Vegan food from a non-vegan chefs' point of view I started my journey as a vegan chef 3 years ago. When I was offered to take over the kitchen in The Hopsack - an institution in the Irish health food scene since 1979 - my knowledge of vegan cuisine came from the Lent menus in Greece. The...
Tempering chocolate in a restaurant kitchen is often difficult because conditions are often not optimal for working with chocolate. So, what are the conditions for creating the perfect result? And what are the smart tips and tricks to successfully temper chocolate? We teamed up with Gastronomixs...
From a very young age, Niall was to be found ‘sneaking in’ to the kitchens and was kept busy peeling prawns under the watchful and encouraging eye of the chefs in his father’s restaurant. He trained as a chef while still in school and at age 15 went off to France to work in a professional...
Noel Keane of Croí Restaurant in Tralee embarked on his ‘grow your own’ journey in 2018. Two years later his garden supplies most the salads and herbs for his restaurant as well as a large variety of vegetables and berries. In this blog, Noel talks about some of the ups and downs of growing...
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Is there such a thing as a free lunch? They say “ There is no such thing as a free lunch ” – that may hold true until you discover foraging! Little did I know when my father took me picking wild mushroom at the age of 6 that I would end up on the island of Ireland, picking much more than...
I have always focused on creating locally sourced, seasonal and sustainable menus, with a close to zero food waste approach. Recently, I have focused even more on sustainability. This was inspired by last year’s the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health, where more than 30...
In this blog post Head Chef at the Brehon Hotel, Killarney and founder of the ChefCollab, Chad Byrne tells us about his journey so far and how he's finding the Veganuary challenge. I’m halfway through this experience and I can honestly say that I have never felt better. I’m not sure...
LOCAL AND SEASONAL??? Every restaurant in Ireland seems to be shouting about the above 3 words, but what does it all mean? I have eaten out of season Grouse in Dublin, Mackerel in Clare, and Strawberries everywhere! I have seen restaurants with ‘local’ written on the window serving prawns...
People always try to make the most of what they buy so food shouldn’t be any different, especially ingredients coming into your kitchen every day. Making use of the entire product is not as difficult as it may seem; us, chefs, do it on a daily basis to a certain extent, it is in our...
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THE TRIALS, TRIBULATIONS, AND TRIUMPHS OF SUSTAINABLE SOURCING I started cooking in Germany when I was 17. The way Germany approaches the economics of kitchen waste and recycling was way ahead of any other country. Every bit of waste was recycled or sorted in some way. A sustainable...