The American burger is unsafe to eat. Unless we get our food system in Europe under control we're heading the same direction

[This post is based on an Opinion piece I wrote in the Irish Independent on Saturday, it has been updated to include the latest updates on horsemeat] 

As Irish horse slaughterer B&F Meats was announced on Friday to be re-packaging horsemeat for export as beef, it seems the crisis is back on our doorstep here in Ireland. What we feared might be the case - Irish equines going illegally into the food chain has proved to be true, and there will be further  resulting ramifications for the food sector, let alone legal and perhaps criminal fallout. 

Foods sold in Ikea and Birds Eye are the latest big name brands to find horsemeat in their products. As we are drip fed more information about the scale of the horsemeat problem, Irish consumers feel unsure about what other nasties may lurk in our shopping trolleys.

At the heart the horsemeat issue is the real cost of cheap food. Much of the comment has centred around “if you eat cheap food, well what do you expect?” But

research shows value ranges and cheap food are not just purchased by the 10% of Irish people living in food poverty (Dept of Social Protection). They are bought by ordinary families whose pattern of shopping is based on value and are now worth 46% of our €8.9 billion grocery market.

Food itself has become cheap, and Irish consumers across many income brackets buy own brand or discounted value ranges. This scandal has revealed that it’s becoming harder to pin the problem on simply cheap burgers and consumers are listening to contradictory advice. In between refuting the FSAI’s claims that his burgers tested positive for horsemeat, Malcolm Walker head of retail chain Iceland told BBC this week that he wouldn’t eat other UK supermarket’s value lines as “there’d be other things in there”.

Dumped meat products

The pressure on food to be cheap across the board and moves towards less regulation and testing are at the heart of the problem. As we’re drip fed more brands containing horsemeat, farm ministers in Brussels were wrangling with the CAP budget which pays farmers to produce for retailers at knockdown prices. The EU’s cheap food policy has worked to a fashion – to deliver affordable food to consumers, but how can we say it’s a success when the player closest to the consumer – the supermarkets, are the ones taking the most margin?  Subsidising farmers and paying for proper regulation at least ensures good food quality at farm level. Farmers and farming programmes currently get 42% of the EU budget. It will be less this year and by 2020 set to be reduced to 33%. So as we reduce subsidy, and food gets more expensive to produce, how on earth do we think quality or food safety is going to improve?

As has been asked many times “Why have CAP? Why pay farmers for producing food whatsoever?” Well let’s look at the US, where subsidy exist only for particular foodstuffs like fructose corn syrup which strangely dominates snack foods, food manufacturing and is blamed for America’s obesity epidemic. US is the free market unregulated end of the model. It is also the model with the most problems for those who eat its food.

Tyson Foods

The involvement of American beef giant JBS in the horsemeat crisis is hardly a surprise. Last year one of their biggest beef processors Tyson Foods was found guilty of using false books and bribing meat plant inspectors. US beef contains antibiotics and steroids, and in the opinion of most American food writers the iconic American burger is unsafe to eat.

Massive recalls of beef for ecoli and chicken and salmonella tainted eggs characterise a regular year in the US food chain. Recent research by the University of Minnesota found evidence of fecal contamination in 69% of the pork and beef and 92% of the poultry samples in retail outlets. Factory farming is blamed for large scale antibiotic resistance in the human population while the use of “pink slime" in burgers - mechanically recovered meat treated with ammonia was recently dropped by MacDonald’s in the US after public outcry. 

pink slime filler

Liberalisation of farming and food manufacture has been a disaster for US consumers.  Americans get sicker and die younger than people in any other wealthy nation. Even the best-off Americans – those who have health insurance, a college education, a high income and healthy behaviour are sicker than their peers in comparable countries, says a report by the US National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine.

Light touch regulation doesn’t work in food. Under the Tory Government the UK’s Food Standards Agency’s budget has been slashed and food testing fallen in some areas by up to a third. In Ireland we have maintained rigorous tests on farms by the FSAI and EHOs. As food companies become more vertically integrated and dominant, it’s crucial that budget for food regulation and standards in production and manufacture are not only maintained but scaled up in Ireland and the EU.

In recent years the Department of Agriculture insisted in there was plenty of legislation in place for the identification of horses going into the food chain. In the wake of the present crisis I asked if they have plans or budget for more checks at factories and putting vets back on ports? The answer was no.

