April 13, 2011

In which the blog owner finds herself without her beloved camera..

by Cake in the country

Yesterday was Tuesday. It started off very well. Things took a downward spiral when I walked into the hallway where my apartment is to find the door to my apartment ajar. I very nervously called my flatmates name as I ventured two steps inside the hallway (darwin award for me I think), then saw my bedroom door had been left wide open (I always keep my doors closed) and my tv gone from the desk. I turned on my heels and legged it out, calling the gardai as I did.

In summary, my house got robbed. And while I realise how much worse it could have been – I could have been there, I could have walked in on them, they could have taken my years worth of medicine notes, my laptop may have been there (luckily I was lugging laptop and hard drive around with me), it’s still a pretty shitty situation. There were box/bag type containers with clothes in them which are now strewn across my room. All the drawers were opened and rooted through, some of the contents are over the floor. And to top it all off:

My camera was taken. Not one, but two cameras, two lenses, some filters, 2 memory cards.

I think anyone who reads this blog or knows me realises my beloved canon camera (oldish though it may be) is my absolute favourite material possession. It comes everywhere with me, it is responsible for every photo on this site, and somebody took the lock off my door and took it. I’m a generally very happy person, but I’m broken hearted over it. It’s replaceable, but its going to take me months to save up for it to replace it. Speaking of, any jobs going for June?

There goes my saving for a mixer idea. Camera trumps it unfortunately.

I toyed over the idea of writing a post about this, and I decided to in the end.

Firstly, anybody with a plain lock on your door – Get a chubb lock. The other ones are ridiculously easy to break into. I learned that too late I guess.

Second – You’ll be noticing a lack of decent photos from me for the next few months, until I get a new one anyway.

Thirdly – Some people are just horrible human beings, to invade your privacy like that.

However, I was blown away with how unbelievably lovely everyone was when I was sitting shakily in my lockless apartment on my own waiting for the scenes of crime (read CSI) people to arrive, and decided to tweet about what had happened. I still haven’t gotten back to everyone, but you are all so so lovely and the kind words and thoughts were really appreciated. As I tweeted last night : Twitter, restoring my faith in humanity, 140 characters at a time!

Also – the Gardai were really lovely when they arrived, so thanks to them too. Hopefully they’ll see something on the CCTV footage and get the awful people who did it.

EDIT: AND MY BLOODY WEIGHING SCALES. ARGH!

April 10, 2011

Strawberry Swiss Roll – A Traditional Irish Cookalongs recipe

by Cake in the country

I never realised I hadn’t published this until today when I went looking for the cookalong recipes! But here it is.

Sundays. Sundays I equate with some kind of cake.

Now I don’t know how traditionally Irish this is to everyone else, but we would often go visiting on a Sunday, or have an odd few in. It’s always really pleasant to have neighbours pop in to see if you’re about on the way home from a drive, it’s something I love about living in the country! And for some reason, it would always involve the handover of a bag from the shop back the way containing a packet of jacobs something or others, and either an apple tart, or a swiss roll.

Now this swiss roll is courtesy of a certain Peter’s mammy again, and we had it on one of our annual Christmas visits in April-July. (This Christmas we managed it in December, unbelievable!). These nights normally end up with myself and Peter winning Scattergories as always, despite the other teams being completely biased against us. Because we would never, ever, EVER cheat. Or make an entire web page to prove that a game ‘existed’ in about 5 minutes.. Never. I’m telling you. So there. Ahem. I may be off topic. Also – having W for an Ice cream flavour – Wibbly Wobbly Wonder. Brill.

