The Airfield Estate Food Series continues on Thursday, September 7th, with Food Literacy: Unearthing the Knowledge Gap as the theme. Prof Bill Schindler, chair of the anthropology department at Washington College, and Kenneth Hojgaard of Copenhagen Food House, a foundation established by the city of Copenhagen in 2007 with the aim of creating a healthy, sustainable public food culture, are the overseas speakers.
They will be joined by a panel of educators and industry figures, and students from Belvedere College and Santa Sabina Dominican College will debate the motion that practical food education should be compulsory in schools.
The sessions concludes with a "nose to tail, root to shoot" supper, sourced from Airfield's 38 acres of farm, fields and gardens in Dundrum, Dublin. The programme of talks and discussions begins at 3.30pm and will run until 7.30pm, followed by supper. Tickets, €40 (students €20), can be booked at airfield.ie.
The following weekend, Airfield hosts its annual food festival, with busy programmes of events running from 9.30am each day.
Nadiya’s multicultural cookery
In the food world, Nadiya Hussain is rapidly ascending to first-name only status, joining the likes of Delia and Nigella. The 2015 Great British Bake Off winner's third cookery book accompanies her eight-part BBC television of the same name, Nadiya's British Food Adventure (Michael Joseph, £20).
It is a joy to read, beautifully written and full of recipes that are accessible, but often with a twist. Just like the Britain she encounters in her TV series, there’s a multicultural, melting pot feel to the book. Flicking through it, tofu coconut katsu curry is followed by chicken and chorizo paella, with jerk haddock and jollof rice salad on the following page.
According to her Wikipedia page, Nadiya's favourite book is novelist Marian Keyes's baking book Saved by Cake. Her own baking game is strong, as her Bake Off success proved. Crispy chocolate and salted peanut tart, using thick cut salted crisps in the base, is the final recipe in the book, and a worthy showstopper.
New charcuterie range
The new Italian and Spanish charcuterie range at Dunnes Stores has been handpicked, literally, by Simply Better ambassador Neven Maguire and brand manager Diarmuid Murphy. The pair made whistlestop one-day visits to producers to select cured meats for the range.
Mario Redondo, whose family firm in Salamanca is supplying Dunnes Stores with Gran Reserva Serrano ham, acorn-fed Jamón de Bellota and chorizo Ibérico de Bellota, will be in the Cornelscourt store on Friday, September 8th from 1-5pm for product tasting and to answer questions about his meats.
Later in the month, on September 28th, Neven Maguire will be in the same store for a cookery demonstration at 3pm, to launch the latest edition of Cook with Neven Maguire.
There is an Italian slant to this edition of the free magazine, available in-store, and Paolo Tanara, whose farm supplies the Simply Better Prosciutto Di Parma and Coppa Di Parma PGI, will also be on hand.