Regulation and upholding standards on farms, subsidising farmers properly to produce food above the cost of production are essential to maintain a food chain that’s safe. We may not like where we’ve got in our food picture but by further letting go of the reins we will pay for it, in the realm of our own health. 

Hate to say I told you so #horsemeat

One of the frustrating things about Europe's current horsemeat crisis is that welfare groups in Ireland warned the Department of Agriculture many times about the problems of horses being transported live to Europe. These animals were known not to have passports and dealers openly admitted (also documented in the UCD report of 2010) that forging passports to get horses into factories wasn't an issue.

For many years I have helped the Irish Horse Welfare Trust to try and heighten awareness of the neglect of horses and the issue of live transport. For cattle and sheep transported to Europe or elsewhere there are strict regulations on travel times and welfare, none of which exist for horses. Horses are not checked at Irish ports before they travel for health or individual identification. This free movement of horses under the tripartite agreement between England, Ireland and France was identified in the UCD report as detrimental to bio-hazard controls - laughable now we have proof that many of these horses were going for human consumption. Authorities here denied that Irish horses could be going into the food chain until a Dutch processor in Nijnegan was revealed last week to be selling Irish and Dutch horsemeat as beef. This piece of news closed the circle in effect, though it's still not clear whether this meat came from carcasses killed in Irish abattoirs or from the live trade.

www.IHWT.ie

What we also know is that of the five Irish plants who were granted licenses to slaughter horses to cope with the surplus of horses after our boom years, only two are operating horse slaughtering at present. Why? Because there are much larger numbers (the department estimates around 16,000 horses) going out live on lorries to Europe.

horse transport

If 12500 equines were killed in licensed slaughterhouses (excluding the knackery system) here in 2011, why the larger number of animals going for live transport with its additional costs? Think about it. You have to have a passport (albeit very easy to obtain) to bring a horse to a factory here. Not so if it is killed abroad, even in the UK. The USPCA have identified false passports and forged veterinary signatures used on passports of animals going on the live trade, some which have been dosed with bute or other drugs. So of course the numbers are bigger - it's far easier to get them into a factory in Poland or Italy than in Ireland, as loose as the system here is.

I have two horses, both of whom I could apply for a passport for tomorrow from the 12 agencies allowed to issue them and get both into a factory next week. That's no reflection on B and F Meats et al. It is an illustration of how the passport and identification scheme doesn't work. This situation has been pointed out to the department many times - by myself, the IHWT, the USPCA and the SPCAs involved with horse welfare and rescue. The lack of regulation has been boiling under the surface for so long that it comes to no surprise to anyone involved in horse welfare or movement that there is horsemeat in the food chain. Horses are sold in Ireland for as little as 10 euro. Last year I loaded up a horse with an IHWT officer outside Bray that had been stabbed in the shoulder and was living on a piece of scrap land with no feed or water. It had been sold to a 10 year old child for 30 euro. Doubtless, its destiny was a lorry to Europe before we got hold of it.

An IHWT project on urban horse welfare in Limerick

What has been of little mention throughout this debate is the welfare issues involved here. Horses are put on lorries that are injured, about to foal or dying. Can you imagine the hellish journey these animals go through without food or water to be slaughtered in hellish conditions like those filmed by hidden cameras at the UK abattoir.

What the horsemeat scandal has revealed is there is overwhelming problems with the equine identification and movement system. Vets need to go back into ports, and the passport system enforced. Having a scheme in place is nonsense without enforcement.

These points were put to the Department of Agriculture's chief veterinary office Martin Blake on Primetime by broadcaster Claire Byrne and myself in a segment on the horsemeat issue. It seems there is little admission of the scale of the problem or how long it has been going on for. All I can hope is that recent events will speed up the will to look again at the tripartite agreement. Something radical needs to happen about the welfare and slaughter issues at the heart of this trade, let alone the dangers for us humans the consumers. You can view the segment at the link below.

http://www.rte.ie/news/player/prime-time/2013/0218/

Irish food culture is a game of two halves, where those at the bottom will suffer the most

Irish horses destined for the food chain

As the horsemeat scandal widens to include giant food labels like Nestle and the worlds biggest beef processor JBS, again we see food fraud not happening at farm level but at secondary processing level and the trade of "beef" in a snakes and ladders game encompassing a global set of players.

