lot of time looking for faults when, as an ordinary punter, you’d often completely overlook them. I’ve always…  Continue reading »

Italian Reds –  The Perfect Pasta Partner !  
I just love all types of pasta dishes from traditional tomato based sauces to creamy carbonara. Pasta offers the perfect blank canvas from a sauce point of view. Similarly, from a wine point of view depending on type of dish you can enjoy anything from a nice Dolcetto up to a beefy Barolo. The fun part it trying all of the combinations to find your favourite.  Continue reading »

There's a nice piece about food blogging as a phenomenon and an enterprise in this months Irish Tatler mag. I'm featured quite well in it so go n get get!!  Continue reading »

The year is 2060. The world as it was known no longer exists. Science and technology battle a surprisingly personalised Mother Nature. She is angry – very angry. The reason?
Global warming has really kicked in. There has been a sequence of catastrophes, one worse than the next. Storms stormed, wildfires raged, sea levels rose with polar melting. The great Siberian peat bog thaw of 2040 seems to have been a final feedback loop too far.  Continue reading »

If you’re looking for a fun night out with the girls that includes tasty drinks and tasty food, I recommend Coobah. Located in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago, this Latin-inspired restaurant served up dishes to rave about while serenading us with live Bossa Nova. To find out what was so great about our meal (and to see recipes to mimic these dishes yourself at home!), read on…

To keep it plain and simple, this was the best sangria I have ever had.  Continue reading »

Brown ale always leaves me a cold. As does its less sun tanned Irish cousin red ale (your Irish cousin will always be redder and less tanned than you are). Perhaps I desire too much, but a straight up brown ale lacks flavour. I tried some good brown ales in my pre-blog days but they were from the Dogfish Head stable and heavily adulterated. The first was Raison D’Etre, a very complex ale made with raisins.  Continue reading »

On my travels I had a great time exploring and enjoying delicious French food. If you saw Top Chef Master’s last night you got a taste of how serious French chefs are. Their training is like the military; structured, no-nonsense, all about technique, full of pride. A lot of my meals in France contained tarragon, a classic French cooking favorite.  Continue reading »

This week we asked Sean Fee, CEO of Look and Taste, for his favourite recipe from the ever-expanding Look and Taste video library:
I’ve had a good couple of years to try out a few of the video recipes we have on lookandtaste and there’s a few that have become part of my limited repertoire, one of which is the Cod with Panko and Wasabi Crust.
I’m into food with a bit of a kick and the wasabi in this dish definitely delivers that.  Continue reading »

The Irish Times reports today that Tesco are recalling their Value Tinned Beans and Sausages after bits of plastic were found in some cans.
Now, you know we love a bargain here at CheapEats, but we also think that quality is important and that it’s possible to spend too little on food.  These tins only cost…  Continue reading »

We’ve written here about Fresh supermarket before, a supermarket with decidedly high, convenience-store style prices.
However, they do have some decent specials on, including:
Lyons Green Label Teabags (80s) – half price – reduced from €2.90 to €1.45
Mangoes – 99c (I spotted a mango in Fallon and Byrne the other day for the ri.dic.u.lous price of €2.50)
Fillet…  Continue reading »

Last Friday, I went along to check out the launch of the new Murphy’s Ice Cream scooping cabinet in the Powerscourt Centre.  The launch was very generously open to all comers, and I brought my lovely Italian friend Elisa along with me.  If you want to evaluate ice-cream, best to bring an Italian, I think.
There…  Continue reading »

More price cuts. Earlier today, SuperValu implemented long-term price reductions across its 194 stores. The cuts mean that the cost of an average weekly trolley of goods falls by €30 from €129.96 to €98.56, a drop of 23%.
SuperValu’s cost reductions will not impact on their use of Irish suppliers or producers, who provide 75% of…  Continue reading »