I'm always looking for somewhere nice to pop into for the quick coffee and croissant fix on a Saturday before I visit a few galleries or do some essential (!) shopping. Anyhows, two of the loveliest cafe restaurants posted on facebook this morning to tell of their breakfasts.
First up is La Maison at 15 Castlemarket street who posted "Breakfast now served 9-12pm, Boisson Chaude, Jus d'orange." Now tell me this photo doesn't make you want to tear open one of those sugar dusted croissants!
Next up is Ely winebar in Ely place. Now the problem here is you have to go downstairs and you don't know if anyone else is in there. But if their dinner menu is anything to go by then the breakfast will be a treat, whether you're alone or not. The facebook post says "Morning all...pop into ely winebar this morning for your coffee fix. Delicious gl free chocolate brownies, freshly baked scones with clotted cream and homemade jams, blueberry muffins and a range of coffees and teas." N.B Ely just very kindly contacted me to tell me "our coffee mornings actually happen in our new private room on the ground floor and it's perfect to relax while reading the paper, catching up with colleagues or for a business meeting." Thanks Ely! Looking good for breakfast!
Wikipedia has an awesome page where it lists what must be all of the literary prizes, cos there are loads!! They are categorised by All Nations Eligible, Awards by Language, Awards by Region, Awards by Country and Awards by Genre ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_literary_awards .)
There is also another page that lists all the poetry awards of which there are a surprisingly large number ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poetry_awards .)
The first four awards in the All Nations Eligible are;
Neustadt International Prize for Literature- since 1970
Franz Kafka Prize- since 2001
Man Booker International Prize- since 2005
The Neustadt prize is awarded every two years for a body of work and is worth $50,000. It is the only one of its scope to originate in the US and is unusual in that poets, novelists and playwrights are equally eligible. A representative portion of the authors work must be available in English. In 2012 it was awarded to the Indian-born Canadian writer Rohinton Mistry.
The Franz Kafka Prize is awarded annually and is worth $10,000. The criteria for winning the award include the artwork's "humanistic character and contribution to cultural, national, language and religious tolerance, its existential, timeless character, its generally human validity and its ability to hand over a testimony about our times."[www.franzkafka-soc.cz It was awarded in 2012 to Daniela Hodrova, a Czech writer. One work has been translated into English, Prague, I see a city...,
The Man Booker International Prize is also awarded biennially to an author of any nationality with a body of work in English or translated into English. Established in 2005 it has onl been awarde five times. Due next to be awarded in 2013, in 2011 the prize went to Philip Roth, the American author who writes widely about Jewish-American life. With a bibliography of over 27 novels, non-fiction and also writing collections he is a prolific contributor to the literary world.
Watching the qualifying rounds of Masterchef Ireland on RTE2 last Thursday one of the contestants cooked a coffee-rubbed fillet of pork. Dyla McGrath was very hesitant about the flavour combination but his blending of the coffee beans with cumi, mustard and coriander seeds changed the flavour enough to put him through to the next round.
(see recipe here: http://www.rte.ie/lifestyle/food/masterchef/recipes/2012/1015/3355-coffee-rubbed-fillet-of-pork/ )
This got me thinking of other flavours that go well with coffee. Niki Segnit's excellent book The Flavour Thesaurus lists coffee as a roasted flavour along with chocolate and peanut. She lists 19 flavour combinations, only one of which is a meat-beef. She states how in the American South coffee is used as a marinade or rub for beef but that in her experience it had an "overwhelmingly gamy flavour".
The other pairings are almond, avocado, banana, blackcurrant, cardamon, cherry, chocolate, cinnamon, clove, coriander seed, ginger, goat's cheese, hazelnut, orange, rose, vanilla, walnut and white chocolate. Phew!
The almond tones in coffee mean it is a perfect accompaniment of almond croissant. The avocado inclusion refers us its use as a fruit in some far eastern countries with coffee syrup and avocado blended in a sweet shake with condensed milk (sounds yuchy!) The banana combi comes into play in the coffee-flavoured cream on banoffi pie (news to me-always thought it was plain cream, but can now see how the bitter sets off the aching sweetness.)
Blackcurrant and coffee are often paired in wine tasting notes but the idea of coffee ice cream in vacherin glace (layered with meringue, blackcurrant sorbet and whipped cream) is beyond sublime. Bedouin coffee is made with equal parts cardamon to coffee and Segnit suggests flavouring a sponge with cardamon and topping with coffee icing. Cherry makes its presence in the pairing of the diner special 'coffee with cherry pie'. We are all used to seeing cocoa sprinkled on cappucino but I prefer my coffee black. So Segnit advocates using coffee as a way to boost the chocolate flavour (and vice versa) in cakes and mousse.
