The Times, 19th April 2012.
Craig Robertson
Food and Drink
Staring at a plate of black pudding at eight o’clock in the morning…despite the hour. Nor is the black pudding accompanied by the usual British…and is accompanied only by more black pudding. Lots and lots of it.
Award for butchers behind the queen’s black pudding
Irish Independent
THE artisan butchers who created the bespoke black pudding that was served to Queen Elizabeth during her state visit to last May were among the winners at yesterday’s Irish Food Writer’s Guild awards.
McCarthy’s of Kanturk, in Cork, were one of five food producers awarded for their exceptional contribution to Ireland’s reputation as a top food-producing country.
Jack McCarthy and his son Tim come from a long line of butchers who have been producing meat products for five generations.
Also among the winners were David Tiernan for Glebe Brethan Cheese, which is based in Co Louth.
Their product had its beginnings 20 years ago, when they imported two French Montbeliarde cows; now they have more than 70.
Other winners included Brendan and Derek Allen of Castlemine Farm for Castlemine Farm Free Range Pork in Co Roscommon; Patrick and Carol Rooney for Derrycamma Farm Rapeseed Oil in Co Louth; and chairman of the Irish Apple Growers Association, Con Traas of The Apple Farm in Tipperary, honoured with the Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The awards took place at Michelin-starred restaurant, L’Ecrivain.
Irish Independent
Jack’s twittering reached a climax when he was awarded the “Twitter Award” by Lucinda O’Sullivan. If you want to follow Jack on Twitter and enjoy his insights into Irish food and rugby you will find him @mccarthykanturk or click here
Old faithfuls, and some newcomers
Sunday Independent January 1st 2012
Lucinda O’Sullivan serves up her choices for the best, and ‘could do betters’, of the nation’s dining experiences
IT’S been a year of value menus and early birds, pop ups and pop offs, bloggers and blaggers. My annual awards are a reflection of a colourful dining year for all of us. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Lucindas 2011!
Click here to see the original article
The Lofty Sardine Award
The Butcher’s Grill in Ranelagh, Dublin, where my feet didn’t touch the ground and my ass was
perched on a high stool, squashed in like a lofty sardine.
The Old Faithful Award
Tom O’Connell, who at a time of deep recession held his nerve and created the excellent
O’Connell’s of Donnybrook, Dublin, where his faithful followers flock.
Small is Beautiful Award
Kosi Moodley’s Indian gem Bistro Spice right in the heart of Monkstown Village, Co Dublin, where
you can also bring your own wine.
The Disappointing Harvest Award
Matt the Thresher in Dublin’s Lower Pembroke Street. Crab claws were small and smaller, and
everything else lived down to the same mantra.
The Strictly Come Dancing Award
Tadgh Foley, who manages the Green Barn Cafe Bistro at Killeagh, Co Cork, will sweep you to your
table in a move that even SCD judges could not whinge about.
The Sour Note Award
Coda at the Gibson Hotel, Dublin, didn’t rock on any score. Ghastly food, and already setting up for
breakfast shortly after we sat down to an early dinner.
The Braveheart Award
Mel Gibson acted the part but John Healy, maitre d’ on TV show The Restaurant — whose grace and
charm astounds all as he awaits a heart transplant — lives it and life to the full.
The Western Stars
JP McManus & Drigin Gaffey, whose Cava and Aniar in Galway are two of the hottest restaurants
west of the Shannon.
Downton Abbey Award
Carton House in Maynooth, Co Kildare, rivals the TV show for grace and beauty.
The Top Roost Award
Joe Macken’s pop-ups Crackbird and Skinflint in Dublin are hitting the highest perches.
The Apprentice Award
Sandra Murphy is more master than apprentice when it comes to running Rising Tide in Cork.
Revolving Door Award
La Stampa, where Louis Murray is now tangoing with Ronan Ryan. Let’s hope they stay in step.
The ‘X Factor’ Award
Finin’s in Midleton, Cork, where Finin O’Sullivan’s vibrant personality is matched only by the quality of his gastropub grub.
The Odd Bird Award
Rachel Clancy’s Magpie Inn in Dalkey, Co Dublin, has been attracting the locals looking for all that glisters.
The Shining Light Award
Electric in Cork city, which turned a bank building into something useful!
The Brangelina Award
Paul Byrne and Fiona McHugh, whose Fallon & Byrne in the capital’s Exchequer Street spawned a whole new dining quarter.
The Top Cat Award
Garret Byrne of Campagne in Kilkenny, whose superb food must be another All Ireland contender.
