Food File - the weekly food news round-up

Fat Duck buys Irish
There is a fridge at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck restaurant in Berkshire filled only with butter – Irish butter made in Dromara, Co Down by Will and Allison Abernethy. The Abernethys have been making butter since 2005, and Allison recently resigned from nursing, after 32 years, to work fulltime on the couple's butter and fudge making business. There's no doubt their butter is superb – it's made with cream from nearby Draynes Farms, where the Holstein/Friesian herd graze on the lush Lagan Valley – but how did it end up in the hands of Heston Blumenthal? "Fat Duck chef James Petrie found me on Twitter. They were looking for a new producer of butter, contacted me and I sent samples over. Now they get a weekly order," Allison explains. The couple make 300 hand rolled pats of putter every day, using only cream and salt. You can buy Abernethy butter in Donnybrook Fair outlets, in Diva bakery in Cork, and in multiple outlets in Northern Ireland.

Food book of the week
The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook - Recipes from a New York Kitchen, published by Square Peg, £20
New Yorker Deb Perelman has received more than 150,000 online comments on her recipe blog, SmittenKitchen.com, in the six years she has been writing it, and says she has "responded to every question I could possibly answer that has come up". She's well placed, in that case, to understand how other people cook, and that shines through in her first cookbook, shot in her tiny New York City kitchen. There's something reassuring in knowing that Perelman has cooked every single dish in the book, and not only that, she has talked her legions of readers through recreating them, too. It's now out in European edition.

Support for Sam
His RTÉ TV show has just finished, but you can still see Neven Maguire in action at a charity cookery demo in the Ballsbridge Hotel, Dublin 2 on Wednesday, May 15th at 7pm. Tickets, €25, include a drinks reception and recipe booklet and can be booked by telephoning 01-2944799. It is in aid of the Sam McMahon Trust.

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Isabelle Sheridan (right) and Rachel O’Donnell launching Cork’s French Food and Wine Festival

The buzz: Food tweets
@CriticalCouple: Can Roca brothers toast of tonight's town, but two brothers in UK, @jonraysanchez and @Petercasamia we predict will be tomorrow's big news
@DaylesfordFarm: A good day for bees today: Three particularly nasty pesticides have been restricted by the EU. Well done to all those fighting for the bees
@cookingthebooks: The problem with drinking cocktails at home is there's no £12 cost slowing your drinking down #5minmanhattan

France by the Lee
Isabelle Sheridan, who owns Cork-based food company On The Pig's Back, brings a taste of her home country to St Patrick's Woollen Mills in Douglas next week, when the French Food and Wine Festival runs from Thursday to Saturday. The Gallic-flavoured event features a traditional French seven-course banquet, a night food market, pétanque tournament, and French food cookery demos. The programme is at frenchfoodfestival.com