Hot Flavours Christmas Special: Delicious gift ideas, Christmas menus, seasonal specials and the food books of the year

If you’re fretting about what to buy the foodie in your life, fret no more as we have a three-way tie for the Hot Flavours Book of the Year.

‘Make Hummus Not War’ declared Izzeddeen Alkarajeh and Eman Aburabi in June as the brilliant Jibrin became the latest small, but perfectly formed tome to be published by Ireland’s Blasta Books.

As the Israeli occupation of Gaza enters its third year, the owners of Cork city’s Izz Café remind us just how rich and unique Palestinian culture is.

The easy-to-follow recipes include one for Magloubeh, an upside down rice and chicken casserole dish which has mythic status back home.

We’re also loving the Nabulsi Kunafa, a syrupy, cheese-stuffed pastry cake which is deliciousness personified.

Recent Izz Café diners include Kneecap who visited to show solidarity with Cork’s sizable Palestinian community.

If you can’t find Jibrin in your local bookshop, fear not, the blastabooks.com website will sort you out.

We’ve also been proudly wearing one of the ‘Proud To Be A Paddystinian’ pins that’s available from izz.ie/collections/pins…

Regents, paupers, witches, bishops, thieves, monks, murderers, saints, goddesses, zombies and, cripes, the English all feature in Filthy Queens: A History Of Beer In Ireland, a riveting 227-page read from the pen of Dr. Christina Wade who is the country’s leading hopstorian.

Among the numerous “I didn’t know that!” tales told is Arthur J. Guinness literally being prepared to go to war in 1775 to protect his fledgling brewery’s water supply.

The only trouble with the tome being that we were perpetually thirsty reading it…

Our holy triumvirate is completed by My Irish Kitchen Table, the first cookbook from Dungarvan food hero Eunice Power whose recipes are defiantly old school – and all the better for it!

From the Dungarvan Fish Seafood Chowder and Confit Duck Tray Bake to the Baked Hake With Chorizo Crumb and Roast Cauliflower with Harissa and Balsamic Dressing, the RTÉ Today show contributor manages to get maximum flavour from simple supermarket ingredients.

As for the Red Snapper Cocktail, we’ve gone and found ourselves a new hangover cure…

If you want to make it a quadruple-whammy of festive foodie reading, the new Best Of Dublin is out now with its updated list of The 150+ Restaurants You Have To Try in the capital.

Among them is Kicky’s, the South George’s Street eatery with serious culinary ambitions, which chef-owner Eric Matthews delivers on… and then some!

The set Christmas Three-Course Menu includes a Salt Marsh Duck with House Morcilla, Smoked Potato, Quince, BBQ Pointed Cabbage and Foie Gras Sauce dish that you’ll be raving about well into the new year…

Also rising to the festive occasion are the Wicklow Brewery whose Christmas Beer Box includes their Helles Lager, Weiss Wheat Beer, HopKnut Irish Pale, 2022 and ’23 bottlings of their Barrel Aged Imperial Stout and loads of cool merch.

Bag yourself one at wicklowbrewery.ie…

Brewing up a storm as well this Christmas are the Third Barrel crew who have two seasonal specials.

They are “House Blend, an 8.5% Imperial Stout brewed with coffee, chocolate, vanilla and cinnamon, and Mojo Rising, a savage IPA brewed with Strata and Enigma hops.”

Yummee!

If you want to wish someone a Merry Cheesemas, The Little Cheese Shop has a monthly subscription deal whereby three different Irish cheeses, crackers and chutney will be dispatched to a designated doorstep.

Finally, let us all raise a glass and say “Sláinte!” to the fabulous Irish food and drink producers out there…