Eat your heart out Galway

So last weekend was the Galway food festival, and I, possessing both a tongue and teeth, of course made my way down to it for a day.  Galway, hidden gem of the West, hosts several such festivals each year.  This summer I’m looking forward to the Galway Races which promise to bring drunk people, horses, and Mongolians, and the Galway Arts Festival, which will bring drunk people, floats, and crusty jugglers.  Recent conversations have revealed that Galway is in fact bad at tourism as most of the locals have no idea what out of town visitors would be interested in seeing, this fact is balanced, however, by how well they do festivals which are accessible and enjoyable, as long as the weather holds out and sometimes even when it doesn’t.

Last Saturday was certainly in the ‘good weather’ category as I was actually able to go on my first jog in this country without being pelted by sleet in 30mph winds, what little calories I burned would surely be sacrificed to the gluttony gods as we eagerly made our way down to the city center.  To our delight it was not overcrowded and rowdy, just busy and happy and full of people who were ecstatic to be out on a lovely spring day.  Passing quickly through an outer market which could have easily drained my wallet several times over by means of locally cured sausages and organic cheeses we pressed on to see our first free event, ‘Craft Beer and Cidre Talk and Tasting’ hosted by Martine’s of Quay Street.



The talk was actually hosted by Martine’s dad, Eddie, who has been making his own potent potables for decades in home and shed.   He was wonderfully helpful and brisk as he walked a cozy roomful of interested parties through the relatively simple process of smashing 20lbs of apples into 1 gallon of sweet, sweet alcoholic cider.  Of course the main attraction was the tasting portion of the ‘talk and taste’ wherein he uncorked a few bottles of his own golden ambrosia, his secret is to use champagne yeast in the fermentation stage which resulted in an absolutely crisp and dare I say elegant end product.  This was followed by a selection of personal preserves picked from the local bushes around Eddie’s country home all of which were exceedingly succulent and more potent than anything you pick up on the local shop shelves.  He finished off the talk with more samples, this time a homebrew ale which despite the greater outlay in time, materials, and equipment, failed to stack up to the cider’s standards.


No worries because I had to dash off to the next event, this time across the river at ‘Aniar’ a tres hip boutique kitchen and cooking school which was doing a talk on pickling, curing and fermenting called ‘Making the Old New‘.  This talk was fairly lackluster, as our host was not exactly the showman I would have wanted and the fare he presented was actually not all that original-seared lamb with boiled carrots, beetroots and bits of greens.  I wish I could have learned more as I expected an informative session outlining how to cure your own meats and store foods in creative ways, instead there was a bit about sticking veg in salty water and using seaweed to make crusts.  No matter because once again it was free and lo and behold in a totally Irish way I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen since my college days and we shared numbers before dashing off again.

With a bit of down time before my scheduled dinner I dropped in on the wife as she enjoyed the usual charming atmosphere and stellar sweets at Cupan Tae, our favorite lunch spot on the bay.  As busy as they were we still managed to snag a table and I enjoyed a cup of tea, while their deserts looked as tantalizing as ever (must get a slice of that later) we decided to go out for ice cream instead after we hit the market for fresh veg.  After stocking our larders 99’s were in order, the ninety-nine being local shorthand for soft serve ice cream with a bit of chocolate stick shoved in the top, just the thing to enjoy in the sun on the river walk commenting on passersby.  Once those were done and deliciously dusted we milled about the Spanish Arch where most of the demonstration tents were set up, there I got to witness first hand the delectable creations of Gail from Lizzy May’s cookies, it would have been a sin to bite them however no matter how delicious I’ve been told they are.

