As anyone taking any notice may have realised, this site is taking a little break. Call it a diet, maybe. Normal service to resume at some unspecified future point.

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In the meantime, here is the one dish that I probably cook more than any other. It’s more or less from Nigel Slater’s The 30-minute Cook.

Pre-heat oven to 200C. Grease an oven dish with olive oil. Allow one part-boned (skin on) chicken breast per person and place in dish, along with some garlic cloves.

Drizzle olive oil, white wine and lemon juice over the chicken, then grind sea salt and black pepper onto each breast. Scatter plenty of dried Herbes de Provence over them. I remember Slater advises a “scant teaspoon” of the herbs but I’m always generous with everything here from the oil to the herbs. Roast for 35-40 minutes.

Incredibly easy and incredibly delicious. Serve with whatever the hell you like.

I finally got out of the house on Saturday, which was a good thing as cabin fever was starting to set in. I had to go up to Lismore in Co Waterford, to do some interviews at the Immrama festival.

Got the interviews out of the way in the morning and having wound up the second one about quarter to one, I suddenly felt very hungry indeed.I knew I would be in Lismore all day – I was going to the sessions of the writers I’d interviewed – so I figured I’d have dinner later in the newly refurbished Lismore House Hotel.

No point in eating there twice I thought so I wandered down the street and went into the first pub I came to – Eamonn’s. Eamonn was behind the counter. I always take it as a good sign to find the person whose name is over the door is also the person dishing out the drinks, whatever about the grub.

Eamonn’s is a proper pub, not very big, kind of old-fashioned but without bicycles hanging on the wall and what I can only describe as all that shite you sometimes get in both rural Irish pubs and mockeeyah Oirish pubs.

“Have you any sandwiches?” I asked Eamonn. He regarded me dolefully. I half-expected him to say “No”. I smiled encouragingly at him. “We have soup and sandwiches,” he said before taking a deep breath and rattling off the full menu.

“We have soup homemade mushroom soup sandwiches toasted sandwiches cold plates you know cold plates with chicken and home-cooked ham or smoked salmon cold plates tea coffee and sweets.”

I don’t know when I last heard anyone refer to dessert as “sweets”. It was rather endearing. I opted for a chicken and ham cold plate and took a seat in the corner.

Maybe it was my copy of The Guardian, my too-trendy glasses or the overall cut of me but Eamonn had his doubts. He came over with cutlery.

“You know now the cold plate is a cold plate with salad and that?” he enquired.

“I do,” I said.

“Hmm,” he said.

The cold plate arrived. Three slices of home-cooked ham, another two or three of proper, home-cooked chicken, two segments of hard-boiled egg and another two of tomato, some carrot batons, coleslaw, potato salad, an apple and mayonnaise salad, all arranged atop leaves of butterhead lettuce. The plate was accompanied by three chunky slices of homemade buttered brown bread.

It was homely, straight-forward and delicious – apart, admittedly, from the apple salad, which was just rather odd. I had the sudden realisation that a cafe in Dublin (The Cold Plate Café, perhaps?) that served food like this would do a roaring trade. No ciabatta, no focaccia, no funny stuff at all – just a nice lunch like your granny would give you.

I had seen a sign for a beer garden so I retreated out there with my coffee and Cadbury’s Snack. Just like the cold plates, the beer garden was a hidden gem – four or five large shaded tables and a long sun-trap of a garden, surrounded by high and rather ancient-looking stone walls.

If you’re ever going to Lismore (and I’d recommend it – what an unexpectedly lovely town it is), I’d recommend a lunch in Eamonn’s. Have the cold plate and you won’t go wrong.

***

If you do go to Lismore, stay in the Lismore House Hotel, right in the middle of town. We were given the use of Room 104 for one of the interviews and it was really inviting. It felt comfortable and luxurious without seeming in any way “designed”.

I had my dinner there in the end, as planned. I ordered sesame-and-coconut-encrusted chicken in a Thai red curry sauce with basmati rice. I wasn’t expecting much, to be honest, but it was a fine dish – appealing-looking and tasty. The chef had resisted overloading the plate, as his colleagues in the Irish hotel business are wont to do.

I washed it down with a glass of Chardonnay – recommended by the waiter – and a sparkling water. To round things off, I had apple tart. The buttery homemade pastry was full to bursting with cinnamony, melting apples. One cup of coffee later and I was a very happy woman. The meal cost €27, which I really thought was reasonable.

Incidentally, I’ve never met a waiter who was prouder to have his job. To my shame, I didn’t ask him where he was from – a former Eastern Bloc country at a guess – but he really took pride in his work. I overheard him telling the people at the next table that he loved working at the hotel. You could tell and it was charming.

The only odd thing was that he commented that he like to see women have dessert. Fair enough, so do I. Then he said, “You know, I ask some women ‘Would you like dessert, ladies?’ and they go ‘Hmm’ and ‘Hmm’ (he made faces to indicate their doing that whole Oh-really-I-shouldn’t thing) and then do you know what I say to them?”

