Found this on an (Irish) blog today – “Big brands are capturing increasingly large shares of the market, making individual, idiosyncratic wines harder to find”. Sorry, but that’s utter bollocks. Big brands may be increasing market share but it wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes to find idiosyncratic.There’s never been a wider choice of wines here ...
My good friend Maureen O’Hara who runs Premier Wine Training sends me news that Alberto Zenato will present a tasting of Zenato wines in Dublin, on Sunday evening, April 15th. Until I get the event calendar up and running again, here are the details. Places cost €20 per person. Space is limited, and places must ...
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I’ve been a photo hobbyist since I got given my first serious camera as a fourteenth birthday present. A Zeiss Ikon ‘folder’ that took a mere eight shots to a roll of film, far cry from today’s digital wonders. It had an f4.5 lens, very slow by today’s standards. Being something of a tech head ...
There are now over 400 food bloggers in Ireland. Though www.forkncork.com my food and drink website, Ireland’s first, has been up and running almost ten years I never considered myself a part of the blogosphere. Though the term ‘blog’ had been coined in the early noughties it certainly wasn’t in common usage, at least not ...
I cooked my first sweet and sour dish in 1984. Pork, of course. The recipe came from Ken Hom’s Encyclopaedia of Chinese Cookery Techniques, a cookery book classic and one I bought the minute it came out that year, on foot of Ken’s successful BBC TV series. I still refer to this book on a ...
BLOG, RecipesI’ve just been road testing a brace of quality coffees from a small and relatively new Irish supplier, Imbibe. Latin Espresso is a blend from Columbia and Costa Rica beans. The blend was described to me by Imbibe’s man Gary Grant as “a medium-to-dark roast espresso which is rich, sweet and balanced with notes ...
BLOGYesterday I set out to clean out my store cupboard – well, not exactly ‘clean out’ but at least have a good fossick around and see what I have, what I’m nearly out of and what I’m missing. Like…. 3 bottles of dark soy sauce, all opened. A bottle of Peychaud bitters that must be ...
BLOGWednesday 12th October 2011 Kicked off with a wine tasting in the morning. With Aussie icon David Hohnen – founder of significant Margaret River winery Cape Mentelle but perhaps best known as The Man Who Gave us Cloudy Bay and turned on the tap that led to the deluge of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. David ...
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I’ve had my outdoor pizza oven for a year now and I think last Saturday was the first night I’ve really felt confident with it. This was due in no small measure to the calming presence of Leslie Williams who is further down the pizza trail than me. The building of the oven is fairly ...
Whalley’s First Law of Pastatherapy: To make pasta successfully you need three arms + a table 12 inches wide x 18 feet long + one of those old-fashioned clothes drying racks that winds up to the ceiling. Fresh, homemade pasta is so much better than anything you can get at the shops. In Ireland, at ...