So anyway, a few years back Cathryn made us dinner before Scattergories wars began, and we had this glorious swiss roll after, a far cry from the prepackaged and slightly sorry ones that one would get in a shop. So I figured – if it’s a swiss roll I’m making, it’s going to be Cathryn’s. So I dutifully called her on cookalong day, and she gave me this recipe:

What you need

3 oz caster sugar, and a little extra for sprinkling
3 eggs
3 oz flour
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Filling
- About 150ml (I think) cream, whipped lightly
- A spoonful of sugar (makes the medicine go down!)
- About 6 fresh strawberries, cut into slivers, and 1-2 more for decoration

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees. Grease and line a swiss roll tin.
So very simple, crack your eggs in a bowl and mix with the sugar until pale, thick and creamy. You need lots and lots of air in here to get this to be a nice light sponge
Add your vanilla.
With a large metal spoon, gently fold in your sifted flour, mixing until just combined.
Pour out and pop on a flat surface in your oven. Cook until just golden and the sponge springs back when pressed lightly – about 8-10 minutes.
Now. This is rumoured to be difficult. It is not. Anybody can make this. What you need to do is act fast. Have a clean teatowel waiting for you that is lightly sprinkled with caster sugar. Tip out the sponge onto the towel, peel off the paper, and trim the edges. These you may eat. Yum. Then use the towel to carefully help you roll the swiss roll up WHILE it is still hot. Let it cool and then carefully unroll to fill.
For the filling, whip the cream so that its not too soft, stir in the caster sugar to taste- you want it just slightly sweet, and stir in the slivered strawberries. Use this to fill the swiss roll – don’t overfill though! Then roll it back up, give it a dusting of icing sugar and pop a few strawberries on top for presentation.
Voila, a beautiful swiss roll that will be positively inhaled off the plate when it’s finished it’s photoshoot!

April 10, 2011

Double Chocolate and Toffee Tarts served with fresh Raspberries

by Cake in the country

Good morning all. I’m taking a few minutes out before I begin the study time to bequeath onto you the first of my chocolate cookalongs recipes. Now, I chose a few different things to make, as I wanted to look at the versatility of chocolate. However, as a complete and utter chocaholic, this ended up as a much more chocolatey dessert than originally meant. In for a penny, in for a pound as they say.

Do I regret it? A solid and and enthusiastic no! The tart base was just lovely. Not overly sweet, not overly chocolatey, and quite fine and melt in your mouth. The ganache was just gorgeous. I may or may not have conducted the odd taste test every 7 or so minutes to ensure the outstanding quality. For quality assurance purposes you understand… And the toffee was a last minute addition. I was debating between caramelised banana a la Dorie Greenspan and raspberries as I had a lovely punnet lazing around my kitchen. And then the twitterverse hummed and hawed over fruit, and I decided… Toffee! Well Like Mam use to bake put me onto a lovely Rachel allen recipe and my ever building store cupboard provided the ingredients without having to pop out to the shops. It was meant to be. So I made 2 with toffee and 2 with crushed sugared raspberries. And they were both beautiful. The proof is in the pictures!

Oh hello lovely.

So now I am going to share this recipe with you. The chocolate base and ganache are originally from Dorie Greenspan’s ‘Around my French Table’, a wonderful cookbook may I add. The toffee sauce is a la Rachel Allen. I recommend making this and just having for drizzling, decorating, eating with a spoon., you know yourself!

You will need:

