Detailed Programme:
SATURDAY (11am to 7pm)
11am - BREAKING THE FAST AT GRUB CIRCUS
A very special breakfast welcome to the start of a packed two-day programme of food and fun-filled frolics and festivities. Alex Raitenava, the sommelier and restaurant manager of Michelin-starred Cliff House Hotel, will make a very special breakfast cocktail and Pat Conway and Jim O’Brien will furnish a little something breakfast-y as they fire up their grills for the next event.
11.20am - THE GODS OF FIRE Part 1
For two whole days, Grub Circus will be the backdrop for a feast of live fire cooking and demonstrations from some of Ireland’s finest practitioners, and at the heart of it all will be Pat Conway and Jim O’Brien of Smokin’ Soul, the BBQ and Smoke masters.
They will be joined by a number of top Irish food stars for a range of demos and dishes:
* Smokin’ Soul Masterclasses
Renowned Waterford Chef Michael Quinn, who trained and worked under Myrtle Allen will prepare and dress a whole Comeragh Mountain Lamb for slow cooking by Smokin’ Soul
Goldie Head Chef Aishling Walsh (Seafood)
Sally Barnes, Woodcock Fish Smokery
BBQ Chef John Relihan (Pitt Bros & Co; 12 Fires)
Andy Noonan (Baste BBQ & The Big Grill)
Instant Kit: Just Add Fire. Learn how to construct a homemade BBQ in half an hour using cheap and readily available materials
Vegan/Vegetarian BBQ
11.45am - MUSHROOM MAGIC
One prominent Irish food duo found themselves caught up in controversy recently with their comments about mushrooms and cancer but at Grub Circus we bring the truth, as food scientist and award-winning Ballyhoura Mountain Mushrooms supremo, Dr Lucy Deegan, gives a very special demo covering all the genuine health benefits of mushrooms, in particular, focussing on BMM’s range of Mushroom health supplements and their impact on health, wellbeing and cognition.
Host: Jillian Bolger
12.15pm - UP CLOSE … AND FAR AWAY (UCAFA)
Addressing the Challenges of Climate Change from a Food Perspective.
Climate change is an existential crisis that has left billions around the world feeling powerless in the face of seemingly overwhelming catastrophe and the current industrialised model of global food production is one of the biggest culprits in causing climate change.
But Grub Circus is seeking to help empower ordinary citizens with practical steps and changes each and everyone of us can adopt to make a difference.
Our own individual contributions may be minuscule in the grand scheme of things but together that difference can grow into something substantial. UCAFA is delivered as an umbrella event with multiple strands in the form of interactive ‘workshops’ with plenty of audience participation.
UP CLOSE …
12.20pm - PLANT YOUR OWN BREAKFAST, LUNCH AND DINNER
TV gardener Diarmuid Gavin, Paul Smyth, GIY’s Mick Kelly and Brian McCarthy, of Cork Rooftop Farm, deliver an entertaining and interactive masterclass on growing your own food at home, starting on your window sill or apartment balcony, while Erin O’Brien and Virginia O’Gara introduce the innovative Cork Urban Soil Project, begun less than two years ago, taking all farmers’ market waste and creating soil in the CUSP biodigester.
12.40pm - GROW BIG & GROW HOME
Éidín Griffin of Rebel Seed Savers is a seed activist, permaculture designer and creative, and delivers a delightfully quirky permaculture-based workshop on how to design your own food and flower oasis with a focus on urban gardens to maximise deliciousness.
This is a hands on creative play session.
1.10pm - THE BEST THINGS COME IN TREES
Anja Murray is an ecologist, environmental policy analyst and broadcaster whose most recent series on Lyric FM, Root and Branch, examines the secret lives of trees and the importance of native Irish trees.
A truly sustainable food production system will always incorporate trees at the heart of the growing cycle, especially through agroforestry, and they are equally vital to the health, wellbeing and even food systems of towns and cities.
Anja delivers a masterclass on becoming a modern day urban Johnny or Johnette Appleseed, including how to set about having more trees planted in our locality.
1.30pm - ZERO WASTE COOKING
Rising star chef Caomhán de Brí, of The Salt Project, opening in Co Sligo, and recent participant in RTE’s Battle of the Food Trucks, demos a simple zero waste food menu using local, seasonal Irish produce
1.50pm - GRAIN OF TRUTH
An interactive workshop and demo—including plenty of fresh bread for the audience to taste!—on the creation of a circular food network for truly sustainable bread making in Ireland, which is not at the mercy of the whims and fluctuations of international grain markets.
Covers everything, from growing the grain, to milling, baking and retailing. Darina Allen will make some very special cheese sandwiches, using cheese, butter and bread from the Ballymaloe Cookery School and, what’s more, the bread is baked from wheat grown on the cookery school farm.
