| Wednesday, March 12, 2008 |
A trip to Ireland reveals what the Irish are eating now
|
I visited the supposed grave of St. Patrick in Ireland one Sunday afternoon a couple weeks ago. What's left of his bones rests under a massive stone in a breezy hilltop churchyard in Downpatrick, County Down, with a panoramic view of chimneyed village rooftops, green, hedge-lined pastures, and modest grey farmhouses. Afterward, as the sun set through the mist rising from Strangford Lough, we went in search of the favorite hot, cheap fast meal of many folks in these parts: fish and chips.
But hang on a wee minute. It's almost St. Patrick's Day, right? I'm meant to be writing blarney about corned beef and cabbage.
The truth is, nobody in Ireland really eats that.
When I asked some friends who grew up in Belfast about corned beef, they just laughed. When I searched for it on the menu of Belfast's historic Crown Liquor Saloon, I found plenty of hearty Irish dishes like steak and Guinness pie, pork and leek sausages with mashed potatoes, lamb stew and liver and bacon in onion gravy, all conveniently labeled "traditional" so tourists like me will know what to eat with their obligatory Guinness. (Personally, I prefer Magner's cider.) But no corned beef and cabbage.
"Historically, for the Irish, beef was a delicacy that didn't come to the table very often," explains Diane Duane of Baltinglass, County Wicklow. Duane is a fantasy and science fiction writer with a serious food hobby, as seen on her extensive Web site, www.europeancuisines.com.
"While cattle were kept here from very early times, they were kept mostly for their milk," Duane said. "For routine eating, pork has always been the favorite."
The popularity of pork explains the wide variety of fresh sausages available at the small butcher shops in Ireland. It must also account for the traditional Irish breakfast, called the Ulster Fry, which includes black pudding (blood sausage made from pork), sausage, bacon, fried tomatoes, fried eggs, soda bread and potato bread. It's not something that most people eat every day, but you can get it at any mom and pop café, and it's popular for a weekend treat.
If a meal with that much pork in it sounds overly filling, or if fish and chips sounds sort of bland, consider that for decades in the 1800s, many Irish subsisted on almost nothing but potatoes, and throughout much of the 20th century, the Irish diet was very basic: root vegetables, a little meat and seafood on special occasions, cheese and milk, eggs, cabbage, bread; and less than that for the very poor.
"It often astounds people to discover that, during the worst years of the Great Famine, among much other food, Irish tenant farmers were still exporting hundreds of thousands of barrels of salt beef – "corned" beef, it then came to be called, because of the grain- or "corn"-sized chunks of salt used in the preserving process – to Britain and Canada. But that was beef that the farmers were raising on behalf of the landlords who owned the land on which they lived and worked: they couldn't touch it themselves, and couldn't possibly afford what little fresh beef came on the market in their areas," Duane said.
"We've never really had a food culture here, other than from the poverty kitchen," explained Liz Moore, chef and instructor at Belle Isle School of Cookery in County Fermanagh. Moore originally hails from rural County Monaghan and spent years working as a chef in continental Europe before returning home to cook and teach, joining a new generation of Irish food ambassadors who are passionate about their art and using the best ingredients available from Ireland and abroad. "We do wonderful things with basic ingredients like lamb and potatoes, but now we have a wealth of food and so many different ingredients with which to work."
I took a Saturday cooking class taught by Moore to try to understand the trends in modern Irish food. The Belle Isle estate itself is a typically Irish mix of old and new: On an atmospheric island with its own picturesque castle inhabited since the 17th century, the entirely modern cooking school is in a renovated farm cottage. Overnight guests can stay in the castle itself or in fully-equipped rental cottages made from the renovated stables and coach house.
One thing is clear here and everywhere in Ireland: Poverty is no longer a factor in most people's diets. The Irish have money to spend on their groceries and on eating out and on traveling abroad, where they've picked up the taste for simply prepared fresh foods found in Italy, Spain, France, North Africa, Asia and the Caribbean; they've made formerly exotic ingredients like olive oil, garlic and chilies feel right at home in Irish kitchens. I notice this especially in St. George's Market, held every Saturday in a Victorian-era covered market building in Belfast. Among the stalls bursting with fresh seafood, local produce, free-range chickens, scones and breads, and wheels of Irish farmhouse cheeses, there are vendors hawking their crepes, curries, seafood paella, tapas and mezzes, homemade pastas, olive and seaweed tapenades and Indonesian and Mexican dishes.
Moore taught our group – a mixture of fun-loving married couples, grown-up daughters and their mothers and mums like me having a special day away from their offspring – a few recipes designed for entertaining friends; not overly complex, but festive and delectable. The starter is Seared Scallops with Thai Cabbage Salad; the main dish features cabbage and lamb, but with the addition of garlic, white wine, onions, orange zest and rosemary giving it Mediterranean flair. The gratin potatoes called Jansson's Temptation are almost French, with a Scandinavian secret ingredient; the dessert is an old Victorian custard-like standard called "posset," yet so easy, fresh and delicious as to seem newly-sprung from the mind of a thoroughly modern chef.
A recent menu at award-winning The Old Inn restaurant in Crawfordsburn, a picture-perfect village just down the road from Belfast, is another telling example of an enticing mix of Irish basics with global twists. Appetizers included terrine of smoked salmon, plaice and prawns, with lemon aioli and micro salad; melon plate with champagne sorbet and raspberry coulis; and salt and chili chicken mesclun of leaves with Thai-style dressing. Main courses included slow roast breast of duck with braised fennel and Parma-wrapped pear; filet of pork with an apricot and walnut farce and red wine jus; and grilled fillet of salmon with buttered leek and raisin, vermouth and chive veloute.