Base
- 150g flour
- 30g icing sugar
- 30g cocoa
- 130g butter (unsalted)
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 large free range egg yolk
Toffee Sauce
- 110g butter
- 250g light brown sugar
- 275 g golden syrup (I stand this in a bowl of warm water to loosen it up a but before measuring)
- 225ml double cream
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Yummy yummy ganache
- 220g chocolate (I used a mix of 61 and 74%)
- 220mls of double cream
- 60 g of soft unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Ok. First off make your pastry.
Sift all the dry ingredients together, and add your small pieces of cold butter. Rub in (or blitz) until they resemble breadcrumbs.
Add your egg yolk in and bring it all together.
To get it all together without overworking the pastry I turned it out onto a surface covered in greaseproof paper and lightly kneaded it. Hardly kneaded actually, just pushed it together until even.
Then wrap in clingfilm and pop into the fridge for at least a half hour.
While this was cooling I actually made a devils food cake. But I highly advise chilling out and enjoying this strange sunny time we’re having. Oh and you can butter your tart tins. I used 4 mini tart tins because that’s what I had and they’re adorable to boot.
Ok so, your pastry is ready to go – divide out into 4 (if youhave 4 tins..) and lightly roll out. On Dorie’s suggestion I made quite a thick base because the dough is rather lovely. Press into your pastry case and ensure it’s even. Trim the excess off. I then froze all 4 tarts for 30 minutes, again on Dorie’s suggestion. So at this point, preheat your oven to 180 degrees.
After 30 minutes take your tarts out of the freezer and pop some greased paper on them with baking beans(If you don’t have the specific ones, you can use normal dried beans). We’re going to blind bake for 30 minutes.
So pop in oven for 30 minutes until pastry is done. I left them about 5-10 minutes, and then very carefully unmold your tarts and set aside to cool.

It’s toffee time. And it’s mightily easy. And this makes a massive excess of toffee sauce but definitely worth making.
Take all of your ingredients, put them in a saucepan, and melt. Bring to the boil for 4-5 minutes. I actually wanted a slightly stiffer toffee so I boiled for about 8 minutes until it had thickened nicely. Oh and be sure not to let it boil over! My sugar thermometer is at home so I can’t tell you what temperature that was, I do apologise.
Thats it!
When your tart shells are cooled fully, pour a thin but significant layer of toffee onto the shells! Leave in the fridge or a cold place to set.

In the meantime, make your ganache. Again, startlingly easy.
Finely chop your chocolate and put in a bowl.
Bring your cream to a boil in a saucepan, and then pour the cream over the chocolate.
Leave for a minute, and then stir to bring it all together. Start from the middle and work out. When the two are mixed, stir in your pieces of soft butter until melted.
Voila, you have a ganache. I left mine on the counter for a wee while before pouring onto the set toffee tarts. Don’t let it cool to point of setting, but do let the heat go out of it so your toffee doesn’t melt when the chocolate hits it. Again, then pour the chocolate into the tarts, and leave to set in the fridge.

When these are set, dust each one in icing sugar, top with a handful of fresh raspberries or strawberries, and dive right in! Absolutely beautiful tarts, ever so pleased with them!

Jennifer can give you a verdict on them, we devoured these on Friday night. Mine is scrumdiddleyumptious!

April 8, 2011

Remember ‘Bake and Decorate’ by Fiona Cairns? Would you like to win it?

by Cake in the country

You know you would! I reviewed this book here a few weeks ago. Take a look and you’ll see why!

This is a late birthday giveaway. It’s now on cookalong day! As you know, I had my 1st blog birthday last week, and I wanted to celebrate with a super prize. And I have, in my possession, a shiny new copy that doesn’t have anything at all spilled on it. Madness I tell you.

I really like it, it’s a great book with achievable results for all of you out there. Quadrille have ever so generously given me a copy to give away to my loyal readers. Thats you!

All you have to do to be in with a chance is leave a comment below telling me what your favourite ever birthday gift was. Competition closes Friday 15th of April at 9pm.

Bonus entries: ‘Like’ my new facebook page here. And leave a SEPARATE comment below telling me that you have

And: Follow on twitter @cakeinthcountry, tweet the message ‘Have just entered @cakeinthcountry’s giveaway over at http://wp.me/RPVK’ You may then spice up the tweet with whatever else you want to add in…

So you have at least one if not 3 entry opportunities. Get those comments in!

Terms: This is open to ROI and UK residents only. Allow 28 days for delivery after address is received. Winner will have 10 days to respond to initial prize announcement. Cake is recommended for all entrants.

WE HAVE A WINNER! No 22 as picked by Richie, my ever so helpful assistant. That’s Aine, I’ll be emailing you about your prize in the next.. eh… 5 minutes! Congrats. For all of those that didn’t win, I have another giveaway coming up on the 24th when I remember to take a pic of the lovely prize!

