Sally's blog

Around Loop Head, in south County Clare, you can meet people and start chatting, let the conversation drift its way towards restaurants and cooking, and then hear them say something like “Oh, Mary Black's mushrooms in Guinness batter with that dill and honey mayonnaise.” And they get all dreamy then, remembering the dish, and its unctuous flavours, its lush satisfaction, the fact that they order it everytime in Murphy Black's.

My guest wasn't mincing her words.“This is the best food I've eaten in my entire life”, she saidWe were halfway through a dish of “Squid, chorizo, romanesco, ink”, the third course of seven on the tasting menu at OX, on Belfast's Oxford Street.

The dish was pure OX: visually arresting, tactile, ardently clever and seemingly able to push all the pleasure points with every bite. Just as clever, and just as tactile, was the decision to pair it with a red wine, a glass of Villa Wolf pinot noir from Germany, a red wine that drinks like a white wine.

The experience of eating in Harry's Shack, on the beach in Portstewart, is so startling that we wrote our response in caps in our notebook: TACTILITY.And we added: “They have gotten the tactility – the feel, the vibe – of the venture just right”.

Watching Diana Dodog cooking, at the food cart that she and her husband, Mike, call Food Depot, is just like watching a really fine musician play, or an athlete perform.

Anyone lucky enough to be in Waterford for the Harvest Festival and GIY Gathering will not only have benefitted from weather more akin to Tuscany than the south east of Ireland but also a city that was defiantly positive and humming with optimism - the oldest city in the country may have had a rough few years but it's certainly not going down without a fight.

“Creme Catalana is a mix between a crème caramel and just set milk. There’s no gelatin in it”. “This is Suki tea, a Belfast company who import the tea leaves and make their own mix”. “It’s 100% sauvignon, so it’s got that acidity, but it’s balanced with floral and vanilla tones.”

Those are just three responses from the staff at Hadskis™, hard-working young people who look you in the eye and try to answer your question directly with an impressive knowledge about food in general and the minute details of the Hadskis™ menu in particular.

Vanilla And Raspberry Chia Jam

Raw, Vegan, Gluten free and refined sugar free

Makes 1 pot

Murgh Do – Piaza Hyderabadi

(A mild chicken curry cooked with an abundance of onion and garnished with cashew nuts, sunflower seeds and mango)

Serves 6

1 free range chicken
150g Ghee
400g onions
30g ginger paste
30g garlic paste
5g red chilli powder
5g turmeric
Salt
10g Garam Masala
2 tin of coconut milk
40g mango chutney
20g fresh coriander
20g fresh mint
20g sunflower seeds
50g Cashew nuts

Frankfuters Chilli

2 packets of Frankfuters diagonally cut
3 tbsp mustard or vegetable oil
1 tbls peeled and finely chopped ginger
1 tbls peeled and finely chopped or crushed garlic
2 small red onion cut into chunks
2 fresh tomatoes deseeded and cut into chunks
1 green or yellow pepper cut into chunks
2-3 fresh chilli chopped diagonally (add chilli powder to add more heat to the dish)
salt to your taste
½ tsp  ground Szechwan pepper
1-2 tbsp of light soya sauce
handful of chopped fresh coriander

Kevin O'Toole's Javanese goat curry

Ingredients;
1.    1kg of goat meat, shoulder meat, boneless, cut into 1-2 inch chunks.
2.    200g Javanese curry paste.
3.    200g passata.
4.    600ml coconut milk.
5.    200ml water.
6.    3 pandang leaves, tied in a knot (available from Asia markets)
7.    Salt and cracked black pepper.
8.    Sweet potato, peeled and cut into even sized chunks.