I was reserving space in my belly for a bit of heavier fare, a proper appetizer before the main course, so I ventured forth to locate Il Vicolo, which advertised a spread of Venetian street foods to take the edge off of my hunger.  Much to my dismay I found the Café entirely closed up without a hint of the promised edibles to be found, fortunately I was spoiled for choice and this was a perfect opportunity to try out a little tapas bar I had had my eye on.  Cava Bodega was as charming and bustling as one would hope for in a drop in wine and bite type place, their festival deal of 2 Euro pinchos (small bite crustinis) matched perfectly with a reasonably large glass of red wine.  What a lovely experience it was to sit and sup in solitude while a dozen conversations danced around me, one of my pinchos consisted of anchovies and a Spanish almond spread called Romesco, the other was a more simple chorizo and Manchego affair which was of a perfect dry pairing for my Spanish Red.  As tempting as it was to double down and spend another half hour mulling over combinations of flavor I decided instead to make a proper evening of such frivolity and jetted off to re-up with my Mrs.  She was checking out cooking demos courtesy of Thai Garden in the main square, due to her insider cred and natural charms she was actually able to score their curry paste recipe and now insists we get a mortar and pestle (so excited) in order to recreate it.

While she studied their technique with a keen eye I took the opportunity to grab a little afternoon sun and by the looks of the opposite bank there were plenty of festivalistas who had the same idea.  After a suitable period of reptile style digestion, I hopped up and breezed over to Creole for my main event of the day, a ’Slow and Low cooking with Craft Beer’ tasting which had caught my eye as soon as I saw the fest schedule.  Having even made a reservation I had no problem plunking down a tenner for the chance to be wowed and made a bit tipsy by the three pairings they’d prepared;  Pressed pork belly with a local pale ale;  brazed Lamb with Mango chutney with a Rye; and finally BBQ brisket mated to a Coffee porter.  I took this very seriously, perhaps too much so, as my inner poncy bastard came out.  While some of the blame lies with food which had obviously sat a bit before being served I surveyed the fare thusly:

Pork belly on the dry side and lacking that savory note one desires, while its roasted red pepper relish was very well executed it didn’t quite meld with the meat.  The beer was nothing too special but helped to give it a summer cook out feel.

The lamb, served on a bit of tortilla crisp, was overpowered by the salsa, which was really a shame as it was properly sweet and moist.  The biggest misstep was not switching the preparations of the lamb and pork, I’ve had vastly better agnello experiences while shredded pig is a latin staple.  The N17 Rye was bland as I found it lacked the strong hop notes at the finish to really round it out and demand another sip.

Maybe I was spoiled by some truly good down home Bar-B-Que back in Chicago but probably not, as the Brisket was dry and stringy, the sauce severely calling for bourbon and the cornbread square it all sat upon  not passing any kind of muster.  The porter, on the other hand, was the strongest standalone of the lot.  Well rounded and subtle it was truly something to enjoy slowly with due consideration, I’ll be on the lookout for Galway Bay’s Stormy Porter in the future.

A bit disappointed as I’d heard absolute raves about Creole I chalked it up to the idea that this was an introduction to what they could do, recognizing that what I’d been served was only a few small missteps away from being a truly satisfying plate.  In any case it had only cost me 10 Euro and had come with the equivalent of about a pint of beer, so I can’t whine too much.  In any case it was 4.30 in the afternoon and we’d come and seen all we needed to, passing by a tart concocting demonstration courtesy of Goya’s bakery we only dallied a moment before heading home,  an easy ten minute drive in light traffic and we were home again home again, making plans for dinner that night and looking forward to next year, when we could eat the whole thing all over again.

Drive Me Crazy

While for some time I have been accepted over here by friends and family, locals who see me less as an interloper and more of just another friendly face, there are a few facets of everyday life which I have previously been unable to take part in.  I eat the food, I wear the clothes, I sing the songs and dance a few steps of the dances, and yet in one or two areas I still found myself limited.  In an effort to erase that feeling of exclusion, and indeed to keep me sharp as to one classic American institution, I saddled up, strapped in, gritted my teeth and turned the ignition.  Yes, hide your pets and children, I started driving on Irish roads.

