By Catherine Shannon Ballman
Catherine Ballman is a Boca Grande resident who is also a culinary travel writer. In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, we thought this particular story would be fun.
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lodagh McKenna, claiming jet-lag from a quick trip to New York City for the Rachel Ray show, got her perk back on when discussing the state of Irish food today. Ms. McKenna, variously called the “Irish Rachel Ray” and/or the “Irish Martha Stewart” (depending probably on which show she last appeared) said, “What we want to do is make food as Irish as possible, take a great cuisine and use great Irish ingredients.” This sentiment is happening across Ireland, with much of the activity focused in Dublin. How good is the food in Dublin? So good that six restaurants in Dublin, population 1.3 million, can flaunt Michelin stars. Compare that to Paris (with a population of 12 million) where only 10 restaurants boast the Michelin imprimatur. So good that Aoife Carrigy, chair of the Irish Food Writers' Guild, wrote, “Irish tourism authorities are realizing what a bounty we have in terms of the potential of making food central to our tourism offerings.” So good that favorites like Boxty and Dublin coddle are being joined by new ways with Irish food, such as Ms. McKenna’s “Wild Nettle Gnocchi with Cashel Blue Cheese.” Or, Ross Lewis’ “Game Terrine of Snipe and Wood Pigeon with Mustard Quince Puree.” Chef Lewis and partners Martin Corbett and Eamonn Walsh arguably changed the course of Dublin’s food scene with the opening of Chapter One in 1993. Michelin-starred since 2007, Chapter One is an expression of the Irish land and sea. The remarkable food, innovative, impeccably prepared and tasty, the people and the ambiance make for a perfect culinary experience. To see how modern Irish cuisine translates to Dublin’s cafes, markets and food stalls, we spent a morning on a “fabulous food trail” with Ms. Carrigy herself, all curls and smiles, as leader. The tour took us through the recently dubbed “ Creative Quarter,” an area between Grafton and Georges Streets, stuffed with food and history. Crossing the River Liffey on the Ha’Penney Bridge, and later over fresh-from-the oven scones, home-made jam and farm-churned butter at Woolen Mills Eating House, she talks about the dual paths that led to the high quality of Irish food today. She talked and we listened as the pile of scones transformed into a few crumbs.
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The annals show farm-to-table is not a new way of thinking about food, it’s been the Irish way of life for centuries. In the 11th century the Cistercian monks of St. Mary’s Abbey, who once reigned proudly over much of the Liffey and down to the sea, herded cattle into an herb-filled field for their diet. An unanticipated effect of the ugly Penal Laws was the creation of a world of small-holding farms. Farmers were forced to be self-sufficient in providing for their own needs, making their own cheeses and smokehouse meats, preserving fruits and vegetables and baking breads and cakes. Further, the lack of a real Industrial Revolution means that the land and waters remained unsullied. In more recent times immigration from Asia, South America and Eastern Europe added their flavors to the Irish diet. A walk down Grafton Street finds Thai, Chinese, Nepali, Polish, Spanish, and Italian restaurants cheek-by-jowl with Irish pubs and bistros. Another factor – Ryanair’s cheap flights– contributed to a broadening of the Irish palate.
Woolen Mills Eating House is infused with the Ballymaloe, the famed cooking school outside of Cork, ethos. Owner Elaine Murphy said, “We have been championing local, small and artisan producers and using local produce from almost exclusively within the island since the restaurant opened.” The menu smacks of Ireland with classic Irish fry-ups and curries, and all manner of pork. The difference is that each is done up with the freshest of ingredients and big dollops of new flavors, such as squash and poached egg with onion bhajis, a fritterlike dish from India, and scallops on toast with samphire, a wild plant found along the rocky Atlantic shore. The next stop is the Saturday-only Temple Bar Food Market. Hidden away at Meeting House Square behind the National Photographic Archives, the jolly market contains booths of yeast bread bakers (still
