My food and drink picks for March - try Brad and Angelina's wine, La Rouge and Mount Juliet for starters

La Rouge in Cabinteely

This week is all about horses for me with the Irish dominating so much of the running over at Cheltenham. 

But in the food world, seasons roll on and new restaurants open. We have seen some great Dublin and Galway restaurants close in recent months but happily other food businesses also open, become firm favourites with the public and new trends begin. Here is my This Edible Life column for March from The Gloss magazine - my monthly pick of food news from producers and restaurants. If I had to recommend one outstanding thing from this month its Sam Neill's Two Paddocks pinto noir - so gorgeous you'll want to take a bath in it.


This Edible Life 

As reviewers in New York wrestle to describe “New American” as opposed to “American” cooking, one of the restaurateurs behind “new Irish cooking” is finding great success with her Cabinteely venture La Rouge. Anne Marie Nohl of the well-loved Expresso Bar on St.Mary’s Road in Ballsbridge (dressed down celebs) joins a gathering of places slowly making the village a foodie nook.

Ed Hick's Bacon Jam

Alongside Urban café, South African influenced Pielow’s restaurant and the Spanish Las Tapas, La Rouge is easy-going but relevant with plenty of Irish dishes. As with Expresso Bar, Sunday brunch is a big attraction featuring Eggs Florentine, seared kidneys and brioche. The “La Rouge Big Breakfast” boasts sausages by Proper Butcher and food obsessive Ed Hick. For more Man Food, try Ed’s Bacon Jam made with honey, coffee and baco  from Hick’s Butchers in Dun Laoghaire and many delis. My husband is obsessed.

Mount Juliet estate

Talking of butchers good and bad, amid covering #horseburger I grabbed a few days at Mount Juliet in Thomastown (doing two radio interviews in the car en route). Binning the phones, the thick Georgian walls give rest and quiet like no other, and the food at The Lady Helen gets better and better. These are stunning plates with great sourcing; I’m sure I saw the pheasant I ate giving me a wink earlier on the avenue.

In the wine world actress Drew Barrymore tells us she is so in love with Pinot Grigio she’s decided to produce her own, Whether it will beat Brad and Angelina’s Chateaux Miramar Cotes des Provence is yet to be seen. Unlike most Pinot Grigios, I found  Brangelina’s white Cote des Provence had a surprisingly full-bodied spank, and a good story for the dining table.

Drew Barrymore

Their wine is stocked by Garry Gubbins at Red Nose Wine in Clonmel, who supplies the horsey set with finds from hobnobbing around fancy-pants estates. He also sells the actor Sam Neill’s gorgeous Two Paddocks pinot noir. Another independent wine treasure is The Parting Glass in Enniskerry owned by the lovely Dom Price, with sweets and goodies on the counter (he knows my type). Others are Gabriel Cooney’s On the Grapevine in Dalkey, Curious Wines in Cork and Cases in Galway.

If you’d like to know more on food and wine pairings, Mary Gaynor in Thomastown Kilkenny runs a lovely wine course open to trade and the public http://www.wineacademy.ie.  In Dublin, Ely’s Big Tasting is on the 22^nd of this month with wine, Irish beers and ciders, Sheridan’s cheeses and organic beef from the Ely farm (yes there is such a thing). Basically, if you don’t want to drink you can just eat.

Kilruddery House

For a Spring shot of the outdoors, Kilruddery Farm Markets start again on 31^st March and every Saturday thereafter; foods for the larder, fresh coffees and great for letting children let off steam. It was here I first began buying Corleggy Cheese from Cavan. Despite being one of the earliest cheesemakers in the country, Silke Cropp’s cheeses from the edge of Lough Erne were new to me. Crackers, chutney, grapes, Corleggy, Two Paddocks… nothing better

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What exactly is a Christmas ham and what's the best way to cook it?

Wet sloppy nightmare or artisan luxury bliss. If you plan to buy a Christmas ham this year here's a few pointers

Firstly what exactly is a ham?

A ham is hind leg of a pig from the femur to the hock. The word gammon derives from the Old Northern French word jambe for hind-leg, and gammon may also be used to refer to a ham or bacon. The depth of meat to the bone is greatest at the top of the hind limb; cutting this piece away from the bone and curing it separately does the job thoroughly and easily. This cut is the original and to this extent authentic form of gammon, though the name is often applied to any round ham steak. Gammon is usually smoked.

What is a free range ham?

Organic ham implies that the pigs are reared in a free range way but there are also many free range producers who don’t feed organic feed and therefore just sell “Free range” pork. New guidelines have been drawn up between the Irish free range producers pig group and Bord Bia and a mark will soon be available to consumers. The prices for free range will generally be higher but believe me, it does taste more flavoursome.

So you’re out rushing around for your Christmas food shop. Why is it important to look at where the ham is from?

Finely sliced ham

Imported European hams have more water and nitrite content allowed. Dutch processors can put up to 17% brine into their meat but only about 10% is allowable here. So an imported ham or packet of rashers that cook down to half their size mightn’t be worth the cheaper price on the supermarket shelf. In the USA a new study in the US found 69 percent of raw pork samples tested positive for yersina a lesser known but serious foodborne pathogen. Countries with less strict food regimes than ours are not worth buying cheap meat from.  

