It's May Bank holiday weekend - foodie heaven

It's May Bank Holiday weekend and the beginning of the summer food festival season in Ireland. Check out some of the following info and links to food festivals and events around the country - they're a hugely important element to rural tourism, offer a way to sample and buy artisan food directly from the people who make it and more importantly, what can be better than a spot of eating and drinking in the sunshine in Ireland? May the weather Gods be kind to us...

Roscommon Lamb Festival from the 27th April to May 2nd was started in 2008 organised by a committee of local farmers, restaurant owners and community groups. The vision for the festival was to “highlight the quality of locally-produced food and to attract additional tourists to Roscommon thus boosting the local economy and benefitting primary producers and suppliers”.

Based on the fact that Roscommon has the highest lamb output in the country, the festival celebrates lamb in a diverse range of food and farming events over the course of the weekend. There are lamb barbeques, farm walks, farmers markets and even a world record knitting attempt, so if you've a pair of needles and a ball of wool, you know where to go this weekend.
http://www.roscommonlambfestival.com/

This weekend Connemara hosts a celebration of Killary Mussels taking place from the 29th April - 1st May 2011 on the glorious Renvyle Peninsula in North Connemara; this really is a gorgeous part of the country. It's the sixth year of the festival and promises that more mussels will be eaten here this weekend than in any other part of the country. The celebrations include music, craic, mussel cooking competitions, walks, talks, theatre and children's activities. There will also be a country market, local art exhibition and mussel cooking competitions http://www.connemaramusselfestival.com/

Sheridans Cheese Mongers are holding their second food event at their Virginia Road Station headquarters in County Meath. Some of Ireland’s finest artisan producers will be showing their best. Irish farmhouse cheese producers include Milleens, Cashel Blue, Coolea, Cooleeney, Bellingham Blue, Corleggy, Glebe Brethan and more. As well as other artisan producers such as Burren smokehouse, Gubbeen salamis, Burke’s ice- cream, Janet’s Country Fare, Mella’s Fudge.
www.sheridanscheesemongers.com

Other foodie events this weekend -

Limerick Georgian Summer Market, 30th April – 01 May 2011 www.limerickgeorgianmarket.com

Goleen Craft & Food Fair, 01 May 2011, Community Centre, Goleen, Co. Cork www.craftinireland.com/events/details/goleen-craft-food-fair

And from Good Food Ireland - several events and courses to whet your appetite this weekend -

On Saturday April 30th - "Sinful but Saintly Cooking demo" with Susan Jane Murray
Susan joins Good Food Ireland members Donnybrook Fair for a “Sinful but Saintly” demo at which she will let us in on her secrets for making scrumptious desserts that are sugar-free, wheat-free and dairy-free.

To book a place at Susan Jane's 'Sinful but Saintly' cookery demo on April 30, call Donnybrook Fair on (01) 668-3556, or see www.susanjanemurray.com

Cookery Courses
Belle Isle Cookery School, Fermanagh -
Saturday 30th April Cakes & Bakes. One day course
Saturday 4th May Fish & Seafood. One day course
http://www.goodfoodireland.ie/Member207/Belle-Isle-Cookery-School-Fermanagh.html

Dublin Cookery School -
2 May - 27 May Cooking for Life. One month course.
7 May Cooking course with guest chef Atul Kochhar. One day course
http://www.goodfoodireland.ie/Member212/Dublin-Cookery-School-Dublin.html

I just wish I could go to them all! Have a great weekend and happy eating x

Irish cooks and food enthusiasts, USA is calling...

If you fancy yourself as a half decent cook and feel that you've a recipe connected to the county you're living in, then this is an opportunity you can't miss.

Rachel Gaffney, a Corkwoman now living in Texas is on the hunt for recipes from the 32 counties of Ireland to be part of a US project to be directed by Emmy Award-winning producer Bob Altman, former Supervising Producer of ‘Martha Stewart Living’.

Rachel, who is passionate about Irish food, wants to showcase what this country has to offer in the form of a video cookbook based on Irish recipes. They can be in any shape or form - main courses, starters etc.