The Twitter Award
To master butcher Jack McCarthy, who would make Kanturk the Irish capital.
And finally…
Every year I have the Rear of the Year Award — though this year it’s the Fairy Tail End of 2011 as
the beautiful Sally O’Brien of Farmgate in Midleton walked up the aisle yesterday.
Irish Examiner
By Jack Power
THOUGH, obviously enough, The Old Convent was once a nunnery it is an alpha-male building radiating authority through its assertive, almost garrison-like lines and magnificent stone facade.
It was built when Catholicism was a certainty rather than a choice. The depth of the conviction behind the building shouts out still, long after the nuns have gone. It does not do doubt, it does not waver and there’s no room for even a shard of ambiguity.
And if you’re prepared to make an imaginative leap the same can be said of the wonderful, earthy-rich food presented by Dermot and Christine Gannon.
Like Catholicism of old, it is an absolute package, a take-it-or-leave deal because The Old Convent does not do choice — the house usually offers only a tasting menu. Just as the Catholic hierarchy of old-fought à la carte Catholicism, the Gannons are confident enough to offer a set menu, one not revealed until you arrive.
In our case — DW and I — we enjoyed it thoroughly, even if we did not realise we were to be so constrained as the house style was not explained when I made our booking. Neither did it seem to deter other guests — we had to book several weeks in advance to get a Saturday night table.
Nevertheless, if you are prepared to surrender the dubious pleasure of 10 minutes puzzling your way through a menu, the eight dainty courses were a real pleasure and two, if not three, were exceptional.
Engagements opened with a dessert spoon of duck liver and bantam egg mousse with smoked-duck lardons apple syrup all presented in a decapitated eggshell. It was a velvet-smooth, deeply-rich tasting morsel arranged with care and humour.
The next course, for me at least, screamed more, more and still more. It was in essence, a hint of what might be, as enjoyable a main course as it might have been my pleasure to discover.
It was, and the “it” was hardly a golf-ball-and-a-half in size, slow-cooked Ballinwillan rare breed pork with Cashel blue cheese, pears and candied almonds. It was as impressive a pork-and-fruit combination as I’ve come across and, like a glimpse of heaven, its fleeting pleasure was as frustrating as it was satisfying. Nevertheless it was a truly exceptional combination of textures and tastes.
The next dish — a coffee cup of cauliflower veloute — was dull and the least impressive of the evening.
It was followed by buttermilk poached organic salmon, baked crab, sushi rice, elderflower and pineapple salad. Though impressive enough it was the dish that tried too hard and probably best showed the difference between a tasting menu dish and a dish from an à la carte menu. The essences of the perfectly good ingredients were almost lost in the tasting menu imperative to push the boat out.
Next was a wonderful apple sorbet with raspberry jelly. This is a simple dish that can say more about a kitchen than many others. Here, in contrast to its predecessor, was a victory for the kind directness that underpins great cooking. It was truly exceptional.
So, too, was the next course. Heifer beef, truffled white cocoa beans, wild mushrooms, triple cooked potatoes and veal jus. The beef — flagged as Jack McCarthy’s dry aged — was pretty much as close to perfect as anyone could ask for. It had depth of taste, a tender texture and was cooked in a way that completely honoured the entire process. A third exceptional dish in one evening.
This was followed by two more courses — a lemon posset and a Valrhona dark chocolate pot — and both were really good. Our wine, Condado de Haza Ribera del Duero Tinto 2007 from Ribera del Duero was excellent.
The Old Convent does food-and-accommodation packages and seems to be an ideal place for one of those short, re-energising winter breaks, and even if the weather can’t be guaranteed, it seems the quality of the food can be. And you’ll experience the legacy of the nuns who seem to have left a very calm karma in the building that enhances the whole experience.
Altogether wonderful food, served with style, in a lovely place.
By MARIA HERLIHY
A PROJECT to help the local meat supply chain to survive and thrive was launched in Newmarket recently.
The two year project which was launched at IRD Duhallow and its aims is to help small abattoirs, butchers and meat processors across the EU.
THE number of abattoirs across Ireland has fallen in the last two decades from 1,000 to just over 200, and this is a trend which is also repeated across Europe.
However, the ‘Local Meat Supply Chains (SLMSC) project, which is funded by the EU lifelong learning programme, now aims to stem the decline and, importantly, develop an e-learning training programme for small abattoirs, butchers and meat processors throughout Duhallow.
Minister for Research and Development Sean Sherlock officially launched the project and said that supporting the agri food sector is vitally important and will be a major contributor to helping Ireland recover economically.