April 7, 2011

Chocolate cookalong, who’s with me?

by Cake in the country

Just a gentle reminder that the long awaited chocolate cookalong is on tomorrow! Who is taking part? Leave me a comment below!

As I’ve said before, everyone and anyone is more than welcome to take part, just find a recipe, keep us updated on twitter, facebook, or on the comments on this post. It can be as simple or difficult as you like.

This months entries will be posted to eat magazine – see them at http://www.eatmagazine.ie.

THE PRIZES

A hamper from Cooleeney Cheese showcasing their whole new range of re-branded products, with wine to compliment. Some Giftbags from Janet’s Country Fayre. A full case of product from Paddy’s O’Granola. A hamper from Naas Farmers Market showcasing the great range of products you’ll find there. A €50 voucher for the fantastic jameswhelanbutchers.com online butchers. A years supply of Donegal Rapeseed Oil. A case of mixed juices from The Apple Farm. A range of products from Llewellyn’s Orchard Produce. A €25 voucher for Goatsbridge Trout Farm. A €50 voucher for Mahon Point Farmers Market, Co. Cork. And finally, A short interview and plug for the winner in the May issue (Issue 3) of EatMagazine!

With the winner to be picked by Dylan McGrath!

So I ask you ladies and gentlemen, why not take an hour out, make something nice, and join in th fun. You can follow us on twitter by searching #chocalong.

Here are a few suggestions for those of you who feel like taking part:

Best brownies!

Chocolate molten lava cakes

Easy and delicious chocolate fudge cupcakes

Brown butter chocolate chip cookies

April 3, 2011

‘I need an intervention’ Treacle Scones

by Cake in the country

You know when you tweak a recipe and it goes wrong. It’s so disappointing. You know what is not disappointing. This treacle scones recipe (Treacle is like molasses to all you them there foreign people). Oh my lord I love them. Now if you don’t like treacle, you are probably not going to like these. But you can reduce the amount by half if you really want to, though why you would want to beats me.

I have mentioned Kitty a few times on this blog. Kit is my second mammy, after my first real mammy. (Right now Julie is exclaiming over the word mammy). Anyway, so Kit makes the most FABULOUS treacle scones (and secret recipe porter cake noms) and though she’s not letting the recipe go, I had to find something to keep me going. I have been through tens of treacle scones recipes, seriously. I’ve never been happy. As of today, I have found my happy treacle scones recipe. Now you can make happy treacle scones too. Hurrah!

What you need (can be halved but why would you want to. Makes 12-14 triangular scones): Oh by the way if you make 12 these work out at 6 weightwatchers propoints each. There are a few big ones in that so if you want to make them smaller you’ll get more with less propoints each. There’s 74 in the whole recipe (may be slightly overestimated to be on the safe side)

1lb cream flour
1/4 tsp salt
4 oz unsalted butter
2 1/2 oz sugar
4 tbsp treacle
1tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
120ml buttermilk (mine was fresh from my homemade butter in a jar yesterday)
120ml skimmed milk

So preheat your oven to 180. Get out a baking sheet or tray and pop on some greaseproof paper. You can lightly dust with flour if no non stick substance to put on.
Put your flour in a bowl and rub in the butter until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Alternatively blitz with a food processor for a few seconds
Add in your sugar, cinnamon, baking powder and mix to distribute evenly.
Make a well in the centre and add all but 2 tbsp of your mixed milks.
Before you stir add the treacle. HINT: Warm the tbsp before lifting out the treacle to make your life easier. I used actual plastic measuring spoons so no easy life for me.
Give everything a good vigourous stir and get it all mixed through evenly. It should be a wet but not overly sticky dough.
Divide dough into two, with well floured hands turn 1 at a time onto well floured surface and give a quick tidy and shape to it. Pat each into a disk about 2 inches thick, and in turn divide each into 6 triangles.
Place on your baking sheet, brush with the remainder of your milk
Place in the preheated oven for 15-20 mins. 10 may be enough for thinner scones. As you know my oven is crazy hot so I run it extra low, mine needed 20 mins.
Slather with a chunk of homemade butter (or at least kerrygold but homemade is the best thing ever!) and sit down and savour the taste of delightfully easy and amahazing scones.

