Spice Bags

By HeadStuff PodcastsSociety & Culture Arts Food

Spice Bags episodes

December 08, 2021 S3 Ep7: Poland: Beyond Pierogi & Pickles
In this episode, we are joined by Bart Pawlukojc, the chef/owner of Arán artisan bakery and bistro in Kilkenny, and Kamila Bystrzonowska, the chef/owner of award-winning MOMO restaurant in Waterford.

On the table: What was it like to live and eat in Poland under communist rule? Why are there so few Polish restaurants in Ireland? What is the Polish personality and how does it affect the cuisine? Are there similarities between Ireland and Poland –in identity, and their attitudes towards food?

There are 123,000 Polish living in Ireland right now; bringing with them history, literature, language, music, and a cuisine that is rich with pickles, wild mushrooms, smoked meats, consommé, and honey.

From bartering pigs, foraging sorrel, to grandparent beekeepers, Bart and Kamila offer a tasty glimpse into a country whose inhabitants are so influential in Ireland today.

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Mentioned in this episode:
MOMO Restaurant, Waterford
Arán Artisan Bakery & Bistro, Kilkenny
Gorące Gary u Barbary Kuchary, Moore Street Shopping Mall, D1
Cork & Fork, Comix Café, Kinsale Road, Cork
Traditional Polish Bakery

Getting to Know SpiceBags
Our podcast episodes come in three delectable flavours:
Deep dives – comprehensive explorations into a country’s cuisine.
Staple chats – where we dish about a topic amongst ourselves.
Interviews – with individuals who have been impactful on the international Irish scene.

Pick a flavour, we hope you like more than one!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 hr 11 min
November 25, 2021 S3 Ep6: Wine not? In Conversation with Sevgi Tüzel-Conghaile
Sevgi Tüzel-Conghaile, founder of the Dublin-based A Wine Idea, is one of the most impressive females in the Irish wine world. Born in Turkey, she is an Oenologist & Viticulturist.

Sevgi, after her graduation in Food Engineering, followed her dream to become a winemaker in her home country before relocating to France to study her MSc in Oenology & Viticulture in Montpellier SupAgro and Bordeaux Sciences Agro. She continued her studies at the prestigious Hochschule Geisenheim University in Germany while living in the renowned wine region of Mosel. Among many other accomplishments, Sevgi also completed a certified course taught by Masters of Wine (MW) Romana Echensperger MW, Alison Flemming MW, Caro Maurer MW, Josef Schuller MW, Frank Smulders MW, among others.

She also married a man from Connemara, so we may need to thank him for her presence in this country!

How can one make wine accessible? Who has the better wine palate, men or women? Also, Sevgi shares some of her favourite dishes from her native Turkey, like dolma, manti, and kibbeh, her love for cooking Turkish, the “Mediterr-Asian” trend, and her favourite wine bars in Ireland.

Finally, she addresses the question, is there a future for Turkish wine?

As mentioned in this episode
A Wine Idea
Sakhalin restaurant
Geisenheim Institute

Getting to Know SpiceBags
Our podcast episodes come in three delectable flavours:
Deep dives – comprehensive explorations into a country’s cuisine.
Staple chats – where we dish about a topic amongst ourselves.
Interviews – with individuals who have been impactful on the international Irish scene.

Pick a flavour, we hope you like more than one!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
45 min
November 10, 2021 S3 Ep5: It's A Wrap
Wrapped foods are the femme fatales of the culinary world in that they exude an irresistible allure.

From maki and jambon to agnolotti and bisteeya, Blanca, Dee, and Mei discuss these most enticing edibles. We converse about the myriad of wraps out there – rice paper, masa, yuba, banana leaves, warqua, and seaweed.

Wrapped foods are easy to eat, but often laborious to make. They’ve been called “gateway” foods to international cuisines; someone might be cautious about Chinese or Mexican, but give them a dumpling or taco, and they will gobble it!

Did the Chinese dumpling come from Turkey? Have wrapped sandwiches and burritos done one star turn too many? Plus co-host Blanca confesses an abiding passion for the American country fair staple, the corndog!

Let’s just say that we have our wraps covered.

Correction: Mei said that Kashing does not have chang-fun with crispy bean curd. It is now on the menu.

