FOOD FILE:This tempting Peartini cocktail (€13.90), created by Karl Byrne, manager of the Mint Bar at the Westin hotel in Dublin, has just gone on his summer drinks menu, but it's quite easy to reproduce at home - provided you can track down some pear vodka.
The ingredients are:
1oz Grey Goose La Poire vodka
1/2 oz Disaronno Amaretto
1/4 oz sugar syrup
1/2 oz lemon juice
Per slice to garnish
Combine the vodka, Amaretto, sugar syrup and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously and strain into a chilled martini glass.
Now here's the tricky bit: slice a section of pear into a fan shape and arrange artfully on the edge of the glass.
F is for healthy recipes
There is another series of The F Word on TV, so of course Gordon Ramsay has another book to flog, but this one - Healthy Appetite - is a bit different. As the title suggests, it's all about getting maximum flavour from healthy ingredients.
Although Ramsay features on the cover, and in many of the beautiful colour illustrations by Lisa Barber, the credits read "food by Mark Sargeant" and "text by Emily Quah", so it's hard to decipher what exactly the ever-expanding Ramsay's input was, apart from the modelling. Maybe they are his recipes, maybe they are Sargeant's, but no matter, they are fresh and appealing - and it's a bonus that they're good for you.
Roast lamb with paprika and oranges, and glazed salmon with spinach and radish salad jumped out from the colourful pages, but there was no sign of the sinful individual pear tarte tatins that redeemed the performance of a recent F Word kitchen brigade led by singer Neneh Cherry.
Healthy Appetite is published by Quadrille (£20)
Covetable cuppas
This stylish three-piece tea set, called the Dove Collection, won an international design award for Newbridge Silverware, and it's available from Newbridge stockists nationwide at a reasonable €50 for the teapot, milk jug and covered sugar bowl. It's a covetable collection, and the delicate white porcelain is of a quality that belies the price. How about some cups and saucers to match?
Squeeze the Es out of juice
You might baulk at paying €3.50 for a small (250ml) bottle of juice, but there is so much fruit packed into the RDA fresh organic juices and smoothies that the cost is easily justified. The blueberry and apricot organic smoothie, for example, contains the juice of three apples, one apricot, a third of a banana, 57 organic blueberries and 12 blackcurrants, and, as with the entire range of six flavour combinations, contains your recommended daily allowance of vitamin C (there's also a big fructose calorie count, so beware). There are so many sugar- and preservative-laden drinks on the market that it's good to see one that contains fruit and nothing else. In addition to the 250ml bottles, there is a children's version that comes in a squeezy pouch (€5.60 for a pack of four), with a clever one-way valve that releases juice only when sucked. RDA organic juices are available from Avoca shops nationwide; Fallon & Byrne, Dublin 2; Fresh, Dublin 7 and 17; Baggot Newsagents, Dublin 2; Ennis Butchers, Dublin 8; Thomas's, Dublin 18; Wilde & Green Wholetruth, Dublin 6; Ardkeen Quality Foods, Waterford; Kate's Kitchen, Sligo, and Blue Olive, Boreenmanna Road, Cork.
WEB WATCH
www.rte.ie/food
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