Watching the Queen getting married on the tele last night (just fleetingly I promise and out of the corner of my eye) I was reminded of a friend of ours who went to Scotland to teach in a Primary School in the early seventies.
He found himself initially extremely confused by the accent and was intrigued by the excitement of the people in the class who were entered for something they called the Chooky Embra.
He was well into the year before he discovered this was an award sponsored by, and called after the Queen’s husband.

His second difficulty arose when a new child came into school one morning and announced that his name was Gooey.

No amount of guess work could translate this for the teacher.

When the child’s mother arrived to collect her son he nervously said to her
“What is his name”
“Gooey” she reaffirmed brightly.
“Its very unusual ” said my friend “How do you spell it ?”
“Oh” she said “it is lovely isn’t it, I read it in a novel,
Its G-u-y, Gooey!”

What fascinates me about that story is the possibility that there is yet on the streets of Glasgow a man, now in his early forties, who answers, happily, to the name Gooey.

It was the Christmas of 1973, Síle and I had been married since the previous July when I decided to cook my first Christmas dinner.
We were living in some style (but for a rent of £65 a month) in a large flat which we shared with three or four others in Ailsbury Park in Dublin. This had a large enough dining room so we got the notion that we would invite Síle’s entire family in for the dinner.
It was no secret in the Ronayne family that the Mammy fairly loathed cooking for Christmas so was more than happy to hand over the apron.
As this would include Auntie Emer as well as Síle’s brothers, sisters and parents we would be about ten sitting down, no bother I thought, I had after all been working in Snaffles in Dublin for the previous eighteen months. How could it possibly be difficult to cater for ten when one was cooking nightly for forty or more in Dublin’s most exclusive eatery?

The advent of the mouse should have warned us of oncoming disaster.
Síle’s sister Úna, a very talented cook and a teacher of Home Economics made and almond iced a Christmas cake for the occasion.

We came into the kitchen on the morning of Christmas Eve to discover that the mouse, who had steadfastly been ignoring the trap when baited with cheese or bacon, found his hearts desire in almond icing and had scoffed great holes in the cake.
While Úna set to re-icing I am glad to report that we easily trapped the mouse by rebaiting the trap but this time with almond icing, the, by now addicted, mouse was caught in seconds!
It was decided that we should have the totally traditional meal.
Turkey, Ham, Sprouts, Celery, Bread Sauce, Cranberry Sauce, Gravey,Roast and Mash Potatoes, Plum Pudding, Brandy Butter, Whiskey Sauce (a Ronayne family tradition) as well as the crackers, the repaired cake, drinks and nibbles.

This all worked beautifully in the planning stage.
It was a little more difficult on the night.
The cooker was one of those blue and white 1950’s specials which was all electric and where the grill became a hob depending on where you placed an asbestos plate.
At the back of the top were two rings one of which decided that this was all too much for it and passed away with a bang on Christmas morning.
The oven which took up just a small area of the whole cooker looked a little like a school locker and barely fitted the turkey.

I honestly cannot remember how we managed.
I do remember that the mashed potatoes were very good all of the rest of the meal has been supressed.
I do remember being more stressed than I had ever been in a commercial kitchen.

One tradition we did establish then was that whenever it was possible Síle’s parents had their Christmas dinner with us.
Many years later we managed to feed the same, but now much extended , family from the restaurant in Waterford.
The number around the table was about 27 that Christmas but producing this from the restaurant kitchen was simplicity itself compared to the horrors of the first dinner in Dublin.

One of my roles, being a Chef on the radio over Christmas, is allaying the fears of all the panicking cooks as they ring with their disasters which, for most cooks, is the most challenging cooking job of the year.
I am always sympathy itself, I know just how hard Christmas dinner to produce from a domestic kitchen.

My advice is always the same, don’t try and do it all, leave out some of the trimmings, delegate help from the entire family and don’t forget the consolante.
This is the traditional drink which the French reserve for the cook and is always kept topped up by his or her elbow.

French Plane tree lined roads have always been a symbol of the country.
Tragically they are now being cut down wholesale as they are deemed dangerous.
This one is still standing in Herault somewhere between our house and an antique fair we were at in a castle in Cassan.At this time of the year I like a summer image as a desktop background to get me over the lack of sunshine, this is the one for this month.