You probably are aware, at least in a general sense, that motoring takes place on the left hand side of this country.  Making the switch to south paw navigation is not that difficult, in my limited driving experience here I’ve only been on the ‘wrong side’ of the road a handful of times, and never for so long as to cause a ‘major’ collision.  What requires a more serious adjustment is reacquainting yourself with all of the car’s controls, knobs, buttons, and levers that control the little things on cars, like headlights and turn signals which are by and large juxtaposed as you might or might not expect when the steering wheel is on the other side.  Combine that with the ubiquity of the stick shift (luckily I had some experience with manual gearboxes) which are also controlled on the left (which I had no experience with) and all of this can make your first few forays into Irish driving daunting on a good day.

Once you do get accustomed to making the car go in the direction you want it to your next challenge will be navigation.  Do you have a fairly comprehensive knowledge of Irish geography especially all of the small towns and villages that lay between you and your desired destination?  No?  That’s unfortunate, because must directions you’ll receive from helpful guides will be a series of places you will drive through in order to get to where you want to be.  For example, the 15 minute drive from ‘the home place’ (family home) in Laragh (which isn’t so much a proper town but rather a general area in the country not marked by any road signs) to Castlerea (a nearby town that actually appears on google maps) one has two options as to how to get there;  the Ballymoe way or the Ballintubber way.  While these two towns lay in opposite directions from one another, both can be passed through on the way to Castlerea, however once you’re through the town proper both routes seem to wind through similar country sides, once of which contains a prison while the other has a castle.

Going further a field offers further difficulty especially once you get to the coast, I have heard recently that ‘the road’ on Inishmore (one of the famed Aran Islands) has washed away.  Imagine, after going to the effort of driving out to the island you find out that the road had fallen into the sea, you’d never complain about construction delays again.  Trying to get to Donegal in the far off north of the country is even more harrowing in winter, I am told, because you have a choice of just two roads which will get you there without passing the border into British owned Northern Ireland.  These two roads are not the most reliable it would seem, as one was long known as the deadliest road in all of the republic due to its habit of icing over and sending drivers careening to their unfortunate fate, and the other is a costal road prone to high winds and the occasional aforementioned washout issues.  It should also be noted that a small amount of snowfall can render either impassable and with that in mind, the good people of Donegal constructed a very nice airport to deal with such issues. 

Most everywhere is connected by networks of rural roadways and while there are some proper dual carriageways (highways) which connect major cities, the majority of roads will consist of two lanes-one for each direction- and if you’re lucky there will be some kind of shoulder.  You will still be lucky if there’s a ditch on the sides of the road as opposed to the standard brick wall covered in bushes from whence any multitude of small animals, or in some cases large animals, dogs, or pedestrians, may spring unexpectedly.  Traffic on such byways is not restricted to small cars, lorries (semi-trucks), tractors, and horse and trap (carriages) are all likely to be found on them, more accurately they will find you as they come head on from around a sharp and blind corner.  There may or may not be lane markers, or for that matter well maintained pavement, while all of this is coming at you and people walk bravely along the edges of thick knotted grass which separate the tarmac (road) from the walls and fences which keep livestock in the field, except for Sundays when it’s easiest to move sheep and it’s not surprising to be held up by the wooly cross traffic.

Seemingly all of these factors come together in what I can only say is the pinnacle of Irish driving terror; The Roundabout.  Long relegated to the status of legend and butt of jokes American abroad movies, these staples of European traffic systems are inarguably the best solution to the problem posed by five or more roads converging at a single point like spokes on a wheel.  This knowledge is of little comfort when approaching your first busy intersection in the midst of a city, the constantly circling flow of cars, trucks, and busses overwhelms the senses and their coordinated flow in and out of the melee baffles the mind.  After a few lessons from helpful Irish drivers, it becomes less opaque;  around the inner island of concrete there are two (unmarked) lanes, the inside lane is used to access all but the road immediately to your left and as the flow of vehicles proceeds clockwise you are to move from the inner lane to the outer only when exiting the roundabout while keeping aware of cars merging in from every direction.  If you miss your turn-off you are instructed to circle around once more and try again this time praying just a little bit harder that you’ll signal correctly while shifting into third with your left hand and not be overtaken by a passenger bus which seems to be the size of a cargo ship. 