In short, the DNA tests carried out in Ireland by the FSAI opened a Pandora's Box of food chain nightmares. As the crisis sucks in more countries, it may seem like vindication for the Irish beef sector but is of little value to us consumers, especially those who shop at the lower end of food budgets, relying on processed foods and ready meals as family staples.


What the horsemeat scandal reveals is that Ireland's food culture is a tale of two halves. At one end of the scale, 'Artisan' meats like Aberdeen Angus Rib Eye and wild Irish game star on restaurant menus. Irish food has never been more vogueish. It is gushed over, photographed and blogged about on the 400-plus food blogs dedicated to Irish food alone.

Boning hall at a processor

On the other side of the Irish eating experience are the €1 fast food hamburger. The rashers that are retailing this week at €1 a pack. The Tesco Everyday Value burgers that sold for €1.41 (17 cent for a burger) until the FSAI revealed that at least one of them contained as much as 29pc equine DNA.

As family income crashed in recent years, so did our grocery spend. While foodies shopped at classy delicatessens, award-winning butchers and farm gates, on the poor side of town, consumers flocked to the discounters and got their grocery spend down from €200 a week to €60.

In a depressed marketplace, the Irish supermarkets engaged each other in aggressive price wars. Since 2005, food prices in the UK have increased by as much as 35pc. By comparison, prices in Ireland rose by only 3 to 4pc, despite the fact that prices in the euro area as a whole increased by 15pc. Consumers benefited and we trusted the food chain not to let us down. That trust was not to prove well-founded.

The FSAI's initial DNA tests were conducted on 'value' frozen burgers and supermarkets' own-brand ready meals. Did they know something that we didn't?

What became evident was that the system broke down, not on Irish farms but at the secondary processing phase – where meat is ground for burgers, and mixed with beef trim, fillers and a wide range of ingredients for ready meals.

Silvercrest Foods had a chain of at least three different suppliers involved in providing one single ingredient for the product. Exactly how many suppliers are involved in the production of one burger?

Is the price point simply too low to supply safe food? If not, is somebody creaming off the fat and who exactly are they?

Irish farmers get between 30pc and 40pc of the retail price of primary cuts of meat. They claim that there are three big operators in beef in Ireland – ABP, Kepak and Dawn Meats pay roughly the same prices for cattle despite allegedly being in competition.

Map of Europe's horsemeat trail

In late 2012, just as the price of beef in Ireland was hitting a healthy €4 a kilo, it suddenly tailed off despite low supplies in the UK. This gave a 50 cent per kilo advantage on animals killed there. As our biggest export market is the UK, why were factories here paying around two hundred euro less on finished animals?

The lid needs to be lifted on the precise relationship between beef processors and supermarkets. Ironically, just as the horse-burger story broke, the UK government, on the recommendation of the Competition Commission, appointed their grocery ombudsman to monitor the behaviour of supermarkets.

Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney said this week that similar Irish legislation is expected this term. The same promise was made at an Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture four years ago, where I gave evidence on the need to bring in a body to police the unfair balance of power in the system. It wasn't news then, like it isn't now.

It is worrying that what began with cheap food has made its way up the ladder. Horse DNA was found in burgers made by ABP at Silvercrest/ABP for the Co-Operative supermarket in the UK, known for its attention to provenance. Does risky sourcing become a money-making trick as we move further up the chain?

The majority of Irish consumers are caught at the cheap end of the grocery business. It's urgently clear that consumers need protection in the form of a supermarkets' ombudsman. If this is not the time to introduce one, then when is?

The horsemeat in burgers scandal. Are we consumers partly to blame?

We consumers. We love cheap food

Oh how we love cheap food, but then gasp in amazement that it might contain something unpleasant. This week’s shock discovery of horse DNA in Irish burgers grabbed headlines around the world. But are we, the consumers also to blame for this debacle?

Our lust for a bargain has been mirrored in the advancing market share captured by Lidl and Aldi in Ireland – we’ve fallen in love with the low-cost German model. At a recent dinner party several well heeled guests boasted how they’ve halved their grocery bill by going to discounters. I replied that Aldi is a great buyer of Irish food – purchasing everything from Aberdeen Angus beef, sparkling water, artisan cheese and yoghurts for its own brand range. Food producers whisper to me that Aldi pay on time with “no messing around”. They’re only too glad to board the German steamroller.

