A few weeks ago I got the opportunity to visit Saba restaurant in Dublin. As you might already know I absolutely love Asian food so jumped at the opportunity to go down and film a quick demonstration from the head chef! I can't believe I had missed this little gem of a restaurant in all my trips to town, the atmosphere is really chilled and the food looks and tastes absolutely amazing. But for me the most exciting part was going into the kitchen which is ran meticulously by head chef Taweesak Trakoolwattana.
The first thing I noticed was the giant wok burners which were blazing hot, perfect for speedy cooking and the amazing aromas of fresh spices and herbs wafting around the kitchen. The second thing was the sheer amount of fresh ingredients expertly prepared and ready for use in the lunchtime dishes. Chef Taw prepared a fantastic stir fried beef curry with fresh peppercorns, which I had never seen before, but if you take a look at the video, they really add something special to the visuals of the dish! After the filming I got the chance to try some of the dishes cooked up, which were all truly delicious and I will definitely be repeating the experience, next time with a few cocktails thrown into the mix!
The winner of the voucher is the lovely @urmomcooks from likemotherlikedaughters.com/
I'm very excited to tell you that I will be at the lauch of the very first Point Village Farmers Market on Saturday.
They are running free cookery demonstrations all weekend to celebrate the launch of Dublin’s finest produce market. Clodagh McKenna will begin the weekends demonstrations at 11 a.m. on saturday morning cooking dishes from her new cookery school at the Village at Lyons.
At 1 p.m I'm up and will be putting my twist on some delicious local produce and signing a few copies of my book, "Good Mood Food", if you already have a copy, bring it down and I'll sign it for ya! At 2.30pm, co-founder of Ballymaloe Cookery School and one of Ireland’s finest chefs, Rory O’Connell will be giving a masterclass in simple, elegant, and seasonal dishes. On Sunday there will be a lesson in all things spicy with Green Saffron’s Arun Kapul from 1 p.m. This will be followed by Pam Holligan from Ballyderrin House who will be taking you into summer with some seasonal dishes from her award winning guest house and cookery school.
There is rumoured to be a number of special guests throughout the weekend and best of all, it’s free! So come early, learn some new dishes and experience all that Dublin’s best produce market has to offer.
My demo and book signing details as follows: Date:29th of May Time:1.00pm Location:Point Village Market, Beside the o2 Arena! Web:www.pointvillagemarket.ie
Let me know if you'll be there in the comments below! :)
As I mentioned I am on Market Kitchen all this week cooking down at the world famous Borough Market in London, a real haven for food lovers! I really loved the day recording down in the market as it was a lot more hands on, and we got to actually shop around for some of the ingredients, plus there was a bit of time for me to nose around the great selection of veg and food products on offer. We recorded all five shows in the one day, so let me just say it is a LONG day! I arrived at about 8am and didn't leave till around 9pm that night, but despite the long hours and the freezing cold, the amazing team really made recording an absolute pleasure.
There was a crack team of five food super heroes producing the content for the show down in the market and these guys really work hard! I have a feeling they have posed together for a photo before because when I told them I wanted a picture, they very naturally assembled themselves in that formation! Let me introduce you to them, Leonie in the middle is the home economist and she spend loads of time compiling info on each of my recipes, the woman is like a human food encyclopedia and was on hand with great one liners to stick in to my piece! Rasheed there with the clipboard is the producer and made sure everything ran smoothly and kept my spirits high throughout the day, he is a former chef and he too has a fantastic and extensive knowledge of food!
Robin with the glasses and hoody, is the hard core camera dude, who is clearly an expert at his job, as he showed no signs of loosing his patience with me even after my 15th take on one shot! He was full of advice and really helped me keep things moving along throughout the day. Olga is the foodie equivalent of a rockstar music video director and kept me so motivated all day long! She is a bundle of energy and was lots of fun to work with. Last but not least in blue hoodie is Dan, and he is literally a professional feeder! I think I saw a documentary about people who kept their partners overweight by feeding them a constant supply of junk food, and I am fairly sure Dan could be guilty of this. (note: I just googled feederism and apparently feeders derive a sexual pleasure in feeding their partners, sorry Dan maybe your not one!) He is solely responsible for introducing me to curly wurly cake! (I know, I know, recipe coming soon!)
