Departures: Foraging for Dessert Ingredients in Ireland
At 7:30 in the morning four or five days a week, pastry chef Paula Stakelum can be found out for a run on the 350-acre estate in County Mayo where she works. She runs along Lough Corrib not only for leisure, but to keep a watchful eye on wild ingredients that play a significant role in her kitchen.
If aroma and ripeness are right, she returns by bicycle later to forage. “You know when something is ready—you smell it,” Stakelum says. “That’s where I begin, with a smell I love. Then I ask: how can I capture that on the plate?”
Ireland & Chocolate
Foraging is often associated with savory foods, but Paula works with chocolate, an underappreciated taste of Ireland (it makes sense, with such superior dairy that Ireland would be home to sublime milk chocolate). Back in the Chocolate Room in Ashford Castle, the five-star estate in the west of Ireland where she’s worked for nine years, Paula is pushing boundaries about what goes with chocolate, incorporating unexpected ingredients such as pine tips.