My beautiful sister Niamh is getting married in July to her wonderful French fiancé Francois (or as we like to call him – France-WHAH?! Oh, how we laugh!). As Maid of Honour, it was my duty to host her hen night on Friday the 26th of April. My sister is one of the best people [...]
Our Irish weather is being as predictably unpredictable as it ever has been this spring. We’ve had winter, spring and a hint of summer in the last couple of weeks. What’s new? I hear you say. Your weather is cray! Deal with it! I like to deal with it by combining seasonal ingredients with weather [...]
A few weeks back, I challenged my friends Lucy and Ferdia to a Come Dine With Me 2013. Very 2011, I know, but we had been talking ALL year about cooking for each other last year and it never happened. I thought putting a competitive spin on it might get us all together long enough [...]
Photo courtesy of Folláin Irish Preserves I am delighted to be guest hosting the Folláin Christmas Masterclass next Thursday the 22nd of November in Andrew Rudd’s Medley in Dublin’s city centre. I’ll be joined by Peadar and Mairin O’Lionáird, who’ll be sharing with us the history of their preserve, jam, marmalade, salsa and relish making careers. [...]
Last Saturday was the first weekend that I hosted Naughty or Nice solo in The Irish Independent’s Weekend magazine. For more than a year and a half, myself and Aoife Barry wrote the weekly column together, sharing ideas for main ingredients or types of dishes to help inspire each other’s recipes. It has been such [...]
I love autumn for lots of reasons, but somewhere near the top of the list is the way this season changes our menus. I love the seemingly sudden shift from light salads and meats to earthy mushrooms, stews and soup as the comfort dishes reappear on our tables after their summer hibernation. On a wonderfully [...]
Pomegranate seeds are wonderful little things. Sure, they don’t leave the cosy skin of a pomegranate easily and make a frightful mess upon doing so. They can be tricky to find too though I always find them in Fallon & Byrne, where I pay a hefty price for them. But they are totes worth it. [...]
I love finding new inspiration for recipes from any source that’s willing to give it. Cookbooks, other cooks, blogs, TV shows, and eating out. The words ‘basil tzatziki’ caught my eye on a menu recently and I just had to recreate it at home. This took all of three minutes to whip together and it [...]
I did kind of a silly thing. Myself and Niall made these super delicious (if we do say so ourselves) chipotle marinated pork kebabs wayyyyyy back in April when we had that great spell of weather here in Dublin. I can feel the warmth at the back of my neck now as I recall us [...]
I know the international readers of this blog must roll their eyes every time I mention the weather, but here in Ireland we have good reason to talk about it a lot/constantly. Because it continues to smote us. The weather pretends to be our friend and then quite literally rains on our parade when we [...]