Green Barn bites
If you’re looking for a bank holiday outing and haven’t yet experienced the charms of The Green Barn restaurant at Burtown House and Gardens, Athy, Co Kildare, you’ll find it just off exit three on the M9, a bit less than an hour’s drive from the capital.
Pack a shopping bag to stash the inevitable purchases when you visit, because as well as the restaurant, the adjoining shop sells bread, organic produce from the walled garden, pestos and dips, soups, chutneys, jams, salad dressings, infused oils, granola and nut butters.
As well as the home-made products, the shop also stocks Sheridans cheeses, crackers and olives, and a range of carefully chosen products including sweet treats from the West Cork Biscuit Company, Con Traas's excellent Irish apple cider vinegar and Crossogue Preserves.
The Green Barn's loose herbal tea range has been developed by herbalist Jacquie Burgess, and there is a cake table, from which takeaways can be purchased. The restaurant gets busy at weekends, and as a result tables can be hard to come by at peak times, so reservations are recommended. Coffee, tea and cake, ordered without a main course, are only available until noon and after 4pm at weekends. See burtownhouse.ie.
Roddy can write
“Rachel Roddy’s writing is as absorbing as any novel. Her prose is so elegant and her storytelling so compelling that I almost forgot I was reading a cookbook.”
Restaurateur Russell Norman's enthusiasm for Guardian columnist Roddy's prose was shared by judges at the UK Guild of Food Writers Awards, who this year awarded her both the food writing award and the cookery writing gong.
Her second book, Two Kitchens: Family Recipes from Sicily and Rome, has just been published. Roddy lives in Rome with her Sicilian partner, Vincenzo, and son, Luca, and this new book is a compendium of stories and recipes from both places, garnered over her decade in the Italian capital and summers spent in the south. It's a very good read, and the perfect inspiration for using up summer's vegetable bounty.
The Legal Eagle goes gastro
Restaurateur Elaine Murphy has gone for an English pub food theme, with nose-to-tail dining at the forefront, for The Legal Eagle, her sixth Dublin food business, due to open this week. The Chancery Place pub will have casual eating options in the bar, and a more formal dining room will open upstairs in October.
“I wanted a very traditional old English pub – meaty, old-fashioned-style menu for downstairs in the bar, but honouring our own traditional lexicon and producers where possible,” Murphy says.
“The more I thought about it, the more I realised that nose-to-tail (use every bit and don’t waste it) sits alongside a celebration of vegetables very comfortably. Both are a celebration of produce and we hope to use some lesser celebrated vegetables and vegetable tops.”
“We are making our own crisps – cheese or bacon or smoked tomato – our own pickled eggs, and even have a DIY crisp sandwich on offer with batch and too much butter.”
Meat platters will feature hay-smoked ham, corned mutton and haslet, served with pickles and sourdough. Other menu items include cauliflower rarebit, Shropshire Blue soufflé, roast-buttered turnip tops and roasted bone marrow. There will be a daily changing roast in a roll at lunchtime, and the bar will have 20 craft beers on tap and more than 200 wines available.
Culinary delights in Cavan
Taste of Cavan returns to Cavan Equestrian Centre on Friday and Saturday, August 11th and 12th. The county's culinary stars will be on hand for cookery demonstrations, including crowd-pleaser Neven Maguire, Richard Corrigan of Virginia Park Lodge, Gearóid Lynch of the Olde Post Inn, and Eddie Attwell of St Kyran's Country House. You can register at tasteofcavan.ie for a chance to take part in a masterclass with Neven Maguire.
In addition there will be 130 stands to peruse, and a Smallholders’ Convention, where Irish and UK experts will share their experience.
