Compiled by MARIE-CLAIRE DIGBY
New cookery courses in Dublin and Sligo
The Ballymaloe Cookery School’s three-month course is regarded as the gold standard total immersion course. But not everyone can escape for 12 weeks to pursue their dream, so it is interesting to hear that two other teaching venues, the Dublin Cookery School in Blackrock and Source in Sligo, are adding longer courses.
Lynda Booth’s one-month courses at the Dublin Cookery School (dublincookeryschool.ie) have gleaned a reputation for being fast-paced and intensive, and she intends to keep up the momentum with her first three-month certificate course, beginning on September 19th (€7,950). Paul Flynn, Oliver Dunne, Neven Maguire, Sunil Ghai, Atul Kochar and David Thompson are among the big names involved in the curriculum for this course.
In Sligo town, the three-storey Source houses a restaurant, wine bar and cookery school. The school’s first eight-week course, Cooking for Business and Pleasure, begins on September 19th (subject to numbers). There’s a broad prospectus drawn up under tutor Eithna O’Sullivan, and the course fee is €3,200. See sourcesligo.ie.
Book of the week
A Year in the Village of Eternity, by Tracey Lawson (Bloomsbury, £20)
Tracey Lawson, a former deputy features editor of the Scotsman, initially went to the village of Campodimele to try to discover why the average life expectancy in this mountainous Italian village was 95, compared to the EU average of 75 for men and 82 for women. It had to be down to genes, lifestyle and diet, she thought. In the course of a year living there (lyrically described, month-by-month, and supported by seasonal recipes from the region), she says she “discovered something much more important – how to live well”.
Award-winning organic oil from Portugal - in Cork
When Edward O’Connor’s organic food home delivery business folded, he didn’t give up on his dream, he just found a different way to make it work. The agricultural science graduate and former Avonmore employee and his Portuguese wife Joana decided to seek out the best organic food products from her homeland and bring them to the Irish market.
They now have an extensive portfolio of extra virgin olive oils and a range of oils and wine vinegars with herbs, which they supply to supermarkets, healthfood shops and delicatessens. They split their time between Ireland and Portugal, where they continue to hunt for new organic products.
Their Bandon-based company, Casa Bio, is the Irish and UK agent for Risca Grande Classic organic extra virgin olive oil, awarded first prize at Europe’s largest organic food fair and also named as organic olive oil of the year by Italian olive-oil guru Marco Oreggia in Flos Olei, his guide to the world’s best olive oils for 2011. Risca Grande is available from
Superquinn (€5.65/250ml), Donnybrook Fair and Avoca branches, some SuperValu outlets and independent retailers. For stockists, tel: 045-408188 or email info@casabio.ie.
Planter-cum-barbecue
Apartment-dwellers with terraces and those with small gardens will like this clever space-saving Hot-Pot BBQ, which is a terracotta planter and barbecue combined. So you can grow the rosemary to season your burgers in the top bit, or a pot pourri of herbs, then when you want to cook, whip the planter off to reveal the grill underneath. You can buy them online from black-blum.com and the price is EUR119, plus EUR18 shipping to Ireland.