We’re very fond of the new window feature in the cafe…..Emily Archer who works with us on the side of being an amazing installation artist, made it as part of a piece of work for the Body & Soul Festival and we were lucky enough to house it once the festival finished.
Emily – “The window farm at the Fumbally is a chance to show people the future of food production on a small, informal scale. But it’s also an ideal way to farm and produce your own food in an urban apartment with little or no garden space using recycled materials. It’s really exciting to see tomatoes, strawberries, coriander, rocket and many more of my favourites all growing in one window in the city centre!”
Although they were a bit late this year the elderflower are in full force at the moment. Its a treat to have such a versatile wild flower in abundance and on pretty much every hedgerow in the country. Once you spot one you just start seeing them everywhere.
As with all wild foraging though, we’ve got to respect mother nature and in particular the bees, and not go overboard. The flowers are more important to them than they are to us.
A little goes a long way, however, and you can make up a pretty substantial batch of cordial with only about 20 heads of flowers. Its so simple. All you need is sugar syrup (roughly 3 to 1 sugar and water melted down. add in some ginger to the syrup if you want), pour it over the flower heads, add some lemon juice and zest – the citric acid will help to preserve the cordial – and leave it in the fridge for 24 hours. Then strain off the liquid and bottle.
And theres loads of other things you can do with elderflower – jelly, tempura, they make a beautiful garnish, and of course elderflower champagne….ours is fermenting nicely….only another month or so to go.
We also experimented with some gorse cordial a few weeks ago – trying to capture that distinctive coconut scent didn’t quite materialize but there were definite subtle undertones and a lovely floral finish, not too dissimilar to the elderflower. I think we may have to approach a perfumer rather than a cook to figure out how to capture scent in taste.
Delighted to be the first in Ireland to stock one of the best food magazines in print. Clever and informed writing, engaging photography and a very distinct sense of what food is really about. Life.
Theres a lot of things we have wanted to do with our coffee since we opened. Introducing filter is one of them (which will happen soon….). Developing our own blend was another, which after about 12 trial bags and a lot of dialing in on the grinder from Ger (our resident coffee genius), we introduced about two months ago. Since then we’ve been talking about selling beans for take home as well, which materialized last week, and which of course we can grind for you if you don’t have your own grinder at home.
This all coincides nicely with a seasonal change in our blend. We’ve moved from:
50% ethiopian Kebel Konga
50% ethiopian Wote
to
50% ethiopian Gedeb Yirgacheffe Natural
30% Costa Rica Don Mayo La Loma
20% Kenya Gachima AA
We are DELIGHTED with the change in season as its taken what was already a fantastic taste profile and just nudged it up a notch.
Here’s a little info on each of the beans, that Ger has put together for you:
Yirgacheffe (Ethiopia)
The growing region of Yirgacheffe is world famous and has some amazing plant stock. Based in the central southern Ethiopia, the farm is named after the town in the heart of the district. So this comes from the town of Gedeb to the south of Yirgacheffe heading towards the Kenyan border, where the coffee is hand picked, naturally processed, and is grown at an altitude of around 1800-2000 metres (on average).
Many thousands of bags marked ‘Yirgacheffe’ are sold every year but there may be significant differences between them in terms of cup quality. Selecting by cupping cuts the wheat from the chaff, and this one was very special on the cupping table. It is also a grade 1, a grade given by the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange liquoring unit to highlight it as an extra special lot. The vareital is Kurume, an indigenous Ethiopian varietal. They are smaller in size than other typica/heirloom beans but are very sweet, giving a very aromatic cup. It is processed at a mill owned by the Moplaco group, where over 200 small holder producers bring their cherries. The yield was heavily down this year, from their capacity of 10 containers to just under 2. But luckily this doesn’t seem to have affected the quality.
In the cup expect the unexpected. It’s a natural so there is lots of fruit and a huge body, but with all the great notes of a washed coffee of Strawberries, Apricot, and a great big syrupy mouthfeel. Whilst remaining bold, it has a clean and a lovely floral aftertaste.
Don Mayo La Loma: (Costa Rica)
The farm was an amazing example of how a professional farm and mill should be. Everything at the mill is impeccably clean, tidy and organised to the point of obsession. I think when it comes to running a good farm and mill it’s okay to be obsessive about what you’re doing. Little things like hats for the staff working in the mill, labels on the lots that are clear and readable; all very small and tiny things, but things that make the difference in quality.
