Wear it, walk it, taste it - your guide to the ultimate summer
The words ‘casual’ and ‘gown’ appear mutually exclusive but Lennon Courtney have managed to marry the two for a laissez-faire summer. Understated, with a fitted tee-type top and elegant full draping of the skirt, this beach gown exudes the true meaning of relaxed glamour. Perfect for al fresco festivities from coastal weddings to dinner à deux or cocktails with friends. Shoes — optional. Blue beach gown, Lennon Courtney (€270).
If the weather is as nice as last year, I am planning lots of outdoor eating this summer.
I live on the edge of Phoenix Park which has plenty of picnicking spots but I also love shaking a rug out in the garden and bringing lunch out into the open air.
My perfect picnic would be with family on a hot summer’s day and would involve lots of crunchy bread and ripe, sticky cheese and a glass of something cold.
The recipes included here are handy picnic bits and pieces to add a little something extra.
Homemade lemonade is a treat at any time but can be particularly nice on a warm summer’s day.
We serve this mint and lavender version in The Cake Café and it is always very popular, particularly when the courtyard fills with sunshine. You can add prosecco instead of the water for a grown up treat.
When I think of Ireland’s southwestern peninsulas, I think of a family.
There are the older siblings, the Iveragh and the Dingle peninsulas, well-known, heirs to the Kingdom, chock-a-block with visitors. The Beara and Mizen peninsulas are the middle children, lesser spotted, steadily forging identities for themselves.
Then there’s the quiet kid: The Sheep’s Head. It’s barely 25 miles long and 2.5 miles wide, but don’t let size fool you. It boasts one of the most spectacular walks in Europe.
The Sheep’s Head Way measures around 150km from its trailhead in Bantry, tracing a waymarked tangle of old mass, school and fishermen’s trails, doubling back at the tip of the peninsula, skirting ridges and shoreline before its endpoint in Durrus. You could happily spend several days here, breaking at B&Bs like Dromcloc House or Seamount Farm, before picking up where you left off the next morning. Or you could simply dip in and out as the mood takes you, that’s the beauty of the walk. On my last visit, I followed a coastal trail by Gortavallig, stumbling across a deserted village, a wild blowhole and the chasms of an old copper mine within the space of an hour. I didn’t meet another soul. It was just me, a gazillion shrieking gannets and the constant presence of the Atlantic Ocean. I came off the path with a tongue tasting of salt. Despite its tiny size, the Sheep’s Head offers a surprising range of scenery. The northern side of the peninsula is starker, more remote, with sheer drops into Bantry Bay. The tip hosts a lighthouse and Bernie Tobin’s chirpy little cafe — known as “the tea shop at the end of the world”. A lovely 3.5km loop here will take you just over an hour. The Dunmanus Bay side is a gentler affair, spotted with heritage sites, swimming beaches like O’Donovan’s Cove and the odd set of strong-armed road bowlers. Graham Norton has a holiday home near Ahakista, I believe. No better place.
In the middle of the peninsula, atop of the goat’s head path sits an incongruous pieta. Someone has left a few coins in the Virgin’s hand, and a nearby plaque quotes Seamus Heaney’s poem, The Peninsula: “...Water and ground in their extremity”. Not bad for a quiet kid.
Details: thesheepsheadway.ie
Wrongly believing barbecues only work with sunshine and short pants, it’s not surprising our grossly under-rehearsed barbecue culinary efforts often end so badly. One of the greatest follies is the disposable foil tray barbecue, the afterthought in the trolley on top of frozen burgers and cheap beer as we race back out to the precious sun. Most believe something so cheap and simple must be a doddle to cook with but, ironically, it’s one of the more difficult barbecues to master yet very handy if used correctly.
Don’t lay it on a flat surface — it should have airholes in the base so set it up on rocks or blocks. Ensure it’s stable and away from other flammable materials. It always bears repeating — you do all barbecue cooking over hot coals/embers, not over flame. Don’t start until the flames are out. You’ll still get one to one-and-a-half cooking hours.
Pimping your disposable barbecue boosts cooking potency. Carefully prise up the sides, remove grill, remove lighting sheet, move most coals to one end for two separate heat areas: ‘low ’n’ slow’ and ‘faster ’n’ furious’. Replace lighting sheet, grill and light. You can also leave some embers exposed for cooking directly on coals. When flames die out, test: if you can only hold palm 5 inches above heat for one second = ‘hot’; 3-4 seconds = ‘medium-hot’; longer = ‘low ’n’ slow’.
It’s a simple yoke, so cook simple, just a couple of forks for turning/lifting hot food. Nothing frozen, all good fresh Irish meat. (If in a cooler box, leave out for 20-30 mins to warm up.) Red meat, charred first then cooked low ’n’ slow; white meat, cooked low ’n’ slow, charred to finish. Avoid chicken on the bone. Stick to breasts, sliced lengthways into strips, 1cm thick, marinade for an hour, start at ‘cool’ end, finish at hot. Burgers like heat, so cook at hot end. (As colour changes from raw/pink, watch for ‘browning’ rising up the side of the burger — when it reaches the top, it’s time to flip, leave longer for well-done.) Sausages, low ’n’ slow, up to 20+ mins at the cooler end, turning regularly. (Test the centre is cooked.) Brush oil onto tin foil, stuff fresh gutted fish with lemon, herbs, wrap carefully in foil ‘envelope’, place directly on exposed embers or at the hot end of the barbecue tray (eg 10 mins aprox for mackerel). Veg kebabs at hot end.
