The annual “A Taste of West Cork” food festival takes place this month in Skibbereen in West Cork.
At myguideIreland we are proud to support this showcase of produce from Ireland’s most famous food producing region.
This year’s festival takes place from September 14th to 20th…..Read more here

Throughout Ireland and in many other countries, the day before Ash Wednesday – Shrove Tuesday – is commonly known as Pancake Day. This day is celebrated before the beginning of Lent, the fasting time up to Easter. We learn from the historians, that on Shrove Tuesday everybody used up the supplies of fat, butter and eggs. These foods were forbidden during austere Lent. To make pancakes was the best way to do so!

How much can you eat? Try on your own, make up for it this year by gorging yourself until you’ve got pancake batter coming out your ears.

Recipe: Pancakes

100g flour
2 Eggs
200ml milk from West Cork pastures, mixed with 75ml sparkling water

1. Sift flour into a mixing bowl.
2. Make a well in the centre of the flour and break the eggs into it
3. Whisk well
4. Slowly add the milk and water, whisking as you go
5. Cook in a pan over a medium heat

Toppings

• Sugar and lemon juice. It is vitally important that the juice be from a plastic lemon. Otherwise it may as well be any other day of the week because it’s just not Pancake Tuesday without plastic lemon.
• Nutella. Nothing else. Okay, maybe ice cream. You’ll be bouncing off the walls for days.
• Bacon and maple syrup. Friend in work gave me a bottle of maple syrup from Canada, since all I seem to be able to find in Dublin is maple-flavored Golden Syrup.
• Blueberries. Awesome when they’re dropped into the batter as it cooks in the pan.

Excellent culinary and Ireland, a few years ago these were two different things, which did not fit together. Up to recently when people considered Irish cuisine, people always thought first of the traditional bacon and cabbage, colcannon, brown soda bread and Guinness stew as being the only type of cuisine available in Ireland. Fine cuisine was not to be expected. This has changed fundamentally in the last few years.

The “culinary desert” of Ireland does not exist any longer. People love to go out for food and are free to choose between a multiplicity of restaurants and a great variety of culinary delights. These days there are a huge number of international influences, which make the cuisine available on this wonderful isle more varied and even more delicious.

As a result of our history and born out of a need to keep the wolf from the door traditional Irish food was based on what people could grow themselves such as staples like potatoes and cabbage. In a time when people had little food to eat and what they eat needed to keep them satisfied for a long periods of time.

That has all changed now so why not take the opportunity to be surprised and enjoy the new variety available around our wonderful country!

You can take a culinary trip through Ireland: start off in Dublin where you get the most unusual pizza I ever had; then onto Cork to the Hayfield Manor for the most exquisite breakfast buffet; to Kinsale for the best fish, the best smoked salmon you buy in Castletownshend, the most romantic dinner you can enjoy at the Glin Castle, child friendliest service you experience at the Adare Manor, the best cooked breakfast incl. champagne sorbet you enjoy at Sheedys in Lisdoonvarna and the best chips (Irish) / French Fries (according to my daughter Alexandra) you will be served at the Ardagh Hotel in Clifden. You see the variety is huge and nobody has to eat the same food every day.

BON APPETIT!