Meet three women offering very different experiences at Cork on a Fork
Pamela Kelly is head chef at the Farmgate Café in the English Market.
Pamela Kelly, The Farmgate Café Pop-up Summer Harvest Feast on Glenbrook Farm, Wednesday August 14, 6.30pm, €100
Pamela Kelly is cooking at a special pop-up dinner at Glenbrook Farm, owned by Peter and Kate Twomey, featuring their ex-dairy beef, free-range pork, and vegetables grown by Cork Rooftop Farm, for an incredible farm to fork experience.
“Glenbrook Farm was a dairy farm that’s now a free-range pig farm, so on the menu we will be featuring their very last dairy cow retired over a month ago, currently dry aging in Fermoy,” said Pamela.
The rest of the evening is focused on pork, but also Cork Rooftop Farm is working with Glenbrook Farm to create a 60-acre vegetable farm.
Pamela recognises the care, time and attention put into the slow-food ethos of raising free-roaming organic pigs, so to honour that effort and the valuable food to be gleaned from animals, the ethos on the night is very much nose to tail.
“Peter and Kate care so much about their animals and want to use every part. I love offal; liver, heart, kidney, and oxtail, so we are going nose to tail with the pork doing brawn, using the organs and all different parts of the animal. For the dairy beef, we’re using the prime cuts, rump and sirloin, because that ages well.
“The pop-up is inside a barn; it is going to smell like a farmyard because it is a farmyard, so to have the whole of the animal is important because, in using the heart, liver, cheeks, ears, and tongue we get to show how delicious it all can be.
It’s important to get that message out there because they’re using a lot of time, energy and resources to keep those pigs in prime condition.
“With a pig, there are very few prime cuts, there’s the fillet steak or a gorgeous roast on the bone. That’s the most premium part of the pig, but farmers can’t charge so much for those, so you need to be economical to get the value out of a pig. That comes from using it all. On the night, we’ll give people a taste of all of that.”
There’s a subtle but strong environmental message to this dinner, as well as a hearty menu of tasty things. For those who eat meat, there must be a return to eating all the animal as often as possible. For a seasoned chef like Pamela who, day-to-day, deals directly with producers in the English Market below Farmgate Café, showcasing inspiring ways to eat and enjoy the odd bits is essential for changing attitudes for diners, producers, and farmers.
“It’s about having that respect for the animal and when you’re sitting in an environment where you’re surrounded by piglets running around, the feeling you have for their welfare is immediate. It’s hard to sit among live animals and eat dead ones, it’s a visceral experience but, if we are to eat meat, we should see it full circle from that to the plate.”
Pamela has enjoyed watching the festival grow over the years and says that it brings out the best in Cork through collaboration.
“Anyone can be a part of it and it’s open to everybody; it’s a very inclusive festival and I hope it’ll continue to grow.”
Angela Newman Hysterical Histories Dinner & Show, Amicus, Thursday to Saturday, August 15 to 17, 7pm, from €32
Angela is the artistic director, performer and co-writer of Hysterical Histories Cork, a comedic dinner experience that takes diners on a journey through the city’s history with a healthy dose of pure Cork craic and plenty of delicious food along the way.
Hysterical Histories was born of a love for Cork, history, performance and music, but also with a genuine appreciation for the produce and food of the city and county, says Angela.
The experience tells the story of Cork from its founding by St Finbarr through to Nirvana and everything in between, in, says Angela, “a very Cork way!” So, what can people expect from a Hysterical Histories experience?
“People are seated at big, long banquet tables; they come on their own or in a group, but everyone is sharing a table with people they won’t know at all. For us, it’s nice to watch how people interact during the evening, sharing stories and tips for travelling around Ireland.
We’re the only dinner theatre in the country where there are scheduled sections in the performance where we come off the stage, talk to people and have conversations about what makes Cork the best county in Ireland.