In the cup expect an amazing honey sweetness; not just in taste, but in its amazing mouthfeel. In that honey loveliness there are peaches and dried apricots, which is super elegant and has a lovely smooth, long, finish..
This is one of Steve from HasBean’s Direct Trade coffees. Which is nice..
Gachami AA Lot A008 (Kenya)
Gachami coffee factory (or wet mill / washing station what ever you like to call it), is located in the Kirinyaga district of Central Kenya, and is seven km from the closest town of Kianyaga. The district lies close to Mt. Kenya, and enjoys good elevations of between around 1600-1800 meters above sea level: ideal conditions for growing amazing coffee.
Built in the early 1970’s, Gachami later joined other factories in the area to form the Baragwi Coffee Farmer’s Society and is one of 11 mills under the society’s control.
There are 1472 members of the society that are growing and active cooperative members at Gachami from five surrounding villages. Growers in this area have on average one hectare on which to grow their crops, and most are within walking distance of the mill. Located on the slopes of Aberdare mountain range, these growers have a mixture of SL28 and SL34 varietal coffee trees.
In the cup this has a lively citrus acidity (I got more of a White Grape acidity with this one) with a fruit sweetness and is very clean. It has a fizz that makes the tongue tingle with satsuma zest and lemon rind, whilst hanging on to that sweetness that makes it such a complex cup.
Together they are!! THE FUMBALLY MK2!
… and we’re really lucky to have such amazing coffees as our blend
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Cutting up a pig on a Sunday morning is always great fun (saying it like we do it all the time….ha!)
We finally managed to find a day to get Ted, Ivan and Fingal up from Cork to show us how to be as clever as possible with all the trimmings off a lovely free range pig. A little shaky from the night before (The Queens, Queers & Tarts night, which was a bag load of fun) the bloody marys and a whopper feed of moroccan style eggs helped us on the way.
Seeing where all the different cuts were coming from made it a lot easier to think of things to do with them. So the Leg went back to Gubbeen with Fingal to get brined and we roasted it up with a simple honey and dijon glaze for a ploughmans plate.
The shoulder cuts went into a delicious normandy apple and walnut casserole.
The trimmings went into our first try of house-made sausage meat, which quickly turned into disaster when we realized our grinder head was way too fine and the meat was coming out like cotton wool. Just about saved by Jasper who ended up cutting the rest of the dice by hand. Sumac, pink peppercorn and cumin sausage rolls.
The same sumac, pink peppercorn and cumin rub went on the ribs, with some added brown sugar.
And the fillet , loin and belly were hung for pancetta, coppa and cured spiced fillet. These were not the most successful, we didn’t get our temperatures and humidity right and probably a whole load of other things, but it was good to try. We’ll definitely be more stringent on following Fingal’s instructions for these next time.
Turkish cuisine is a wonderful thing. But like so many aspects of eating, it can be distinctly circumstantial.
While traveling in Turkey food highlights included; picking a pomegranate straight from the tree for breakfast in a forgotten valley on the southern coast, drinking a warm sour yoghurt drink and actually thinking it was good and sitting on a sunny pavement in Istanbul tucking into one of the most delectable of heavenly food experiences – Bal Kaymak.
Bal – honey
Kaymak – a buffalo milk clotted cream.
The turks do love their honey and as with all honey you can find varying degrees of floral and woodland tones depending on where it originates. On this occasion I was lucky enough to get a slice off a comb, something that is far more common over there than it would be here. The Kaymak was fresh (as it always is) and unctuously smooth. Kaymak is only good for 24 hours and is therefore made every morning, formed into roulade shaped cylinders and slices are scraped off onto the plate. Accompanied by some bread and the ubiquitous glass of sugary tea, watching the world of Cucurcuma go by on a warm sunny morning in early October, it was so simple, so good.
So with a slight tip of the cap to the Turks we have come up with an Irish version Cáis & Mil, which on a rainy day in Dublin, could take you to any sunny pavement in Istanbul in a heartbeat.
Remember this time last year when we had that mini heat wave in march and everyone went out and started planting and shaping up the garden. And then it snowed a week later! Well its that time again, only this year theres no doubt that a little caution will be taken in the form of a few weeks of patience until the weather changes. But we can still get sowing indoors.
Its always amazing to think that these little babies
What do you do when you live on a farm in west cork, your mum and dad make cheese, your brother makes sausages and you tend one of the most stunning organic gardens in the south west? You make an electronic masterpiece of a music album. Obviously.
Broad Bean Band – the next step in Irish Farmhouse Produce.
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