Food For Thought

Easy Food Home-Cook Hero Awards

The Easy Food Home-Cook Hero Awards Cookbook has just hit the shelves. Published annually in spring, the cookbook features 30 finalist recipes from the annual cookery competition, alongside over one hundred recipe favourites from Easy Food magazine. (Edited by Dee Laffan, editor of Easy Food, and published by Zahra Publishing. Available in supermarkets and newsagents nationwide, RRP €5.95.)

The Easy Food Home-Cook Hero Awards is an annual cookery competition run by Ireland’s best-selling food magazine, Easy Food. The competition opens for entries in May each year and asks home cooks of all ages to enter their favourite recipes into the competition, across 10 different sponsored categories, for example, Fabulous Fowl, Tiny Tastes and €10 Family Favourites. A panel of shortlist judges – chefs, home economists and food writers – have the tough task of shortlisting each category to three finalists. These three finalists take part in the cook-off final in Cooks Academy, where they cook their dish for judges Gina Miltiadou (Easy Food’s publisher), Catherine Fulvio and Kevin Dundon. Each finalist presents their dish to the judges and talks about what the dish means to them, and then the important job of tasting each dish takes place.

The kitchens in Cooks Academy are always buzzing with excitement and nerves, captured by the film crew for the TV show of the event which is broadcast on TV3 the following week. Finally, the big award ceremony is held on the evening of the cook-off in The Shelbourne Hotel, hosted by TV3’s Martin King. One winner is announced in each category, who wins €1,500 worth of prizes, and the two runners-up also go away with a hamper of foodie goodies. To catch the TV show and for photos and more information from the event, visit www.homecookhero.ie.