In terms of recording, I much preferred cooking direct to camera, although, I've watched the slots last night and tonight and I'm kind of coming across like a duracell bunny! Extremely excitable but I blame the cold! One of the biggest problems of the day was keeping the frying pan hot, because of the bitter cold weather, every time I would add something to the pan, it would cool down, but Leonie did come to the rescue by erecting a portable metal guard which she would stick around the hob and we would stop filming in order for it to heat up.
I was actually flying to Sweden the following day to go skiing, so luckily had packed thermal underwear (I know, sexy right?) which after about five minutes of arriving I ran across to the nearest toilet to to change into them! So if you are wondering just how many layers I am wearing, I think the total came to seven, but I was still cold! We finished up after a long day with high spirits and lots of laughter! The dishes I cooked which will be coming up on the show this week are mackerel with chorizo potato salad, healthy Singapore noodles, healthy paella, aromatic duck salad, and one more which I has completely slipped my mind, so it will just have to remain a suprise for us all for now! :)
I'm going to be demonstrating at Bloom 2010 which is taking place in the Phoenix Park, Dublin over the June bank holiday weekend. I haven't been before so I'm very excited to be heading down! Here's a bit about the event:
The Food Market is now firmly established as a key attraction at Bloom and this year’s Food Market will be Bloom’s biggest yet! With over 40 artisan food producers, the market highlights the very best that small artisan producers from around Ireland have to offer. The producers themselves will be on hand to provide tastings and give tips on how to prepare tasty dishes using their products. The market will include a huge variety of foods from handmade chocolates, and baked goods to farmhouse cheeses and the finest Irish honey.
Each day, Bord Bia will also host four live demonstrations on the Bloom cookery stage. Featured chefs will include award winning chef Neven Maguire; Darina Allen, Ballymaloe Cookery School; food blogger and author of “Good Mood Food” Donal Skehan (that's me!) and well known TV chef Jenny Bristow. The dishes prepared by the celebrity chefs will promote quality assured local produce and will be available to order each day in Bistro Bloom.
There will be an particular emphasis on artisan food within ‘The Food Village’, the area incorporating all the outdoor catering options, where food producers will “serve slow food fast”. A new feature for 2010 - Bord Bia will seek to bring food to life through a series of talks and demonstrations which will take place alongside the Food Market. The purpose of the showcase is to recreate the link for visitors between the food products on sale at the Market and the craft skills used in their creation. The demonstrations will also bring to life ‘forgotten’ food skills from Ireland’s past. Skills on show will include cheese making, butter churning, apple pressing and fish smoking. The demonstrators and talks will be delivered by a mix of current artisan producers and domestic practitioners.
Tickets are on sale on www.bloominthepark.com or by calling 0818 300 260, with significant discounts available in advance of the show. No booking fee applies and children go free.
I am really excited to announce that I am going to demonstrating at this years Taste of Dublin festival in the Iveagh Gardens on the 13th of June! The world's greatest restaurant festival, is back for its fifth year in the stunning location from 10th -13th June. I haven't actually been to the festival before so I am even more excited to see how it goes. A huge selection of Dublin's finest restaurants will be on display and will be serving up some of their signature dishes.
I'm going to be in amazing company as the line up of other chefs demonstrating includes a lot of familiar names like, Rachel Allen, Clodagh McKenna, Neven McGuire, Darina Allen, and Gina D'Acampo! For my demo I am going to be cooking some really great family dishes which are full of flavour and really easy to throw together without to much trouble! Apart from the chef demos and restaurant exhibitors, there is a lot of other food related exhibitors too. If you are interested in coming down, make sure to get your tickets via the Taste of Dublin website here!
