weekend bites

This week I’ll be eating… Savoy cabbage, the one with dark green, crinkly leaves and outstanding flavour. It took me a while to embrace the taste of cabbage and I was fully grown up before I would volunteer to eat it. The Savoy is lovely cooked in butter with lardons of bacon and lots of pepper but I also like it done in a German way; again, cooked in butter then finished with cream and seasoned with fresh nutmeg.

Two of the big Champagne brands seem to slogging it out in the Irish market at present. The distinctive orange packaging of Veuve Clicquot is springing up all over the place, latterly at Jonnie Cooke’s new restaurant in Dundrum and at the Dalkey Duck. Now Moët & Chandon is available from Brown Thomas with a label personalisation service ‘at no extra cost’ (which is not quoted in the press release). It’s becoming all very Celtic Tiger.

Two great names in the pantheon of Irish butchers have come together recently as Peter Hannan’s now legendary Himilayan salt-aged beef goes on sale in James Whelan Butchers’ eight outlets, the latest of which is the recently opened one at Dunnes Stores in Bishopstown, Cork. Hannan Meats is based in Moira, County Down and supplies discriminating restaurants throughout Britain and Ireland and has twice been named Supreme Champion at the Great Taste Awards, beating off competition from 10,000 top producers. jameswhelanbutchers.com hannanmeats.com

In supermarket news, Blackrock appears to be buzzing with the opening of the brand new Aldi store in the Frascati centre and now a new Dunnes Stores on the corner of Newtown Park and Newtownpark Avenue. SuperValu’s Christmas wine offers run until 26 December and include some attractive ‘buy-six’ offers and Graham Norton’s Prosecco reduced to a tenner. Plus, in true Christmas spirit, Aldi will have fresh geese from 20 December.