Some Thoughts on Irish Food

[Note: I have included a few pictures.  It is not exactly representative of what we've been eating, in that I usually only took pictures if something struck me as particularly attractive.]

When we visited Ireland and Scotland in 1987, it was long before the so-called food revolution.  There wasn't a lot memorable about the food.  For years, we've quipped that every dinner was either lamb or salmon, salmon or lamb.  The vegetable offering was always long-cooked green beans or peas.  Specifically in Ireland, we remember lots of brown bread.

We'd heard a lot about a food revolution in Ireland.  More artisan bakers and cheese makers, etc., and more thought given to the vegetable and fruit bounty in this mild climate.  

So we expected much better food.  By and large, that has been true.  The expected foods, perhaps, but prepared in more modern ways.  As in the States, there are more restaurants and more people eating out.  More sidewalk cafes.  And more fast-food places.

But some things haven't changed all that much.

There's still a lot of lamb on the menus.  But, then, if you could see the innumerable sheep covering the landscape, that should be no surprise.  The surprise would be that it is still overcooked.  We've had lamb a few times.  And, no matter how much you assure your server that you really, really want the meat to be very pink, they just can't seem to bring themselves to cook it that way.  (Our lone exception was the perfectly prepared lamb at Coopershill, our Co. Sligo country house stay.)

Brown bread is ubiquitous.  Every breakfast.  Most dinners. As an option for sandwiches. With your bowl of seafood chowder.  

Eggs.  Wonderful, fresh eggs.  From the hens just outside or from the neighboring farm.  Those lovely, deep golden yolks.  We have eaten more eggs than we usually would, but it has been very hard to resist that freshness.

An "Irish" is available for breakfast everywhere, everyday.  Eggs, rashers of fabulous meaty bacon, sausages, broiled tomato, black and white pudding.  Sometimes with sautéed mushrooms; sometimes with baked beans.  Not unusual to have an option for some fresh fish that just came into the local harbor.   Porridge is always available, and we've really enjoyed it. 

I've had a "full Irish" twice, just because.  Occasionally it's served with farls, a potato-flour combination that is somewhere between mashed potato cakes and bread.   Our usual breakfast has been one soft-poached egg with toast.  It seems to confuse our servers that we want only one egg and that we don't want bacon and sausages.  The bacon really is lovely, so, trust me, we've certainly had some.  (Here, a rare two-egg day.)

But some things are different, too:

The breads are now fabulous, almost everywhere.  We have had some of the most divine, moist brown breads.  We have vowed to figure out how to make our own.  But there have also been some wonderful white soda breads that were so subtle and moist.  We had one very unusual carrageen moss (i.e., seaweed) soda bread that was really interesting and good.  And, tonight, we had our first Guiness bread, which was a real stunner.

Carrageen moss bread.

Every lodging seems to make its own muesli, and many make their own jams.  Some make their own yoghurt, and a couple places we stayed even made their own honey.

Rhubarb has been very much in evidence--at breakfast and in desserts.  That's probably a function of the time of year we're here, but it has made me happy.  One of the things I love is fresh stewed or poached rhubarb with my morning yogurt.  And 29 days into our trip, I can report that I have been able to have rhubarb all but 6 mornings so far.  Sometimes from the garden outside.

The beer options have certainly expanded.  Besides the usuals like Guiness and Smithwick's (and Carlsberg for some reason), which are on tap everywhere, there has been a craft beer revolution in Ireland.  Many establishments will have some local brew on tap or, if not on tap, in bottles.  We have tried a handful of the local craft brews, and they have been very tasty.

Every dinner is served with "3 veg."  You might get asparagus on your plate with your entree, but your server will show up shortly with a dish of 3 veg--always potatoes, usually carrots, and some other, such as green beans (but fresh and well prepared).  Potatoes are a ubiquitous item.  Even if your entree includes a little serving of potato gratin, you'll be offered some steamed or roasted potatoes.  Chips are pretty much everywhere, too.  They are nicely prepared, however.  Never soggy.

One thing that has really hit us is the incredible seafood.  We have been in coastal areas throughout our trip.  And every area we've visited really prides itself on offering the local seafood.  The couple times we dined somewhere that didn't mention where their seafood was from, we noticed it right away.

They might be touting their Dublin Bay prawns or Dingle Bay prawns.  Bantry mussels or Killary mussels or Mulroy Bay mussels.  Greencastle-landed fish.  Lobster.  Each seafood offered will be local and named by the place it's caught or harvested.  

We have eaten so much (wonderful) white fish--sea bream, plaice, hake, haddock, cod, brill, turbot, monkfish.  Some we'd never heard of.  All have been fresh and very tasty.  The winner of the Dinan White Fish Taste and Texture contest: (drumroll) John Dory.  Great fish.  

Smoked salmon (gravlax) is on virtually every menu--breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

The mussels have been really good, too.  Most that we've had have been very, very small.  The shrimp have been wonderful--bigger than what we call bay shrimp in Oregon, but smaller than what we call prawns.  Somewhere between the two in texture, too.  (I love shrimp, so this has made me a very happy camper.) We've also had some really good scallops.  We had Donegal scallops for dinner the other night.  They're small and very flavorful, a bit firm in texture.  Also have seen lots of crab.  A number of places were offering dinners of crab claws, which looked more like stone crabs than our Dungeness crab.

Prawn salad.

Crab salad with apple.

As I've mentioned before, seafood chowder is offered everywhere.  Most cafes or pubs will offer it for lunch.  Restaurants will offer it as a first course at dinner.  It will usually have two to four types of white fish and maybe some shellfish, if it's locally harvested wherever you're eating.  

One thing we've gotten a kick out of seeing:  Every little town seems to have a Chinese Take-Away.  We'll be driving in some far-flung region and drive through a hamlet with only a few businesses, and there will be the Chinese Take-Away.  Sometimes, it's Chinese and European Take-Away.  We're not sure what the European take-away is, but we've seen it quite a lot.  Always paired with something else, whether Chinese or Indian.

I've drunk more tea in the last month than in the last 10 years I think.  Always with breakfast.  Sometimes in the afternoon.  One nice touch has been that hotels/inns frequently offer to serve you tea (and probably a biscuit) when you arrive.  A rather civilized way to settle in and shake off the road dust.

We've noticed that there is apparently a national cuisine, rather than a series of regional cuisines, such as we might see in France.  So there is nothing different about the food in Donegal, except that we see different place names for the source of the fish, or we might have different fish available.  Some places we see shellfish; other places, not.  

We have had some lovely meals and some very simple meals--almost all of it with super-fresh, super-local products.  One take-away for us is that we may have to learn to make some of that chewy dark brown bread.