Dingle food fest.

October is going to be a very exciting month for us food wise as it's the month of birthdays and our birthday gastronomy weekend! 

However to get the month off to a good start on Sunday 2nd we headed back to Dingle for the Dingle food fest.

 We got there round 12 ish and had a gander round the Farmer's Market first of all, our bag wasn't long in filling up with delicious smoked chicken breasts from Carrig na Breac smokehouse in Leitrim, a selection of cheeses from The Old Irish Creamery in Effin, Co Limerick and wow what a selection they have, curry, chocolate, porter, chili, Jameson whiskey, smoked, herbs, garlic, you name it they have a cheese with it! We got delicious venison sausages from The Wild Side Food Artisan, a French man who lives out in Castlegregory. From The Green Apron I got the most deliciously indulgent Chocolate Raspberry Conserve. Scrummy Apricot salsa from the Phoenix restaurant, absolute heaven!

Recipes will be added later for the superb Smoked Chicken risotto and the Venison sausage & Red wine casserole that were enjoyed from this haul.

And then it was onto the food trail, unfortunately I hadn't brought my camera so the pics off the phone are rather dire!  (Note to self check to see when Vodafone are bringing out the iphone 4s!)

We nibbled our way around town starting with Teriyaki salmon skewers and a warm sake shot at Fish at the Marina.

Tim's taste of the sea at Out of the Blue was a little trio of tasters - lobster and langoustine bisque, cured salmon with herbed cream and a little scatter of caviar (Yum!) and a swirl of smoked mackeral pate with a carpaccio of salted mackeral on top.

In The Waterside Restaurant Billy had suckling pig and I had the crab toastie - loved the crackling not that too much was offered to me!

In Murphy's Ice Cream we shared a Kerry strawberry and champagne chocolate covered popsicle, nom, nom! My turn here to be mean with the sharing!

We stopped in Murphy's Bar for a pint for himself and a cup of tea for me and I was asking the bar man about the Crean's lager and he very kindly poured me a quarter pint of it on the house. I'm not a larger/beer drinker but this actually tasted quite ok. A barmaid here also gave us the head's up on barbecued kangaroo available at Finn McCool's Surf Shop. WE got one of the skewers and it was lovely, very juicy and succulent.

We stopped off at St James' Church and took in two cookery demo's - Jean Marie Vaireaux from Out of the Blue restaurant did hake fillet, Sauce Vierge and beetroot chutney and it was finger lickin' good!
Then Mark Murphy did what was down as a dessert delight, he made a chocolate ganache served in an espresso cup, a little chocolate millefuille layered with creme paistisserie - pastry cream, a smear of raspberry coulis and candied orange peel.

End of the day we stopped off in John Benny's bar and Billy got a couple of oysters, I tried oysters au naturel once and did NOT like them so I passed up on these. On another occasion I have lightly grilled them wrapped in bacon and loved them though.

The 2012 festival will run from Friday 5th October – Sunday 7th October - a great day out or even a weekend!