IT'S lunchtime and Mark Brodie orders a cream cheese and bacon bagel. Not the kind of cheese that's normally associated with him, but a mass-produced, mass-marketed product that's a million miles from the little orbs of fresh Boilie cheese produced on his family farm in Cavan.

Boilie began life in 1992 when Brodie's mum, Anne, was experimenting with soft cheese. She'd grown up on a working dairy farm in Lurgan and after marrying in London, returned to Ireland with John Brodie in 1973 to buy 85 acres on the shores of Lough Ramor. The couple began farming with just two cows, which were a present from Anne's father.

"Mum worked in the hotel business in London where she developed a love of foreign cheeses. Dad loved the English territorial cheeses and rankings of cheddars but back in '70s Ireland there was little more than Calvita on the market."

Disappointed by this paucity, Anne began making her own black wax cheddar. "This was around 1984, " Brodie explains, "and coincided with what other like-minded people were doing. Milleens, Cashel Blue, Cooleeney and Ardrahan all came along at this time too." For four years, Anne made the cheese by herself, selling it through Superquinn and a few select shops before opening a market stall at Dublin's Mother Redcaps in 1988, where she also sold other Irish farmhouse cheeses.

Noticing there was no fresh Irish cheese on the market, Anne began making curd cheese. But fresh cheese has no longevity, making it impractical for shops and consumers. "She tried storing her cheese in olive oil first, but this turns to jelly when refrigerated. Nut oils proved too flavoursome and expensive, while rapeseed was too acidic."

In the end sunflower oil, infused with pink peppercorns, chopped parsley and distilled garlic, was settled on and this is still being used today. "The herbs are more for colour, " Brodie explains. "In the beginning we used a mix of them, but it proved difficult to keep the blend consistent. Besides, most herbs really need to be heated in oil before they effectively infuse flavour."

Once perfected, the little cheese orbs sold well at the stall, but the shops were reluctant to take on such an unusual product. "We didn't even have a name for it in the beginning.

'Cheese truffles', 'cheese balls' and 'cheese in oil' were all ruled out and when Superquinn agreed to trial our product in 1992 it went into the store in jars without any branding!" The name Boilie (pronounced 'bow-lee') eventually came from the Boilie Road near Ryefield Farm. "It was a local name and sounded 'round' like the cheese, " Brodie explains. "It was only afterwards that we learned boilie is an old Irish word for 'milking place' . . . a hollow in a field where the cattle were milked."

Today Boilie is still produced in small batches using slow, traditional methods. Pasteurised milk arrives daily from Ryefield's supply farms and is allowed to set overnight in small vats.

The curd is then hung and left to drain in muslin bags before a tiny amount of salt is added. Then the orbs are formed and packed in to glass jars with the sunflower oil and seasonings.

There is nothing artificial added to the process and the product is 100% natural.

"We still use the old-style vegetarian rennet, " Brodie explains. "Perhaps the biggest change has been the switch to machine rolling. At one time we had four people hand-rolling the cheese into balls. Despite being quaint . . . and maybe even rheumatism-inducing . . . this didn't really lend anything to the final product!"

Originally developed as a cow's milk cheese, that changed when a local goat farmer turned up one day with a spare 10 gallon churn of milk. "He asked if we could do anything with it and Dad decided to try a goats' milk Boilie. The process we used was the same, with a few tweaks to get the right consistency."

The goats' Boilie outsold cows straight away and today it accounts for 80% of Boilie's sales.

Today Mark Brodie manages Ryefield Farm, which employs six people, and also makes O'Neills, another goats' cheese. With a background in commerce, he worked as an accountant for five years before spotting Boilie's potential and moving full-time to the family business. Although his dad has since retired, his brother now farms the cows at Ryefield and owns 900 goats with another business partner, which supply all the goats' milk necessary. Brodie is proud of the family success although fears that the farmhouse cheese market may have reached its peak. "We all travel so much now that there's a strong sense of place, and a strong recognition of AOC [Appellation of Controlled Origin, part of an EU system that protects the names of regional produce, like Champagne, Parma ham, Jersey Royals etc]. I think people want French Camembert, Dutch Gouda or Greek Feta rather than their Irish equivalents."

Thankfully Boilie's originality and old-style packaging (the goats' cheese still features the original label from 1992, complete with drawing by Ann Hughes, the wife of the man who gave them their first goats' milk) has seen it win fans all over the world. The rustic, country-style product has won international awards, and is available all over the UK, US and Europe. "In retrospect we'd definitely have changed the spelling of our cheese, " Brodie quips with a grin. "Some people think it's a French product, while it gets pronounced as 'Boilee' in the UK! We'd probably have left out the first 'i' if we'd thought about the cultural implications. It wasn't really something we ever guessed would be significant."