"That’s what makes us a special experience because when you break bread with people, it makes you friendly, and you have chats you wouldn’t normally have - you don’t have to speak the same language when you’re eating together.”
Amicus is the restaurant partner with Hysterical Histories, hosting the experience upstairs serving a menu combining traditional Irish fare with modern twists.
“We want our guests to taste Irish produce with a modern twist. That’s why we chose Amicus as our venue partners because they’re so good at that,” said Angela.
“This year, we’re serving a beautiful, braised beef and stout stew flavoured with their own selection of spices, and for dessert a Bailey’s Irish Cream Cheesecake - it’s divine!
“For vegetarians, Amicus have devised a Colcannon Potato Cake served with seasonal salads from the kitchen garden.”
A section of the experience is dedicated to Cork’s food and drink heritage, something that Angela feels is very important.
“We talk about the importation of different breads from the Huguenot refugees in the 1600s, and we talk about how, in the twelfth century, Normans brought pork bodice to Cork.
That’s something every Cork person grew up eating, and you can still buy in the English Market today.
“We also talk about other Cork food traditions like spiced beef, and we teach kids about asking for a glass of ‘Razza’, the raspberry cordial we all grew up with when we went to the pub with our parents on a Sunday!
Angela and her band of welcoming Cork-whisperers perform, sing, dance, chat, and even serve all food on the night, and its popularity shows with three performances for the festival that, last year, sold out.
“Hysterical Histories really is family- friendly - we consider children our VIPs, they ask the best questions!”
Angela says a food festival for Cork was long overdue and that Cork was always “ahead of its time” for food.
Epi Rogan Wild Foraging & Shared Dinner, The Glass Curtain, Friday August 16,
2-7pm, €135
Originally from Alaska, Epi came to Ireland 20 years ago. For the past decade, she has cheffed in leading restaurants including Bastible, Paradiso, Pilgrim’s and Nell’s. Epi is now The Glass Curtain’s pastry chef and is hosting a Wild Foraging and Sharing Dinner for the festival with chef-proprietor, Brian Murray.
“The menu at The Glass Curtain changes every day,” says Epi, who shares Brian’s openness to ideas and novelty in food. It’s something we are both very in tune with; we both love new and interesting things.
"He has gotten into foraging because you can come in with something and ask what we think of this thing and how could we use it, so it’s a great kitchen for that.”
Planning a dining event based on wild food and foraging is tricky, requiring advance planning to ascertain which favoured spot will yield the most interesting things to work with.
This year’s foraging location is secret, but both on shore and on land are possible.
“Last year, we were in Nohoval,” says Epi. “We got lots of different types of seaweed and rock samphire; there is water mint and watercress growing. There were sloes, meadowsweet and lots of blackberries.
The foraging walk will be about an hour, explaining and identifying things, then it’s back to the restaurant for a sharing dinner with wine.
A good forager seeks out tasty morsels year-round and finds ways to preserve them for use throughout the year – no different at The Glass Curtain where petals of wild roses have been pickled, and fig leaves kept for sweet things.
“We have lots in our larder collected over the year, together with what we will collect on the day. We’ll trial a dessert using blackberry and meadowsweet because they often grow together.”
Epi says foraging is a way for her to combine her love of food and being outside.
“When you’re a chef, you don’t spend very much time outside because you’re in a kitchen for so much of day,” she said.
“It’s nice going out in the mornings and collecting and seeing how things change week to week. I feel like I’m always learning or doing something I’ve not tried before.”
As well as this event, The Glass Curtain is hosting three specially designed festival menus and is taking part in the VQ Shared Table event along MacCurtain Street.
“It brings everyone who works on the street together. We see each other and talk to each other all the time, but getting to work in co-operation with each other is a lovely thing on a personal level. The more people get involved and work together is just really positive.
“It’s a great way for people to get together and eat delicious food from Cork. It’s an exciting place for food now, so for me, it’s that.”
For more information on the festival see
App?
