Episode list

Brazilian Kika Chix is challenged to cook her country's favourite dish using only Irish ingredients. At home, the beef is cured in the sun. In Ireland, that's a problem.

When French IT intern Tanguy Escaron accepts the Romancing Ireland challenge to cook a meal, voted on by the online French community, to represent their country, he's feeling quite confident. That he must use only Irish ingredients doesn't seem like too much of a problem - until he realises that Ireland is not a wine-growing nation and gave up processing Irish grown sugar many years ago. With a party of friends arriving to taste-test his three-course meal, the pressure's really on. His quest for Irish alternatives brings him face-to-face with 20,000 Irish bees in a Dublin back garden, and trying Irish beef jerky, made by a Czech meat technician in Kilkenny.

Italian recipes often have very few ingredients. So the quality of each one has to be first class. This is the challenge facing Arianna Siliprandi, a bass player with Irish ska band, The Skatuesques, who has taken on task of cooking the dish that her compatriots online have voted to represent Italy. The catch is that Arianna must use only genuinely Irish ingredients. Her recipe requires two cheeses that are fundamental to Italian cuisine - Parmigiano Reggiano and Buffalo Mozzarella. Her quest to find an Irish equivalent takes her from the industrial estates of Dublin to the green pastures of Cork. For vegetables, she finds herself in a community garden in the shadow of Dublin's Aviva Stadium.

As manager of a busy Dublin restaurant, Uta Nilas has seen her share of fussy diners. But they'll be nothing compared to her two Romanian friends if she fails her Romancing Ireland challenge to cook Romania's favourite meal using only Irish ingredients. Right form the word 'go' the pressure's on to find an alternative to one of the main ingredients - rice. Her quest sees her sipping Irish perry wine in the a county Dublin orchard and learning, from a Finglas butcher, about the ulcer treatment properties of tripe.

Marc Vila Terra is a YouTuber whose vidoes about being Spanish in Ireland are extremely popular with his compatriots here. It's this online community that has voted a dish that best represents Spain, and Marc has accepted the challenge to cook it. The catch is, however, that he can use only Irish ingredients. In his search to replace such fundamental foodstuffs as jamon serrano and Spanish chorizo, he finds himself amongst rare-breed pigs on a Wicklow farm and drinking wine with a genuine Argentine cowboy in the wild west - or, rather, in Westmeath.

New arrivals to Ireland tend to find our supermarket fruit and veg pretty to look at but somewhat tasteless. Ireland also faces an obesity crisis that is linked to ultra-processed foods. But the Romancing Ireland challenge, which saw non-Irish nationals cook versions of their homelands' favourite dishes using only Irish ingredients, proved that Ireland has wonderful ingredients that are bursting with flavour and nourishment. Here, we look at three key ways to find local, seasonal and sustainable Irish products that are good for both personal health and the health of the planet. We meet a man who is growing his own, a community that are growing together and a local farming family that are growing ethically for their local community.