“No,” I said.

He waggled his elbow at me. “I say ‘Bite me!’”

So that was slightly strange. Overall, thumbs up, though.

I’ve long been a fan of Giles Coren but I’ve just seen him in a TV ad for Bird’s Eye. I can’t believe he took the frozen pea shilling. For shame, Giles, for shame.

It’s nearly as bad as Carol Vorderman doing those ads for loan consolidation products.

Have you noticed how many lotions and potions designed to be applied externally smell like they should be taken internally? You can get strawberry shower gel and coconut shampoo, for example. I’ve just been thinking about this because of some of the birthday presents I got in the last week.

One, from rather lovely friends, was a bottle of Chance by Chanel, which has quite a herby, basil-like kick when first applied. Another was a pot of scrumptious-smelling almond body cream.

I love them both but I’m slightly wary of perfumes and cosmetics that smell like foodstuffs ever since I had a bottle of Joop perfume that was supposed to be redolent of apples.  I think it was called All About Eve.

One of the first times I wore it, I was heading out on the town on a Saturday night. I swanned off down the street, delighted to be enveloped in such a heady scent. On the way to the bar, I bumped into my (male) flatmate, who was heading home. We chatted for a while and, as we said our goodbyes, he leaned in to give me a hug. “Jaysus!” he spluttered. “You stink of cider.”

Slightly too redolent of apples, then.

Finally, as promised, a run-through of our two-star Michelin experience in France. As I mentioned, we had lunch in L’Oasis in La Napoule near Cannes while on our holliers a few weeks back.

Given that the set lunch menu is €72 a head, I did hmm and haw about booking a table. This was lunch, after all. After a phone call from my brother, in which he howled at the thought that we might not sample Michelin-starred food when it was so nearby, and a conversation with the husband, in which he reasonably pointed out that we had already (a few days earlier) spent €130 on a round of golf for him plus €60 for lunch in the clubhouse afterwards, I booked the table.

Of course, I then lived up to every stereotype of my sex and insisted I had nothing in my suitcase that I could possibly wear to a posh restaurant. Well, any excuse. One divine pair of chocolate linen trousers and a lovely cream top later, I was good to go.

The odd thing about L’Oasis is its location, down a non-descript little street off the main seafront throughfare. Once we were in the door, however, we realised it’s an aptly-named place. Given the choice of sitting inside or out, we chose “l’exterieur” and were led out into a stone-walled garden/courtyard, where linen-decked tables were nestled between flowerbeds bursting with orchids and birds of paradise.

We were guided to a table in the corner, from where we could keep tabs on all the comings and goings and size up our fellow diners (lunchers?). They all appeared to be at least twenty years older and many hundreds of thousands of euro better off than us. Elsewhere, this could have meant being horribly patronised by the staff but our legion of waiters (the maitre’d, a primary waiter, a bread waiter, a sommelier, a dessert waiter and a chap whose sole function appeared to be whisking away crumbs) were all sweet and friendly.

Having chosen our food and taken the sommelier’s recommendation of a Sylvaner wine from Alsace (which turned out to be lovely – dry and fruity and not noticeably sweet at all), we were given an amuse-bouche – some sort of smoked salmon dip – and a choice of breads from the restaurant’s own boulangerie/patisserie.

Much as I wanted to dispatch that with haste, I persevered with demurely dabbing it on little pieces of bread and nibbling away daintily. It was good – not spectacular – but very good.

The starters were a whole other story, however. The husband ordered scallops. He got three small, perfectly-cooked scallops, positioned precisely at one end of the dish, with the thinnest imaginable strips of asparagus fanning away from them. These were accompanied by quails’ eggs, bitter leaves and a flawless dressing.

My first course – a yin/yang of foie gras (yes, I know how it’s made) and artichoke was, if anything, even better. A thick triangle of foie gras held a thin triangular inset of artichoke heart. Alongside it was a scooped-out artichoke half, filled with foie gras. Accompanying the ol’ yin/yang were a few salad leaves, some edible flowers and a truffle oil dressing. I’m bereft of adjectives to do it justice but it was damn good.

The husband had sea bass to follow and I have to admit, the details of that dish escape me. (I did take notes but have mislaid my notebook in a tidying of the house since we got home. Where do tidied-up things get to?).

I had a duo of milk-fed veal – may as well be hung for a cow after the foie gras, I figured. The fillet was served in almost translucent, milkily tender slices while the second piece – belly, I think – was caramelised and fatty and explosively tasty.

Again, the details of whatever accompanied that have slipped my mind. To be honest, it was dessert that wowed us to such an extent that everything else rather paled in comparison.

Having let us digest our main courses, the dessert waiter wheeled over an enormous tiered trolley that was laden down with cakes and tarts and compotes and fruit concoctions and creamy things in little pots. When I say the trolley was enormous, I’m talking at least six foot high, if not more. It fairly loomed over the waiter. Had I had the neck, and the stomach, I could have sat there all afternoon sampling its delights – it was an all-you-can-eat affair.