What goes into a ham?

Wet-cured bacon is prepared by immersing sides of bacon in brine or by injecting brine into the meat. It’s popular with manufacturers as it’s a faster and cheaper way to cure, but it has downsides for flavour. The final product is allowed to have up to 10% brine by weight, leading to shrinking on the pan. When you see a white liquid come from your rashers, that’s the brine and is a sign they have been wet cured.

You should be able see the grain of the muscle 

By contrast, dry-cured bacon is rubbed with a mixture of salt and sugar in various proportions and they are given time to cure the meat, taking about 7 days. Some producers will say there really is no such thing as nitrate free ham has pork can only be cured with nitrate. (Some use dried celery extract which has high concentrations of nitrate).  It’s a slower and more labour intensive process but it results in a drier finish and fuller, more pronounced flavour. This is the way meat was cured prior to it becoming an industrial process. You’ll benefit not just from a much better taste, but because there will be less shrinkage during cooking and it is easier to get a nice crisp result.

What’s the best way to cook it?

Choose the right sized ham e.g. a 4kg fillet of ham will feed 10 people and allows a little extra if your family like to help themselves to more on Christmas night. Never!!

Cook the ham on Christmas eve – it takes the pressure off the next day

Weigh the ham and put in a pot with half water and pure apple juice if you have it or a bay leaf, bouquet garni, orange peel or cider

Bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes per pound. Some people change this water or soak the ham then fully roast it. If its dry cured it doesn’t need soaking.

Honey and spice glazed ham

Next day, remove skin and score the meat crossways with a sharp knife. Apply your preferred glaze. Honey, mixed spices with cinnamon and cardamon is one of my favourites. A lot of people will put cloves in the ham, a jerk or Caribbean glaze is gorgeous but seriously hot.

You can warm the ham before putting on the glaze. Apply the glaze and put it back in the oven for another 20/30 minutes. (This can all be done while your turkey is resting.)

Do not throw the cooking water out. It can be used to keep the ham moist when roasting in the oven. 

All important - what price should you pay?

Supermarkets –

Lidl have hams from 4.99 a kilo to 7.99 a kilo a gammon and a loin, Irish produced

Dunnes stores cooked ham 4 kilos Bord Bia 50 euro (12.50 a kilo)

Dunnes Stores Dry cured Irish gammon joint 1.9 kilos 19.99 euro

Free range/small producers

www.crowesfarm.ie - outdoor reared dry cure hams and organic dry cure hams, both boneless.

Their Outdoor Reared hams are €9 per kg and the organic are €12.99 per Kg.

Can courier direct to your door, final courier delivery day for Christmas is Dec 22nd and courier is free for orders over €100, below that it's €10..

www.Termonfeckindelicious.ie (I so love that name) – dry cured 13lb (nearly 6 kilos) boneless ham 45 euro. Whole ham on the bone 40 euroBottom of Form

www.Jack McCarthy.ie award winning Kanturk butcher 4 kilos free range boned –

34 euro

www.oldfarm.ie  €14.50 per kg, free-range, gmo free, natural brine cure.  Delivered to your door!

Here's a link to a radio piece I did with Pat Kenny this week on ham (its an hour and 6 mins into the show) and whatever you do, eat plenty of ham this Christmas. 

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/todaywithpatkenny/2012-12-06.html 

Pigs glorious pigs

This week in the Irish Farmers Journal I'm writing about the pig sector and the precarious position it is currently in because of the huge rise in animal feed prices. It was chilling to talk to farmers who are losing up to 10,000 euro a week on their farm. It's a crazy figure, the type of stuff that would not only keep you awake at night but encourage you to sell up and get out before you lose your mind. With feed prices pushing cost of production above what farmers are getting per finished animal, that's what the losses are -  10 euro a week per pig on a 600 sow unit is 10,000 a week. Put another way, half a million euros per year.

New's today that meat processing company Olhausen is to close three plants in Dublin and Monaghan with the loss of 160 jobs makes the crisis all more pertinent. Olhausen was an old Irish business and such was the popularity of their sausages they were even shipped over to James Joyce in Zurich. Unfortunately it looks like the firm will be wound up, another casualty of a very tough pigmeat trading environment which has put processors also under massive pressure. There has been some movement recently (and thankfully) on the supermarkets front in offering a bit more on price but as pigmeat is increasingly seen and sold as a discount meat, pig farmers are still in a volatile position. As long as rashers are sold on "two for one" offers and priced as a loss leader to shift other groceries that situation is going to remain. The only light at the end of the tunnel is that pig producers across Europe are leaving the sector, partly because of the upcoming legislation bringing in changes to the housing of sows.

Up to now, female pigs have been in stalls to prevent bullying and allow for even feeding. Animal welfare improvements now mean they will be loose housed in groups - but for farmers here that means an average investment of 300,000 euro to change their systems around. Across the EU pig producer numbers are decreasing and decreased supply should mean a rise in price. Without it, we won't see the 400 or so farmers in the Irish pig sector here next year.

