CHILLI PASTE WITH PUNJABI TASTE: Mindi Keane was a wallpaper design manager for a UK company when she met her Irish husband Eamon and moved to Knocklyon in Dublin 16. Last year, the company she was working for went out of business. "I had time to think about myself and what I really wanted," she says. "Like my mother and grandmother, I enjoy cooking healthy, clean Indian food."
She launched the Mama Nagi’s range of chilli pastes – blends of fresh raw herbs and spices that can be used as marinades, dips, and stir-fry or stir-in sauces. They are based on her mother’s Punjabi recipes although Mama Nagi now lives in Lancashire. Keane signed up for the SuperValu Food Academy programme and her product has been accepted into up to 20 stores, from September. In the meantime, she sells three pastes, Hot Punjabi Chilli, Keralan Coconut Chilli and Bengali Sweet Chilli, at the Herbert Park Sunday food market in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. See mamanagis.ie for stockists and recipes.
WILD ABOUT THERAPEUTIC TEAS: Chef, food product developer and herbal medicine advocate Freda Wolfe has set up Wild Irish Foods and its first product is a selection of teas with therapeutic properties. Having returned from Asia and South America "brimming with inspiration and enthusiasm for herbalism and healing foods", Wolfe, who studied at The Irish School of Herbal Medicine for four years, spent two years developing and testing a range of teas. Intelligent Tea comes in eight varieties; detox, digest, coldbuster, chillax, buzz, vital, hangover and love, the last being a heart-friendly tonic of hawthorn, nettle and rose. Wolfe is also a beekeeper and will have her first honey harvest for sale in September. For Intelligent Tea stockists, see wildirishfoods.com
FRESH SPROUTS: Sprout & Co, the healthy-eating outlet that arrived on the Dublin day-time food scene at just the right time, has spawned a second branch, a ground floor and basement premises at 5 Lower Mount Street.
The new shop sells the same range of salads and soups, cold-pressed juices and smoothies and coffee as the Dawson Street branch, with the addition of Nobó dairy-free ice-cream available by the scoop.