When thinking about the recipes that you might submit, she advices emphasising the story behind the recipe and why, from your perspective, it belongs in this collection - one which will live in the digital-recipe seeker’s “bookmarks” for years to come. Rachel is looking for a paragraph or so along with the recipe, explaining to home-cooks around the world, how they can share your love of Irish food with their family and friends by serving your dish.

If your dish is selected, the team would also like to present your photo, a short biography and a link to your blog or website. So while the aim is to present the best of traditional Irish food, they are most interested "interpretation and embellishment" and the idea of a recipe having been passed down to you through family or tradition. It is okay to mention a particular branded ingredient if you feel that it is integral to the taste of the dish – as long as the product is made in Ireland.

The recipes will be filmed in extreme close-up without an on-camera presenter, so that the ingredients and the ‘how-to’ process will be the star. They will be styled by a feature film/television food stylist and lit, photographed and edited by an Emmy Award winning production team.“Runner-up” entries may be presented in text and photo format also with a link back to your blog. So for all Irish food writers, bloggers and cookery enthusiasts this is a wonderful opportunity.

Email your recipe to:Rachel@Rachelgaffneys.com

You can follow Rachel on Twitter @Rachelgaffney and on Facebook.

http://www.rachelgaffney.blogspot.com/

RACHEL GAFFNEY'S REAL IRELAND5515 TAMARON COURTDALLAS,TX,75287TEL: (469) 6446054EMAIL:

http://uk.mc295.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=Rachel@Rachelgaffneys.comWEB: www.Rachelgaffneys.comBLOG: www.Rachelgaffney.blogspot.com

Like prostitution, food substitution is one of the oldest trades in the book. "We're being codded" Part II

Food substitution or food swindling in order to make money is one of the oldest tricks in the book. While may think what we eat today is dominated by food additives and unnatural manufacturing, our range of foods has to be better than a century ago when particularly urban people were at the complete mercy of food sellers.

Freidrich Engels even wrote about it - pointing out that as working men got their wages on a Saturday in industrial Britain they had to buy their family food on Saturday evening. This was the beginning of what we know today as evening grocery shopping. And as much of it was conducted in candlelight, this was where a lot of the chicanery took place. As the good food was sold off from the morning onwards, the ordinary working person was left with the poor produce that remained by the evening or produce that was discounted precisely because it was foul. Rotten meat was covered with a layer of healthy fat, aged butter was covered with a coating of fresh butter, oranges were boiled to make them weighty and shiny and in the case of fish, their gills were painted red to make them look fresh.



Sadly there are still plenty of people out there willing to pull the wool over our eyes. In 2009 the Food Safety Authority brought two Irish companies to court for the mislabelling of fish. They won their case against one of the companies who was passing off farmed salmon as wild salmon; an altogether rarer and far more expensive product. One of these companies is a very well known fish retailer and wholesaler who got off on a technicality but was nonetheless happy to pass off farmed salmon as wild salmon and collect the huge difference in price for quite some time.


So like prostitution, food substitution - as one of the oldest trades in the book is still very much alive and well. But who's going to take on the villians of the piece? Following this most recent survey on fish mislabelling and recognising the scale of the problem, the FSAI are introducing annual checks for fish and food businesses that fail to keep appropriate traceability records or who are found to be intentionally misleading consumers. They also say they will take repeat offenders to court but for the moment most of them will get off with a verbal warning. Unfortunately that is how the legislation stands. Seems a bit lily-livered to me.


One of the sad facts behind the mislabelling story is that most of the fish that is being passed off as cod is imported. Not only that but much of the white fish we eat is imported. White fish, behind farmed salmon, is the second most popular seafood in this country and the similarities between filleted white fish make substituting species easy to do. Most people don’t know the difference.

In terms of our own lovely local seafood catch, 80% of Irish fish is exported to Europe where there is a ready market in France and Spain for high quality, fresh whole fish. Unfortunately we Irish consumers don't seem to be switched on to how good the product is on our own doorstep and instead eat cheap imports that come from Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Scandanavia which have been ususally frozen for several days. This imported fish is cheaper, and comes in huge volumes so this makes it more attractive for supermarkets in particular. It also comes filleted, ready for sale and Irish fish just can’t compete.

So, what do we do about cod?

