Ireland: worth the weight
On a recent trip to Ireland, Colleen Braganza discovers an artisanal food movement that serves up some outstanding though calorie-laden food
So, you're going to Ireland?" asked a friend. "You will eat well there."
I wasn't so sure of that. Before my trip the only food item that came to mind when anyone said 'Ireland' was the potato. And as much as I like potatoes, there is only that much you can do with them. I also thought Irish food couldn't be much different from English food given the proximity of the two islands and the fact that the British controlled Ireland in some way or another for centuries. In the run up to my six-day trip to the isle of Eire, I was looking forward to sightseeing in literary Dublin, industrious Belfast, quaint Cork and the famed Irish countryside. I had no expectations from the food.
I soon found out that I should have dumped my preconceptions about Irish food in Mumbai's Mithi River. The Irish clearly take their food very seriously. There is a burgeoning and influential artisanal food movement in Ireland called Good Food Ireland set up in 2006, whose members are committed to "using Irish, local and artisan food produce" to produce food that stands out from the usually mediocre fare that most tourists worldwide fall for. As a guest of Tourism Ireland, my group and I were treated to outstanding meals every day.
Somewhat unintentionally, my first meal on the Emerald Isle was salmon, a fish, as I found out later, the Irish share a special relationship with. There is a Celtic legend dedicated to salmon and the Irish are seriously into fishing and smoking it. It's a rare Irish menu that doesn't feature salmon of some kind.
So on day one in Ireland, after a mind -numbingly boring Mumbai-London-Belfast flight, I was glad to sink my teeth into a juicy fillet of salmon at the Bushmills Inn in Antrim, Northern Ireland. Its crisp skin sprinkled with poppy seeds on a bed of pak choi and peppers drizzled with a tangy dressing of toasted sesame seeds, this salmon was indeed a taste of better things to come.
Over the next six days, as I travelled from Northern Ireland to Dublin to the coastal city of Cork, my preconceptions about Ireland and potatoes were steadily demolished as I ate my way through exquisite food — goat and sheep cheese, hake, salmon, Dublin bay prawns, wild rice and all kinds of aged beef (mostly organic beef from cows reared in farms on grass and not in sheds on corn). Indeed, Ireland is the only Western country where I've seen healthy looking cattle on the grassy bank on the side of the road as traffic zips by.
Whenever I travel, my motto is to always try everything I am unlikely to get or eat back home without robbing a bank. That meant chicken was banished from my plate. The only time it appeared was at a traditional Irish night where we were treated to a traditional Irish meal comprising what looked like boiled chicken with a herb dressing, blanched carrots and mashed potatoes.
Ireland, especially the north, is well known for its soda or wheaten bread which is addictive, crumbly and soft with a soda-y flavour that goes particularly well with lashings of the excellent Irish butter. Thus, as we continued our winding tour of Ireland with our guide-cum-encyclopaedia Andrew Beggs, all meals were complimented by mounds of bread of every kind — olive, tomato, onion, wheaten and corn bread. After a tour of Ditty's artisan bakery in Castledawson, Northern Ireland, the proprietor Robert served us with the most divine fruit and nut bread among others. Most of us had just eaten a hearty Irish breakfast (see box) but that didn't stop us as we tucked into it.
Bread isn't the only thing the Irish seem to make well. At Rory's, a bistro in Dublin, I shared dessert — 'Strawberry and honeycomb knickerbocker glory with roasted peaches and chocolate sauce' — with a fellow traveller. Almost a month later, thinking of it makes me happy. The food at Roly's was outstanding, but the dessert was nothing like I've tasted before. The really smooth chocolate, a sweet burnt-ness of roasted peaches and creamy ice cream is the one reason I'll return to Dublin.
As we neared the end of this part-gastronomic journey through Ireland, I felt like a well-fed good food veteran. By then, I also thought it couldn't get any better. But that was until we arrived at Cork, known as the food capital of Ireland. Dinner at Augustine's at the Clarion Hotel in Cork came a few hours after all of us whetted our appetite at the picturesque town's famous English market, also known as Alladin's Cave for foodies. The three-course meal at Augustine's was one of the best I've ever had. It started with a delicate, burst-in-your mouth flavourful beef carpaccio followed by an onglet of artisan beef with cauliflower and truffle risotto topped by a shatteringly well made vanilla Creme brulee. I ate every scrap.
It showed. At the end of my trip, I stepped on the weighing scale to find I had put on three kilos in six days. But it was totally worth it!