Well, coffee and cinnamon need little explanation- think cinnamon doughnuts,but cinnamon can be added to coffee sponge to round the flavour and apparently coffeee in Mexico is served with a cinamon stick to stir- cute! Meanwhile, in Ethiopia coffee is prepared with the inclusion of ground cloves, in Morrocco coriander seeds flavour their espresso style coffee and in Yemen a drink called 'qishr' is made of brewed coffee husks and ginger. The goat cheese pairing refers to a Norwegin cheese called 'ekte gjetost' made with the whey, cooked until it caramelises. This sweet cheese is eaten on toast with morning coffee (?!)
So we come to two easy pairings- coffee and hazelnut, apparently a good icecream two-scoop choice, and coffee and orange. Segnit advocates an orange and coffee marmalade but I'm not so sure but orange and coffee tiramisu I am sold on, especially when made with an orange and coffee bean liquer. The inclusion of rose on the list might surprise you but not when you think of strong black Turkish coffee paired with sweet rose Turkish Delight. Coffee and vanilla excells itself in my favourite dessert- affogato; simply get a bowl of best quality vanilla icecream and tip your espresso over it- bliss!
The final two forays into coffee compliments are first the ole fave coffee n walnut. Who hasn't enjoyed a slice of old fashioned coffee cake topped with walnuts but whatever happened to my old favourite sweet- the coffee flavoured walnut whip? I'm not keenon white chocolate- it's jus too sweet, but coffee's bitterness might just be its saving grace. Segnit's suggestion is Cafe Tasse's Blanc cafe bar which contains ground coffee beans giving a bitter contrast to the sweet white chocolate.
So, now you can pop off and brew up a good cup of coffee and drool over all the nice things that could be accompanying it. Enjoy!
So I thought I'd do a few articles showcasing some of our great Irish Publishers.There are no less than 66 full members listed on the Publishing Ireland website, including many specialist publishing houses and Irish language publishers. Pretty good going eh! Everyone is talking about the demise of the independent book shop with the meteoric rise of Amazon, supermarket sales and the big boys pushing the smaller kids off the street. Surprisingly the independent book shop is thriving in France with new ones opening regularly, particularly in Paris. Cut price books don't seem to swamp the market there which may be part of the explanation. But what has not changed is that people still love to read, be it new releases, second-hand or ebook versions, and long may it last!
Next month is the Dublin Book Festival www.dublinbookfestival.com where the city can celebrate all things BOOK, but more about that in November. For now back to Irish publishers.
This first publisher is called A & A Farmar and is owned by Anna and Tony Farmar, both authors themselves and they operate out of an office in Dublin 6. They publish mainly non-fiction books with an Irish interest including biographies, food and wine, poetry and history amongst others. Their most recent books published are The Widest Circle edited by Barbara Sweetman Fitzgerald, Parley-Poet and Chanter: Pecker Dunne transcribed and edited by Michael O'hAodha (back in print by popular demand) and The Young are Desperate by Brendan Kennelly.
The Widest Circle, Remembering Michael Sweetman is about the life of Michael Sweetman, a Fine Gael activist who inspired radical changes in the 1980s through his involvement with the Just Society. Tragically killed in a plane crash in 1972, this book presents his ideas and contribution to Irish life.
Parley-Poet and Chanter is the story of a man born in a horse-drawn wagon in .Co. Mayo. Travelling the country for most of his life, he also traveled in Australia, played for huge audiences in New York, worked with The Dubliners and with the actor Richard Harris . He describes his battle with alcoholism, the hard life on the road, and the prejudices endured by Travellers.
The Young are Desperate is two novels originally published in the 1960s by poet Brendan Kennelly. In The Crooked Cross, a village is struck by a drought that is as much spiritual as physical, lamenting the tragedy of stifled energy. In The Florentines, a young man leaves Ireland to find joy in an English university, celebrating the energy of youth.
Burt's Guinness crisps made in Devon... whoa, roll back there, made in Devon??? How did that happen- how come these were not made by an Irish crisp maker, like our new local crisp maker Keogh's or some other artisan crisp company that seem to keep popping up these days. Well I hope Burt's haven't got the license- how do brand flavours work? I'll be looking out for these on our shelves soon.
The clock is made of sea tumbled red bricks which have been collected from the Skerries shore in Ireland and whilst not the cheapest (around €360) I think they are really attractive unusual pieces. The workshop is in Duleek, Co.Meath.
Just two days to the announcement of the winner of the Booker Prize 2012. It's a good shortlist this year and in case you don't know them here's a quick resume.
1. Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists
"It's Malaya, 1949. After studying law at Cambrige and time spent helping to
prosecute Japanese war criminals, Yun Ling Teoh, herself the scarred lone
survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle
fringed plantations of Northern Malaya where she grew up as a child. There she
discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator,
the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the Emperor of Japan. Despite
her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden
in Kuala Lumpur, in memory of her sister who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses,
but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice 'until the monsoon comes'. Then
she can design a garden for herself. As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself
intimately drawn to her sensei and his art while, outside the garden, the threat
of murder and kidnapping from the guerrillas of the jungle hinterland increases
with each passing day. But the Garden of Evening Mists is also a place of
mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? Why is it that Yun
Ling's friend and host Magnus Praetorius, seems to almost immune from the
depredations of the Communists? What is the legend of 'Yamashita's Gold' and
does it have any basis in fact? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to
survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?