evolving in a country where soda bread is king) and cheese- makers, curry kitchen, butcher, green grocers and chocolatiers. At Crepes in the City, all the ingredients for the sweet and savory crepes are sourced from within the market itself. The bustle of the crowd prompted Ms. Corrigy to comment that markets are becoming centers of community gathering, replacing pub and church. Silke Cropp’s Corleggy Cheese shares an interesting pedigree with other artisan farmhouse cheeses, such as Knockalara and Dingle Peninsula: They were each started by Germans who immigrated to Ireland some 25 years ago and couldn’t find the cheese they remembered from home. Corleggy cheeses are all made from raw milk, sheep or cow, resulting in cheeses with big aromas and clean flavors. Along a stone wall in the north end of the market The Temple Oyster Bar serves up plump oysters.The Atlantic-raised oysters, this week from County Sligo, were cold and briny, sweet and a bit buttery. They were accompanied by a fresh mignonette and a glass of crisp white wine (French, but maybe that’s about to change). David Llewellyn, who sells apples, ciders and vinegars at the market, planted a vineyard in Lusk, the wine-making capitol of Ireland, and trusts that Irish wine has a future. Elaine Murphy back at Woolen Mills poured both a red and a white Irish wine. Onward to the Blazing Saddles Wholefood Deli – an easy 10-minute walk – a showcase for fresh, vegetarian foods. It is a tiny spot but crammed with food for destination shoppers and the neighboring workforce alike to eat for lunch or carry home for dinner. Like everything in the store, the creamy yellow dal soup contained no dairy, sugar, additives or preservatives ... just lots of taste. A crowd favorite is Nobo, named for the Irish word for “no cow.” It is an ice cream made from avocados,
and so good even traditional ice cream eaters opt for its clean, nuanced flavors. Curiously no olive oil, the linchpin of the popular Mediterranean diet, is used in any of the food. Instead, rapeseed oil is preferred. A recently-introduced crop in County Meath’s Boyne Valley, rapeseed is high in Omega 3, 6 and 9, plus vitamin E and contains half the saturated fat of olive oil. Clearly it was time to stop by the pub, and The Swan suited the need. Serving alcohol since 1691,The Swan was known by the sign of a white swan to indicate to an illiterate clientele they had arrived at the right spot. Sometime in the 19th century The Swan was redone to fit Victorian style sensibilities. It remains one of Dublin’s 11 “Heritage Pubs,” complete with cash drawer, snugs for use by women and priests not wanting to be seen drinking publicly and wall-mounted casks, one each for sherry, brandy, port and whiskey. The seven brass taps are the oldest in Dublin. As we sipped a drop of Powers 12-year-old Special Reserve, publican John Lynch recounted tales still bandied about around the slab of Scottish granite bar top. Stories about the occupation in 1916 by the Rebels, and again in 1921. Stories of the escape of Irish Free Forces through a hole punched into the wall, and rugby championships won by Dublin favorite son Sean Lynch, father of the current owners. Refreshed, we walked on to the aptly-named business called The Good Food Store, a grocer and deli. We were welcomed by hand-warming breakfast sausage rolls. Extremely popular in Ireland as a convenient way to grab a meal on the go, as with most fast food around the world, sausage rolls are often a greasy, bland disappointment; not so at this bustling shop. The pork sausage was rich with the flavors of thyme, marjoram, basil, rosemary and sage. Tucked into a piece of puff pastry, this is a roll that with a cup of tea could kickstart a rainy Dublin morning. The store is the perfect destination for all those culinary purchases to take home. Shelves line the store with Irish wares. Irish-made pasta and red sauce, rapeseed oil from Co. Donegal, cutting boards from Waterford and teas from around the world tempt and seduce. After a quick breeze through Market Arcade down the street we dropped in at Parisian-chic Cocoa Atelier. Deviating from the other stops on
the tour, this chocolate is not local but French.The Irish seem to have a high predilection for sweets; bakeries and chocolate shops pop up in every neighborhood. Dublin has made this a spendy temple to ganache, which by the way is French for “jowl,” something to consider the next time the bon bon box comes your way. Traditionally Irish, however, are biscuits from the high-end, artisan-owned Lismore Food Company. Uniquely Irish, the bar code on the boxes of biscuits shows the shape of the Lismore city skyline. Fallon & Byrne, a restaurant, food hall and wine shop was our final point of call. Three stories tall and jammed with Irish foodstuffs, Fallon & Byrne captures the whole of the revival of Irish food. Being Saturday, the market teemed with folks filling up their baskets with seaweed bread, charcuterie, well-hung meats and cheeses for Saturday dinner parties and Sunday dinners. We retreated to the wine cellar – also known as “The Lower Depth” – where we enjoyed soda bread with farm-made chorizo, a lovely Irish homage to the Italian bruschetta, and a glass of French red. The last 10 years has seen wine re-emerge as a crowd favorite in Ireland. Although wine drinking goes back to the days of the Celts (and a feast-loving group they were) it faded in popularity. But a complicated tax system, tied in with the VAT rebates, keep wine very expensive, thusly, the impressively-knowledgeable staff make Fallon & Byrne a go-to source for trustworthy information and recommendations. And so we sip and munch, listen and learn, and think about the food destination Ireland has become.
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March/April 2017 GASPARILLA ISLAND
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