Month: September 2010

Kanturk welcomes the Knights of the Black Pudding

pudding2The Brotherhood of the Knights of the Blackpudding, a colourful French food fraternity visited Kanturk in celebration of the Gold Medal Winning Black Pudding by McCarthy’s of Kanturk.

The brotherhood paraded up Strand Street, with their banners and ceremonial dress, accompanied by local ilen pipe players to arrive at the Gourmet food festival outside McCarthy’s premises on Main Street.

Representing Good Food Ireland, Peter Ward of Country Choice is no stranger to the finest Irish food. Indeed, he was declared Good Food Ireland Person of the Year in 2009. He said, “I say to people, don’t make anything exotic at all, just make something really really good that will bring people to your door. Here Jack McCarthy has, with a bucket of blood in either hand, made something really really really good.” He went on to say that, “It is great that our authorities are coming round to realise that the expertise of the producer is the greatest safe guard we can have in the production of food in Ireland.”

Jean Claude, chair of the fraternity spoke, “The Black pudding fraternity has been in existence for nearly fifty years and in that time we have seen over 30,000 different sorts of black pudding. We very happy to know, and to see, how much the Irish people enjoy black pudding and how the Irish pork butcher made a really good black pudding.”

pudding3The food festival included stalls from local businesses such as IRD Duhallow Community Food Services, Cork City’s On the Pigs Back” and new local enterprise www.easyentertaining.ie, and also drew gourmet emporiums from further afield, Sheridan’s Cheese Mongers, Mannings Emporium, Soul Bakery and Gubbeen Farmhouse to name just some of the stall holders.

Brotherhood of Black Plackpudding visit Cork

The 25 strong group of representatives from this French Fraternity will be parading in their regalia in honour of Black Pudding in Kanturk on Tuesday 21st September at 5:30pm.
There will be a spit roast and traditional music in celebration of this event on Main Street Kanturk to which all are welcome.

The brotherhood of the knights of the Black Pudding is one of the worlds greatest authorities on Black pudding. At the annual international awards three Irish Butchers were awarded medals. So impressed were the French by the quality of the puddings presented by the Irish that they decided to make Ireland the location of their annual pudding pilgrimage.

The Black Pudding Fraternity was established in 1963 at Mortagne-au-Perche in the heart of the Perche region of France by a group of foodies to promote traditional black pudding. Black pudding has a history dating back over 2000 years and there are variations in many countries, so that the annual pudding festival hosted by the fraternity has become a major international event with over 600 entries in 2010.

The Fraternity has welcomed some 2,250 people into membership since 1963. These are food connoisseurs from all walks of life; included are personalities from the worlds of politics and the arts both French and from abroad. Thus thousands of members worldwide support the efforts of the Fraternity with its core leadership of about thirty dignitaries entitled to wear its regalia, which is a tradition amongst French gastronomic societies. Dignitaries of the Fraternity are ambassadors for the Perche’s most noble product, its black gold!