I work mostly from home but I have been working quite a bit in the city lately. Living in the sticks and having no car means I have to contend with an epic journey home.
After enduring the longest Dublin bus journey in history (even longer than the 17 bus route), I then have a thirty [...]

Sometimes the simplest of dishes can be the trickiest. I have always found homemade garlic bread a difficult one to get right. It always tastes nice but not perfect.
It either has too much garlic or too little, drenched in butter or lacking and dry or just too herby. The margin for error is surprisingly big [...]

I know there are bigger things to be angry about in the world but it really annoys me when recipe books assume you have an ice cream maker.
You come across a tantalising ice cream recipe and excitedly race through the instructions to disappointingly come across “now place the mixture in your ice cream maker and [...]

Selecting the right vehicle for a dish is very important and can have a huge impact on flavour. When it comes to brown rice, it simply tastes better than white and with the exception of certain curries, goes better with most dishes. However, the merits of brown and white pasta are not as clear cut.
What [...]

Asian food absolutely rocks but I always feel that shop bought noodles let a good stir-fry down. However, I have recently discovered wholegrain noodles which are a complete revelation.
As a general rule I try and eat as much wholefoods as possible; I’ve eaten brown rice for years and changed over to wholegrain pasta a few [...]

I love Indian food and feast on it at least once a week but I just haven’t got the cooking down yet. I am comparing myself to my husband who makes the most amazing curries. This is one recipe that I will be taking on.
I have observed that the secret to a great curry is [...]

Well the first of my crops are ready to pick. Unsurprisingly, the peas are the first to make an appearance followed by the lettuce. Peas are plucky little fellas that will keep giving and giving and are unbelievably hardy.
I cultivated them from seed in April and planted them outside in May. I also kept a [...]

I experienced an extremely pleasant picnic recently. This wasn’t a ‘hang’ sandwich affair but a proper picnic on a river bank with lots of lovely food and company. It got me thinking about interesting picnic ideas and the best way to serve them up.
A good picnic should be on the fancy side and include a variety of [...]

I like to call this dish Peruvian Paella. It is a cross between a paella and a risotto in the way that it is made and presented but has the flavours of Peru.
The mix of flavours gives the dish a very distinctive taste and the spiced yoghurt dip is a nice addition, giving the dish [...]

A few years back I was at an endangered species bbq. Okay, we didn’t actually whack a whole load of endangered critters on the grill but cooked up some unusual meats. We got them from Downey’s butchers in Terenure which offer up a large selection of gourmet game. We weren’t just trying to be mean [...]