Ryefield Farm, Bailieboro, Co Cavan, Tel: 042 966 6848;

www. ryefield. com Peter Mosley Microbrewer THIRTY-five-year-old Peter Mosley is head brewer at the Porterhouse, an Irish microbrewery that owns three large pubs in the Dublin region and one in London's Covent Garden.

Mosley's been with the company since its early days in 1996, when it opened as a novel concept in Temple Bar: a bar brewing and selling its own beers.

Having studied biotechnology followed by a post-graduate diploma in brewing, he worked his way up with several UK breweries. "Unlike Ireland, there's quite a tradition of regional variations there: northern bitters, Scottish ales, dark milds and so on, " says Mosley. "Coming to Ireland meant learning a new market, but it proved to be a lively one, open to new ideas."

Producing 10 standard brands . . . three stouts, three lagers, a Weiss beer and three ales . . . Peter also has the opportunity to create seasonal brews. "We've done lots of interesting flavours, including a chocolate stout recently that sold very well.

Then there's been a German-style kolsch, and a beer aged in whiskey barrels. Last year we did an unusual-tasting hemp beer which raised a few eyebrows. The gardai even took some away to test for THC [the illegal stimulant found in hemp], but we'd tested it too and knew it was fine!"

Unlike a large brewery where Mosley might simply be part of a production chain, he works with just three others in the Blanchardstown premises, and enjoys the hands-on nature of craft brewing. Aside from the physical process, he also deals with outside merchants, ordering Irish and British malt, and hops from the States, the UK, Germany and New Zealand. "As we are so reliant on natural materials there's always going to be an inherent variation in our product. Our job is to limit that variation and it's my job as brewer to control this. It's not difficult to make a good pint of beer, but it is difficult to make consistent, good beer."

He explains that procedures and techniques have changed little over the years he's been in the industry, with stout the one exception for a microbrewer. "Stout has to be presented in a certain way to the customer, with a black base and tight, thick, creamy head. In 1996 we introduced nitrogen into our stout . . . a process that ensures a repeatable, uniform head every time.

The Irish stout drinker is very conservative and wouldn't have accepted their stout any other way."

Unlike major breweries, the Porterhouse doesn't filter its products, with the exception of its lagers, which are filtered purely for presentation reasons, not to extend their shelf life.

"Because we supply to our own outlets we can control our supply chain. This means we never over-produce our beers and we can focus on quality, rather than quantity."

Mosley has seen many changes in the Irish beer market in the last 10 years, and feels the Porterhouse is partly responsible for these. "Like cheese 15 to 20 years ago, there simply wasn't much choice for the Irish consumer. Then microbreweries came along offering people something different from the big brands that had traditionally dominated. Quite a few microbreweries opened around the same time as us, but many of these have subsequently closed down, sparking a fear that people weren't accepting new beers. But European brands like Warsteiner and Erdinger are huge here now and that's thanks to returned emigrants and tourists."

And while these changes are all good for a craft brewer, Mosley explains that people sometimes need their perceptions challenged. "You'd never say that cheddar is cheese and that everything else is a variation on it, yet people still use Guinness as the benchmark for defining a stout. Historically, stout isn't really a true stout, and its taste has been re-defined." The Porterhouse sells three kinds . . . a fairly commercial one, a sweeter Oyster Stout and Wrasslers XXXX, which is aromatic and rich, more akin to what a traditional stout would have been like.

"There are so many different kinds of beer, of stout and of ale, " Mosley concludes, "that they can all happily co-exist."

Producing over a million pints a year, some of the Porterhouse's products have been reappraised over the years and finetuned to match drinkers' expectations. "We need to make sure we cover all tastes and all styles of beer, so we try to offer products that differ to the mainstream brands. We realised that we can make wild and wacky beers like our Brain Blasta (an extra strong red ale), but it's also important not to alienate the normal drinker who doesn't want that big new taste sensation."

As a craft brewer, Mosley acknowledges that it's an all-consuming job, and it wouldn't suit everyone. "The brewery is in an industrial park, and, because of the nature of the product, the building needs to be cold, and it is often wet too. Because I'm working with a living product that ferments seven days a week there are long hours and a lot of worrying."