Supplique pour être enterré sur une plage de Sète

This is the title of one of Georges Brassens most moving songs, although as with all Brassens songs it is not at all serious.
The title translates as;

Petition to be buried on a beach in Sète.

Sadly this request was not granted, however his grave does have a good view of the sea, and it is in Sète.

Inspired by this song Sile and I went to the town of Sète while we were in France at Halloween only to discover that the Espace Brassens-the museum in his honour- was closed for the day as it was All Souls Day the day the French traditionally visit their family graves.
On our way out of the town we became enmeshed in a long traffic jam, strange we thought in the month of November, until we discovered that it was of families, laden with potted plants, heading to the cemetery.
So we passed ,slowly, the graveyard where Brassens is buried, and it does at least have a good view of L’encre Bleu.
Furthermore we found in the town a restaurant which was dedicated to Brassens and played his music while you ate. This I have to persuade Sile to let us return to!

First you must watch the great man himself singing (and talking about) the song courtesy of Youtube.

Here

Here are the words in French:

La Camarde qui ne m’a jamais pardonné,
D’avoir semé des fleurs dans les trous de son nez,
Me poursuit d’un zèle imbécile.
Alors cerné de près par les enterrements,
J’ai cru bon de remettre à jour mon testament,
De me payer un codicille.

Trempe dans l’encre bleue du Golfe du Lion,
Trempe, trempe ta plume, ô mon vieux tabellion,
Et de ta plus belle écriture,
Note ce qu’il faudra qu’il advint de mon corps,
Lorsque mon âme et lui ne seront plus d’accord,
Que sur un seul point : la rupture.

Quand mon âme aura pris son vol à l’horizon,
Vers celle de Gavroche et de Mimi Pinson,
Celles des titis, des grisettes.
Que vers le sol natal mon corps soit ramené,
Dans un sleeping du Paris-Méditerranée,
Terminus en gare de Sète.

Mon caveau de famille, hélas ! n’est pas tout neuf,
Vulgairement parlant, il est plein comme un œuf,
Et d’ici que quelqu’un n’en sorte,
Il risque de se faire tard et je ne peux,
Dire à ces braves gens : poussez-vous donc un peu,
Place aux jeunes en quelque sorte.

Juste au bord de la mer à deux pas des flots bleus,
Creusez si c’est possible un petit trou moelleux,
Une bonne petite niche.
Auprès de mes amis d’enfance, les dauphins,
Le long de cette grève où le sable est si fin,
Sur la plage de la corniche.

C’est une plage où même à ses moments furieux,
Neptune ne se prend jamais trop au sérieux,
Où quand un bateau fait naufrage,
Le capitaine crie : “Je suis le maître à bord !
Sauve qui peut, le vin et le pastis d’abord,
Chacun sa bonbonne et courage”.

Et c’est là que jadis à quinze ans révolus,
A l’âge où s’amuser tout seul ne suffit plus,
Je connu la prime amourette.
Auprès d’une sirène, une femme-poisson,
Je reçu de l’amour la première leçon,
Avalai la première arête.

Déférence gardée envers Paul Valéry,
Moi l’humble troubadour sur lui je renchéris,
Le bon maître me le pardonne.
Et qu’au moins si ses vers valent mieux que les miens,
Mon cimetière soit plus marin que le sien,
Et n’en déplaise aux autochtones.

Cette tombe en sandwich entre le ciel et l’eau,
Ne donnera pas une ombre triste au tableau,
Mais un charme indéfinissable.
Les baigneuses s’en serviront de paravent,
Pour changer de tenue et les petits enfants,
Diront : chouette, un château de sable !

Est-ce trop demander : sur mon petit lopin,
Planter, je vous en prie une espèce de pin,
Pin parasol de préférence.
Qui saura prémunir contre l’insolation,
Les bons amis venus faire sur ma concession,
D’affectueuses révérences.

Tantôt venant d’Espagne et tantôt d’Italie,
Tous chargés de parfums, de musiques jolies,
Le Mistral et la Tramontane,
Sur mon dernier sommeil verseront les échos,
De villanelle, un jour, un jour de fandango,
De tarentelle, de sardane.

Et quand prenant ma butte en guise d’oreiller,
Une ondine viendra gentiment sommeiller,
Avec rien que moins de costume,
J’en demande pardon par avance à Jésus,
Si l’ombre de sa croix s’y couche un peu dessus,
Pour un petit bonheur posthume.