Another quick note to tell you to tune in to Good Food Channel on Sky Channel 262 this evening and tomorrow evening at 7pm, I'm going to be appearing on Market Kitchen. It's competition week on the show all week, so you'll have to tune in to see what dishes won over the diners! :)
I'm up early tomorrow morning to appear on Ireland's only breakfast TV show, IrelandAM to cook up one of the dishes I have come up with for the Cork City Marathon which takes place in June and you can read about more of recipes and details of the event here: readysteadycork.com. I'm going to be doing one of my favourite little pasta dishes, the Avocado, Rocket and Parmesan Penne at 8.30am so tune in if you can! :)
Denis Cotter is going to be doing a cookery demonstration at The Cookery School @ Donnybrook fair on the 27th of March. If you haven't come across Denis before, you have been missing out! His award winning restaurant, Café Paradiso in Cork city is well known for its innovative and inspirational food and of course Denis's love for fresh fruit and vegetables.
I came across Denis through his book "wild garlic, gooseberries ... and me" which is beautifully illustrated with really interesting closeup shots of vegetables and amazing Irish landscapes. Like another of my favourite cookery authors, Nigel Slater, Denis writes books which read more like a journey or a discovery of food rather than just recipes denoted into seperate chapters.
You can read more info about Denis on his website here or contact Monique if you are interested in attending! Sounds like it's going to be a good one!
A few weeks ago, I received a lovely email from Monique McQuaid who runs The Cookery School at Donnybrook Fair, inviting me to a cookery demonstration with English chef, Fergus Henderson. To be perfectly honest I had never heard of Fergus before, but after a quick search on Wikipedia, I discovered he is the man behind the highly respected St. John's restaurant in London, which is famous for it's use of off cuts and using the whole body of an animal. Fergus was coming to Dublin to demonstrate cooking a pig from nose to tail, which was enough to grab my attention and I confirmed my attendance!
We arrived slightly late and had to clamber over people to find seats at the back of the room, which wasn't all bad, with the tiered seating, we could still see the whole thing. The cookery school is located above the shop, and is a fantastic set up with plasma screens showing everything going on in the beautiful, modern kitchen which is fully equipped with everything you could imagine! Monique, a graduate of the famous Ballymaloe Cookery school, was dressed in chefs whites and although Fergus was doing all the talking, it was quite clear she was the one keeping things ticking over, pulling things out of ovens and prepping things as she went!
To say Fergus is a slightly off-beat individual is an understatement, but I suppose I should have expected it, from a creative genius who is famous for cooking a pig from nose to tail. Throughout the course of his charming 2 hour long demonstration, amongst the amazing dishes he produced, he left us with with some fantastic uncommonly eccentric quotes, which had us chuckling in our seats, such as: 1. "I spent my wedding night talking to my trotter." 2. "Tripe is sexy, tripe is the way forward." 3. "There is a certain Jedi knight quality to cooking."
Fergus worked his way through the different cuts of pig, cooking up goodies like deep fried crispy pig tails which he suggested were perfect for a child's dinner, braised pig head, crispy pig's ear, and thinly sliced pig heart served in a delicious salad with pickled walnuts. I will leave you with Fergus's recipe below and make sure to check out Monique's website which has details of all the upcoming cookery demonstrations.
Fergus Henderson's Pot-Roast Half Pig's Head I say only half a head, as it is a perfect romantic supper for two. Imagine gazing into the eyes of your loved one over a golden pig's cheek, ear and snout.
