The Baker, The Forager and the Distiller. Sunday 25th October, Butler House

The last of the 3 also leaves us slightly skewed 5:4 female to male across the evenings.

This one is the 2nd that is led by a baker (my Real Bread Ireland activities influencing me a wee bit 🙂 and her breads form the core of the product collaborations and tastings for this evening. Tickets from this link.

Sarah Richards, Seagull Bakery, Tramore

Sarah has possibly the smallest commercial bakery in Ireland (matching Highbank’s claim to have the smallest legal distillery) and in that tiny space she is constantly creating new varieties of loaves. She also has a passion for exploring older varieties of grains for her baking.

I met Sarah at the Real Bread Ireland launch in Jan 2014 and we have been in regular contact since because of that network.

Tom Jones, Sea of Vitality

Tom has a passion for seaweed and really enjoys experimenting with how it can be re-introduced into every day cooking in Ireland. His is a recent business, set up with Ria his wife, and he is still in the mode of constantly exploring and discovery.

While the wild sea vegetables around their native coastline in Dungarvan are bountiful he also spends time on the Atlantic coast in the West so that he can source the best our oceans have to offer us.

We met at a Taste Ireland event in Wicklow and I had the pleasure of watching him for an hour during the West Waterford Festival of Food earlier this year where he gave a talk in Nude Food. Thats the middle photo below.

Nichola Beresford, Muldoon Whiskey

Nicola I have never met before and her product (a whiskey liquor) is the only one of the vegan ones across the series that I have never tasted. And as with her fellow producers in this evenings session Muldoon is only in production a couple of years.

Based on an old recipe unearthed in 2005 this liquor carries hints of toffee and hazelnuts and its going to be really interesting to see how it is used here!

Thats it. Details and tickets from this link.

Keith

Esther Barron, Barron’s Bakery

What a pleasure to meet with Esther and Joe Barron during the recent Waterford Festival of Food – site here. I went out on the Saturday for one of their bus tours. Mine was the Staples one and it involved a visit to Crinnaghton Juices (video in an upcoming post) and then Barron’s bakery.

4th generation, oldest working bread oven in Ireland, a just published book on their 125 year history. You just have to love it.

During the tour I shot this video clip (slightly longer than usual at just under 4 minutes) where Esther and Joe show us the equipment and process which their bread goes through.

Every town in Ireland should have one, two, three local bakeries and every home in Ireland should support them.

Keith

Waterford Harvest Festival – Ireland (4)

Flahavans Oats


This is one of the bigger businesses to be featured here – and also one of the oldest. The 6th generation of the Flahavan family run this business and they produce a range of products derived from Irish Oats.

Sowan’s Organic


From this 1st generation business come a range of organic bread, gluten free bread and then cake mixes. I have tried the bread mixes and made a tasty loaf!

keith

Earlier posts in this series:

http://biabeag.posterous.com/waterford-harvest-festival-ireland-3

 http://biabeag.posterous.com/waterford-harvest-festival-ireland-2 

http://biabeag.posterous.com/waterford-harvest-festival-ireland

 

 

Waterford Harvest Festival – Ireland

I spent a couple of hours with my family at the Amazing Grazing event today – part of a 9 day food festival held in the city of Waterford.

While time was spent eating and sampling I also chatted to a number of the food entrepreneurs who were there – some known to me and some new. I will feature them in a number of posts over the next week or so in the order I found them on the day!

The post started with a general shot of the crowd and day – they estimated that up to 40,000 people would turn up to visit over 100 food stands.

Paddy’s O’Granola


Patrick O’Connell does one product and does it well – a crunchy breakfast cereal which was kick started while he was still a student. The kids loved the taste of it. Read more on the Good Food Ireland site about him.

Knockdrinna Farmhouse Cheese


Helen Finnegan started this cheese business in 2004 and has grown it by a combination of internal product development and also taking over the production of another local cheese product in 2008. Read more on her site here.

keith