Irish Grapes

Irish Grapes are now in season and given the good July we had this year, our grapes have done particularly well.

Black Hamburg Grapes grown in Kilkenny for sale in Glasrai & Goodies in Gowran

It makes one wonder why, with all the talk about eating local and seasonal, we do not see more Irish Grapes for sale in Irish Greengrocers. They are reliable and easy to grow. These ones pictured above are Black Hamburg grapes, a desert grape full of complex flavours, tasting quite different to the supermarket pipless ones. They were photographed in the shop only an hour after picking. Wonderfully fresh and looking like grapes should look.

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A Feast of Field Mushrooms

Should one pay attention to the dreaded health and safety experts who give us dire warnings against eating wild mushrooms? Why, instead do they not encourage us to educate ourselves, so that we can identify them properly?

In France, where things are better organised and have more respect for their native foods, you just bring your freshly picked mushrooms into your local pharmacist (they are trained to identify them for you) and then head to the kitchen. They respect their edible fungi and have a useful code of practice, asking foragers to carry their picked mushrooms in a basket to allow the spores to spread and to cut them with a knife to protect the underground mycelia.

This year from August through to October, we have been feasting on wild field mushrooms in County Kilkenny, it has been the best mushroom harvest for several years. Rumours abound of neighbours competing with each other to be the first to gather the overnight arrivals, each having their own favourite secret spot. There were reports of fields, not too far away, being white with mushrooms at dawn. 

Not long ago, children earned pocket money by picking mushrooms, threading them on long stands of grass and selling them by the roadside. Now, we have to pick our own.

Freshly picked Kilkenny mushrooms being prepared for mushroom ketchup.

A couple of buckets (next time we will use baskets) were filled with wonderful fresh mushrooms, with their magic earthy smell. On our arrival back home, the first move was to immediately cook some for breakfast, using good quality country butter, frying a few free range bacon rashers and adding the mushrooms for the best imaginable breakfast.

The surplus mushrooms were made into a delicious soup and the remainder into mushroom ketchup, using an old fashioned recipe that called for copious quantities of brandy.

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Do you know your Cucumbers?

Why do shoppers prefer to buy their cucumbers, well aged, wrapped in tight plastic, imported from abroad when freshly picked, Kilkenny grown cucumbers are available? If a cucumber is bought on the day it is picked and eaten soon afterwards, the flavour is incomparable.

Four different types of freshly picked cucumber available from Glasrai, Gowran, Co. Kilkenny

Each variety of cucumber has a slightly different flavour, so it is worth trying them all. The small smooth green Lebanese ones are our favourite. The prickly ones at the bottom are gerkins, which are delicious when pickled.

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Red Currant & Lavender Jelly for the Easter Lamb

At Nashtown Castle our preserves, jellies and pickles are made seasonally with local seasonal produce where possible. They are home grown and home made. Here is our list of the preserves that are currently available.

Nashtown Castle Red Currant & Lavender Jelly for Easter

• Apple Jelly - made with apples from an old traditional Kilkenny orchard
• Apple & Lavender Jelly - made with our homegrown lavender
• Bitter Orange Marmalade - this is our only preserve that has no locally grown ingredients
• Cucumber Pickle - made with three varieties of cucumber, grown in our garden
• Gooseberry & Apple Jelly - has a subtle gooseberry flavour
• Pickled Red Cabbage - robust old fashioned pickle, made with our own red cabbage
• Pumpkin, Ginger & Orange Marmalade - more like a relish, delicious with cold meat
• Spicy Pumpkin Chutney - perfect with cold beef and a baked potato
• Red Currant and Lavender Jelly - to be eaten with the Easter roast lamb. Fresh mint will be difficult to find as Easter is so early this year, so here is a great alternative

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A Bucket of Blood

A friend arrived with a bucket of fresh organic pig's blood a couple of days ago, this was the opportunity that we have been waiting for. Fed up with eating black puddings, posing as being made from traditional recipes, but actually made from dried imported blood, here was our chance to make our own genuine organic pudding.

Fresh organic pig's blood

The first problem was to locate a traditional Irish recipe, there were plenty telling us how to use them in cooking, but few were found on how to actually make them and those ones had quantities of white breadcrumbs in them, that we wished to avoid. Not having used fresh blood before, the safest course of action was to use a sensible French recipe. So, we began with Jennifer McLagan's Boudin Noir. This proved to be a success and good starting point.

Black pudding made with fresh organic pig's blood, ready for the oven.

The next morning, feeling a lot braver and considerably more foolhardy, it was time to go it alone and create our own recipe to try and achieve the traditional style of Irish black pudding, that we were aiming for.
It turned out to be as simple as rendering down some organic pork back fat, cooking onions in the fat, adding cooked pearl barley, oat flakes, spices and last of all: the blood. Then baking it all in a bath of water, in the oven.

Traditional homemade black pudding ready to cook for breakfast

What a delicious breakfast - two different types of homemade, locally sourced, blood pudding, fried slowly with a nob of country butter. The first one was very rich and light in texture and the second was exactly as we had hoped: moist with a rich traditional flavour.

Homemade black pudding almost ready for the breakfast table

From now on, we will find it difficult to buy blood puddings, as we know that we can make vastly superior ones, in full awareness of the origin of all the main ingredients.

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