Allison and her husband, Will Abernethy, are custodians of a near-lost tradition of handmade, hand-rolled butter in Ireland, having begun producing Abernethy Butter around ten years ago and growing it into the award-winning brand it is today, with a variety of flavours as well as handmade fudge and lemon curd. A unique dairy product, commercially unlike any other in Ireland in terms of process, their small-batch, slow-churned, hand-rolled butter shaped with wooden pats is made using Draynes Farm grass-fed, single-herd cream, which Allison and Will found to be the creamiest cream, resulting in the driest, best butter.

Abernethy Butter is frequently listed on menus and a star ingredient in dishes of the best restaurants in Ireland and the UK, with a slew of stockists and their walls covered with prestigious awards. Offering a variety of flavours (Dulse Butter, Black Garlic Butter, Smoked Butter, Chipotle Chilli & Smoked Paprika Butter), their unsalted and salted butters are their signature, and ‘Abernethy Gold’ should surely be added to the colour chart for that unmistakable, rich shade each roll bears.

www.abernethybutter.com

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Ballymakenny Farm potatoes have developed a cult-like following in Ireland over the last few years for good reason, and despite the challenges of 2020 they continue to be the spuds everyone wants on their plates. Maria and David Flynn started out growing the usual potatoes for supermarket retail until Maria, unenthused by what they were doing, decided to literally inject a bit of colour into their farming by trying out the ‘purple spuds’ they have become best known for. They planted these purple Violetta potatoes along with Red Emmalies, Yukon Gold and the peculiar-shaped Pink Fir Apple potato. She had spotted a gap in the market for heritage potatoes to be grown in Ireland with an idea to target chefs and restaurants directly.

Through a combination of Maria knocking on restaurant doors, word of mouth and savvy social media posts, Ballymakenny became the most sought-after potatoes by high-end chefs and restaurateurs in Ireland. During COVID, with some quick thinking the farm opened the Spud Shack, a drive-through shop on their farm which garnered plenty of attention on both social media and in the news. Maria credits the support of the hospitality industry and friends as playing a huge part in this. The success of the Spud Shack led to an online shop to sell the spuds nationwide and small independent shops started to reach out and ask if they could stock the potatoes. They now sell out week on week and Maria says the Spud Shack is here to stay.

www.ballymakennyfarm.com

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Tom Durcan has been selling his traditional spiced beef at his butcher’s stall in Cork’s English Market since 1985, but the recipe he uses dates back to his teenage apprenticeship in Jim Kidney’s butcher shop in Carrigaline. Tom’s adapted recipe involves a slow cure for at least a month in a salt brine with brown sugar and saltpetre and a secret spice mix that includes pimento, cloves and cracked black pepper. It’s a lengthy and labour-intensive process requiring regular stirring of the cure to ensure absorption of all the flavours. He uses local Irish Hereford heifer beef that has been finished on maize for three months to produce a particularly tender meat with good layers of fat.

Durcan’s Spiced Beef can be found in stores and restaurants nationwide, including Dublin’s Chapter One restaurant, where chef-proprietor and fellow Cork man Ross Lewis is an enthusiastic champion of the tender, sweet-savoury delicacy. Durcan’s Spiced Beef can be ordered and delivered ready-to-cook or ready-cooked, whole or sliced, and ready to pop onto crusty buttered white bread topped with caramelised Spanish onions, as Tom loves it, or into a fresh Waterford blaa with Coolea cheese, as in the recipe from Hatch & Sons in Dublin.

www.tomdurcanmeats.ie

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Kinsale Mead, established by Kate and Denis Dempsey in 2017, is Ireland’s first commercial meadery for over 200 years. Kinsale, with its long-standing reputation as Ireland’s premier gourmet destination and its historical trading routes to Spain, is reflected in the ingredients crafted into their white and red mead: Spanish orange blossom honey, local botanicals and fruits grown in Ireland. In 2020, Kate and Denis, inspired by the legends of Ireland’s Wild Geese, wanted to explore the potential of their mead further by ageing it in French wine barrels for twelve months. The IFWG Award is for their Wild Red Mead – Merlot Barrel Aged, a three-year-old fermented off-dry mead flavoured with tart Irish blackcurrant and juicy cherry, then aged for twelve months in Bordeaux wine casks.

2020 was a challenging year for the duo as direct sales were impacted, meadery tours were limited and tastings, food festivals and other promotional opportunities all ceased due to COVID-19 restrictions. They responded by creating virtual Online Mead Talk & Taste Zooms comprising tastings and intriguing insights into the history of mead in Ireland and the importance of mead in Irish food culture, held in high esteem and value. Kinsale Mead’s Wild Red Mead – Merlot Barrel Aged showcases the creativity, innovation, determination and attention to detail put into every drop of their honeyed elixir. This mead may well have influences of Spain and France, but to taste it is to experience a contemporary expression of the original wine of Ireland.

www.kinsalemeadco.ie

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NeighbourFood is an online marketplace where a range of local producers can sell what they grow, rear and create. A ‘virtual’ farmers’ market, customers order online then on the designated day, chosen by each host in locations countrywide, collect their order of vegetables, meat, fish, sauces, cakes, bread, condiments and ready-made meals.  Started in Cork in 2018 by Jack Crotty and Martin Poucher, there are now 40 locations in Ireland and 20 in the UK, each with its own local suppliers, managed by local hosts who respond to online orders directed to them, collating each one ready for collection.