Meat processing for burgers

Yet our desire for cheap food and the lengths the food chain will go to supply it are central to how horse DNA got into our burgers. Supermarkets want profits up, share price up and they do this by driving prices down. Their goal is to pay suppliers as little as possible including those who process beef. But like any product, food has a bottom line from where it can be produced or not. Below that line cost-cutting can put consumers at risk. For this very reason I’ve campaigned at Oireachtas Committee level for a supermarket ombudsman to ensure farmers and food producers can produce our food cleanly and safely.

Irish beef at its best; grass fed and highly traceable

Last year Monaghan chicken farmer Alo Mohan told me they made 56 cent on every chicken. These same chickens are then retailed as low as 2.99 by the supermarket. How can a living breathing animal which has been nurtured, fed and cared for from birth to cost less than a cup of coffee?. And if the farmer is getting 56 cent out of a 2.99 – who is taking the largest cut? The supermarket.

Chicken farmer Alo Mohan

But who’s driving this? Us the consumers.

It may come as a surprise that food prices in Ireland are in fact artificially low and far lower relative to the UK. Since 2005 food prices in the UK have increased by as much as 35%. By comparison, Irish prices are just 3 to 4 per cent above their level of seven years ago despite the euro area as a whole increasing by 15%. In this same period, the price of oil and grain has made the cost of producing food explode. In Ireland, recession and weak consumer demand has kept the supermarkets in razor sharp competition, trying to keep the price of food low despite production costs rising.

As our incomes shrink and bills dropping onto the hall floor are ignored for days no one wants to go out and pay a whopping amount on groceries. But in our desire for value we can end up with products like the supermarket spaghetti bolognese I examined containing just 16% meat. What on earth is in the rest? Most likely what are called food “extenders” and “fillers”.

Extenders and fillers are used to add volume and taste to sausages, burgers, ready meals and any amount of things in our trolleys. They arose from the need to produce lower cost food and can reduce costs by 10-30%. This week our Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney described the ingredient that carried horse DNA into the Irish burgers as powdered beef-protein additive – a filler used to bulk up cheaply produced burgers.

"Pink slime" was commonly used in US fast food chains

Also common is mechanically separated material from animal carcasses known as mechanically deboned meats (MDM) where meat on bones is ground and processed into a product that then goes into other foods. You might remember the unpleasant “pink slime” story which broke in America recently. This MDM (resembling pink ice cream) was found in many fast food chain burgers. But once it was exposed that ammonia treated to “clean” the slime, fast food chains boycotted it in a desperate bid to calm consumers.

Most of this intense manufacturing takes place in Europe and looks to like the source of our imported horse DNA problem. It’s frustrating that Ireland has the best food ingredients in the world with demanding standards on food safety and traceability. Yet somewhere an ingredient manufacturer has cut costs, or deliberately defrauded other manufacturers and consumers. You won’t find many other countries doing the type of DNA tests the FSAI carried out on meats because frankly they would be too scared about what it might reveal.

What needs to happen quickly is identifying and punishing the supplier who sold this tainted ingredient into Irish burgers. In 1999 the Belgian dioxin crisis cost Belgium 625 million euro and the prime minister his job. Yet the Belgian father and son who knowingly sold machinery oil into animal feed causing widespread PCB poisoning received ridiculous suspended sentences of two years. The penalty for messing up the food chain should be an enormous headline-grabbing event to match the damage done by the event itself. Horse DNA in Irish beef burgers is not acceptable. Who is going to take up the tab for the damage done to our own food sector and jobs?

So what can we do to eat safely and not pay out a fortune? The answer is keep your food chain short and keep things simple. And let’s be honest, this takes work. But putting a small bit of thought into what I buy makes me feel safer about what I feed my children in particular. I buy my meat and vegetables from local shops in the village. I buy store cupboard foods in one big shop about every three weeks in either Superquinn or Aldi picking brands and suppliers I know and trust. Kidney beans, tinned tomatoes, butter beans, chick peas, chilli flakes and herbs are all imported products, my trick here is to buy what has the least added ingredients and cooks well.

If you only want to shop in the supermarket always buy Bord Bia approved beef, pork, chicken and sliced meats for kids lunches. I’ve been on these farms, seen the processing and this is the highest level of auditing in food you’re going to find. I never eat ready meals but cook my own – cottage pies, ratatouilles, warming chillis and soups, freezing half for another day.