Extras: fresh, home-washed green leaves (avoid ‘ready-to-use’ salad leaves — they’re not!). Salt, pepper, homemade mayo, tomato sauce, relish, mustard (use individually or in combinations eg mustard/mayo on chicken). Crunchy pickles. Lemons. Fresh herbs. Tin foil and cooking oil. Ditch ‘long-life’ burger buns for floury fresh baps, lightly toasted facedown.
Calvin Harris: Summer
As the title attests, the song is custom- crafted for blaring at full volume with the windows down and the air conditioning blasting. Like all the best pop anthems, there’s a whiff of ennui too, particularly in the chorus refrain: “We fell in love as the leaves turned brown.”
Zedd features Foxes: Clarity
A sun-kissed banger from 2013, this is a foot-stomper with wonderfully inane lyrics and an irresistible groove. It was no surprise it bagged a Grammy this year. For more of the same, Foxes has just released a solo album.
Daft Punk: Get Lucky
No, we’re not sick of it either. Dance gurus Daft Punk decided to capture the zeitgeist of ’70s funk pop and were so successful that their pastiche arguably eclipses the real thing. You want Nile Rodgers’ riff to last forever.
Fun: We Are Young
The most uplifting downer anthem you’ve ever clapped eardrums on, We Are Young is both a valentine to fading youth and also an invitation to revel in the moment. In that regard it speaks to the essence of summer — the sense that you should take advantage of the good times because they will not last forever.
Lana Del Rey: Summertime Sadness
Not only is it the best track on Del Rey’s debut album, Summertime Sadness is also an exquisite evocation of summer’s ethereal qualities: the way the world can seem more vivid when the sun is breaking through the clouds.
If you’re looking for something to pack in your holdall for a long flight or a beach read, The Thrill of It All (Harvill Secker, €13.99) by Joseph O’Connor will serve you well. It charts the rise of a four-member band, including twins Seán and Trez (who “could be witchy in the acuity of her insights”) around the London music scene in 1983. Their adventures, which start in suburban Luton, take in a squat in the East Village in New York (“if you could imagine Ozzy Osbourne’s mind turned into an apartment”) and Dublin for their reunion in 2012. As with all O’Connor novels, it brims with wonderful turns of phrase, humour and the kind of observations that stop you in your tracks. Mostly, though, it’s a coming-of-age story of four 19-year-olds fumbling towards adulthood and the departure of innocence, a nostalgic romp back to the early 1980s and a love song to popular music. As one of its characters says, “If you can listen to the Beatles doing ‘She Loves You’ and not be a little bit glad you’re alive, you’ve got an answering machine for a heart”.
No wine speaks of summer like a raspberry and redcurrant-scented rosé. Yes, even real men can drink rosé nowadays, just make sure it is a dry version from Provence, the Loire or perhaps Rioja.
“Blush” or “white zinfandel” is best avoided as it is just too sweet and out of balance, particularly with food.
Rosé seems to taste better when drunk outside and few wines can compete with it as a match for barbecue grilled meats and fish, not to mention spicy food.
Aldi have a fragrant and inexpensive Cotes de Provence at just €8.99 and O’Briens will be offering a “3 for 2” deal on rosé for much of the summer including the fine subtle raspberry-flavoured Mirabeau Cotes de Provence and Chateau de Sours Bordeaux. My top rosé pick is El Coto Rosado, Rioja, Spain — €14.99; stockists: O’Donovans, 1601 Kinsale, JJ O’Driscolls, Ballinlough; Cinnamon Cottage, Rochestown, independents nationwide.
Made from a blend of tempranillo and garnacha this has a distinct strawberry and cherry aroma with lovely mouth-feel and a crisp refreshing finish.
3 springs of mint leaves
1 tsp of lavender leaves
1 tbsp of white sugar
1 tbsp of brown sugar
juice of 3 lemons
Put the mint lavender and sugars into a saucepan with a large cup of water. Over a low heat melt the sugar. Mash the mint and lavender to get the flavours out. You can set this syrup aside in the fridge for a few hours to strengthen up the flavours if you have time.
Stir the syrup with the lemon juice and triple the amount of liquid with water. Taste and make sure it is sweet or bitter enough for you. Serve with a few extra mint leaves in the glass and some ice cubes if you have them to hand.
This is such a simple thing but we loved these as children. If we had been given an apple to bring to school we would have put our noses in the air, but there was such fun in opening your apple/orange once the lunch bell sounded. The flavours of both fruit blend together and the alternating colours always made eating seem more fun.
1 apple
1 orange
Slice an orange into eight segments and do the same with the apple. Alternate each slice and put it back together so it is like a chocolate orange for want of a better description. Cling film the apple/orange and make a second one with the remaining segments.
Pop in to your picnic basket until later.
8 rashers
16 soft prunes, stoned and halved
Slice each rasher into three long strips.
Wrap a piece of rasher around each piece of prune and secure it with a cocktail stick.
Place them all into an oven heated to 200 for ten minutes or until the rashers are cooked through and turning golden.
These are tasty little bites to add to a cheese board or to nibble on all by themselves.