“It is heartening to see a project addressing some of the challenges faced by the rural meat sector in maintaining profitability and competitiveness,” he said.
Project Co-ordinator at IRD Duhallow Isobel Fletcher said that abattoirs play a key role in the meat supply chain, but yet they have been closing down in the last number of years.
She said that given their rural location, small abattoirs are also faced with the difficulty of retraining and reintegrating staff into the labour market.
“The decline is partly due to external factors such as stringent international legislation, dominance of multinational retailer as well as rising consumer quality demands and scrutiny by environmental and nutritional groups,” said Ms Fletcher.
She told The Corkman that the project has been enthusiastically received by many working in the meat industry.
“They recognise that the future to long term survival depends on developing additional business skills and adding creativity to products and the way in which they do business. The project comes at a time when the industry itself is gearing up for change, she said.
– MARIA HERLIHY
Mary Carney from Waterford won the title of MasterChef Ireland. McCarthys were delighted that to see their renowned black pudding included in her star dish. 28-year-old Carney from Waterford wowed McGrath and Munier with her final three-course meal serving a warm lobster salad, squab pigeon which seemed to particularly impress and a summer berry plate. Mary, who is a telecommunications policy and strategy advisor with a large telecommunications company, credits her mother with teaching her how to cook.
For the water bath squab:
Smoked bacon
Blend of coriander seeds and black pepper
Thyme
Port
Butter
4 squab
Dark Chicken Stock
For the pea puree:
2 packs of frozen petits pois
2 bags of fresh peas
4 Garlic cloves
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Salt
Chicken Stock
Basil
Mint
Sherry Vinegar
For the crumb:
Jack McCarthy’s Black Pudding
400g of Walnuts – shelled preferably
For the braised spring onions:
Water/butter for an emulsion
Salt
Pepper
6 bunches of spring onions
For the crispy bacon:
20 slices of smoked bacon
For the pigeon glaze:
Truffle honey
Dijon mustard
For the pigeon jus
Dark Chicken stock
Sherry vinegar
For decoration:
Flowering pea shoots
Borage flowers
Salt
Method
Pre-heat oven to 150 degrees.
For the spring onions: Prepare the spring onions, blanch and set in iced water. Closer to service, warm and cook through both spring onions and blanched peas in a water butter emulsion.
For the crumb: Cook the walnuts at 150 degrees for 15 minutes, remove and peel. Pan fry black pudding until crisp.
For the peas: Cook fresh peas in salted water, remove skins and set in ice cold water. Cook garlic in olive oil and allow to infuse. Cook frozen peas in water for 4 minutes. Blitz frozen peas for 5 minutes, with some light chicken stock, pass through a chinois and add garlic oil to taste, salt and sherry vinegar. Set peas on a bowl of ice to maintain colour.
For the glaze: Mix equal quantities of dijon mustard with truffle honey and set aside.
For the pigeon: Prepare the pigeon pieces and set in 2 vac pac bags with a few thyme sprigs, two slices of smoked bacon, a couple of tablespoons of port and a few knobs of butter. Place in a water bath at 61 degrees celsius for 2 hours. Remove from bag, reserving juices. Pass juices through muslin and reserve for sauce. Using a pastry brush generously paste glaze on to pigeon and place under the grill on high for 4 to 5 minutes until golden brown.
For the pigeon livers: Season livers just before cooking and pan fry in oil and butter for 2 minutes each side on a medium heat.
For the crisp bacon : Crisp bacon under the grill.
For the pigeon jus: Strain the reserved juice into a muslin cloth and allow to boil gently. Add chicken stock and sherry vinegar to taste. Serve alongside the pigeon in a jug.
Finish: Place crumbled pudding and walnuts on to pigeon. Set squab on top of pea puree, scatter with blanched peas and place the onions alongside. Place crisp bacon on the place. Decorate with borage flowers and pea shoots.
Equipment needed:
Two chopping boards
Plastic gloves
Five small metal trays which can be placed under the grill
Whisk
4 saucepans
Muslin
Water bath set to 61 degrees
Oven preheated to 150 degrees
Blender
Le Micro Blender
Microplane
Mandolin
Non stick frying pan
Spatula
Chinoise – or flat chinoise preferrrably
Hand blender
Bowl of ice in freezer
by Geraldine Comiskey
Never mind that it was no mudfest this year – it didn’t stop more than 190,000 people giving it welly for Ireland for three days at the National Ploughing Championships.
…….
McCarthy’s at the West Cork Food Festival were broadcast on RTE Nationwide. It is one of the most important food events of the Irish calendar and the Queen’s visit has been a fantastic boost to the food producers of Ireland.
