Dee Laffan and Oisin Davis are on a mission to highlight the finest Irish food & drink pairings through their brand new podcast "Beár Bia." Translated to English as Food Bar, Beár Bia's key focus is that local foods taste best when enjoyed with local drinks and Ireland is no exception. Furthermore, pairing our native food native food & drinks is a vital means to develop our Irish culinary culture.
How does Beár Bia work?
Each episode will have a different focus - whether it be pairings from a particular county, from an event, a bar or restaurant, a specific ingredient or cooking method, or themed around a food or drink brand.
The hosts invite Irish food & drink producers for a round-the-table, fun-filled tasting, and discussion. Brewers chatting with cheesemakers, distillers hanging out with chefs, etc - all of it recorded, filmed & photographed for the podcast.
For the second episode, the hosts were kindly granted access to the huge array of different Irish food & drinks producers that were at the Bord Bia Bloom festival in Phoenix Park last month. Their goal was to look at how they could celebrate pairing some of the best Irish drinks there with Irish food products but in their most simple state. That way they could demonstrate that even something as easy to prepare as an Irish cheese on a cracker could taste amazing alongside an Irish beer.
The producers and their brands worked with for the special Bord Bia Bloom episode were:
Ann Rudden of Aine's Chocolates of Cavan whose chocolates we paired with county Galway's Micil Distillery's Irish Cream Liqueur. It's founder Pádraic Ó'Griallais joined in.
Dennis Dempsey of Kinsale Mead in Cork shared some of his Wild Atlantic Mead to pair with Birgitta Hedin-Curtin's wild smoked salmon from the Burren Smokehouse in Clare.
Caitriona Keavney from Cooleeney Farm in Tipperary joined, and the guys paired some of their smoked brie with the dark mild beer from David Walsh Kemmis' Ballykilcavan Brewery in Laois.
Each pairing was individually recorded at the Bord Bia Bloom festival. Between them all we covered what is most likely Ireland's oldest food & drink combo, an ideal starter style pairing and a decadent Irish dessert.
The first season of Beár Bia will feature 12 episodes and will be broadcast fortnightly. Read more about it here.
Slán go fóill.