Exciting, creative menus like this are found in restaurants and cafes all over the Emerald Isle, just down the street from the inevitable chippy. It's true these menus are a long way from Irish lamb stew, making a culinary journey in Ireland more about discovery than nostalgia. But don't worry, the Irish are in no danger of losing their unique identity, Moore believes.
"Our arable land is fabulous; our grazing is second to none. Look at the pastures. It's winter and they're green. The cows and the sheep benefit from that," Moore points out. "People will always love the traditional cabbage and bacon and beef and Guinness pies and things like that, but we want to eat a bit lighter now. And it's always fun to use new techniques and invent some of our own – that's what cooking is all about."
Seared Scallops with Thai Cabbage SaladCourtesy of Liz Moore, Belle Isle School of Cookery (www.irishcookeryschool.com)
For the salad:
1/2 green cabbage, stalk removed, very finely sliced
1 large red onion, very finely sliced
3 tablespoons cashew nuts
1 red chili, seeded and finely sliced
Lots of cilantro
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
Juice of 1 or 2 limes
1 teaspoon light brown sugar
1 teaspoon fish sauceFor the scallops:
12 sea scallops
Butter or olive oil
Salt and pepper
Mix together all of the vegetable ingredients for the salad in a bowl. Stir together the sesame oil, lime juice, brown sugar, and fish sauce. Pour over the salad.
Heat a pan and season the scallops. Sear them for 1 minute each side, depending on the size. Serve at once with the salad.
Yield: 4 servings
Approximate nutrition per serving: 184 calories, 7 grams fat (1 gram saturated, 35 percent fat calories), 14 grams protein, 15 grams carbohydrate, 27 milligrams cholesterol, 4 grams dietary fiber, 319 milligrams sodium.
Cabbage Parcels of Slow-Cooked Lamb Shanks with GarlicCourtesy of Liz Moore, Belle Isle School of Cookery
These parcels can be made up to 2 days in advance and stored in the fridge to be reheated as needed.
4 lamb shanks
Salt and pepper
6 cloves garlic, left whole and unpeeled
Zest and juice of an orange
2 to 3 sprigs fresh thyme or rosemary
2 onions, finely sliced
1 (6-ounce) glass white wine
1/2 cup chicken or lamb stock
1 pat of butter
4 to 8 large leaves of Savoy cabbage
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Heat the oil in a large casserole. Season the shanks and brown them well.
Place a double layer of foil that will be big enough to fold over in a roasting tray. Lay the browned shanks on the foil with the cloves of garlic. Sprinkle with the orange zest, thyme and onion slices.
Bring the sides of the foil in to form a parcel before pouring in the orange juice, wine and stock. Add a pat of butter and seal well.
Place in the oven for about 3 to 3 1/2 hours. The shanks are properly cooked when the meat falls off the bone. Remove from the oven and allow shanks to cool until they can be handled.
Bring a large pot of water to the boil. Have a large bowl of very cold water standing nearby. Blanch the cabbage leaves for 2 to 3 minutes and then plunge them into the cold water. Once cold, remove them and squeeze them dry as much as possible.
Line a small ladle or tea cup with a double layer of plastic wrap. Cut out the larger end of the stalk of the cabbage leaves and any other tough bits. Line the ladle with the blanched leaf.
Remove all of the fat and skin from the shanks. Shred the meat from the bone and squeeze in the garlic. Re-season the meat with salt and pepper if necessary, stir in the parsley and some of the cooking juices. Stuff the meat into the cabbage and press down hard. Fold over the edges of the cabbage and then bring up the sides of the cling film. Twist the ends tightly together and remove from the ladle. Repeat with the other leaves. Chill.
Remove the plastic wrap and reheat for about 25 minutes covered with foil. Serve with the rest of the cooking juices and a pat of butter.
Yield: 4 servings
Approximate nutrition per serving: 304 calories, 12 grams fat (6 grams saturated, 35 percent fat calories), 33 grams protein, 12 grams carbohydrate, 105 milligrams cholesterol, 2.8 grams dietary fiber, 144 milligrams sodium.
Jansson's TemptationCourtesy of Liz Moore, Belle Isle School of Cookery
Butter, for greasing
1 1/2 pounds potatoes, peeled and cut into thin batons or matchsticks
7 ounces of anchovy fillets, or less to taste
Salt and pepper
1/2 pint heavy cream (do not substitute milk or it will separate while baking)
1/8 cup butter
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Butter an oven-proof dish. Rinse and dry the potato sticks. Place a layer of the potatoes in the dish and then add half the anchovies. Season with plenty of pepper. Go easy with the salt, since the anchovies are already salty. Continue with another layer of both and finish with a layer of potatoes on the top. Pour over the cream and dot with butter and bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until the potatoes are golden and tender, and the cream has been absorbed.
Yield: 6 servings
Approximate nutrition per serving: 329 calories, 22 grams fat (13 grams saturated, 57 percent fat calories), 16 grams protein, 21 grams carbohydrate, 92 milligrams cholesterol, 1.8 grams dietary fiber, 1,370 milligrams sodium.
Lemon PossetCourtesy of Liz Moore, Belle Isle School of Cookery
1 pint heavy cream
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 lemons, juice only
Pour the cream into a large saucepan and add the sugar. Bring to a boil and boil for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and whisk in the vanilla extract and lemon juice. Strain the mixture into a jug and then pour into small ramekins or custard cups. Leave them to cool and refrigerate for 4 to 6 hours before serving. For a variation, use lime or grapefruit juice in place of the lemon.
Yield: 6 servings
Approximate nutrition per serving: 363 calories, 29 grams fat (18 grams saturated, 71 percent fat calories), 1.7 grams protein 25 grams carbohydrate, 108 milligrams cholesterol, no dietary fiber, 30 milligrams sodium.