Mentioned in this episode:
Cranky Yankee Corn Dogs
Sabenero Cheese (for taqueños)
PIcado Mexican Pantry
L. Mulligan Grocer (Scotch egg)
Al-sham Bakery in Cork
Kashing Restaurant
Gursha Restaurant
Follow the Camino (Empanada Gallega)
Las Muns (Empanadas)
Wrap & Roll (Wrap restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City
Vietnam)

Getting to Know SpiceBags
Our podcast episodes come in three delectable flavours:
Deep dives – comprehensive explorations into a country’s cuisine.
Staple chats – where we dish about a topic amongst ourselves.
Interviews – with individuals who have been impactful on the international Irish scene.

Pick a flavour, we hope you like more than one!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
45 min
October 27, 2021 S3 Ep4: Exploring Filipino Cuisine with Richie Castillo

Richie Castillo is founder and chef of the Filipino Dublin pop-up venture Bahay, and former chef of Clanbrassil House and Bastible. Although Irish, he’s a global guy. Richie’s father is Filipino, his mother is from Kerry but born in Jordan; his parents married in Jerusalem, and he grew up in Knocklyon with summers in the Philippines.

Richie chats to us about cooking influences in his life (his dad, his Kerry grandmother), takes us on a tour of his favorite Filipino dishes like suckling pig lechon and adobo, and explains the mystique of the bittersweet citrus fruit calamansi. He talks about the Spanish connection to Filipino history and cuisine. Also he answers burning questions, like what’s banana ketchup and why do we need to be eating it now?

Richie also tells us about Bahay’s menu and his future plans. Bahay means “home” in Tagalog, and Richie’s venture Bahay expresses all the diverse inspirations that make up his house. Richie’s Bahay is an amalgam -- pinch of this, a douse of that, uniquely Richie Castillo, and tremendously exciting indeed.

For more about Richie Castillo and Bahay, Instagram @bahay_dub

Mentioned in this episode:
Nicole Ponesca, I am Filipino and This is How We Cook
Pinoy Sari Sari Store, 25-26 Mary Street Little, Smithfield, Dublin 7, D07 DP03; 112-113 George's Street Lower, Dún Laoghaire, Dublin, A96 AK31

Our Spice Bags podcasts come in three flavours: deep dives -- comprehensive explorations into a country’s cuisine, staple chats -- where we dish about a topic amongst ourselves, and interviews with individuals who have been impactful on the international Irish scene. Pick a flavour, we hope you like more than one!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
43 min
October 13, 2021 S3 Ep3: Cooking Schools
Blanca, Dee, and Mei have radically different relationships with cooking schools. Dee, always inquisitive, signs up for a cooking class every time she travels; deep-diving Blanca is a Cordon Bleu graduate (pictured) who has not only taken cooking classes but also taught quite a few; and Mei refuses to take a cooking class, mainly because her Chinese side doesn’t want to be publicly shamed when she fails!

Cooking schools that make you cry. Cooking schools with hot instructors. Cooking schools that are a waste of money. Cooking schools that provide a unique window into a place that might have gone hereto undiscovered. Community kitchen cooking schools. Books about cooking schools. From Madrid to Cork, Cape Town and the CIA, we’ve got your cooking school questions covered in this latest episode of Spice Bags.

Mentioned in this episode:
Ballymaloe Cookery School
Le Cordon Bleu
Alambique
Books for Cooks
Woodcock Smokery
River Cottage Cookery School
Cape Malay Cooking Safari
Kevin Thornton's Kooks
Picado Mexican Virtual Kitchen
Aoife Noonan Masterclasses

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42 min
September 29, 2021 S3 Ep2: World Food: An Interview with Author James Oseland
James Oseland is a multi-award winning writer, former editor-in-chief of the American food magazines Saveur and Rodale's Organic Life, and one of the most hailed arbiters of the international food world. His first cookbook, Cradle of Flavor, about the cuisines of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, earned him his first James Beard award. Jim has also been a filmmaker, actor, and fashion and music journalist, and his memoir Jimmy Neurosis is a vivid and heartfelt recollection of his early gay punk days.

Jim’s latest project, a series of books, World Food published by Ten Speed Press/Penguin, reflects his passionate curiosity about cultures and his ability not only to enjoy food but also to connect with the people who make it.

On the heels of the publication of World Food: Mexico City and the eve of the publication of World Food: Paris (October), Jim chats with Spice Bags about far flung places like Greece, Queens and Jakarta. What are his thoughts about writing, research, and respectful cultural appropriation? Where would he send someone in his recently adopted home of Mexico City? (It’s not a fancy restaurant.) Finally, he brings us back to one of his favorite places, which is the kitchen, and the process of chronicling the people who inhabit it.

