New Irish whiskeys, cheese and gorgeous sourdough breads: my January food picks from The Gloss magazine

David Tiernans Montbeliarde herd

After a couple of busy months attending and presenting food awards it’s good to be at home and looking at what's new in Irish food and drink for the year ahead. For starters, cold Januarys are the perfect excuse to take Rihanna and Jay Z’s lead and drink Irish whiskey. 

Jack Teeling, who sold Cooley for €73m last year has hit the stills again with a new blend of Scotch and Irish single malt. Teelings Hybrid certainly causes a hurricane in the back of your throat, but it’s also a really  warm and complex whiskey. With a hard cheese like David Tiernan’s Glebe Brehan made from his herd of Montbeliarde cows in County Louth, it's a combination that makes for a grown up, contemporary treat.

Kombucha made in Stoneybatter Dublin

The following day you may need my new find, Dublin Kombucha – a Japanese cleansing tea full of antioxidants and good bacteria brewed by Laura Murphy in Stoneybatter. Suspiciously healthy sounding but gorgeous – a cross between sparkling apple juice and miso soup.  DBKB deliver, with a four-pack costing €10. The Joe Macken empire stock it, and Cake Café just off Camden street.

Bakes and breads are perfect warming January foods.  New York is having a French baking moment as renouned Frenchman Eric Kayser wows the well heeled with his sour dough breads. Sour doughs require fermentation and you’ll only find them made by craft bakers such as Dublin-based Thibault Peigne www.tartine.ie whose breads (which take 48 hours to make) can be found in Listons, Mortons in Ranelagh. Try his French rustic sour dough grilled with some goats cheese, torn basil and prepare an addiction plan.

Eric Kayser's sourdough aux marrons

French baking is also the name of the game at Armelle’s Kitchen in Kilcullen, Kildare. Armelle turns out the mouthwatering cakes while her partner Kenny makes classic French macarons. Their rum frangipane lasted all of three minutes in our house.

For low key French I love La Cocotte café upstairs in L’academie Francais on Kildare Street. Quiet, with a gorgeous view over Trinity’s cricket grounds, Arnaud Bucher presides over a choice of fabulous pastries, pain garnis (with proper baguette) and plat du jour. I order the charcuteries francaises and pretend to read my battered Proust.

Brown Hound Bakery

For really good baking outside Dublin check out The Gallery Café in Gort where fringed lampshades take you straight back to Abigail's Party, Brown Hound Bakery in Drogheda for the prettiest of treats under delicate glass cloches and Laura Kilkenny’s outstanding The Wooden Spoon in Killaloe which can’t stop collecting awards.

Andrew Rudd

January is also plein with chefs going their own pop-ups. Andrew Rudd tells me he’s busy at his new venture Medley – cookery school and dining in an airy Fade Street loft. Ian Marconi, (ex Moro and St John’s of London) is moonlighting from the moorish meatballs of The Paella Guys to do some cool private dining in the parlour of his Portobello house. www.parlourgames.ie

In my own parlour I’m planning a wintery feast of roast lamb as outside the kitchen window the rams graze in their raddles – a paint pack on their chest which marks the rump of the ewes they get up on. How clever would it be if prolific Irish males wore a similar apparatus – no more awkward moments in Guilbauds.

Wild goat. Euthanise, rehome or shoot?

Goat, Wicklow

Here up in the mountains sometimes even domestic animals pose a problem. We live within five minutes by car to the Sally Gap - a wild Wicklow upland known for its wandering sheep and possible store of dead bodies which appear from time to time buried in deep bog. It's also a place of outstanding beauty but a site near enough to Dublin for people to think that driving up there with unwanted animals is a good idea. How wrong they are.

Less than three miles away from the main cross roads of tiny bog roads in the Sally Gap is our place. At the moment we are paying the price for again living in an environment where people sometimes feel a loose or unwanted pet doesn't cause a problem. This week it's a (probably once domesticated) billy goat with full horns. He is  stressed, confused, and making our life pretty much hell. On the lane outside our house he is now challenging cars, chasing sheep belonging to our next door farmer into wire fences and freaking the crap out of all animals in the area including "rescue and rehab" - our two re-homed horses and ponies, one of which nearly landed me in hospital today by knocking me over on the road in front of a car. He's 600 kilos. I'm not.

The Sally Gap Wicklow, Ireland

Ringing the Gardai isn't an option. I've done so and they've said "not our job love". As anyone knows living in an environment like this there are few people or agencies around to help you out. In the past I've collected loose and abandoned horses on roads in my own trailer and on my own time. One of them resulted in me getting personal threats and night time visitors at home. The Irish Horse Welfare Trust is brilliant at rescuing equines on limited resources and pursuing prosecutions for neglect and welfare abuses. But with animals that come between the livestock and pet categories it's much more difficult. Often the code is in the country - don't call anyone, shoot it and say nothing.

If loose animals are quiet, the SPCAs might collect if the animal is already penned but again in this area of Wicklow it's tricky .Wicklow SPCA due to dwindling funds cant afford to collect and look after animals like goats. The DSPCA, they sometimes pick up animals outside Dublin but it depends on the nature of the job. A loose dog or injured swan is one thing. An injured cow or dumped goat is another.

Sheep in the Wicklow uplands

In the meantime my neighbour wants to shoot the goat. With 400 pregnant ewes out on grass it isn't a good time to have them harassed or running loops round a 20 acre field as they were doing yesterday and possibly early aborting.

Lesson here is folks... and I know I don't have to stress this to anyone who reads this blog - do not buy animals you can't cope with once they are fully grown. That cute kid goat at a country fair will grow into a 60 pound guy that is full of territorial and sexually aggressive behaviour with full horns to boot. Unless he's in an environment with plenty of space and is free to behave in his herding and domineering way, this animal is a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands. It's sad to reminisce, but at the last house we lived in near Kilcroney in Enniskerry, the dumped animal of choice was pot-bellied Vietnamese pigs (killed) and decapitated deer; presumably shot for trophies. There was such a pile of rotting animals on the lane at one point that I rang up the council and they replied "Yeah, that's what people are doing. Get used to it."

This evening I found said goat now in the field next to our kitchen. Tomorrow I will have to make a call on it. My local farmer will shoot it if I tell him, or else I can leave the animal to take its chances. As you can imagine these kind of issues come on top of real life trundling on. I'm trying to finish up my food column for a deadline this week, I'm writing script for a piece with Pat Kenny (RTE radio one) on Thursday and a lecture for an Taisce for Saturday on genetically modified foods. We've small children sick with the flu and one of the horses suffering near fatal colic. Fantastic!

I'll let you know how it goes, and in the meantime, gather together your Christmas ham recipes for a piece I'm doing. Glazes; honey, mixed spice, marmalade, jerk Caribbean? I need the best and most tastiest of suggestions! x