Serves 2 A dollop of duck fat 8 Shallots, peeled and left whole 8 cloves of garlic, peeled and left whole 1/2 pigs head (your butcher should have no problems supplying this) - remove any hairs with a razor A glass of brandy 1 bundle of joy- thyme, parsley and a little rosemary 1/2 bottle of white wine Chicken stock A healthy spoonful of Dijon mustard 1 bunch of watercress, trimmed, or other greens- a case of Liberty Hall Sea salt and black pepper
Dollop the duck fat into an oven tray wide and deep enough to accommodate your half pig's head and put it on the heat. Add the shallots and garlic and leave them to do a little sweating to improve the flavour of the dish. Shuffle the tin occasionally to prevent any burning, but you do want some colour. When happy with these, cover the ear of your demi-head with foil so that it doesn't frazzle, then rest the head in the tin. To welcome it to its new environment, pour the glass of brandy over it, nustle in your bundle of joy, add the wine and then the chicken stock in a not dissimilar fashion to an alligator in a swamp! Season with salt and pepper, cover the tin with greaseproof paper, offering some protection but not denying the need for the rigours of the hours to come in the oven- which is where you should now put your tin, in a medium oven for 3 hours, until the head is totally giving. Check it after 2-2 1/2 hours; you could remove the greaseproof paper at this point and get a little colour on your cheek. When ready, remove the head to a warm place. Whisk the Dijon mustard into the pan liquor, in which you should then wilt the bunch of watercress. Finally, on the head presentation platter, make a pillow of shallots, garlic and wilted watercress, where you then rest your head. There you have it- dinner for two; open something red and delicious: Moon, June, Spoon.
I am coming to you live from my hotel room in the sunny south of Ireland in Ballingcollig, Cork. I was doing a cookery demonstration for the Hope Foundation last night and it went extremely well! It was my first time doing a demo in front of a live adult audience, so I couldn't rely on my usual school demo tricks like asking them what they bring for their lunches, and of course every kid sticks up their hand. No this is a little different, but in a good way, I get to give more tips about the stuff I am cooking and I can choose dishes which are a little more interesting than stuff only kids will eat.
Last night I was demoing some of my favourite dishes from the book, I did 7 dishes altogether, which were my aromatic duck salad (with duck supplied by the lovely folks from Silverhill), hasselback potatoes, tomato chicken thigh supper, garlic mushroom and goats cheese pasta, mushy roast garlic and cherry tomato pasta, and my favourite dessert, Kerstin's bursting berries with white chocolate!
We did a bit of a signing after the demo, so a huge thank you to everyone who came up and bought a book, and big shout the folks at the Hope Foundation who pulled off the whole night with huge success! Mark was our cameraman for the night and popped me the tape of the whole thing, so when I get time I will stick it up here, so you can take a peak!
Today's recipe is going all Irish, as for the next few days, the country will be taken over by a rush of green and lots of celebrations. A few of the towns we drove through today already have their bunting up in the town square! This recipe is from my Cork News column which is out today, and for any foreign readers out there, this dish is quite a traditional Irish dish, so I hope you like it!
Traditional Irish Food: Colcannon Colcannon is as traditional, as traditional Irish food gets, and for the week that's in it, when the whole world will be going green in our honour, what better thing to do, than serve up some of the finest! I told my grandad I was making this the other day and no sooner was it out of my mouth than he had burst into song. The dish of course, is the inspiration behind the traditional Irish song by the same name, "Oh weren't them the happy days when troubles we knew not and our mother made colcannon in the little skillet pot". This recipe is the one I grew up with, but if you want to experiment, you could also stir in a little bit of wholegrain mustard to add an extra bite to it!
Serves 4 portions 1kg potatoes, peeled and diced 250g savoy cabbage, finely sliced 1 bunch of spring onions, finely sliced 2 tablespoons of butter 75ml of milk A good pinch of sea salt and black pepper
Add the peeled and diced potato to a pot of cold water, cover, place over a high heat and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the potato is tender when pierced with a fork. Place a metal steamer into another pot, add a little water and bring to the boil. Place the cabbage into the steamer and steam cook until it is tender. When the potatoes are cooked, remove from the heat, drain into a colander, then add back into the pot with the butter and milk. Using a potato masher, mash the potatoes until smooth and creamy. You may want to add a little bit more or less milk and butter, it is up to you! Add in the spring onion, steamed cabbage, sea salt and black pepper and stir through with a spoon until evenly combined. Serve the colcannon straight away with a little extra butter and sea salt if you want. Enjoy and a slightly premature, Happy St. Patricks Day!
