Menu: Learn traditional fish techniques in masterclasses at The Keep in West Cork
It's Fishing, Kasundi Natural On Coffee Menu The Chutney And Sustainable All
‘Artisan’ is a word The Menu rarely uses anymore if at all, so cheapened and worthless has it become, too often mangled by the food industry marketing machine and employed for all manner of second-rate culinary chicanery, artless afterthoughts on the labels of cheap industrially produced foodstuffs. But once it stood for something, describing a skilled craft worker, creating with hands. Sally Barnes is certainly that — but she is so much more again.
One of The Menu’s most favourite people, as a fine a comrade at the coalface of conviviality as she is a gifted alchemist when working with wild smoked fish, she has spent 40 years feeding, first family, then friends and eventually fans all around Ireland and the world of truly superb food, all the while amassing a profound knowledge of her craft and its place in the natural world.
In addition, she has become an inspirational figurehead of Slow Fish, the water-borne wing of the Slow Food movement, championing a genuinely sustainable form of fishing in the face of the environmental havoc being wreaked on our oceans by industrial fishing.
CLIMATE & SUSTAINABILITY HUB
We are lucky to have her and luckier again will be any who manage to procure a precious place in one of her masterclasses, covering traditional techniques (salt preservation; hardwood smoking) and the importance of working with nature; understanding stocks, wild fish and their vital place in the food chain.
Classes are conducted in The Keep, a specially constructed and Covid Safety Charter certified new addition to the Woodcock Smokery, between Skibb and Castletownshend, a quite gorgeous wooden structure with glorious views over West Cork and as far as Kerry. Courses offered: Full day (filleting, cold and hot smoking, lunch included, €240); Half day Course (In depth hot-smoking session, lunch included, €165); Coastal Harvest (Immersive foraging day, cooking demo for lunch, €150).
The Keep is also open (Wed, Thurs, 5p-7pm) for aperitivos and tastings, and is most definitely one of The Menu’s top choices for a little al fresco dining this summer, and is also available for private group bookings.
One of The Menu’s favourite Irish coffee roasters and retailers, Cloud Picker Coffee, is releasing a limited edition of an exceptionally unique roast with all proceeds going to the UNICEF Yemen Project. This will be the first Irish tasting of the quite extraordinary Yemenia. This is Yemen’s recently discovered Arabica varietal, previously unmapped in the coffee world, even though 98% of the world’s Arabica cultivated varietals can be traced back to Yemen, part of a caffeinated heritage that is centuries old. The country is seen as the birthplace of what we now recognise to be coffee as a beverage, though that pronounced place in the history of The Menu’s most Hallowed Bean has been declining since the 19th century, to where it is now responsible for just 0.1% of global production. Now Yemen is one of the world’s most benighted countries, and Cloud Picker hopes to raise funds and awareness to support efforts to end the civil war, provide aid to Yemeni children and enable the revival of local and sustainable coffee cultivation.
For those fans of a drop of the craythur, Teeling Whiskey host an online Single Pot Still Tasting Wonders of Wood (May 20, 7pm) event, with Master Distiller Alex Chasko, sampling the fruits of five unique maturation projects from their range of single pot still whiskeys. WoW TastingPacks: 5 x 30ml Teeling Whiskey Samples, customised tasting mat, Teeling Nosing Glass.
teelingwhiskey.digitickets.ie
The Sligo Food Trail hosts Rivoting, Pivoting and Canny Cooking (May 18, 10.30am) with immensely popular chef Gaz Smith.
Chef-proprietor of Michael’s and Little Mike’s, in Mount Merrion, in Dublin, Smith is one who led from the front as culinary innovator in the face of lockdown and will offer his honest and frank assessment of all that has transpired and his response in adversity, including the addition of a retail arm to his business and a range of branded sauces. Tickets free; registration essential.
sligofoodtrail.ie
The Menu is currently struggling to name a better producer of Irish-made condiments than Graham’s Mustard Co. Their range of mustards is quite superb. Their horseradish is as close as The Menu has ever tasted to his preferred homemade version; Dijon and wholegrain are superb iterations of classic recipes; while a steak sauce with a pronounced emphasis on tarragon is splendid with grilled meats but equally efficacious as a last-minute in the pan addition to a creamy fish sauce.
But it is the bright clarity and sublime balance of the flavour profile of Kasundi chutney that makes it such an especial pleasure: sugars of apple, tomato and sugar arrested on the point of saccharin by a crystalline cider vinegar acidity and reserved salinity — the perfect bedrock for a muscular and lively chilli-forward spicing, ensuring it is a superb grace note for all manner of foodstuffs.
Though a last-minute spoonful stirred into a curry offers elevating fruity tang, its uses are myriad. Gorgeous with cheese toasties, particularly some of the aristocrats of the Irish farmhouse canon, Milleens or Crozier Blue, or more recent arrivals such as Kerry Blue or Hegarty’s Cheddar. Blended with creamy natural yoghurt, it served as a perfect dressing for a salad of cold roast lamb and green leaves and is quite delicious when smeared as a glaze on white fish headed for the charcoal grill.