In Praise of an Irish Breakfast

It’s St Patrick’s Day and when I think of Ireland and her culinary traditions I don’t think of Irish stew. I remember wonderful family meals at my Grandmother’s house in County Down, of course. Always fresh meat and veg and spuds dug from the garden. All traditional fare, of course.

But it’s the breakfasts that I remember most clearly: you just can’t beat a good Irish fry-up. A delicious fresh egg is a must. With lovely bacon and some small pork sausages are essential. We had grilled tomatoes often but very rarely beans.

But you also need potato bread. That’s fried in the pan too and you put your egg on it and have it with the egg yolk dripping over it. Soda farls. White fluffy soda bread is a must too. Again, you can fry that in the pan too or just toast it. It’s yummy and filling. And if it’s toasted you can have that with jam at the end with proper Irish butter.

And then there’ your brown wheaten bread. Toasted or plain. With butter again. It’s delicious and thanks to dear Paul Rankin and Irwin’s bakery we can get potato bread, soda farls and wheaten bread in England here too.

Join the MyDish Easter Egg Hunt

Hop around the MyDish web site in the run up to Easter and you may just make springtime a little sweeter!

Join in the fun by hunting the site to find a total of 7 chocolate eggs by clicking on the egg when you find it. Fill your basket with all 7 eggs for your chance to win 1 of 5 prizes of personalised Thorntons Easter eggs for the whole family.  The luxury chocolate eggs from Thorntons will be personalised with your name or message in icing.

In addition to the luxury personalised Thorntons eggs on offer, every person that successfully finds all 7 eggs will receive a 10% discount off any Thorntons products bought through their site www.thorntons.co.uk.

MyDish Easter Egg Hunt closes on Tuesday 7th April.

Wendy Richard’s Chilli con Carne

Wendy Richard was one of those stars of TV who inspired nothing but affection. Whether as the dollybird Miss Brahms in Are you being served? To the sometimes forbidding matriarch Pauline Fowler in Eastenders, she one of those people that everyone liked, probably because she seemed so down to earth.

At her funeral this week, at her request, she included something unusual in the order of service:  a recipe. ‘Wendy’s Chilli Con Carne’ gets a whole page in the booklet. You can imagine people round at Wendy’s house, tucking in to huge portions (for this is not a recipe for dieters), having a drink and a laughing a lot. That’s presumably why she included it: it was famous among her friends.

It’s a bit of an eccentric recipe, obviously honed and tweaked over the years. There’s  tarragon vinegar and chocolate too. It’s not a very hot chilli. I can imagine chilli purists (mostly boys) not being very impressed. But that’s hardly the point. Food has the power to evoke such memories. It can immediately transport you back to a particular time or place. And that is why, I suppose, Wendy Richard shared this recipe with her friends at her funeral. They will make it and think of her. Which is rather touching.

Whatever happened to Keith Floyd?

Keith Floyd has his own inimitable style when it comes to communicating how to cook. Pour yourself a little drinkie, up here Clive, and enjoy this classic bit of Italian cookery.

This is why you are fat

Make sure that you’ve had your breakfast/lunch/dinner, before you take a look at this disgusting site: This is why you’re fat!

It’s a vile collection of grotesque deep fat fried dishes, disgusting menus and calorific calamities. Not for the faint-hearted.

Grab a £5 Marks and Spencers Voucher with MyDish

It’s dead easy to get your hands on a lovely £5 voucher you can spend at Marks and Sparks with MyDish.co.uk. Just invite two friends, family members or colleagues to join up and when they do we’ll despatch a shiny voucher for you to spend on what you like. It could be the easiest fiver you have ever earned. Find out more here.