Suppliers know in advance what is required of them, so there is no waste. Minimal packaging is used – another win for the environment. NeighbourFood has become an essential service and resource for growers and producers whose livelihoods were threatened as a result of the shrinking of the hospitality industry. In 2020 there was an influx of suppliers to NeighbourFood, which in turn provided further choice for customers who wanted to support local enterprises. This award goes not just to co-founders Jack Crotty and Martin Poucher, but to NeighbourFood nationwide, from its suppliers and collection point hosts to its appreciative customers.

www.neighbourfood.ie

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Ballymore Organics, set up by James Kelly, was the first mill to open in Kildare since Odlum’s 200-year-old Leinster Mills closed in 1989. After growing his first organic crop of ‘smashing wheat’ in 2015, James convinced Andrew Workman of Dunany Flour to mill 20kg of the grain. Positive responses to the flour meant that James decided to build a mill on the farm and he started producing his own stoneground wholemeal flour in 2017. The single-varietal, single-origin flour is expensive to grow and mill, but James’s sales pitch was simple: he got in contact with hotels and restaurants telling the chefs about the way that he farmed and got them to try the flour. The hook was the flavour. Soon his flour was being namechecked on menus at Aimsir, Ashford Castle, Dromoland Castle and Adare Manor and James was dealing regularly with Michelin-starred chefs.

With wholemeal flour selling well, James expanded his range of products to plain flour and semolina at the beginning of 2020. He also started milling the oats that he grows, becoming Ireland’s only grower and miller of both wheat flour and porridge oats. As well as selling direct to chefs, he invested in a small webshop, selling small amounts of 5kg, 10kg and 20kg bags of flour and porridge oats – until everything changed on 14 March 2020. While James’s trade customers disappeared overnight, online orders – fuelled by a COVID-19-caused flour shortage – skyrocketed. Consumers locked down at home now actively wanted to buy Irish and support Irish farmers.  James credits COVID-19 with putting his products on the map, which have gladdened the hearts of home bakers all around Ireland over the past year.

www.ballymoreorganics.ie

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Within the school system, we teach language with which to communicate and we teach maths with which to navigate, but we do not teach crucial skills associated with food and commensality. A two-year food education programme aims to change this for a portion of students throughout Ireland. Devised to teach children about food in an engaging and creative way, the programme was successfully piloted in eight primary schools and is now being expanded nationwide, with 45 schools joining this year and a further 65 joining next year.

The programme is wide-ranging, taking an expansive, hands-on approach to education, fostering inquisitiveness about where food comes from, how it is grown and how it affects all our lives. Green-Schools provide cooking kits to all the participating schools as well as the seeds for the garden, teaching resources and ongoing support from their staff. The cooking kit provides children with the equipment to practise skills during the cooking workshops such as peeling, grating, knife safety and different chopping techniques. Many chefs from around the country have also come on board and are helping reiterate the learning from the cooking workshops by doing their own cooking demonstrations with the children. The programme is a welcome addition to Ireland’s food education landscape.

www.greenschoolsireland.org

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‘The cheesemaker’s cheesemaker’ is a good description of Marion Roeleveld. In 2004, using milk from her partner Haske’s goats, she started making Killeen Farmhouse Cheese on their 50-acre farm near Portumna, Co. Galway. The main Killeen Farmhouse Cheese production is a semi-hard goats’ cheese Gouda, made from pasteurised milk and traditional rennet and available plain or with fenugreek. With curds washed and pressed in the Gouda style and with a smooth white paste, the 5kg cheeses are covered in a thin breathable plastic coat and sold from two months of age, when the flavour is fresh and clean with a hint of nuttiness that develops as the cheese ages. A cows’ milk variety is also made, using milk supplied by a local farmer, and it comes in plain, basil and garlic, cumin seed and an Emmental style called Kilmóra.

A holistic philosophy informs the whole production process and the running of the farm, where quality and traceability are paramount. They grow all the grass, hay and silage for the goats themselves and it is a closed herd – Haske only introduces selected breeding males to the herd. Marion’s training and all-round knowledge of farmhouse cheese production also led to her working with other producers to develop some remarkable cheeses, including Mossfield Organic; the ewes’ milk Cáis na Tíre; and most recently, the East Galway gem, Kylemore Farmhouse Cheese. Consistency and an absolute commitment to quality have led to awards a-plenty for Killeen Farmhouse Cheese, including Best Goat Cheese (twice) in the British Cheese Awards and Supreme Champion (three times) in the Irish Cheese Awards.

www.killeenfarmhousecheese.wordpress.com

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