John's blog

Niamh Shields, celebrated Waterford-born food blogger at @eatlikeagirl, has written her first cookery book and, in the process, she's also written her first novel.

Some of the latest Food News is ...

Look out for a brand new cider from Stonewell Brewing in County Cork. www.stonewellcider.com

When travelling in County Cork make sure to hit Shannen's beautiful and now bigger Diva Boutique bakery in Ballinspittle. www.divaboutiquebakery.blogspot.com

And speaking of beautiful baking, is there anything nicer on a warm Dublin afternoon than a madeline and a cup of tea in Queen of Tarts, opposite the City Hall in Dublin.

Merrill Garbus will be playing at Whelan's in Dublin tomorrow night, and even with our greying hair and inappropriate attire, we would cast aside our age just to hear this woman sing and play her ukelele. Ms Garbus is weirdly wonderful and her second tUnE-yArDs album, “Whokill“, is one of those brilliant pieces of work that falls from the ether all too rarely.

The elements conspired to help the fist ever Sheep's Head Market, in the little village of Kilcrohane, far down the peninsula in West Cork. The little fields are being cut for silage, making a chessboard landscape. Buttercups brazen it out with dandelions to see who wins the maillot jaune, wild honeysuckle is emerging in hedgerows as elder flowers begin to decline, and cramp bark makes its bid to be the new hero of the moment.

Jessica Murphy reminds me of Bernadette O'Shea, the legendary creator of Sligo's greatest-ever restaurant, Truffles.

Once in a while, something really stops you in your tracks. And occasionally, something blows your mind. Visiting Michael Flanagan's Achill Island Turbot is one of those mind blowing events. From the outside, Achill Island Turbot looks like any IDA plant, someplace to build circuit boards, perhaps.

Pat O’Sullivan says he’s a dreamer, stirring one of several cappuccinos he will down today, as he gazes from the window of Café Noir number three on Limerick’s Georgian O’Connell Street. This café was made for the building, or vice verse, with it’s typical high ceilings and genuine sash windows it’s a perfect meeting of minds and styles, like it was always there. The same can be said for Café Noir, the group of cafés founded by Pat back in 2007.

When it arrives, in waxed brown paper tied up with string and with a red PW seal and a traditional shopkeeper’s label, a delivery of wagyu beef from James Whelan butchers of Clonmel seems to be just about the best present a food lover could possibly have. Even before you have a taste, the eyes have feasted.

Of course, it’s only right that the beef should be presented as a luxury brand product: the wagyu striploins cost more than twice as much as the Angus striploins which Whelans sell, so we are dealing with what may be the priciest beef in Ireland.

“When you cook for someone, you are saying – here, eat this, I hope you will love it. When you share food, you are sharing the pleasure of taste and of hunger satisfied.”

Over thirteen or fourteen centuries, people tend to forget things. That's ok.

But it is time, in these parlous times, to remind our European friends of something that we did for them back in the seventh century which they seem to have conveniently forgotten.