Compiled by MARIE-CLAIRE DIGBY
Lessons for living
Skills for Life is the title of a five-day cookery course at the Cookery School at Donnybrook Fair in Donnybrook, Dublin 4 (August 29th-September 2nd). The course is designed for young adults about to move out of home and aims to equip them with the skills to feed themselves (and their friends) cheaply and quickly. It costs €299 and runs from 10am to 2pm daily. See donnybrookfair.ie.
First catch your crab
No, not really. You’ll be provided with a live crustacean at the crab-dressing classes given by Stephen Caviston in Matt the Thresher on Pembroke Street in Dublin 2. Caviston shows participants how to dispatch and cook their crab, then it’s time to don the aprons provided for the messy but satisfying job of extracting the white and brown meat. Instruction is given on what to discard and how to get the most meat from the shell. The class can be booked for groups of four to six, and costs €20, including the crab, which will be dressed to your preference, additional shellfish nibbles and a glass of wine. To book, tel: 01-6762980.
Sweet success
The expression “kid in a sweet shop” might have been coined for Kevin Ginty (right), founder of Tubs Sweets, a new confectionary company based in Rathnew, Co Wicklow that has grown to employ 20 people in the space of a year.
When a colleague recently passed around a Tubs Sweets pot of startlingly blue sweets, most of us recoiled in horror, but when the afternoon sugar-low struck, a few dipped in, and before long the tub was empty. The chewy blue bonbons tasted, surprisingly, of raspberry, and were very good indeed.
The range of 60 types of sweets also includes traditional favourites including cola cubes, pear drops, fruit jellies and liquorice allsorts. The 170g tubs can be securely resealed (if you have the willpower to put the lid back on), ensuring you won’t have loose sweets rattling around the car floor or the bottom of your handbag.
You can buy them in Superquinn, Topaz, Londis, Galla and Costcutter branches, as well as independent shops, for €2.19, or two for €4.
Book of the week
The Good Cook, by Simon Hopkinson (BBC Books, £25/€28)
Everyone's talking about how good his current cookery show on BBC television is, but Simon Hopkinson almost never made it to our small screens. He explains: " 'Are you quite mad?' I would exclaim to folk who had suggested that I might, possibly, be better than I thought at doing a turn on TV." But eventually he was persuaded, and the resulting six-part series on BBC One on Friday evenings is earning him lavish praise. The book of the series, also called The Good Cook, follows Hopkinson's established approach of designing his chapters around specific ingredients. It's a simple and enduring format that, when coupled with his engaging narrative, has proved to be a winning formula. His earlier book, Roast Chicken and Other Stories, first published in 1994, made it to number five in last year's Observer Food Monthlylist of the 50 Best Ever Cookbooks. Elizabeth David, Claudia Roden and Nigel Slater finished higher up the list, if you're wondering, and the surprise (to me anyhow) winner was Richard Olney's The French Menu Cookbook(Ten Speed Press, 1970). The Good Cook has a deliberately retro feel to it, and there's a touch of nostalgia to many of the recipes, which is not a bad thing at all. Many of the recipes are classics, given a slight twist, such as this orange caramel custard. Recipes for the 20 dishes featured in the TV show are available at bbc.co.uk.