JP from the Hope Foundation contacted me in January asking me if I would be interested in becoming an ambassador for the charity. The Hope Foundation was set up to help the street children of Calcutta, in India. To be honest I haven’t really done much charity work before, but I have always wanted to, and after reading about the work the charity do with the kids in India, I was really interested in becoming involved. JP suggested that I might visit India in April so we are currently working on plans for that. But for now to kick things off, I'm going to be doing a cookery demonstration in aid of the charity in the Oriel House Hotel next Thursday evening at 7pm. Check out the details below and hope to see you there! :)
Health & Beauty Night with Cookery Demonstration by Donal Skehan Raising funds for the street children of Calcutta with THE HOPE FOUNDATION
Oriel House Hotel & Spa, Ballincollig, Cork 11th March 2010 @ 7pm
Tickets can be purchased from Oriel House 420 8400 Mount Mercy College 454 2366 The HOPE Office 429 2990Adults €20 Student €15
Also just got word that the reprint of my book has arrived in, so books will be on sale on the night, and I will be signing them whether you like it or not! :)
I had such an brilliant time on Thursday, as I mentioned here on the blog, I was appearing on Good Food Channel's, Market Kitchen! I was so nervous that I wasn't going to actually be able to fly as the whole of Ireland had come to a stand still due to the snowy weather. However the planets were aligned and even though Dublin airport had been closed the night before, Thursday morning our plane wasn't delayed and I was on my way to London!
I arrived at the Market Kitchen studios with my buddy Elaine who came along to take some pics and lend some moral support. As soon as we arrived I was whisked into makeup to get beautified, after which we were sat in the green room which had a great array of food magazines which kept me completely distracted as they had plonked the latest copy of Delicious on the table!
The lovely Faye then came to meet us to talk me through the process of recording. They had each step of the recipe planned out and what way they wanted it to flow. It was a lot to take in all at once but Faye kept telling me I would fine and to stay calm! While we were in the green room, I met the presenters Matt Terbutt and Amanda Lamb who were really lovely and very friendly.
Faye brought us up a very quiet stairs to the main studio and when she opened the door in, there was a rush of people running around, wires, cameramen, food stylists, and a lot hustle and bustle- all very exciting! We watched while another guest of the show, Simon Rimmer, demonstrated what looked like a really tasty egg dish. I have to say Simon is an expert at what he does and he certainly didn't put me at ease. An extremely tough act to follow! When Simon was finished I met the fantastic Home Economist who was in charge for setting up all the ingredients, equipment and generally making sure everything ran smoothly. She talked me through what I would be doing and made sure I had everything I needed before the filming started. I was making Mint and Lime Mohito Chicken so they had already marinated the chicken and everything was ready to go!
Before I did my cooking slot, I had a quick interview with Matt who was having awful trouble pronouncing my name, so much so that he had to hyphanate it on the autocue so that it read, Do-nal! Very funny altogether! After the interview we headed over to the kitchen space and got going on the dish. I wasn't sure if I was going to mention this but, as I was demonstrating butterflying a chicken breast, I sliced it wrong and ended up with a sad scraggly looking chicken breast and we had to cut! Let me just saw THIS DID NOT PUT ME AT EASE!
In fairness to all the crew, it was no bother to them and we just started again pretty quickly! The rest of the demo ran quite smoothly and hopefully it looks well when it's all edited together. When the demo was finished all the audience members got served mini portions of the dish to sample it and then gave their comments to camera! It was a little bit scary to hear what they were going to say but from what I could hear they were all extremely complimentary and no one got sick so it was all good! I had a ball doing the show and it was a fantastic experience, the first of many hopefully! It's going to air on the 21st of January on Good Food Channel so make sure to keep an eye out for it!