Featuring: Darina Allen (Ballymaloe Cookery School); Sarah Richards (Seagull Bakery, Tramore); Keith Bohanna (Real Bread Ireland); Emma Clutterbuck (Oak Forest Mills); James Kelly (young grain farmer, Ballymore Organics), Fanny Leenhardt Cohalan (Wellbread Bread School, baking and grain consultant). Also Fergal Walsh and Caitriona introduce their fledgling Dún Artisan Bakery, based in Dungarvan
2.30pm … AND FAR AWAY
We talk to those with direct experience of the impact of climate change on the African continent and Central America, listening to some incredible stories of both heartbreak and hope.
Steve Collins
(Organic farmer, famine relief frontline worker and founder director of Irish charity, Valid Nutrition, who has spent over half his life working in some of the most troubled hotspots of sub-Saharan Africa.)
Ellie Kisyombie
(Ellie migrated from her native Malawi to Ireland, co-founded Our Table and since become one of our most pre-eminent food activists.)
Kevin Thornton
(The former Michelin two-starred chef is an inveterate nomad and has travelled extensively through Southern African countries, immersing himself in the culinary cultures of these countries.)
Peter Sztal & Frank Kavanagh
(One half of Cloudpicker Coffee, along with partner Frank Kavanagh, who work with, amongst others, Brazilian, Colombian and Ethiopian coffee farmers and the struggles they face.)
Allison Roberts
(Chocolatier Allison has embedded ethical trading and production practices in her Exploding Tree chocolate brand from the off and is very conscious of the impact of climate change on vulnerable small cacao farmers and producers.)
Éidín Griffin
Éidín, of Rebel Seed Savers, spent 20 years living in Southern Africa where she built an eco-home near Lesotho and supported the creation of hundreds of resilient food gardens at underprivileged schools and communities.
3.15pm - NEW IRISH COOKING
Sample some of the great food being cooked in Ireland by new migrants to these shores.
An 80-year-old Chinese grandmother teaches Michelin two-starred chef Kevin Thornton how to make authentic dumplings and hear the stories of their journeys to this country.
Lilly Ramirez-Foran gives a definitive Taco masterclass featuring recipes from her new book, Tacos, with her Mexican nephews on hand to appraise the results.
Ellie Kisyombie cooks up a comforting peanut soup from her native Malawi. Kristina is a Ukrainian woman currently living with an Irish host family in Limerick and is going to share a pot of traditional borscht.
MC: Karen O’Donoghue
4.15pm - THE GODS OF FIRE Part 2
Andy Noonan and John Relihan
5pm - CHOCOLATE BLIND DATE
The Aztecs and the Mayans believed chocolate was the ‘food of the gods’ but at Grub Circus we’re more inclined to go with the ‘food of love’ angle.
Allison Roberts, one of Ireland’s very first bean-to-bar chocolatiers, working from her Clonakilty Chocolate Micro-Factory where she specialises in producing alternative, ethical chocolate which is marketed under the brand Exploding Tree. Allison’s entertaining and informative demo includes a tasting of ‘instant chocolate’ for all the audience and the highlight will be a Chocolate Blind Date.
Four single guy and four single gals will be invited up on stage to undergo a blindfolded tasting of Allison’s various products and the aim is to match up the most suited pairing who will then go off on a Grub Circus Chocolate & Prosecco Blind Date Picnic, returning the next day to report on their progress.
Overseeing all, doing her finest Cilla Black impression, is MC Ali Dunworth.
6pm - NATURAL BORN KILLERS
The rise in popularity of Natural Wines in recent years has seen it become one of Ireland’s hippest tipples with a proliferation of great bars and restaurants around the country coming on board.
We present three of great Irish natural wine importers, including Le Caveau, the pioneers of the natural wine movement in Ireland, in a thoroughly entertaining Natural Born Killers competition that promises samples of fantastic wines for everyone in the audience.
Featuring:
Dublin’s new Table Wine/Loose Cannon/Fruit Seller team (Kevin, Brian and Fabian);
Pascal Rossignol, of Le Caveau; and
Brian O’Connor, of Brian’s Wines and
the team from Table Wine/Loose Cannon/Fruit Seller;
Shane Murphy and Mick O’Connell MW of Neighbourhood Wine/La Mission Wines, all take to the stage
What’s more, they will be joined by the wild cards, Irish Examiner Wine Writer Leslie Williams and Dave Whelehan, of Whelehan’s Wines, in Dublin, who will be pitting three old school conventional wines against the Natural Newcomers.
Overseeing proceedings will be Beverley Mathews, proprietor of Cork’s award-winning L’Atitude 51 Wine Bar, one of the country’s foremost natural wine bars, who will be joined by more stars of the Irish wine and beverage world (TBC closer to the date.)