Spilling the tea with Maître D’

Long table dinners, farm to fork collabs, free chef demos and talks: I love a good food festival and have even been known to drive halfway across the country to attend one. That said, the little people in my life are not big fans. Apparently, I do too much talking and there’s not enough of the food that they like.

Fortunately, with this year’s Cork on a Fork Fest taking place from 13-17 August, we might be able to win on both those fronts: there are lots of kid-friendly activities happening alongside all the things I want to do.

My pair have already picked the pizza making party (tickets are €15, which includes a pizza) at the Marina Market where Oak Fire Pizza chefs will show them how to stretch the dough and add toppings (no pineapple please!). At the end, the pizzas will be cooked in Oak Fire ovens so that we can all taste their creations. I’ll bet that at least one child puts pineapple on a pizza, just to annoy me.

There’s also a children’s food trail, taking kids (with their adults, if they’re under 14) around Cork city centre to try bite-sized tastes of local food (€18 per ticket). The Cool Food School’s Deirdre Doyle is on site at St Peter’s Cork with her interactive cooking classes and you can learn all about bread, beef and butter at a free Butter Museum demonstration.

Check out corkonaforkfest.ie for a full list of events and booking information.

I can never resist a roadside strawberry stop, pulling in off the road to grab some punnets of fragrant Wexford berries with, perhaps, a side order of spuds. At least the spuds make it home for dinner; the berries barely last to the next town.

With our nationwide grá for this seasonal fruit, I was intrigued when I first heard about Marks & Spencer’s viral strawberry sandwich, inspired by a popular Japanese-style treat known as a fruit sando. With red fruit, cream cheese and sweet bread sliced at a careful angle, this is a sarnie styled for social media – although it is €3.50 for just one piece.

But here’s a thought: why fork out for an imported strawberry product when you can make your own at home? If you can’t get your hands on the original Japanese milk bread (shokupan), slice up a soft brioche. Whip some Irish cream cheese (Killowen do a good one) with a splash of cream, a little sugar and vanilla for the filling and layer with some luscious seasonal Irish strawberries for your own Insta-worthy dessert sando.

If you have a family holiday coming up, you don’t want to a) eat out all the time or b) spend the entire time in the self-catering kitchen. We used an early summer break as an opportunity to road test meal-kit company gousto.ie and found it was a great way to get the whole crew involved.

We ordered in advance – the smallies choosing crowd-pleasers like ginger chicken noodle stir fry and orzo with roasted peppers and prawns – and we used our holiday home address for delivery. Right on cue, the red box arrived, with everything pre-portioned and ready to cook.

There was fierce enthusiasm from the kids who decided to take over cooking, following the recipe card instructions and – blue moon alert! – they produced dinner with minimal kitchen carnage. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It turns out they’re far more adventurous when they’ve helped make the meal and a beef and mushroom pie was an unexpected triumph.

We’re glad to see Gousto using Irish-sourced meat and produce, spotting Glenilen Farm, Andarl Farm and O’Hanlon Herbs on the suppliers list.

There’s nothing I like more than discovering a new black pudding on a breakfast menu and a visit to the Lodge at Ashford Castle gave me the opportunity to taste puddings from Co Mayo butcher Kelly’s of Newport.

Meaty, but not over-spiced, it went well with the Kelly’s rashers, sausages and Claremorris eggs in the Lodge’s superb Full Irish. It was no surprise to learn that Kelly’s Butchers were flying high at the recent IFFA (International Trade Fair for the Meat and Protein Industry) in Frankfurt, bringing home five gold medals, two silver and one bronze.

This family-run butchers, who source meat from local farmers and their own herd, won gold for that black pudding, along with their smoked white pudding, white pudding with cranberry and white pudding with seaweed, while the plain white pudding took silver and their vegetarian pudding won bronze.

The one and only Seán Kelly gave full credit to his Newport team, adding – with tongue firmly in cheek – that the wins prove “secret family recipes going back generations can bring home the bacon!”

Summer might mean holidays for most of us, but for Ireland’s small-scale vegetable farmers it’s peak production time – just as the veggie box customers pause their deliveries and head for the sun. This is an ongoing dilemma for growers who are left with gluts of gorgeous produce and a shrinking market.

Green Earth Organics, the Corrandulla, Co Galway-based organic vegetable growers which also offers a nationwide organic grocery delivery service, has come up with a thoughtful solution: they will “boost your box” by adding extra seasonal veg into deliveries this summer, free of charge. Sometimes, it can be difficult to source fresh organic fruit, vegetables and other kitchen cupboard items, so Maître D’ is already a fan of their doorstep deliveries. My favourite pick is the 100% Irish Farm Box (€32.49 + delivery).

Got your ear to the ground on food news? Email the goss to maitred@farmersjournal.ie