A late summer's morning just outside Glenties, in Co Donegal, and Sara Moss is lifting a sweet-smelling tray out of the oven, with beautiful nutbrown Dundee cakes lined up like so many new-born babies in a maternity ward. The aroma is intensely beguiling, but also surprising: what are the producers of the wonderful Filligan's preserves and chutneys doing with a whole batch of Dundee cakes?
It turns out that in addition to making the acclaimed chutneys and preserves, which they sell under their own label, Filligan's, andalso the Avoca Handweavers and Gourmet Ireland labels, Philip and Sara Moss have also been producing a range of cakes since they set up their business several years back. "I began by making carrot cake, and the thing just grew and grew, there were carrot cakes everywhere," says Sara. While their carrot cakes, Dundee cakes and porter cakes are popular, the jams, chutneys and preserves have now become the major focus of the business.
"Chutneys are our passion," they admit, and their expertise has seen their range grow to about 20 different products: Donegal chutney, Jill's cucumber relish, plum jam, a terrific fiery pepper relish, spicy orange chutney and tangy lime marmalade are just some of their delicious foods.
"We were both always interested in food, and lucky to have experienced interesting foods," says Philip, who spent a year in Jerusalem after studying at art college, and who at one time used to cook, filling the freezers of working women over Christmas. Sara's mother and aunt have both run restaurants. "Cooking is in the blood," she says, and it shows: there is an intuitive appreciation and understanding of good food in their work.
Filligan's is a model small-food enterprise, now operating from the shed at the back of the farm; ("I lost my studio," says Philip, who nevertheless still manages to paint and exhibit). It now employs four people, two full-timers and two part-timers. "But we still cook with little-big saucepans," says Sara - the smallest industrial saucepans - which may explain how their foods have such a precise identity, despite being sold under different labels.
If Philip and Sara Moss are proof that you can have a successful food company operating in a remote place, Roisin Jenkins takes the idea of living and working at the edge to a new extreme. She produces the excellent Dibbles range of preserves and dressings, and has recently moved her production and her team from Port-na-Blagh to a small unit just outside Milford, way up in north Donegal.
This is just about as far north as you can get, but the distance from . . . well, everywhere, doesn't faze Jenkins in the slightest. Since starting the Dibbles range of five products in May 1997, after a year of research and recipe-testing and studying branding ("I don't know why I wasn't arrested for loitering in supermarkets," she chortles), her profile has risen with startling speed. She already supplies most of the Tesco stores in Ireland, is hoping to get listed for Tesco in the UK, and the Dibbles range is also widely available elsewhere. Recently, she has begun exporting to The Netherlands and France.
Like Filligan's, the success of Dibbles is based on genuine quality. In particular, the chilli jam and the onion marmalade which Jenkins makes are superlative, indispensable condiments which bring a fillip to any meal, from a late supper to a lunchtime sandwich. The salad dressings are also just the sort of food our busy lives need: delicious, practical, distinctive and speedy.
For anyone who was raised on the commercial, vinegary, imported chutneys which dominated supermarket shelves only a decade ago, the creativity and accomplishment of small Irish companies such as Dibbles and Filligan's is revolutionary. That they can flourish while working in such a geographically remote region shows that the dream of a country of food micro-industries, currently a buzz idea in both the Department of Agriculture and An Bord Bia, can be made a reality. A quite delicious reality, in fact.
Filligan's products can be found in specialist shops such as: Kate's Kitchen, Sligo; Douglas Food Company, Dublin; Good Food Store, Dublin; Cheese Etc, Carrick-on-Shannon; Sheridans, Dublin and Galway; Simple Simon, Donegal, as well as various Avoca outlets. The Dibbles range is widely available.