YUM

Oh by the way my case competition went well, I had fun doing it. The lovely Amrita won (Hi Amrita) and the standard was amazingly high. Seriously. Next up is my public speaking competition, ridiculously busy thus the quiet blog these days! Must be off, have to pack for Ceeavan! Make these. Enjoy these. You are welcome.

March 27, 2011

Happy Blog Birthday to meeeee!

by Cake in the country

Well good morning all. The clocks have gone forward an hour and I was rather late to sleep but it’s still morning and not afternoon. Before I go off and start packing the suitcase I am living out of for the next 6 weeks, I had to come on and say:

It’s my BIRTHDAY. Not my real birthday you understand, but the day my blog turns a big tall 1 year old. This day (and about this time) last year I was sitting in my room deciding what would be the most effective procrastination technique and lo and behold, here we are a year later. And I can say as a procrastination technique it is top notch!

But that is not why I love this blog. When I started this up last year I thought I’d just be blathering about medical stuff, thus my first blog name – Musings of a med student. I was never happy with it. The thing is you can’t really talk about it much except for how much one hates the blasted kidneys (I know just because I said that I’m going to end up on the nephrology team now. I just know it). And my favourite hobby seemed to take it over, that being food, baking, cooking, and the best part – Eating (Caps lock for Eating, oh yeah). And so it became a food blog. One of many many food blogs that have sprung up in the last few years, hurrah for that. I mean, I absolutely love to cook. I love feeding people actually, and most people love to eat so it works out very well. I’ve had my good recipes and bad recipes, and I think my cooking has just come on 1000% since I started this. As well as some exposure to really top class quality food (Bord Bia, Harrys, Salon des Saveurs, I’m looking at you), I can finally be an advocate for something I absolutely adore – my local community. Now local in Ireland is pretty much… well.. Ireland. And thats fine with me. I don’t know if I just notice it more now or something to that effect, but there is this huge push toward local, attainable food, and I think it is absolutely fantastic. As I have said in previous posts, support your local farmers. We do things so well in Ireland, and we have the best of the best in produce, meat, dairy. Why not utilise it? Thus our 20 mile cookalong coming up in June. Take part! I’m really happy to be a part of this movement that supports our fresh, Irish produce.

But the other thing, and the best thing I think, is the food bloggers community. Little did I know, when I feebly announced on my twitter status that I had a blog (I had about 8 followers at the time, 4 of them were spam) and begun to find other Irish food blogs, that things would skyrocket and that I would meet (online and in person) the nicest group of people that you can imagine. We’ve had a number of meetups, small and large, and then bloody massive all the way up in Harrys for Inishfood, and each time I am wowed at how great people are. I’m not going to name names because I will forget someone, and there are loads of people involved now, but I absolutely love all of our chats, in person and on twitter, facebook etc. If it’s not complete hilarity during discussion Jedward on Vincent Browne, it’s discussion about all things food, or sometimes ,just the most trivial things that you just eavesdrop in on on twitter. But as Aoife (Icanhascook) said when the Irish Blog Awards nominations were out – We have the best community, and it is completely true.

If you’re ever thinking about starting up a blog – about anything – do it. You meet the (hands down) loveliest people in the blogging community, and I am absolutely delighted to be a part of it. Let the good times and good food continue!

P.S. If anybody feels like buying me a present, I will happily accept a stand mixer. Or a good food processor. Or an Aga stove. Y’know, just if you felt like it!