Last week I went along to do a cookery demonstration at an all girls school, after being asked by the lovely home economics teacher Breda who came to the book launch a few weeks ago. Now I'm fairly relaxed when it comes to demo's and I've done a few school cookery demonstrations before, but never to an all girls school! The funniest part of the whole day was when Breda revealed that she had sent me a text saying "Hi Donal, I hope you're ready for 40 screaming girls this afternoon, they're already excited about you!", but instead of sending it to my phone, she sent it to her plumber whose name is also Donal! As you can imagine she got a text back straight away saying "who is THIS!", I think she was far to embarrassed to even text back to try and explain herself! My Aromatic Duck Salad was on the menu, and the girls were really great, I had lots of volunteers to chop, peel, and grate! They were all really enthusiastic, everyone tried the salad and I didn't even have to wash up! I had a brilliant time and thoroughly enjoyed it! Check out the pics below!
If you want a food demonstration at your school or event pop me an email and we can have a chat!
Most of life's great decisions come from having absolutely no prior knowledge as to how something is going to turn out. That was most certainly the case over the weekend. You might remember earlier this year I got roped into cooking for 800 hungry Parisians for an event on a small island in the west of the city with Le Fooding magazine sponsored by our very own Bord Bia. Well after the huge success at Chalet Des Illes, the delightful Noreen Lanigan, decided she wanted more abuse from me and decided, being a blogger I would be the right person to demonstrate at the third annual Salon Du Blog Culinaire, an event organized by a cookery school north of Paris in the little town of Soissons, in November. The event is quite unique and very timely with the amount of food blogs continually on the increase. It invites lots of France's finest food bloggers to demonstrate their favorite dishes and kitchen techniques in a fairly manic two day period watched on by fellow bloggers eager for culinary inspiration. During the summer I had the opportunity to meet a group of France's top food bloggers who were on a visit to Ireland to discover the fantastic conditions our lovely animals enjoy before they head off the little farm in the sky and onto our supermarket shelves. To put things in perspective here, unlike our own Irish food blogging community which, while thriving and very rapidly increasing in numbers, this group of French food bloggers were 10 of over a thousand. These guys were the cream of crop and are well and truly established with tens of thousands of visitors a day, numerous cookbooks and iPhone and iPad Apps. Not surprising really from a nation who takes so much pride and passion in their cooking that they would be willing to fall out with each other over a bad Boeuf Bourginon! After our visit to the farm, I demonstrated some of our traditional Irish dishes, including Irish stew, brown bread and roast lamb, and was gently reminded again that Noreen had plans for me in November…
Clare Clinton who is interning at Bord Bia's Paris office got the ball rolling earlier this month with emails back and forth to decide the best recipes to show off our finest meat and fish products. Despite me dragging my feet, we eventually decided upon 6 dishes to cook and impress the French food bloggers, including mussels in Irish cider, crab claws with chilli, garlic and lemon, roast shoulder of lamb with rosemary and garlic, a good auld Irish stew and to mix things up a little an oriental steak salad and spicy Beef fahitas.
Myself and Maeve Desmond, who I'm sure many of your may have met at Bloom or the Irish Food blogger event in May, flew to Paris on Friday evening just in time for a late dinner in a beautiful restaurant very close to La Bon Marché. The restaurant proudly serves Irish beef alongside some French classics and the quite adventurous dishes I chose including Carpaccio of veal tongue served with a salsa and for mains Pieds et Pacque d'agneau which on the English menu I was reading from was translated as feet and packets of lamb. I'm big believer in always trying something different in another country rather than something familiar but unfortunately sometimes it doesn't always work out the way I had planned. The veal tongue had a very interesting texture and flavor and was complimented quite nicely by the salsa it was served and was definitely worth the chance of trying, however the Lamb feet and packets, left a little to be desired… The packets turned out to be a strange little dumplings of finely minced pork wrapped in what looked very much like tripe and actually tasted quite nice, but the feet had about as much meat on them as my little finger. Maeve and Noreen played it safe and benefited from doing so with Maeve going for an amazing long wooden platter of beautifully sliced ham and of the Irish beef and Noreen choosing a lentil salad to start followed by the most amazing French black pudding which was really rich and velvety, a stark contrast to what we are used to with a fry! Dessert was a financier de poivre, an individual little flat cake with pear and île flottante a big dollop of fluffy egg white and sugar which was served floating in a dish of vanilla cream and topped with a caramel sauce. After all that we rolled our way back to our hotel ahead of the six o'clock start on Saturday morning.