My last piece for the Farmers Journal on the large-animal vet sector is now available online at the link below. My food column this month in The Irish Times Gloss magazine is unfortunately not online but I'll put a copy of it soon on Basketcase. If you like eating and well sourced Irish food it's an entertaining read, with plenty of gossip and upcoming food events thrown in.

http://www.farmersjournal.ie/site/farming-Prevention-and-cure-15654.html

Red meat - the most intense nutrient-rich food available to human beings

A new take on meat - my piece in today's Irish Independent

With celebrities from Paul McCartney to Star Wars actress Natalie Portman telling us to eat less meat, switching our shopping habits towards a vegetarian diet is one of the pieces of advice dominating the food world right now.

The rise in obesity levels combined with the unsustainable nature of beef production means that consumers are now encouraged to limit the quantity of meat they eat and turn instead to buying more vegetables, fish and meat alternatives.

But a new book by Irish butcher Pat Whelan argues that going back to the old-fashioned staples of our traditional diet; eating plenty of beef, pork and lamb is not only a healthy choice but one essential to our wellbeing. Whelan, who is the fifth generation of his family to be involved in meat production, runs a butcher shop in Clonmel, Co Tipperary and his knowledge of meat from farm to fork has earned him a Rick Stein Food Hero award.

In his book "An Irish Butcher Shop", Whelan argues that one of the reasons consumers find it easy to turn away from meat is a lack of knowledge on how to prepare it and an over reliance on inferior quality meat sold in plastic packaging in supermarkets.
He points out that beef should not be sitting in a pool of its own blood in a plastic box, and that everything about the mass production of meat and the way it's marketed to consumers is contrary to the core benefits and joys of eating it.

He argues that instead of turning away from meat, we should be appreciating its unique benefits -- red meat is the single most intense nutrient-rich food available to human beings. It's a crucial source of iron and trace elements such as zinc and copper, as well as vitamins B12 and B6.
Fat on meat is also something we shouldn't be afraid of -- it is fundamental to the taste and tenderness of the finished product.

Irish beef that is fed on pasture develops a good covering of fat which gives it great flavour. Because it's grass-fed, this makes the meat a high quality, close to organic product. Meat from grass-fed animals has up to four times more omega-3 fatty acids than meat from grain fed animals. It is also the richest known source of CLA or "conjugated linoleic acid"; an exceptional omega-6 fat which has been attributed with antioxidant and anti-cancer properties.
Most of the current opposition to beef consumption is related to cattle "feed lots" -- vast industrial-scale feeding units found typically in the US but now growing in popularity in India and China. Here animals live on a regime rich in maize and cereals which is not their natural diet.
As the appetite for beef grows across the world, we have to produce more cereals (wheat, barley and so on) to make the animal feed that cattle eat.

In many developing countries, feeding cattle (or chicken and pork in large quantities) takes other foods and water resources out of the food chain. Put simply, if everyone across the world adapted to the 'Western Diet', we'd run out of many foodstuffs, and water.

Farm animals also produce more than 10% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions but new approaches to the anti-meat argument such as Simon Fairlie's book -- Meat: A Benign Extravagance has swayed even the hardened environmentalists such as best-selling author George Monbiot back towards eating meat. Fairlie argues that it's specifically feed-lot production of cattle that reduces the world's food supply and that what we should be doing is eating meat but simply less of it.

In Ireland the situation is very different; cattle and sheep roam outdoors and eat grass which is in plentiful supply, so the beef and lamb we eat takes a minimum of inputs and is fairly sustainable.

However, most pigs and poultry in Ireland are farmed in intensive indoor units where the quality of the animals' lives is poor and again they are eating a cereal based diet.
Ireland comes closest to factory farming in these pig and chicken "units"; vast indoor sheds packed densely with animals.

The intensive production of chicken and pork over decades has also affected what we're getting on our plate -- pigs are slaughtered at about seven months old, and unfortunately quality and flavour of modern pork has been affected by the breeding of faster maturing pigs. So the consumer pays the price with an inferior-tasting product.

The bacon and rashers most of us eat have been injected with brine, and can often contain more water than meat content. So while we think mass-produced cheap rashers are good value, if they end up a third of their original size after cooking then it's a bad deal.

You might get better value from an artisan-produced pork that's more expensive raw but yields more meat when cooked. One way to keep both sides happy is to continue to eat meat but put more thought into what we buy.

Pat's book is full of recipes for everything from 'pot-roasted shoulder of lamb' to 'boozy rabbit with prunes'.

His advice is to vary what you buy from the old staples of sirloin, fillet, lamb cutlets, pork chops and rashers. Try new cuts and free-range or artisan products occasionally. The pay-off is in quality, taste and ultimately better value for money.

An Irish Butcher Shop by Pat Whelan, published by Collins Press. Suzanne Campbell's food blog is at www.basketcase theblog.blogspot.com
- Suzanne Campbell
Irish Independent