FOOD FILE:There's a "restrained good taste" look to Rachel Allen's new range of kitchen utensils, tableware and stemware for Tipperary Crystal.
The porcelain dinner service has pretty, pale blue adornment on a white background, and the delicate floral pattern is reproduced in the glassware. A dinner place costs €14.95, large serving dishes are €34.50, and the jug in this picture costs €90. The range is sold by Tipperary Crystal stockists nationwide, and you can find the shop nearest you by phoning 01-4191810.
Chocolate couturier coming to Dublin
Gerard Coleman, the Dundalk-born chocolatier whose L'Artisan du Chocolat range has been described by Gordon Ramsay as "the Bentley of chocolate" is on the lookout for a Dublin city centre premises to complement his London store, on Lower Sloane Street in Chelsea.
Coleman, who is based in Kent, is different from most other chocolatiers in that he makes his own chocolate from scratch, rather than buying liquid chocolate.
He was delighted with the reception his couture chocolates got from visitors to the recent Taste of Dublin event, where he manned his own stand and spent many hours explaining the provenance of his chocolates and handing out generous samples.
"I've always wanted to do something in Dublin. People were asking why weren't we there already, when were we coming, and where would we be opening," he said.
Coleman's engaging presence at Taste resulted in him receiving invitations to teach at the Ballymaloe Cookery School, and to appear on the Late Late Show. In the meantime, if you snagged a delicious morsel at Taste and need another fix, the range can be purchased online at www.artisanduchocolat.com, or by phoning 00-44-845-2706996.
Cook school winner
The winner of the competition to win a place on an Essential Intermediate cookery course at Cooks' Academy, which we featured recently, is Pat Tobin of Rialto, Dublin 8. Tobin, who is an accomplished cook and runs vegetarian cookery classes, will be sharpening her knives for an action-packed week in July.
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If you've been hooked by a US TV cook - and who hasn't been seduced by The Barefoot Contessa's culinary confections at some stage - but you're not used to cup measurements, this website has a useful conversion chart. A cup of sugar, for example, isn't the same weight as a cup of flour, and in baking, approximations can be catastrophic. Locate it in "kitchen measurements" at the top of any of the recipe pages on this site, and choose the "Conversion table for US and metric" option.