Preaching only to buy local and artisan goes over most consumers heads and budget. But buying less complicated foods and ingredients is one way to bypass the extremes of food manufacturing. Remember horsemeat is also present in many snack foods and crisps sold on European supermarket shelves. The more processed something this, the more surprising the ingredients are on the label. Keep things simple is the key, buy Irish and above all enjoy your food. Our food sector employs 200,000 Irish people, let’s hope it can weather this storm. 

Inhumane, poorly regulated and bad for human health. How did horsemeat end up in Irish burgers?

Irish agriculture hit the news worldwide this week with the discovery of horse DNA in supermarket burgers. The affair began on Tuesday when the Food Safety Authority here released results on tests for porcine and equine DNA in 27 Irish supermarket burgers. 13 tested positive for horse DNA.  The product with the highest level (29 per cent) of equine DNA was Tesco Everyday Value burgers. They cost 1.41 for eight burgers but have now been removed from the marketplace. 

These particular burgers contained 17 ingredients: meat content (63 per cent), onion (10 per cent),wheat flour, water, beef fat, soya protein isolate, salt, onion powder, yeast, sugar, barley malt extract, garlic powder, white pepper extract, celery extract and onion extract. One of these ingredients contained horse DNA via what is now identified as a supply chain in the Netherlands or Spain. It was most likely some kind of protein powder filler which are common in burger manufacture. This things go largely under our food radar. All week I've been writing and researching this topic with the discovery  that horse meat could in fact be endemic in the European food chain.

Not only that but horsemeat itself may not be safe to eat. Irish farmers have to jump through hoops to ensure the traceability of their cattle, but the horse trade is subject to little or no regulation and forged documents and passports are common, especially with horses coming from North America and killed in Canadian or Mexican slaughter plants. In Ireland horses are stolen and shipped live as far as Italy where they go into the European food chain, some having been treated with bute or other drugs which are banned substances. 

Ingredient suppliers who may be buying this meat are not subject to the same safeguards as farmers, especially when it comes to low-grade animal protein. That's how horse DNA ended up in Irish burgers. What else it is an ingredient of we will have to wait and see. 

Today I published an analysis of this mess in The Irish Times. You can read it at the link below. In the meantime remember buy local where you can, keep your supply chain short and keep away from processed food. My feeling is that the FSAI's tests on burger meat is only the beginning and authorities must investigate the horsemeat and ingredient trade at large to get to the bottom of what could potentially be an enormous case of food fraud. 

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2013/0119/1224329033672.html

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.

Women's Christmas, cakes and the Jeremy Kyle show

New Years Eve

I was glad to read in Psychology Today that a quarter of people fail in their new year resolutions in the first week. Phew, at least I'm not on my own.

In fact, that's a complete lie. I didn't make any.

You could say this arises from fear of failure but it's probably more a healthy case of can't be bothered. New year resolutions are great, and setting ludicrous goals even better, but for the month that's in it, January doesn't signify anything too dramatic for me other than using up half a tonne of frozen turkey, baking a Galette des Rois, and getting back on top of work deadlines..

I cheated at my Galette this year. Traditionally it's a cake for the feast of the Epiphany which is the 6th January. This date is also known as Little Christmas or Women's Christmas, which is just as well as I had two girls nights out in a row - one with old schoolfriends and the second with women from my village who have a traditional meet up in the pub for Nollaig na mBan. We had wine, laughs, gossip and in a rural area like ours a night like this forms important bonds. I am lucky enough to have wonderful neighbours on whom I can call at a moments notice for rescue and respite (and regularly do). A day before Christmas our thoroughbred broke out of his stable and ran wild down a public road chased by a motorbike. 

*Ring Ring*  

"Hey,  can I drop the kids in? Having a bit of a problem here...."

Seriously, there's never a dull moment with thoroughbreds. They are the runway models of the horse world; beautiful, possibly anorexic (ours is) and with insanely tricky personalities. I am going to end up a crying wreak on the Jeremy Kyle show with all my kids taken into care if he doesn't start behaving himself soon.

Gallette des Rois

Back to cakes. In Catholic France the gorgeous Galette des Rois almond pastry celebrated the arrival of the three wise men. This was possibly because under the Julian calendar, Christmas Day fell on that day whereas under the Gregorian Calendar, (the present day system) it's the 25th.

