Compiled by MARIE-CLAIRE DIGBY
Kanchi dine in the park
Kanchi Dine in the Dark looks like being one of the hot tickets at next month's Taste of Dublin (June 14th-17th). The disability organisation has signed up 10 leading Irish chefs, including Ross Lewis, Kevin Thornton and Ed Cooney, to create tasting plates which will be served to festivalgoers in a blacked-out dining area by wait staff who are legally blind. Each sitting will last for 30 minutes, places will be allocated on a first come first in basis, and the price is eight Florins (€8) for the tasting plate, a glass of wine, and a chat with the chef on duty.
Blooming good food in the Park
It takes a lot to upstage a summer garden in full bloom, but the Bord Bia Food Village at the Bloom event in the Phoenix Park next weekend is just as much a draw as the show gardens and floral marquee. There are more than 100 Irish food and drink producers signed up to showcase their wares at the five-day festival (May 31st-June 4th). The Food Village will also stage cookery demonstrations in the Bosch Summer Kitchen, with chefs and cooks including Neven Maguire, Jenny Bristow, Catherine Fulvio, Donal Skehan and Rozanne Stevens working with Bord Bia Quality Assured ingredients, and broadcaster Ella McSweeney interviewing artisan food producers. See bloominthepark.com for more information and a timetable for the demonstrations.
Bargain beef steak out
It's time to ditch the frozen peas and use up all those unidentifiable packages in the deepest recesses of your freezer to make room for some cut-price steaks for summer barbecues. There is up to 33 per cent off steaks from grass-fed Irish cattle at Superquinn branches from next Wednesday until June 19th. It's the perfect time to make room in your wine rack too, because a diverse range of bottles selected to accompany the beef (see John Wilson, page 22) will also be on special offer. The retailer will be introducing some limited edition steak cuts for the duration of the sale, including a 30-ounce bone-in rib steak called the cowboy cut. T-bone, New York striploin, sirloin, rib-eye and fillet will also be available. Masterclasses in now to cook the various cuts, and what wines to try with them, will be staged at the Sutton, Limerick and Lucan branches next Wednesday (6-8pm) and in Swords, Rathgar, Blackrock and Waterford on Thursday (6-8pm).
The Perfectly Tossed Salad, by Mindy Fox (Kyle Books, £15.99) Don’t be put off by the rather smug title of this book by US writer Mindy Fox. Now that alfresco dining and catering for outdoor parties seems a possibility, you’ll find lots of really great ideas here for inventive salads, many of them substantial enough to be a meal in themselves. Oriental and Middle Eastern influences spice up many of the compositions, and unusual grains are used to add texture and depth.