Travelers, writers, eaters and readers: take some tips from James Oseland! We certainly have.

**

We recorded this episode remotely with James Oseland in Mexico City, so forgive the occasional, three-second delay.

World Food: Mexico City is sold in Ireland by Picado Mexican Pantry, 44A Richmond St S, Saint Kevin's, Dublin 2
https://www.picadomexican.com/

**

For more about James Oseland and World Food
https://www.jamesoseland.com/

Monica Patino
https://delirio.mx/

On Greece:
https://www.saveur.com/article/Travels/Far-Side-of-the-Mountains-Epirus/

Cradle of Flavor
https://www.amazon.com/Cradle-Flavor-Indonesia-Singapore-Malaysia/dp/0393054772

JImmy Neurosis
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/jimmy-neurosis-james-oseland?variant=32206454325282

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/book-review-james-oselands-jimmy-neurosis-is-a-vibrant-coming-of-age-memoir-783606/

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1 hr 3 min
September 15, 2021 S3 Ep1: Brasil Delicioso!
Brazil is a vast multicultural food lab where you find a myriad of flours, Amazonian, African and Asian ingredients and Portuguese inspired sweets.
As more Brazilians come to Ireland, we are starting to see more exciting food ventures from Brazilian style sushi to steakhouses.
In this episode, we do a whirlwind tour of Brazilian businesses and meet the charismatic baker and entrepreneur Fabiano Mayor of Sugar Loaf Bakery in Dublin who tells us about the Brazilian sweets and food history, Euzana Forkan, Masters student in gastronomy at TU Dublin tells us about cassava, the versatile root that underpins so much of Brazilian food culture.
Finally, Pedro Ferraz, executive chef for Bodytonic group (Wigwam & Bernard Shaw) tells us that Russian beef stroganoff is a Brazilian family dish!

Instagram
@sugarloafdublin
@wigwamdublin

References
Brazilian food by Thiago Castanho

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1 hr 6 min
September 08, 2021 "Food Cravings" Spice Bags Live at Taste of Dublin
Science tells us that we get cravings when our bodies are deprived of salt, sugar, vitamins, and fat, a fact we will remember when we go on our next churros bender.

Food cravings are naughty and nice, sophisticated and shameful. There are homesick cravings; cravings for food that we have never tasted, but encountered in a movie or a book; cravings you invent to impress other people. Moreover, no one person craves the same. Our culinary longings do not simply demonstrate our palates, they provide a unique map to ourselves.

In this special Spice Bags teaser, recorded live at the Taste of Dublin, we go full-on craving confession with our former and much-beloved guests Kwanghi Chan (Bowls) and Lily Ramirez (Picado). Expect laughter, gasps, chat about Italian mobsters and various animal parts, and a few food secrets that have never before been revealed.

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45 min
June 13, 2021 Food + Fiction
At Spice Bags, we are as much book geeks as food geeks. However, what is the role that food plays in books, and how do words serve to whet our appetite? In this special pre-season, collaboration episode we hope to do just that!

With fellow HeadStuff podcaster Conor Reid, whose literary podcast, Words to That Effect, has always been a favourite listen of ours, we examine some of our best-loved novels and food excerpts.

We discuss a sexy Sicilian detective, Stephen King, 17th-century Spanish picaresque and the Japanese magic-realist Haruki Murakami. Most importantly, we unpack the deeply personal ways in which books address our hunger.

Word of Warning: The novels we discuss are more steak tartare than strawberry shortcake!

Support the show and get lots of bonus content by becoming a member of HeadStuff+. Find out more at HeadStuffPodcasts.com

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1 hr 7 min
April 07, 2021 S2 Ep12: Malawi with Ellie Kisyombe
Malawi-born Ellie Kisyombe is the founder of Our Table and currently Ellie’s Kitchen, Home Edition. As an activist and a food producer, Ellie is well known on the political and the food scene, and has been one of the most prominent faces of a changing Ireland. Here, Ellie talks about living in Ireland in Direct Provision, but also about growing up in Malawi and her family, which was where she got her ambition and her culinary chutzpah. Plus she talks about Malawi food and what makes it distinct; its beautiful freshwater fish, its multicultural influences, and yes, its whiskey and gin.

https://ellieskitchenhomeedition.com/

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55 min

About Spice Bags

From the publisher's feed

Sometimes the clearest way to see yourself is through a foreigner's eyes. Named after everyone's favorite Chinese-Irish deep-fried drunk snack, Spice Bags is a podcast about food in Ireland and…