In the FSAI report, fake Cod is the fish that keeps cropping up again and again. In fact nearly three quarters of the "smoked cod" on offer to Irish consumers that the agency tested wasn't cod at all but Pollack, Coley, Saithe or God knows what else. But there's two interesting things that emanate from this - one is that even though stocks are shrinking, Irish shoppers still want to eat cod, whether it's bought in a supermarket or a chipper. So the mislabelling of cod perpetuates the myth that there is plenty of cod about. This means that Irish consumers are failing to adjust our shopping habits and our wallets, to food that is endangered or comes with a high environmental cost.

So what can consumers do to eat more Irish fish and avoid eating something that is falsely labelled? Firstly if they buy their fish locally it’s the easiest possible option. In Dublin you can still buy fish direct off boats coming into Howth, harbour, (pictured) Dun Laoghaire and Dalkey and there are fish dealers in this area who will get you what you want straight from the boat. Local fish mongers, though scarce, are a great option and if it comes to supermarkets, buying Marine Stewardship Council certified fish gives you a certainty that it’s sustainable and has a country of origin label.


A new scheme soon to be brought in by Supervalue will see Irish fish being retailed on their shelves which is traceable straight back to the boat it came in on which is really great.

Ironically, one positive thing coming from this fish mislabelling affair is that it reveals we are patently happy to eat lots of other fish besides cod, and in fact we didn’t seem to notice the difference. But if most of us are happy to eat cheaper fish, the savings from doing so should be made by us, not by someone trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

If you're interested in fish stocks and their sustainability check out Ocean 2012 which is a coalition of groups lobbying for change and sustainable practices in the EU's Common Fisheries Policy. They're at http://www.ocean2012.eu/ and the Irish representation is on twitter at @OCEAN2012IE - they will soon have news coming up on Irish events for European Fish Week June 4th - 12th.

Would you like fries with that? We're being codded, again.

A year on from when I first wrote about the fish labelling scandal going on in Ireland it seems nothing has changed. In the second survey into what exactly we are buying when we purchase "cod", the Food Safety Authority of Ireland has revealed that nearly one in five fish are not what it says on the label. So what are the implications for consumers and does this point to murky goings on in the fish trade?

This most recent survey was carried out in retail outlets, fish shops, hotels, pubs, restaurants and takeaways all over Ireland. The FSAI found that 19% of products it sampled were labelled incorrectly. The largest sector selling us fake cod was takeaways, with 32% of takeaways found to have mislabelled fish produce on sale.

Do takeaways rely on people being either (a) drunk and on their way home from the pub when they buy their "cod" and chips, or (b) their product being so doused in salt and vinegar that your box of fish and chips could be in fact battered Nike trainer with deep fried turnip peelings?

The point is that this isn't so much a food safety issue but common or garden food swindling, based on making money from innocent consumers. Cod is generally an expensive fish and in this case it’s being replaced with other varieties, and food businesses are increasing their own profit margins by selling fake produce.

This survey was undertaken last autumn when cod stocks are traditionally low and found that fish such as pollack, coley or smelt were being sold as cod. At that time cod was about 11 euros a kilo; pollack about 6 or 7 euro a kilo so you stand to make a lot of money if you can replace one with the other.

Okay, so a bit of coley posing as cod won't kill us. However, in terms of food safety, food substitution in the past has had fatal consequences. In North America two people died from eating puffer fish that had been labelled and sold as monkfish; a pretty terrifying outcome. As consumers, we need to have confidence in what it says on the label. Particularly in the EU, we are under the impression that strict policies on labelling and traceability are in place. Instead, what this study reveals is a level of disfunction in the labelling of seafood in Europe.

What’s shocking about this is not the first time that mislabelling of fish has found to be an issue in Ireland. About 12 months ago when I first wrote on the subject UCD did a study on fish and found much the same problem. A quarter of the fish they examined was mislabelled. In one major supermarket chain, seven out of their 16 "cod" products weren't cod. The research calculated that by selling cheaper alternatives, this retailer could be getting inflated profits of between €400,000 to €550,000 per year on Irish cod sales.

