Weekend BITES

… barbecue, but not any old barbecue. Take hamburgers, the charcoal will give them a lovely smoky flavour and I’ll have mine with raw onion, pickles, mustard and Heinz Tomato Ketchup. But the burger is key and I always try to make my own using good minced beef into which I mix quite a lot of finely chopped bone marrow, some salt, black pepper, Lea & Perrins Worcester Sauce and a smidgin of French mustard. On the other hand, I might just get the bone marrow burgers from The Village Butcher in Ranelagh, which also have some smashing sausages, including chilli and fennel, and a Gaucho version.

Bag-in-box wines used to be a bit of a joke, probably because only very basic wines were considered for this kind of treatment. But shipping wine in heavy glass bottles is environmentally unjustifiable and bag-in-box offers a brilliant solution. O’Brien’s is ahead of the game with two great Portuguese reds, the Porta 6 Lisboa at €36 for 3 litres and the even better Altano Douro at €33.50 for 2.25 litres. But it’s not just about saving money, it’s about convenience. You can have, say, a glass a day and the wines still stay fresh for weeks.

A British supermarket chief last week warned that ‘the era of cheap food is over’ and there’s no doubt that the same applies in Ireland. Last year, we spent the least proportion of household income on food ever. This decline, accompanied by cheaper food in real terms, appears to have started in the late 1950s. By 1980, according to the CSO, households spent 27.7% of their income on food; by 2016 it had dropped to 14.7%. The War in Ukraine, Europe’s bread basket, is just one of many factors but it will have a huge impact on the price of cooking oils, baked goods, pasta, many forms of meat and even Irish whiskey.

I’m surprised that it has only just got round to this but Ben & Jerry’s, the ice-cream company from Vermont, is launching four sundaes, as in a readyassembled ice cream sundae in a tub. Essentially you get swirly ice cream topped with whipped ice cream, finished with sweet gooey stuff and chocolate chunks. In other words, just like I’d want to make it myself. The versions are: Vermontster (based on cookie dough), Hazel-nuttin’ But Chocolate (the one that gets my vote), Oh My! Banoffee Pie and the Non-Dairy Berry Revolutionary. Priced €6.50 for almost half a litre.