The lovely Michelle Darmody is the owner of the equally delightful Cake Cafe, just off Camden Street in Dublin. She is also a fan of Street Feast. Today she shares a few thoughts on how food can help to bring people together as a community. She also shares a yummie recipe for a simple sponge cake- a perfect thing to share with neighbours on June 17th. Thanks Michelle.
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I love to eat almost more than doing anything else in my life. I love to explore new tastes, to find the strangest cheeses, the sweetest dates, the beautifully paired ingredients that make each other sing. Every new country I visit throws up more new and exciting taste possibilities. Morocco with its deep, burnt, full, aromatic cooking, Thailand with its light and fresh seasoning and gently cooked fish.The list could go on for ever and it does.
I once read about a girl who said she remembered events in her life by the dresses she wore, well i remember events in my life by the meals that I ate. I remember the first olive I tasted in the English Market in Cork. I remember not particularly liking it but thinking it was so sophisticated to be eating olives that I made myself like it. I remember sitting on a cliff top in India with fish being pulled straight from the tandoor oven red and hot and spicy being washed down with a cold bottle of Kingfisher beer, I remember the brown soda bread my father used to make early in the morning, the heavenly smells filling the house as we tore ourselves from our wintery beds. I remember chipper chips after the school disco when you had drunk a little too much and wanted to mask the smells before facing home.
Eating to me is an act to be shared, to be enjoyed with friends and family, neighbours and colleagues. Streetfeast helps you do all of these things. It brings food out in the open, to be celebrated, to be enjoyed, to be shouted about. Food is the very foundation of our bodies, it becomes us and to me it should be the most important part of our day.
Simple Squishy Sponge Cake
Ingredients
Caster sugar | 150g | 5oz
Eggs | 5
Self raising flour | 150g | 5oz
Cream, whipped | 250ml | 8.5floz
Jam | 100 mls | 3.5 fl oz
Heat your oven 180 Celsius or 350 Fahrenheit or Gas mark 4.
Mix your eggs and sugar for ages with the balloon attachment until really light and fluffy.
Sieve in the flour and then fold so the mixture does not lose its volume.
Pour into a greased and lined tin and bake for about 20 minutes until it has risen and is nice and golden.
Do not open the oven door during the first half of the baking time.