There is one thing I don't do and that is early mornings, sure I can be full of energy first thing but I fade fairly rapidly during the day! Noreen runs a tight ship let me tell you (This woman has a tractor license!), so at 7.06 with toothbrush still in mouth, I answered to phone to a bright and sparky Noreen who wanted to know were I was! Rushing out the door and out onto the streets of Paris, I stumbled on Noreen and Clare (and a sleepy Maeve!) negotiating the boot of the car with Irish posters, recipe booklets and of course the suitcases. We were all bundled into the car and then the real fun started- our departure from Paris was fairly comical not helped of course by the GPS which took us on the wrong road at least twice.
When we finally arrived in Soissons and at the culinary arts school the 3rd Salon Du Blog was well underway. One of the French food bloggers who had been on the visit to Ireland, was the charming Chef Damien who makes a mean Boef A La Guiness and runs the school and a highly successful website, 750g, which attracts a ridiculous amount of visitors on a daily basis! There was definitely a huge sense of excitement as we were ushered through the halls of the school and passed the many rooms where different food bloggers would be spending their weekend. We arrived at the Bord Bia room which was positioned perfectly smack bang in the middle of all the rooms which guaranteed us constant traffic and visitors and were introduced to our helpers Suella and Virginie. It's always fairly nerve-wracking arriving at a new kitchen so there was some fierce scurrying around to get all the equipment and ingredients before we were due to kick off with our first demonstration at 11am! We got kick started with a great turnout and the rest of the day was so busy that it became pretty much a blur except for the fantastic Bloggers Picnic that had been organized for lunch, where all the bloggers had brought along a little dish to be a part of the most massive buffet of food I have ever seen! One thing that should be noted and that is instantly clear in terms of the difference between Irish food bloggers and French food bloggers, they have no problem telling you they would done something differently, where we might be a little bit more shy to go up and taste test if someone is giving a demo. So it was all fairly nerve wracking to make sure things were cooked just the right way! Either way I love their passion!
Saturday finished off with a giant blogger banquet complete with hoards of Irish cheese, Irish salmon, Irish beef, Irish lamb and randomly enough a little bit of good old Irish dancing! We were sitting having a great time but the minute the music started Noreen told us she had to get up to take some photos and we thought no more of it, a few minutes later we looked down at the dance floor and there she was like Jeanne Butler on acid leading the Ceili putting the rest to shame- and THAT'S how you represent the country! I don't know whether it was the dancing or not but Noreen headed back to Paris on Sunday and we were joined by another lovely lady from Bord Bia, the lovely Bernadette, lovely! :)
On the last demo of the day on Sunday I was accompanied by Chef Damien to demonstrate a very simple dish of crab claws with chilli, garlic and lemon. The whole thing was a crazy combination of both of us trying to translate each other language but somehow I think it worked, and I suppose it did help that we were being filmed for the French tv station! All in all it was an absolutely fantastic event and I think we represented Ireland quite well if I do say so myself. My only wish was that I had got to see a lot more of the other demonstrations, there was a massive variety of food being demoed but I did manage to catch one or two! An absolutely massive thank you to Chef Damien, my two lovely kitchen assistants, the lovely ladies of Bord Bia, and of course all the French bloggers who made me feel so very welcome!