We controlled ourselves, however, and chose just one dessert each – tiramisu for him and a coffee and chocolate tart for me. We would have had more, if it weren’t for the fact that all sorts of other sweet goodies arrived at the table, including a glass tub filled with sweets, a huge bulbous glass filled to the brim with pink, yellow and green macarons and a stand laden down with petits fours or mignardises, as L’Oasis calls them. I did my best to plough through as much of these as was humanly possible. I’m not sure any dessert course will ever live up to that array.

We lingered a while, stretching out double espressos as long as possible while trying to make room to squeeze in one more mignardise or macaron. Eventually, we called for the bill. Including coffee and a tip, it came to €180. “Good value, really, isn’t it?” said the husband. He wasn’t joking.

I detoured into the loo on the way out, more to inspect it than anything. While I was washing my hands, a portly Madame d’un certain age hove in the door. “Bonjour,” she boomed at me. I nodded, picked a mini hand-towel from the waiting pile, dried my hands and dropped the towel into the receptacle on the floor. Madame glared at me. It was only minutes later, as we strolled back to the seafront, that I realised I hadn’t really registered the wicker basket full of used hand towels and had instead dropped my towel into the rubbish bin. Oh well.

Afterwards, I diverted back to the little shop adjoining L’Oasis and bought some two-Michelin-star preserves and chocolates as presents to bring home and a two-Michelin-star baguette (€1.50) for our tea. You’ll have to visit to buy the bread but other treats are available from its online shop.

Brief pause for a commercial break…

…Well, not quite but I would like to give a plug to Aisling and William from Longueville House, who are now selling lots of goodies at the Mahon Point Farmers’ Market every Thursday from 10am to 2pm. These include preserves & chutney, honey from their own bees, house smoked salmon, wild game terrines, lamb sausage, olive savoury cake, herb infused vinaigrettes, pesto, fruit liqueurs, chocolates & jellies. Yum, yum and more yum.

Plus William is happy to dole out tips on preparation and cooking to anyone visiting the stand and that has to be worth the price of some chutney. He’s a hell of a chef – am salivating at the memory of wood pigeon I had there over 18 months ago.

So pay the stand a visit if you’re in the area or, better again, go to Longueville. It’s one of those died-and-went-to-heaven places that is so worth going to.

I know I’ve been promising reports on the food in France, not to mention the healthy eating recipes but I’m zonked after a week of celebrating (?!?) turning 30, culminating in an until-all-hours party last night.

So instead, here are pix from the drool-inducing Cours Saleya market in Nice. This is how all markets should be – a riotously colourful offering of every type of fruit and veg you could imagine and more besides. I should really go to the trouble of writing about this but brain is porridge.

Just posting to say, yes, I’m still here and, yes, I’m still eating, although so busy I’m not really cooking. (Dinner tonight was a toasted sandwich with hummus, tomato and chorizo – a raiding-the-fridge job – a natural yogurt and, how gluttonous am I, a whole 100g Green & Blacks milk chocolate bar.)

Have loads to report as was in France for 10 days and ate like a queen (cake and everything else besides). We even made it to a two-star Michelin restaurant! Once I get some time and figure out how to upload photos from the new camera, I will report in full. Short report: Fab. Delicious. Verging on the orgasmically good.

Have even more to report as then embarked on a complete health kick when I got home (minor slip-up there earlier on the chocolate front) so have lots of healthy recipes to post too.

Yes, I am so pathetically proud of my little seedlings that I took pictures of them with my phone (hence the risible quality). I would have used our camera had it not been stolen by a nasty baggage handler some months ago. Mental note: must buy another one.

Day-old thyme…altogether now, awww…

Here’s the basil, slightly hardier-looking…

And out in the garden, a row of infant rocket. Aren’t they cute? I feel bad for planning to eat them eventually.

Regular visitors to the English Market in Cork may have noticed there is a new stall next to K. O’Connell’s fish stand. It’s called Fish To Go or possibly Fish2Go. Anyway, it sells prepared seafood like cooked prawns, fish patés, terrines and so on.

I was feeling a bit lazy yesterday evening and felt like just getting lots of tasty bits and pieces for a salad ie no cooking required. I got crab claws cooked with chilli and garlic and fresh sardines done with lemon, mint and I think parsley. Both were just delicious and sang of summer to me.

The sardines cost about €2.40 for four and 10 or 12 crab claws came in at a slightly eye-watering €7.50. Still, they were worth it considering all the effort I didn’t have to go to preparing them.

I once tried to extract all the meat from a cooked crab and found it a tortuous experience. The details are distressing but let’s just say that I ended up retching in the corner of the kitchen, clutching a fork in one hand and a hammer in the other. No, the Fish2Go/To Go way is much easier…