In short, driving here is not for the weak of spirit and liberal use of classic Gaelic phrases such as ‘feck’, ‘bugger’, and ‘eejit’ is recommended.  Believe me when I say there will be plenty of opportunities to use such glowing terms if you ever take a journey across this beautiful land.  It seems that no mater which country you hail from we’re all afflicted by drivers who go too slow in the fast lane (the right lane over here), ones who pull out ahead of you, tail-gaters, people who don’t know how to use their turn signals, or don’t turn off their high beams when on-coming on a dark night.  No, there is no shortage of thick headed, ignorant, impossibly moronic drivers on the road, and now, thanks to me, Ireland has one more.

Legen.....Derry

When I got off the plane in Dublin airport I was quite excited to see my fiancée Regina, not entirely because there had been a nine month absence which we’d both endured although that was the lion’s share of the excitement.  But while on the plane I had learned a new fact, apparently the long held belief that the Irish are descendants of the ancient people known as the Celts is in fact erroneous.  Recent, or so I was lead to believe by the in-flight entertainment, developments have used modern science to tie the DNA of the Irish to similar strains found by peoples native to the northern region of Spain; the Basques.

So upon my arrival in Ireland and after a thorough amount of time spent kissing and holding my beloved I shared with her my revelation.  Yeah, she replied, of course.  She explained to me that it was widely known that the Milesians ventured out from the Iberian peninsula and settled in Ireland after a series of clashes with the indigenous people.  It is at this juncture that I would like to point out that the ‘indigenous people’ were not exactly people but rather gods, goddesses, and beings of the spirit world.  Reg explains this all to me in the same manner in which one would explain the American revolution or Napoleon’s conquest of Europe.

Over the years Regina has told me many stories in this same manner, The Táin, the Faye, Cuchulian and the salmon of knowledge, all of which may fall into the realm of ‘myth’ when it comes to black and white history books but to the Irish hold as much truth as successions of kings, the English rule under Cromwell, and Michael Collins as the first president.  The concept may be a bit foreign to us domesticated yanks but the idea of a shared history including impossible exploits by fantastic actors is not so strange to native Americans, Africans, Australian aborigines, and a myriad of cultures around the globe.  Maybe we didn’t have to give up the history of Coyote as the trickster god when we settled for Columbus discovering America.

We have our figures of mixed lineage as well, Davy Crocket was a real person even if his exploits were exaggerated in song, the same goes for Billy the Kid or Buffalo Bill Cody, from there it’s only a small walk to Wyatt Earp and the OK corral shootout, Wild Bill Hickok shot in the back of the head during a saloon poker game holding black aces and eights, forever to be called the dead man’s hand.  So why not throw in John Henry, Pecos bill, and Johnny Appleseed?  Perhaps in a few more centuries the line distinguishing myth and truth will blur to the point where it cannot be discerned, given millennia of social and cultural upheaval like the Gaelic people have survived those differences are not worth debating.

Perhaps it is because of this, or vise versa, or chicken and egg not withstanding, the Irish seem to have a unique attitude towards their view of legends.  Take for example our flat-mate Jack, over the course of several conversations and with the aide of liquid tongue loosener I’ve elicited a tale from his childhood;  the Ennis field wars.  It seems that when he was growing up the children of his town, Ennis, came into conflict with the adolescents of neighboring towns over possession of the local woods, streams, swamps, and of course fields in which they were want to play.  This all sounds innocent enough as young kids are often prone to imagining their exploits as something grandiose, in fact there is a movie which follows a similar plot involving Irish youths called “the War of the Buttons.”

Mention this to Jack and he’ll get a slightly insulted look on his face and explain how it was kind of like that only they didn’t battle with buttons salvoed form slingshots, “we had rocks, and spears, proper spears with metal blades.”  He’ll explain how his housing estate held some key advantages, since it was the most recently built there was a rich resource of construction materials which could be repurposed into armaments, their fort was located in the midst of a massive hedge, impenetrable save for one heavily guarded entrance, most importantly they had a navy.  He’ll explain, in that same matter of fact tone as Regina employs when explaining how the recruitment test of the Fianna (a fearsome warrior class) included evading a band of hunters through a forest without breaking a twig or disturbing a leaf, that they had a navy because his older brother (a general) helped to develop raft building technology thus enabling them to navigate the swamps and ponds with ease. 