On a recent trip to Ireland, Colleen Braganza discovers an artisanal food movement that serves up some outstanding though calorie-laden food
So, you're going to Ireland?" asked a friend. "You will eat well there."
I wasn't so sure of that. Before my trip the only food item that came to mind when anyone said 'Ireland' was the potato. And as much as I like potatoes, there is only that much you can do with them. I also thought Irish food couldn't be much different from English food given the proximity of the two islands and the fact that the British controlled Ireland in some way or another for centuries. In the run up to my six-day trip to the isle of Eire, I was looking forward to sightseeing in literary Dublin, industrious Belfast, quaint Cork and the famed Irish countryside. I had no expectations from the food.
I soon found out that I should have dumped my preconceptions about Irish food in Mumbai's Mithi River. The Irish clearly take their food very seriously. There is a burgeoning and influential artisanal food movement in Ireland called Good Food Ireland set up in 2006, whose members are committed to "using Irish, local and artisan food produce" to produce food that stands out from the usually mediocre fare that most tourists worldwide fall for. As a guest of Tourism Ireland, my group and I were treated to outstanding meals every day.
Somewhat unintentionally, my first meal on the Emerald Isle was salmon, a fish, as I found out later, the Irish share a special relationship with. There is a Celtic legend dedicated to salmon and the Irish are seriously into fishing and smoking it. It's a rare Irish menu that doesn't feature salmon of some kind.
So on day one in Ireland, after a mind -numbingly boring Mumbai-London-Belfast flight, I was glad to sink my teeth into a juicy fillet of salmon at the Bushmills Inn in Antrim, Northern Ireland. Its crisp skin sprinkled with poppy seeds on a bed of pak choi and peppers drizzled with a tangy dressing of toasted sesame seeds, this salmon was indeed a taste of better things to come.
Over the next six days, as I travelled from Northern Ireland to Dublin to the coastal city of Cork, my preconceptions about Ireland and potatoes were steadily demolished as I ate my way through exquisite food — goat and sheep cheese, hake, salmon, Dublin bay prawns, wild rice and all kinds of aged beef (mostly organic beef from cows reared in farms on grass and not in sheds on corn). Indeed, Ireland is the only Western country where I've seen healthy looking cattle on the grassy bank on the side of the road as traffic zips by.
Whenever I travel, my motto is to always try everything I am unlikely to get or eat back home without robbing a bank. That meant chicken was banished from my plate. The only time it appeared was at a traditional Irish night where we were treated to a traditional Irish meal comprising what looked like boiled chicken with a herb dressing, blanched carrots and mashed potatoes.
Ireland, especially the north, is well known for its soda or wheaten bread which is addictive, crumbly and soft with a soda-y flavour that goes particularly well with lashings of the excellent Irish butter. Thus, as we continued our winding tour of Ireland with our guide-cum-encyclopaedia Andrew Beggs, all meals were complimented by mounds of bread of every kind — olive, tomato, onion, wheaten and corn bread. After a tour of Ditty's artisan bakery in Castledawson, Northern Ireland, the proprietor Robert served us with the most divine fruit and nut bread among others. Most of us had just eaten a hearty Irish breakfast (see box) but that didn't stop us as we tucked into it.
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Bread isn't the only thing the Irish seem to make well. At Rory's, a bistro in Dublin, I shared dessert — 'Strawberry and honeycomb knickerbocker glory with roasted peaches and chocolate sauce' — with a fellow traveller. Almost a month later, thinking of it makes me happy. The food at Roly's was outstanding, but the dessert was nothing like I've tasted before. The really smooth chocolate, a sweet burnt-ness of roasted peaches and creamy ice cream is the one reason I'll return to Dublin.
As we neared the end of this part-gastronomic journey through Ireland, I felt like a well-fed good food veteran. By then, I also thought it couldn't get any better. But that was until we arrived at Cork, known as the food capital of Ireland. Dinner at Augustine's at the Clarion Hotel in Cork came a few hours after all of us whetted our appetite at the picturesque town's famous English market, also known as Alladin's Cave for foodies. The three-course meal at Augustine's was one of the best I've ever had. It started with a delicate, burst-in-your mouth flavourful beef carpaccio followed by an onglet of artisan beef with cauliflower and truffle risotto topped by a shatteringly well made vanilla Creme brulee. I ate every scrap.
It showed. At the end of my trip, I stepped on the weighing scale to find I had put on three kilos in six days. But it was totally worth it!
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