March 23, 2011

Rosemary slow roasted lamb shanks for busy days, a ‘Trad Irish cookalong’ recipe

by Cake in the country

I am busy. I did not expect to be this busy. At the minute, I have to finish an eportfolio, fix up my psychiatry public speaking, organise a trip down to waterford to spend an hour in the hospital getting some information, write up a case presentation, and of course I must study!

But yet I am taking time off to write a blog post (because I’m out of eggs and forgot to get treacle, my two baking plans went out the window) but I need a break from schoolwork and evidence based medicine or my head shall explode. And/or melt. So I am going to provide for you a nice recipe for those days you are busy busy busy but still have to have a rather nice dinner doled out.

You may see a pattern here with nice slow roasted throw it in the oven dishes, but that is because they are awesome. I’m also a student and cheap cuts of meat are a god send, because usually with the right cooking they are delicious, and most certainly under utilised. And thus hard to get your hands on! But luckily I have a lovely local butcher who is absolutely amazing and has told me to give him a call and he’ll have it for me the next day. So if you’re looking for a cut you don’t see, do ask your local butcher!

This is also one of my cookalong recipes. The theme was traditional Irish (Yay Irish), and to me that means something that we can make with local produce that isn’t all time consuming, will fill a hungry family, and is affordable but tastes lovely. I think this is one thing that fulfills all of the above! It is remarkably easy and only yummy.

This was made with the last of last years lamb from our farm. I’m really pushing for keeping it as local as possible, and don’t tell anybody, but it MAY be an upcoming cookalongs theme… Shhhhh.

Anywho,

You will need:

Your choice of cuts of lamb – I used 2 lamb shanks and 2 neck of lamb
About 4-5 sprigs of rosemary
An onion
A head of garlic
2 carrots
about 1 cup of red wine
Salt & pepper
Olive oil

Season your mear. Let it rest so that it’s at room temperature if you can!
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees
Get your Le Creuset pot, or hobproof/ovenproof dish, or just a pan! Brown the meat as well as you can, it’s difficult with odd shaped cuts I must say.
Take out your meat for just a minute and leave on a plate.
Cut your onion in half, give it a rinse under the tap, and pop it in the roasting dish/pot. Do the same with the entire bulb of garlic (yeah baby). Give your carrots a rinse and top and tail them and pop them in too.
Rest your meat back on top of all of the bits and pieces
Pour over your cup of red wine, and then pour over one cup of water too.
Cover it up and put it into the oven. As soon as it goes in, turn the oven down to about 140 degrees.
Leave it there for a good 4 if not 6 hours. Give it a check from time to time in case it starts to burn or all of the liquid evaporates. Mine took 5 but my oven runs hot.
I served it with creamed mashed potatoes and some steamed carrots that really complimented the natural sweetness of the lamb. It was lovely!

Also, if you have some lovely liquid left over, stir in some cornflour, a splash more red wine, and reduce it to make a beautiful gravy!

I have only one iPhone picture before the vultures got it, before the lamb went in the oven

Take my word for it, it was lovely! Enjooooy!

March 17, 2011

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

by Cake in the country

Hello hello and Happy Paddy’s day to all!

I’m not going to post much today. Delighted to announce I got chosen as the SO Sligo new Irish menu competition winner, hurray! So now I am going to a few different places over the weekend, and shall update via twitter and here. Can’t wait to see all. Will have to take a trip into the Food Market in Stephen St carpark and Rockwood, and on the lookout for the lovely foodie people that shall be attending. Should be a great celebration of all things foodie and local, and looks like there are some fantastic gigs lined up too.