As we're not great Christmas cake, pudding or mince-pie eaters in this house, the Galette is a Christmas staple, and devoured long before the Epiphany. It's a simple recipe, and if you are pressed for time as I usually am, you can use pre-made puff pastry and the result will still be pretty delicious. After you roll out the pastry it literally takes about five minutes to prepare. It's simple, mouthwatering and for me, the most perfect of French pastry treats.

May you all have a happy and healthy 2013; may cooking and food provide you with pleasure, comfort and fun in these strange and often unsettling times that we are living in. Basketcase will still be here; keeping you company in your travails; supplying scandal, food news, the wild, obscure and occasionally profane.

But in the meantime have a slice of Galette, and let me know how you get on. Happy Eating.

Galette des Rois

100 grams ground almonds

100 grams caster sugar

100 grams butter

one egg, lightly beaten

400 grams home made or ready made puff pastry

three drops almond essence

Mix the butter and caster sugar into a paste then add the ground almonds and the almond essence. Bind together with the beaten egg.

Roll out the pastry into two 10 inch rounds. Spread the almond paste on the first round, spreading it out to within an inch of the edge. Place the second round of pastry on top of the first, press the edges together, and score the top in semi-circular lines. Brush with a beaten egg and bake at 180 for 25 minutes.

You better be hungry x

Want gorgeous food this Christmas? Here's my December This Edible Life column from The Gloss magazine. Foodie heaven awaits...

As the C word gets nearer by the minute I’m taking cooking inspiration from the great and the good. Over at the The Fat Duck in Berkshire, Heston Blumenthal is serving Christmas tree on the menu alongside partridge, snail porridge, gold, frankincense and myrrh. Phew, nothing to live up to there. 

I’ll be cooking for eight and have sourced my turkey from two fields away where he is currently pecking about under the trees oblivious to the Victorian delph platter that awaits. Jamie Oliver’s Dublin eatery may be so so, but his delicious Brussels sprouts recipe never fails – roasted with garlic, bacon lardons and cream. To start I’m serving Mag Kirwan’s smoked Goatsbridge Trout with wasabi and for sparkle, a scattering of her Trout Caviar. Pudding will be the traditional French Galette des Rois – more strictly for the epiphany but we love it at Christmas – puff pastry, almonds, cream and a secret hidden jewel.

There are gorgeous gifts for Foodies this year including hand made serving boards for cheese and antipasti from Terry Cullen who makes Fallon & Byrne’s beautiful examples. The effervescent Birgitta Curtin’s Burren Smokehouse offers online ordering for her award-winning smoked salmon, cheeses and chutneys.www.burrensmokehouse.ie  For decandent foodies, white truffles from Alba have outstandingly deep flavour and can be bought from www.buywhitetruffles.co.uk.

Foodie books this Christmas are all about bandwagons and jumping on them.

 50 Shades of Chicken features recipes for Dripping Thighs and Mustard Spanked Chicken.  And in case you thought vegetables weren’t sexy, its rival 50 Shades of Kale promises “Fifty new pleasing ways to partner kale, including Thai’d up Roughage”. Oh yes, yes, YES!!

If you’re on a tight budgets check out Aldi’s Christmas offerings. Their Christmas pudding just beat Fortnum and Mason’s in a taste competition and I happen to know some great Irish cheeses sold there under private label. Keep a secret? Me?

Waterfall farm shop

If you fancy a free range turkey they can be ordered at Waterfall Farm Shop outside Enniskerry. I’ll be at their Christmas Food and Crafts Fair and will try to not to leave this time with a baby goat. If we don’t stop borrowing things from the neighbours (last week it was a gigantic John Deere), we’re going to get a reputation to add to the one we already have.

The Cellar Bar in the Merrion Hotel

On my pre-Christmas eating plans are The Good Food Ireland dinner at the Shelbourne and lunch at The Cellar Bar at The Merrion Hotel for Jane Russell’s organic pork sausage and their doesn’t-

taste-skinny skinny soup. Churpy Strahan’s Lolly and Cooks makes a hip pit stop at Georges Arcade for a warming chorizo and lentil stew and if you’re rushing in Dublin’s Southside try Urban in Cabinteely for decent coffee in New York inspired surroundings.

For #dudefood a la the US I’ll be visiting just-opened Asador on Haddington Road from Eric Mooney (ex One Pico) and Shane Mitchell (Peploes). On their massive grill are meats from artisan producers and if you’re planning bodice ripping high jinx later, there’s Irish lobster, and Champagne of course.

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 

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