Sunday Business Post
…
Jack McCarthy’s handmade Irish Haggis also features and is served as a starter with a brown onion puree, roast garlic and a wild mushroom and Bushmills sauce for €8.95.
The Irish Examiner
By Pól Ó Conghaile
Behind the clockwork-efficiency of the state dinner for Queen Elizabeth lay tales of last-minute mercy flights to Dublin, six-hour dashes across the country with smoked salmon and ‘forever secret’’ ingredients. Pól Ó Conghaile gets the real story
AS DINNERS go, it will take some beating. On May 18, 172 guests — their names reading like a who’s-who of Irish society — filed into Dublin Castle for a black-tie banquet with Queen Elizabeth.
Liam O’Flynn played the pipes, the queen addressed “a Uachtaráin agus a chairde”, and the crowd was wowed by a sensitive speech and a dress embroidered with more than 2,000 hand-sewn shamrocks.
In the headiness of the moment, of course, it was easy to overlook the food on the plate. Organised by the Department of An Taoiseach, the state dinner menu was designed by Ross Lewis of Michelin-starred restaurant Chapter One, and catered by corporate banqueting company, With Taste.
The menu showcased a stellar range of Irish food and producers, and it was only shortly before the event that many suppliers learned they had made the grade.
THE BURREN SMOKEHOUSE
“What an opportunity,” was Birgitta Hedda-Curtain’s reaction when Lewis called her at the Burren Smokehouse, asking if she would smoke some salmon for the occasion. “I was excited but you have to keep yourself contained and get it right. It was a great adventure.”
Birgitta and her husband Peter set up their smokehouse in 1989, and have since watched the Lisdoonvarna-based business grow into one of the most successful smokeries in Ireland. Products are mailed all over the world and, as of this year, are stocked at Fortnum & Mason in London.
As fate would have it, the morning before Lewis phoned, Birgitta had been speaking with one of her salmon suppliers, Barbara Grubb of Dromana House in Cappoquin, about wild salmon.
The window for netting this year’s strictly-controlled quota on the River Blackwater had just opened.
“It was unbelievable,” Birgitta recalls. “I drove three hours down and three hours back to get it. The draft netting season started on May 12, and I brought it to Dublin four days later. It was gorgeous fish. Ross wanted wild salmon because, flavour-wise, it’s the best you can get hold of.”
In total, she smoked eight fish for the state dinner. “It was only the queen’s salmon in the oven. When it came out, I did nothing to it. No vacuum-packing, no pin-boning, nothing. It was virginal. I drove it straight up to Dublin and hand-delivered it to Ross in the catering kitchen.”
When her salmon arrived, Birgitta recalls, the chefs immediately went about trimming it, pin-boning it and taking off the smoked skin. At the state dinner, it was served as a cream in the starter course, along with cured Clare Island salmon, lemon balm jelly, horseradish and wild watercress.
“Ross and I both tasted it, and it was fabulous,” she says. There’s a mischievous reaction when I ask whether the queen enjoyed it. “Of course she did — there wasn’t a spot left on her plate!”
GLENILEN DAIRY FARM
Meanwhile, in Drimoleague, Co Cork, an email pinged into the inbox of the Kingston family, requesting samples of unsalted butter, milk, cream and crème fraîche for a top secret event in Dublin.
“We were told what they were being used for but it was confidential,” recalls Valerie Kingston, who runs Glenilen Dairy Farm with her husband Alan. “We were told not to tell anyone because the suppliers wouldn’t be announced until the dinner was served. It all just added to the buzz.”
Shortly after receiving the samples, Ross Lewis confirmed that Glenilen had made the cut. For Valerie and Alan, it was a highpoint in generations of family farming. They went about assembling the order. Everything went to plan, until a crucial item was left behind.
“The products were to go up on the Friday before the dinner, and everything went up except the butter,” Valerie laughs. “Alan came into me on Saturday morning and said that the butter never went. He thought he was going to have to go all the way up to Dublin with it.
“Thankfully, my brother and sister-in-law had visitors down from Belfast, so we asked would they mind taking the samples up.
“Several phone calls and passwords had to be related, and I think the box even had to be opened to confirm the contents, but everything got delivered anyway.”
Glenilen Farm has come a long way since 1997, when Valerie began making cheesecakes for the local country market.
This year, the family won an annual contract worth €500,000 to supply Tesco UK with its homemade cheesecake, enabling them to hire more staff in the recession.