Speaking of celebrations, here’s an idea of what Inishfood brought last weekend. It was really amazing, probably one of the highlights of the year for me so far, just a great day out with the nicest people. I always wonder why the Irish foodies are so nice, I reckon it’s because there’s such good food around, who could be unhappy. On the other hand, I think I may have to drive the 2 hours up to Harrys again because the food was SO GOOD! Yes. All caps. That is how good it was. Look here:

This food was amazing. Locally sourced, delectably cooked, beautifully presented

Here is an idea of how it all went down…

March 10, 2011

SO Sligo Food Festival 16th – 20th March

by Cake in the country

So Sligo. The land of heart’s desire. It has mountains, it has beaches, it has the views, the literature and the arts scene. Home to Yeats and subject of his poetry. What you may or may not know is that it also has the food festival! From the 16th to the 20th of March, there will be a rather amazing food festival, with demos galore, loads of fun filled activities for kids (small and big kids alike), and a serious overdose of craic to sort out your weekend! The full programme is available at http://www.sosligo.com, and I strongly urge you to look at the programme.

When they mentioned they were on the lookout for a new dish to represent Ireland, it got me thinking. Now as you know we had the Traditional Irish cookalong last Friday, but I wanted to get past the traditional and try for something new. Bearing this in mind I began thinking of what we do well foodwise in Ireland. I have to admit I didn’t know where to start. Our meat and dairy is fantastic – we have happy cows here as I always say. That being said, Ireland as a whole has so many great foods, I decided to narrow it right down. I love all things local, and I think it’s so important to support your local produce. There are three main things that I personally find Sligo does extremely well with – Dairy (Good old NCF milk is the best in the country), Lamb (Biased as ours is very good!), and Salmon. We regularly have our neighbours knock on the back door with an entire salmon they caught that day (having caught 3 others they have plans for). I think in general all veg is well received, we seem to have some rather good soil about the place. So bearing all this in mind I chose the following for my idea for a new national dish (or menu). I’m hoping to make and photograph each part over the next week or two, so hang on in there for recipes.

Now. I know these be recessionary times, and we can’t afford to be going mad with food here in Ireland. I am flat broke myself. Smoked salmon is expensive. Thus I suggest you get a side of salmon and hot smoke it in a wok yourself. This results in a smokier flavour and different texture, which I think goes so well in a potato cake as it all balances out fantastically. Darina Allen does a fantastic tutorial in her book – Forgotten skills of cooking, which I shall give a go soon and let you know exactly how it works out.

Likewise, lamb is expensive. However for the Rosemary slow roasted lamb you can get fantastic results with the cheaper cuts- neck and shanks are what I used and the flavour was tremendous. Recipe will be up in the next few days! Was a very simple brown the meat, add an onion cut in half and a head of garlic cut in half and a few sprigs of rosemary, a dash of wine and a cup of water and off to the oven you go! No mess, no fuss, what we all need on a Saturday, only to produce the most fabulously tender and tasty lamb, falling off the bone and with a gravy ready made in the pot, just in need of thickening and reducing. You can’t go wrong!

Sea Salt Ice cream is I think the pride and joy of Murphys Ice Cream Parlour. I have a lot of trouble resisting it when I’m passing, as Mary or Jennifer could tell you. So much so that I shall have to give it a go when my ice cream maker is rooted out again this summer. This encompasses the dairy element as above! I thought as a flavour it would reflect Sligo’s famous coastline, the beaches of Strandhill, Rosses Point and Streedagh amongst others. Beautiful places they are! Visit them when you’re at Sligo for the food festival! You are going… right? I shall see you there!

Oh just an aside- the cheeses of Ireland are plentiful and really really good. Here are a few examples of what would be included (Taken from the CAIS website)

The Steele family who produce Milleens.
The Willems family who produce Coolea.
Jeffa Gill who produces Durrus.
The Berridge family who produce Carrigbyrne.
The Ferguson family who produce Gubbeen.
The Brodie family who produce Boilie.
The Maher family who produce Cooleeney.
Bill Hogan and Sean Ferry who produce Gabriel and Desmond

So there you have it. Come to Sligo! See the sights. Tis a nice placeen now, so tis. Without further ado, I shall leave you with a few photos of my favourite things about Sligo. Enjoy!