They built the rafts with a fatal flaw, however, which could be exploited were the vessels ever captured.  Rapt with his oratory I asked what the flaw was, ‘well they would get stuck in shallow water and we could pelt them with rocks.’ he replied.  Hardly the sinking of the Bismarck but still, other impressive include the environmental hazard suit, built of polystyrene tubing and bits of metal sheeting, again foraged from a construction site, it was able to protect the wearer from a fall of great height or more accurately, off of a local bridge.  That was the second version though, the prototype was apparently not as sturdy.  Similarly was their simultaneously best and worst invention, the catapult; literally, a siege weapon in the medieval vein although perhaps scaled down a bit.  It worked, by god, although not very well apparently for as Jack put it, you can only use it to hit so many cows before you start trying to improve it.  Improve is a loose term since by ‘improving’ it the small soldiers overclocked it to point where the torsion caused the catapult to explode sending boulders hurtling in all directions, no one was hurt by the test run, of course because they had a safety tunnel and the aforementioned environmental hazard suit.

There are more stories of course, such as the lad who wrong in his belief that adults would not have left that bulldozer accessible to children if it could be easily turned on, or the pen-knife accords which had to be implemented after one lad was captured by the enemy and “Stabbed up a bit”, but they are best explained by the veteran who saw it all first hand.  If you will, however, imagine my astonishment and awe at hearing these stories of youth presented so flippantly, so naturally as to never have questioned the plausibility of a children’s crusade which lasted longer than hostilities in WWII or for that matter the lack of parental oversight which allowed it all to happen.  Again, it must be the Irish sensibility that places such epic events so close to home, so accessible that legends are just a touch beyond commonplace, the word ‘legend’ itself in the form of phrase ’A legend of a…’ is employed to describe interesting individuals, nights out, and even dogs.

Yapper was a legend of a dog, as often I hear when gathered around the kitchen table at the Finan homestead in Laragh.  To be fair I met Yapper when he was still alive, a scruffy little Jack-Russell terrier who stood no higher than the laces of a good boot he would seem to the casual eye that he was in all ways ordinary.  This was, however, at an advanced age when I interacted with him, and as stories would have it when in his youth Yapper killed everything.  He would hunt mice and other small game no bother and this is not of special note, what is exemplary was first his ability to catch wild birds, sparrows and thrushes could not escape his jaws as he snatched them from the air mid flight, if they roosted he would climb a tree and pluck them from the nest, more often than once his ability to climb ladders would place him on the roof of the house or even on a small second story window sill where he was occasionally stuck for the night. 

In these ways he was as much cat as dog, but when his prey became more dangerous he proved the adage that it is not the size of the dog in the fight which matters.  There were the minks, the stoats and other weasels which he would ferret out and extinguish, he was also seen to drag off and hide the bodies of tom cats three times his size which he’d dispatched handily.  Yapper would win fights against the family guard dog, a nimble and determined collie, as well as any other canines who thought the terrier was easy pickings, but his most lauded feat was the fact that he had killed a badger. 

Most of you reading this will never have come face to face with a badger before, nor have I, but by tales passed on to me I say that with a decided note of relief.  ‘Don’t turn your back on one.’  I’m told, ‘unless it charges you, in which case, run.’  A badger is like a wolverine, if that helps at all, only thicker, more dense, better able to hug the ground, if you face one while holding a shotgun you’d better hope both barrels are loaded, that’s your only chance since their skin is so think, if you’re driving and one’s out in the road it will do more damage to your car than a deer.  In my time I’ve faced raccoons, possums, skunks, groundhogs and coyotes just to name a few, but when there’s a rustling in the undergrowth here I just pray that it’s not a badger.  Still, Yapper, the wire-haired terrier I knew to beg for food sitting bolt upright on his haunches, killed one in cold blood escaping with all four paws intact to tell the tale, or rather, to have his legend grow and live well beyond his years.