ENGLISH MUM

My sister in law, the  lovely Auntie L, has her birthday ridiculously close to Christmas, so on Saturday we decided to throw her a little birthday party.  It also just happens that the lovely chaps at Cobra Beer had contacted me a while ago and said ‘guess what, we know you like curry so we’re going to send you some beer to go with it’. No way.  ’What, like no strings?  You’re...

So here, finally, is the review of The Forge Restaurant where we celebrated English Grandma’s 70th.  We went with open minds because (let’s face it, like most restaurants) some of our friends had had fabulous experiences, and others not so good - we’d also heard tales of being rushed through desserts to free up tables, but when I phoned I spoke to a very friendly waitress who assured me that we...

I love butternut squash.  I love its sweetness, its softness, and its beautiful orangey colour.  I love risotto too, and the combination of both of them is one of my favourite meals.  I happened to mention to the lovely Matt, fellow blogger and ’Wine Evangelist’ (I love that title) at Curious Wines that I was going to knock up a butternut squash risotto and he very kindly offered to send me...

So this is really clever.  Lovely Lar, over at Ireland’s best wine blog, Sour Grapes , has taken different recipes from various Irish food bloggers nominated for the Irish Blog Awards, and matched them with some rather outstanding wine choices.  To accompany my Sunday lunch of beef stew with fluffy parsley dumplings.  Lar suggests a Clos du Val Cabernet Sauvignon coming in at a breathtaking €27.49,...