At the dinner in Dublin Castle, the Kingston’s milk and cream featured in a carageen set west Cork cream served with strawberries, fresh yoghurt mousse and soda bread sugar biscuits, and Irish apple balsamic vinegar meringue.
“I suppose it’s the honour of it,” Valerie reflects. “It puts our products and west Cork products on another plain. To be able to say they were fit for the queen … the menus are like gold dust but if we do manage to get a copy I’m going to frame it.”
Though the state dinner was assembled in a matter of weeks, and devoured in a matter of hours, the evening had been generations in the making for many of the producers.
McCARTHY’S BUTCHERS
Take McCarthy’s in Kanturk, the butchers that supplied the black pudding for the canapés.
Today, the business is run by Jack McCarthy and his son Tim, but their story goes back five generations to 1892, when a local baker swapped his dough hook for a meat cleaver.
As the story goes, the baker, Callahan McCarthy, was disappointed with the quality of meat available to him at the time, and vowed to do something about it. Almost 120 years later, McCarthy’s pudding had won a prestigious gold medal at La Confrérie des Chevaliers du Goûte Boudin, and was served to Elizabeth II.
“Everything was hush-hush,” Jack McCarthy recalls.
“Tim made up a special batch of pudding the Saturday night before. I asked him what was in it, and he said it was the same base ingredients as always — local pork, dry-cure bacon, local onions and herbs, butter and cream from North Cork Co-op and Donal Creedon’s Macroom oatmeal.
“I asked him was there anything special added, and he said there was ‘a touch of Cork magic!’. I think he added a drop of Midleton whiskey! I can’t prove it though, because he won’t tell me.”
When he first heard the queen was coming to Ireland, McCarthy says, he was sceptical.
But the proof was in the pudding, and he sees the state dinner as a supreme vote of confidence in Irish produce and suppliers that are fast making a name for themselves on the international stage.
“We’ve got the water, the air, the grass and the environment,” McCarthy says. “It’s pristine. Why we’re being fed by foreigners I don’t know. We should be feeding the world.”
How Irish suppliers served up dishes deemed fit for a queen
The Menu
Cured salmon with Burren smoked salmon cream and lemon balm jelly, horseradish and wild watercress, Kilkenny organic cold pressed rapeseed oil
Rib of Slaney Valley Beef, ox cheek and tongue with smoked champ potato and fried spring cabbage, new season broad beans and carrots with pickled and wild garlic leaf
Carrageen set West Cork cream with Meath strawberries, fresh yoghurt mousse and soda bread sugar biscuits, Irish apple balsamic vinegar meringue
Irish Cheese Plate
Tea and Coffee
Château de Fieuzal, 2005, Graves Pessac-Léognan
Château Lynch-Bages, 1998, Pauillac
The suppliers
Smoked salmon — Birgitta Hedda-Curtin, Burren Smokehouse, Lisdoonvarna, Co Clare
Salmon — Clare Island organic salmon, Clare Island, Co Mayo
Lemon balm — Paul Flynn, The Tannery, Dungarvan, Co Waterford
Organic cold-pressed rapeseed oil — Kitty Colchester, Drumeen Farms, Co Kilkenny
Wild watercress, cabbage, carrots, chive flower and garlic leaf — Denis Healy Farms, Co Wicklow.
Rib of beef — From a Co. Wexford farm, produced by Kettyle Irish Foods, Drumshaw, Lisnaskea, Co Fermanagh.
Ox cheek and tongue — M & K Butchers, Rathcoole, Co Dublin
Black pudding — McCarthy’s of Kanturk, Co Cork
Potatoes and spring onions — McNally family farm, Ring Common, Co Dublin
Butter, milk, cream and crème fraîche — Glenilen Farm, Drimoleague, Co Cork
Irish apple balsamic vinegar and apples — David Llewellyn, Llewellyn Orchard, Lusk, Co Dublin
Strawberries — Pat Clarke, Stamullen, Co Meath
Milk — Cleary family, Glenisk, Tullamore, Co Offaly
Dittys Irish oatmeal biscuits — Robert Ditty, Belfast
Stoneground wholemeal flour — Kells wholemeal, Bennettsbridge, Co Kilkenny
Buttermilk and butter — Cuinneog Ltd Balla, Castlebar, Co Mayo
Glebe Brethan cheese — produced by David Tiernan in Dunleer, Co Louth
Cashel Blue cheese — produced by the Grubb Family in Fethard, Co Tipperary
Milleens cheese — produced by the Steele Family in Milleens on the Beara Peninsula, Co Cork
Knockdrinna cheese — produced by Helen Finnegan in Stoneyford, Co Kilkenny