So who is doing the duping – is it the supermarkets, the fish and chip shops or is it the fish dealers who are selling them the fish? The FSAI can’t name and shame the outlets or merchants involved in this sting so to speak. They found that some of the mislabelling may be due to a certain amount of ignorance, but a few names popped up in the retail and wholesale side where several instances occurred, especially in the battered and smoked fish. They’re being investigated as this would suggest that it was more than accidental.

Unfortunately the penalities are low even if charges are brought and while you can name and shame an outlet for food safety breaches, mislabelling food comes under “misleading the consumer” which hasn’t huge penalities – most will get a verbal warning, then if they persist be taken to court.

Not very heartening for the consumer is it? Will it take a serious health incident arising from food mislabelling to change the law? Why can't we find out who the worst operators are and therefore make our own choice as consumers to stop being codded at the fish counter? If you want to hear more on this topic I'll soon upload my interview on RTE radio with Pat Kenny teasing through the issue. And no, there won't be any bad jokes, I promise.

In part two of this post, I'll be examining the sometimes hideous, sometimes hysterically funny history of food substitution and I'll have some tips for how to buy Irish fish, that's the genuine article. We've so much great fish in Ireland it's ridiculous that we're buying not only fake product but fake product that's mostly coming from outside the EU. But that's a whole other story... part two coming soon.

New garden, new start

In between lots of food writing and talking last week I managed to get out to the garden and plant some spring veg - a refreshing change to the chicken wars which were continuing apace. Late last year we moved to a new house with a large garden, in fact it's not really a garden but a job centre. The minute we arrived, my husband and I walked around it stupefied with fear - having moved here precisely because we wanted a small piece of land of our own, once we were in possession of it things just began to look plain scary.

The list of jobs to be done; lawns to be mown, hedges to be cut, trees to be felled, felled trees to be chopped is pretty overwhelming. And while it had been beautifully maintained by the previous owners, the place doesn't feel like the garden we want it be and big plans are afoot to change how much of it is orientated.

Being animal lovers, more living, destructive additions are set to arrive in the next few months but in the meantime we are just trying to maintain the garden; chop down a few small trees to get a nicer view of the valley we live in, cut hedges and start on the lawns. While a lot of the planting is very suburban and 1970s in flavour, there are some lovely places in the garden, including the potting shed (pictured above) which is a lovely place to work, with old-fashioned panes of glass covered in clematis to one side and a lovely pink camellia climbing all over the front wall and door.

If you follow this blog from last year you will be familiar with the travails of planting too many tomatoes so this year I stuck to just Ferlines - -a nice large ridged tomato like the ones in French outdoor markets, which have been successful for us in the past, and a few of a mini variety.

I also put in lots of rocket, dill, basil, radishes and three types of lettuce. We will plant more in a fortnight's time so that you get a successive crop rather than everything coming at the same time -yet more lessons learned from previous efforts.

For someone who spends a lot of their day looking at a laptop, it's lovely to be outside again and pottering around in the dirt. Gardening in a new place and planting from seeds is always slow at the start but once your veg begins to come up it is such a pleasure to walk around the garden in the evening, see how everything is getting on and have a glass of wine and chat as the sun sets. I have one terrace I'm trying to remodel as a place to eat in the evenings which has beautiful views. At the moment it's a grey concrete hell but I've high hopes for its transformation into a cool but lush space for eating and entertaining. I've done this before - the first garden I had was truly awful - a tiny concreted yard the size of a stamp but after years of work it became something really lovely, with hanging vines, lanterns, dark wooden floors and verdant planting. So in a way this garden is going to benefit from the experiences that have gone before, or fingers crossed, let's hope it will.

It's funny, I am more patient about gardens then most other things in my life. I'm prepared to put in enormous hard work, constantly forgive them, plan and reinvest when things go wrong and ultimately learn from my mistakes. If I could bring these qualities into everything I do, I'd be some kind of cross between Michael O'Leary and the Dalai Lama. I'll keep the blog up to date with regular reports and photos and include the food I grow into my cooking this summer. For everyone out there fond of gardens, or perhaps who doesn't know where to start - buy a few seeds, a bag of compost, a small tray and stick them in the ground. See what happens. Get stuck in now folks, dirt rocks. x