Source: Speak up Italy
1 The introduction to the report suggests that Irish cuisine
A. has only ever had one real ingredient.
B. was based on very basic and simple foods.
C. was traditionally very bad for your health.
2) Ciaran Fitzgerald's restaurant at the Blue Haven Hotel
A. has the finest imported products.
B. is famous for its locally caught fish and seafood.
C. is well known for its elaborate dishes of meat.
3) The teams of chefs at the hotel are
A. all from Kinsale and south-west Ireland.
B. come from abroad but were trained in Ireland.
C. nearly three quarters Irish in origin.
4) How does Ciaran Fitzgerald describe the food found at his restaurant?
A. A mixture of traditional Irish and international dishes.
B. International dishes with local Irish touches.
C. Traditional Irish food with international accompaniments.
5) Which statement best describes the population of south-west Ireland?
A. Both Irish and foreign people have lived there for some time.
B. The area's scenery has recently attracted foreign visitors.
C. There are mainly only Irish people living there.
6) How would you best summarise Jeffa Gill’s experiments with cheese-making?
A. Her success has been totally unexpected.
B. She always wanted to be a professional cheese-maker.
C. She makes enough money from it now to survive.
7) She concludes that cheese-making has enabled her to
A. have time to enjoy her hobbies.
B. live in a place where there is very little other work.
C. start a family in an area which she loves.
Many people still associate Irish cuisine with the potato, which has been a major part of the Irish diet for centuries. Generations of Irish people grew up eating potatoes, Irish stews and cottage pies — carbohydrates ruled. Over the past 10 years, all this has changed, however. At the centre of the fine food revolution is the fishing town of Kinsale, Ireland's `Gourmet Capital'. One of the most famous hotels in town is the Blue Haven. It is managed and co-owned by Ciaran Fitzgerald, the youngest in a Kinsale family of six. Ciaran was only 25, and working as an accountant, when he took over the running of the hotel last year. The hotel's outer wall is the oldest wall in town: 200 years ago, there was a fish market here. Kinsale's fishing heritage, says Ciaran Fitzgerald, is very much reflected in the Blue Haven's restaurant menu.
We have very much focused on seafood. Seafood is emphasised. You've got fresh lobster from the tank, you've got John Dory, you've got red snapper, a lot of just nice seafood dishes. I suppose, Kinsale, fishing... traditionally a fishing town, great access to some fantastic local suppliers of seafood. So we... I suppose that's what we represent here, and that's what I would see as modern Irish cuisine. I've a team of chefs in there who, who have pretty much, I'd say 70 per cent of them are Irish, but they've trained abroad.
So they take those dishes and they put some little twist on them, with the different accompaniments and different things like that. So, I suppose the basic dish itself, the roots of it are traditional Irish type of food, and then you just garnish and accompany it with more kind of international flavours.
Places like Kinsale have benefited from Ireland's new wealth. People now have more money to go to restaurants. But the beautiful scenery of the southwest has attracted both Irish and foreign residents since the 1960s.
Many started small farm businesses here, often growing organic produce. Today, more and more people want to buy high-quality food that is produced locally. Driving west from Kinsale, you pass the town of Clonakilty. This is the home of Ireland's famous black pudding, made from ox blood, oatmeal, onions, beef and six spices.
Further north along the coast, lonely Sheep's Head Peninsula sees few tourists. And yet on this rugged finger of land Jeffa Gill produces rind washed Durrus cheese. The cheese has won prizes and is even sold as far afield as Tokyo. Jeffa Gil didn't expect this to happen when she began making cheese back in 1979. At that time cheese-making was virtually a lost art in Ireland:
I didn't really intend to become a cheesemaker. I was young and enthusiastic and we had a small farm, and we had a small herd of cows. And I started to make cheese from the left-over milk from taking the milk to the diary, to the creamery. So it started very much as a hobby. It wasn’t something I intended to do. I did not intend to build a cheese factory! But it was just in the 70s, and we needed to make a living off a small farm. So I made cheese. And the cheese developed and the market developed . Because it just went from selling to friends to selling to restaurants, to sell¬ing to the local shop and selling to a local distributor. You know, going from a pan on the stove" to a vat in the comer, and then the house grew up around the cheese, and the dairy grew up. I just de¬veloped an interest in it, verging on an obsession, I suppose, but also an obses¬sion to make a living. It was a way to make a living, and live in West Cork. I always wanted to live in West Cork. Un¬less you were a writer, or you had a private income, you couldn't live here.
Key:
1B 2B 3C 4C 5A 6A 7B
