weekend bites

This week I’ll be eating… chicken with 40 cloves of garlic! The garlic turns out sweet and a lot less pungent than you might imagine. Just take a chicken and pop it into a casserole, add the unpeeled garlic cloves, a glass of dry white wine and two tablespoons of good olive oil. Put the lid on and cook in the normal way. Squeeze the soft garlic out of their skins and mop up along with the roasting juices with crusty bread. If you want to grow some of your own food this year now is the time to take action! Seed potatoes are arriving in the garden centres and you need to ‘chit’ or sprout them to get a head start. Place them in an old egg carton in a bright, frost-free place and the little green shoots will soon appear. The traditional time for planting these ‘first earlies’ is St Patrick’s Day. Unwins do packs of just six tubers, by the way. Chefs Stephen Caviston and Enda McMahon are now fully up and running at their deli and fish shop, Gill & Hock, in Deansgrange (in what was originally the Marian Stores on Abbey Road). Amongst other things, they do sensational sandwiches which can be ordered online, and Ponaire coffee. gillandhock.ie Telephone: 01 230 3735 Last week the Kilkenny Whiskey Guild marked a special occasion for the county with the latest launch in the Irish Distillers Virgin Irish Oak series of Single Pot Still Whiskeys. This is the Midleton Dair Ghaelach Bluebell Forest Edition, aged in casks made from a tree in the bluebell woodlands at Castle Blunden near the ancient city. The whiskeys blended here at between 12 and 23 years old and every bottle can be traced back to one of six trees. It costs €300.