Gougane Barra Hotel’s recipe for brown bread is best in the world

A WEST Cork family picked up an award for the ‘Best Hotel Cookbook in the World’ in Paris this week.

Katy Lucey along with her daughters Jane and Ali from the Gougane Barra Hotel attended the prestigious Gourmand World Cookbook award ceremony, as part of World Cuisine Week in Paris, where they were honoured for their cookbook ‘Cooking with Katy - Recipes from Gougane Barra Hotel’.

What started off as some simple online videos, shot by Jane, showing Katy baking brown soda bread during the lockdown last year grew steadily  into something much bigger as their videos became a huge success and brought a taste of Gougane Barra into peoples’ homes.

Photos of the Gougane Barra brown bread were posted from all over the world and more family cooking videos followed.

‘Ali our youngest daughter suggested creating an eBook of their favourite recipes so Katy shared the recipes, Jane designed the eBook and I looked after all things technical,’ said Neil Lucey.

They decided to donate all funds from the eBook to the ISPCC Childline and have already raised more than €15,000. The fundraising is still ongoing and €1 from the printed copy of the book also goes to the fundraiser.

‘The book is a collection of personal family recipes from both sides of our family. There are no fancy ingredients or notions about it. It is possible to cook and bake simply and well. It had been a pleasure to share our much-loved recipes and we are delighted at the thought of being awarded such a high honour for something which started so simply in our family kitchen as a lockdown project,’ said Katy.

‘Cooking with Katy’ is available online at gouganebarrahote.com for €10 and €1 of each book goes to ISPCC Childline.