Market newsletter 22nd July 2010

Welcome to this week's newsletter - and what a wet week we've been having with these monsoon conditions! The forecast thankfully is for a gradual improvement over the weekend, so hopefully we'll all get out and about without getting saturated...

 

 

Last Saturday saw the arrival of the first of Des Crinion's organic sheep's milk cheese. Des had been promising me that he would supply us with this product as soon as it was sufficiently mature, which is made from milk produced by his flock of sheep on his farm outside Slane in Co. Meath - the image above is his prized black sheep!

The cheese is called Toto, in memory of  Des'  cousin who had a serious love of sheeps milk cheese and travelled with Des and his family on a couple of cheese research trips - where she made serious inroads into the supplies of cheese in France and Italy! Certainly Toto cheese is set to be a hit with Honest2Goodness customers, as we sold out of it on Saturday; Des has promised me a further supply in time for this Saturday, although as his supply is limited by the size of his flock, we will be getting a little at a time. The price of the cheese is €2.50 per 100g.

On tasting at the Pantry this week will be our newest preserve - a  spiced cucumber pickle. I got this recipe many years ago from a friend in Co. Clare (thank you Teresa B!) and had misplaced it for a long time. I recently found it and decided to try it out again - come along and taste it and let me know what you think - it is great with cheese and to brighten up any sandwich or cold meat platter.

The Spud Man wont have any organic produce for the next couple of weeks, as the delivery arrangements have stalled!He will have fresh consignments of spuds and soft fruit from Wexford.

 

Phoenix Delites - did anyone catch Pascale on the Ian Dempsey show last Monday? She will have her 'wedding favour' chocolates along on Saturday.

Cafe news: Dish of the day is set to be Pork Stifado, a classic Greek dish flavoured with gentle spices. Of course, we will also have Jim Ryan's ham ready for Toasties (and a fresh batch of gooseberry chutney to go with it) and we'll also a salad option (yet to be finalised!).

We will also have musical entertainment this Sat, with Darragh Murphy making his debut appearance with us. We look forward to hearing him.

Wine of the week: Colm has been very busy with new wine deliveries this week, as we took in three new consignments. To celebrate the arrival of our new consignment of Prosecco, he is putting it on as a special this week at a discount of 15%. So you can buy it for €11.50. Read more about this sparkling wine here, and if you want to know the difference between the different types of sparkling wine we stock, then read this article.

Our red wine of the week is from Jumilla in southeast Spain. It is reduced from its usual €10.40 down to €7.99 - a real bargain for this wine made from the Monastrell grape, check out its taste profile here.

Recipe update: A few people were asking about the spicy yogurt chicken dish that we serve in the cafe. Here is the link to it.

Also, if the veggie stall has more of that great basil available this Sat (no confirmation as yet), then here is a lovely recipe for pesto to be able to make and then have this summer herb available later in the year when the sunshine (such as it is) has left us.

Hope to see you on Saturday!

Brid & Colm