" www.amazon.co.uk
2. Deborah Levy, Swimming Home
"As he arrives with his family at the villa in the hills above Nice, Joe sees
a body in the swimming pool. But the girl is very much alive. She is Kitty
Finch: a self-proclaimed botanist with green-painted fingernails, walking naked
out of the water and into the heart of their holiday. Why is she there? What
does she want from them all? And why does Joe's enigmatic wife allow her to
remain?
Profound and thrilling, Swimming Home reveals how the most devastating
secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves." www.amazon.co.uk
3. Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies
"By 1535 Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith’s son, is far from his humble origins.
Chief Minister to Henry VIII, his fortunes have risen with those of Anne Boleyn,
Henry’s second wife, for whose sake Henry has broken with Rome and created his
own church. But Henry’s actions have forced England into dangerous isolation,
and Anne has failed to do what she promised: bear a son to secure the Tudor
line. When Henry visits Wolf Hall, Cromwell watches as Henry falls in love with
the silent, plain Jane Seymour. The minister sees what is at stake: not just the
king’s pleasure, but the safety of the nation. As he eases a way through the
sexual politics of the court, its miasma of gossip, he must negotiate a ‘truth’
that will satisfy Henry and secure his own career. But neither minister nor king
will emerge undamaged from the bloody theatre of Anne’s final days." www.amazon.co.uk
4. Alison Moore, The Lighthouse
"The Lighthouse begins on a North Sea ferry, on whose blustery outer
deck stands Futh, a middle-aged, recently separated man heading to Germany for a
restorative walking holiday. Spending his first night in Hellhaus at a
small, family-run hotel, he finds the landlady hospitable but is troubled by an
encounter with an inexplicably hostile barman. In the morning, Futh puts
the episode behind him and sets out on his week-long circular walk along the
Rhine. As he travels, he contemplates his childhood; a complicated friendship
with the son of a lonely neighbour; his parents’ broken marriage and his own.
But the story he keeps coming back to, the person and the event affecting all
others, is his mother and her abandonment of him as a boy, which left him with a
void to fill, a substitute to find. He recalls his first trip to Germany
with his newly single father. He is mindful of something he neglected to do
there, an omission which threatens to have devastating repercussions for him
this time around. At the end of the week, Futh, sunburnt and blistered,
comes to the end of his circular walk, returning to what he sees as the
sanctuary of the Hellhaus hotel, unaware of the events which have been unfolding
there in his absence." www.amazon.co.uk
5. Will Self, Umbrella
"A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella. James Joyce,
Ulysses Recently having abandoned his RD Laing-influenced experiment
in running a therapeutic community - the so-called Concept House in Willesden -
maverick psychiatrist Zack Busner arrives at Friern Hospital, a vast Victorian
mental asylum in North London, under a professional and a marital cloud. He has
every intention of avoiding controversy, but then he encounters Audrey Dearth, a
working-class girl from Fulham born in 1890 who has been immured in Friern for
decades. A socialist, a feminist and a munitions worker at the Woolwich Arsenal,
Audrey fell victim to the encephalitis lethargica sleeping sickness epidemic at
the end of the First World War and, like one of the subjects in Oliver Sacks'
Awakenings, has been in a coma ever since. Realising that Audrey is just
one of a number of post-encephalitics scattered throughout the asylum, Busner
becomes involved in an attempt to bring them back to life - with wholly
unforeseen consequences. Is Audrey's diseased brain in its nightmarish
compulsion a microcosm of the technological revolutions of the twentieth
century? And if Audrey is ill at all - perhaps her illness is only modernity
itself? And what of Audrey's two brothers, Stanley and Albert: at the time she
fell ill, Stanley was missing presumed dead on the Western Front, while Albert
was in charge of the Arsenal itself, a coming man in the Imperial Civil Service.
Now, fifty years later, when Audrey awakes from her pathological swoon, which of
the two is it who remains alive?" www.amazon.co.uk
6. Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis
"Shuklaji Street, in Old Bombay. In Rashid's opium room the air is thick with
voices and ghosts: Hindu, Muslim, Christian. A young woman holds a long-stemmed
pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her eyes. Men sprawl and mutter in
the gloom. Here, they say you introduce only your worst enemy to opium. There is
an underworld whisper of a new terror: the Pathar Maar, the stone killer, whose
victims are the nameless, invisible poor. In the broken city, there are too many
to count.
Stretching across three decades, with an interlude in Mao's China, it
portrays a city in collision with itself. " www.amazon.co.uk