But he loves the variation of his work, which he'd never experience in a large brewery, and enjoys the satisfaction of creating a product from beginning to end. "The best bit of my job is creating something tangible, " he beams. "Our beers have won several international awards, which feels great, but nothing beats walking into the bar and seeing a roomful of people enjoying your beer."

The Porterhouse, Temple Bar, Glasnevin, Bray and Covent Garden;

tel: 01 679 8847; www. porterhousebrewco. com Sarah Webb Craft baker DESPITE the popularity of cookery programmes and high sales of Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess, baker Sarah Webb isn't convinced that there's been a resurgence in people baking at home. "People certainly know more about food, and have a much greater interest in it, but if home baking was really enjoying a comeback we'd never be as busy as we are now."

I'm not so sure I agree with Sarah. One glance around The Gallic Kitchen, which began life as a market stall, would intimidate the most confident of apple-pie amateurs. Baked cheesecake, savoury scones, pear and almond tart, goats' cheese quiche and Thai chicken pies are some of the handmade treats jostling for space in the counter and fridges. The scent of warm pastry wafts from a kitchen thriving with activity, and Webb, complete with well-worn bakers' whites, emerges from her engine room. With sparkling eyes, fine lines and not a trace of make-up she is as healthy and natural looking as the goods she bakes with care each day.

Growing up on a farm in Offaly, her career took her from fishing lodges in the Scottish Highlands to the professional kitchens of the Roux brothers in London before a move back to Dublin and White's on the Green. Here she became pastry chef under the eye of Michael Clifford, honing her skills in the art of patisserie. But Webb always knew that rustic baking was more her style, and she left the restaurant world in 1990 to open a bakery stall in Mother Redcaps Market. Here her sausage rolls, tarts and quiches found a loyal audience and for five years, The Gallic Kitchen enjoyed steady trade at its 300sq ft stall.

"By 1995 I'd out-grown the space and managed to find a proper premises close by on Francis Street. People thought I was mad opening a bakery in this part of town, but the gamble paid off over time." Eleven years on, she employs a team of 12 who run her kitchen, manage her outdoor catering contracts and run stalls at over 10 farmers' markets around the country. Webb ran one of the original seven stalls that opened at Temple Bar Market's inaugural day in 1996 and she still maintains a presence there. While once she was the market's only baker, she now has competition from several others, and welcomes this diversity. "The markets offer people more choice and have been key to our success. Somehow the style of food we bake suits the type of shopper that markets attract."

And while some Gallic Kitchen originals are still on the menu, today Webb recognises a shift in Irish eating trends. "There's much more of a demand for vegetarian food, which we never made in the beginning. But many of our original recipes are still big sellers: our sausage rolls, sweet and savoury tarts, fish pies and potato cakes are all popular. We've switched the latter for rosti and now make fish cakes instead of pies, but our baking has stayed true to its roots."

There's something infinitely wholesome and comforting about baked goods, and despite her operation being very much artisanal, Sarah welcomes the little changes that make life easier as a baker. "Sixteen years ago I would have had to go out each day and scout around for ingredients, visiting the butchers and markets to see what was available. Now you can order something like dates in the evening time and they'll arrive the next morning!"

She also welcomes the changes in Ireland's cultural landscape, acknowledging that the Irish love of travel and the growth in immigration has changed the way we eat as a whole. "People are definitely more adventurous, and also more familiar with a wider range of ingredients, " says Webb.

"It's fascinating to see the availability of so many foreign foods too." Amongst her Irish staff she employs a Lithuanian, a Romanian and a Pole, all of whom have introduced her to new recipes. "Even our way of baking bread is different. In some eastern European countries they don't use baking trays;

instead they put the dough straight onto the base of the oven.

This creates a hard crust which is then used as a kind of spoon with robust soups and stews."

The Gallic Kitchen makes its own soup every day, which is popular with the local workers around Francis Street. Bread is baked daily to serve with this, and also in larger batches for party catering. "But we don't actually sell bread to our customers, " Webb explains. "For a start we'd need a new set of ovens. It's a different area . . . we're more pastry based."

Future plans for the energetic Webb include a move with her husband and two children to Durrow, where they are building a second kitchen solely for production purposes. Does this signal a break into the big time? "At one stage we looked into supplying the supermarkets but we'd have needed bigger kitchens, rear access, etcetera. I'm happiest with things as they are. Our food is natural and rustic and the farmers' markets are ideal outlets for us."

The Gallic Kitchen, 49 Francis Street, Dublin 8; tel: 01 454 4912;

www. gallickitchen. com