Megabytes by John & Sally McKenna April 2001
Take a 
Break!
For those of you reading this in the office Be Warned! Our Menu of the Month contains a snippet of Latin rhythmn in the form of The Blazers' El Ano Viejo brought to us by those culinary divas and kitchen spice girls Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken. Don't play it unless you want everyone else in the office on their feet dancing. But if you can, then read the menu, listen to the sounds, and order a cult book that no one else on your block will own.
Otherwise this month, we have features on dining out in Paris, animal rights, cool cookery demos in South West Ireland, and a great recipe for polenta. Look out for our special competition prize: the most useful piece of kitchen equipment we've come across all year. The winner of last month's competition was Paula McGrath from Clontarf. Yes, the four Bridgestone titles in print are the Bridgestone 100 Best Restaurants in Ireland 2001, the Bridgestone 100 Best Places to Stay in Ireland 2001, the Bridgestone Irish Food Guide, and the Bridgestone Dublin Food Guide. Many thanks to all of those who entered.
Meanwhile, please check out our new web site www.bridgestoneguides.com We have added a number of new features including links to other food sites in Ireland, weekly recipes, reviews and we now have a readers' forum. Please feel free to contribute to this. Do you have a recipe you want to share, a gripe you want to air? Do you have a food you want to find, a service you need? Any comments will be welcomed and enjoyed.
A Harvest for the World
Ever had that situation where you see a book in a friend's house that looks
interesting, flick through it and decide that you would like it for your cookery
library, but when you go looking you are told by the bookshops that it's an
'American-edition-only/out-of-print/can't-be-traced' title. Great cookery books
can all too often disappear too quickly, and different markets often don't recognise
great original cooks: Alice Waters' brilliant books rarely get a publisher on
this side of the pond, for example. Read on.
Menu of the Month
Dinner menu from Ciudad - to spicy latino sounds. Read on.
Recipe of the Month
Fried polenta with blue cheese and broccoli
Some chefs weave their magic by taking simple things, and then making all sorts of marvellous associations and pairings with them, improvisations that startle and surprise and delight you. Here is one of those startling, surprising delights, courtesy of Mercy Fenton, chef at Cork's sublime Jacob's on the Mall restaurant. Find out more.
Paris in the Winter
Susan Holland and Ian Parr have made Baltimore's Customs House restaurant into one of the glories of Irish eating over the last few years, their ruthlessly imagined and executed fish cookery having no peer in the country..And one of the thrills when they open each season (and they will reopen again on Friday 6th April) is to see what new ideas have been picked up on their winter travels, when the restaurant is closed. Find out more.
Gastronomica
When you first take a peek at the cover, you think to yourself; this doesn't look like a scholarly journal, Gastronomica boasts a shot from Louis Bunuel's L'Age d'Or, of an eyes-shut maven sucking on a trio of fingers. Cor! Find out more.
You shall have a fishy!
It seemed like a pretty good idea, and it was. Ask a whole tribe of restaurateurs to invent a fish dish that would pair beautifully with Moreau Chablis, one of the brands distributed by Grants of Ireland, then get a bunch of judges to select a short list of the most exciting dishes, then send them off around the country to eat them, then sit them down to argue about who the six winners were to be. Find out more.
Singer, but no songwriter
You may not have ever heard of Peter Singer, but he has, unbeknownst to you, had a pretty significant impact on your life. Peter Singer is the father of the philosophical concept of animal rights. Find out more
In Season St Tola Goats Cheese
The best farmers and artisans implicitly understand and appreciate animal and environmental welfare; they wear it as immediately and as naturally in their work as they wear their wellies. Siobhán and John McDonnell, for example, who have taken over the making of the superlative St. Tola Goats Cheese, in Inagh, County Clare, wrote to us recently. 'We are up and running again for the season, but it is hard to predict what will happen with the foot & mouth scare', they write. Read on.
The Competition!
We have a Rosle mill as the prize in this month's competition, thanks to Seamus McCarthy Kitchenware, of Nenagh, Co Tipperary, who are the Irish distributors for Rosle. Read on..
Noticeboard - Cutting Edge Classes
However often we may argue about just exactly who are the most cutting-edge cooks in Ireland, the name of William O'Callaghan of Longueville House, near Mallow in County Cork, will always be amongst the front runners. Find out more.
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Til next month's Megabytes!