Pauvres rois pharaons, pauvre Napoléon,
Pauvres grands disparus gisant au Panthéon,
Pauvres cendres de conséquence,
Vous envierez un peu l’éternel estivant,
Qui fait du pédalo sur la vague en rêvant,
Qui passe sa mort en vacances.

Vous envierez un peu l’éternel estivant,
Qui fait du pédalo sur la plage en rêvant,
Qui passe sa mort en vacances,

And here is my translation (on which I have laboured all week)
I reserve the right to return and change it as I think of better translations.
And I apologise in advance for its inadequacies.
Brassens is best appreciated in French but this is to give a little taste of the man to people who can’t speak French and to give me a chance to get inside his French lyrics and also have a great time trying to make his thoughts cross over into English.

In another life I would certainly have done this for a living.

Petition to be buried on a beach at Sète

Old Man Death, is looking to foreclose
Because I once sowed flowers up his nose
He now chases me with foolish zeal
And so surrounded by these graves to fill
I have decided to rewrite my will
And grant myself a codicil

Soaked by the blue ink of the Lion Sea
And then again with ink from the Notary
Who writes with wonderfully neat script
I note where my body must be put
When from the soul it makes the final cut
And from each other they are ripped.

When my soul make his flight into the blue
With the street kids and with the girls that do
With the gavroche and the grisette
I will return to my first childhood bed
In the couchette from Paris to the Med
Which ends in the station in Sète

My family vault it is as old as sin
Without an inch to fit another in
We would need someone to leave it quick
And if the old boys won’t make haste
To give the new boys just a bit of space
It will be as full as any tick

Right on the beach close to the deep blue sea
Make my new home as pleasant as can be
A soft and cosy little niche
Down by the dolphins, my boyhood friends
By the place where the soft sand ends
On the beach of to the Corniche

But sometimes to that beach would come a storm
When Neptune shows the ships his savage form
And when sailors fear for their lives.
The Captain cries “Now, have no fear
Save first the wine and then the beer
And then the children and your wives!”

And it was there at just fifteen or so
When playing alone it would no longer do
I met a girl who moved my heart
She was a siren, a half girl half fish
Who finally fulfilled my every wish
And showed me how to love and how to part.

But please don’t put me by Valéry’s tomb
For I must give the Maestro lots of room
Where poet and troubadour hear the wave
He may be thought a better poet than me
But I will be lying closer to the sea
And won’t intrude in pictures of his grave

This tomb sandwiched between sea and sky
Will not cast shadow on the passers by
But have a certain charm where it will stand
To bathers it will not be something strange
A place to hang their towels when they change
For kids a castle made of sand

And please plant in that little patch of mine
A tidy copse composed mainly of pine
Parasol Pines I love the best
These will help send away the blues
So when friends come to pay to me their dues
I will lie happily, at rest

One afternoon for Italy, one for Spain
Charged with smells and music’s sad refrain
The Mistral and the Tramontaine
And softly in my sleep the voices swell
The Fandango and the Vilanelle
The Tarentella and the Sardagne.

And should a sea nymph,passing, sleepy eyed
Come by my graveside glistening from the tide
Wearing just the merest wisp of thread
Would the Lord forgive me do you think
Were the shadow of my cross to her to sink
To grant a little pleasure to the dead ?

Poor Kings of Egypt ! Poor Napoleon !
You dead in state in every Pantheon
Oh you ashes of other days
Green with envy now you will look at me
As in my dreams I float on the blue sea
Spending my death on holidays
Green with envy now you will look at me
As in my dreams I float on the blue sea
Spending my death on holidays

A nice little co-incidence while we were in France at Halloween.
I showed my beau-frere, Padraic, my translation of Les Copains d’Abord and he said he had a friend from Galway who sang Brassens songs and he would send it to him.
After the break I got an email from Padraic to said he had had a reply from the same friend who was no longer in Galway but in Puisserguier, a few kilometres down the road from our house in Thezan.
Small World.

——————————————————————————–

Above is a bowl of Apple Jelly, a wonderful soft set, positively quivering and glistening in the bowl. (I will give you the recipe at the end of the piece)
I would call it delightful and delicious but I wouldn’t even get a look in at any jam making competition because in its manufacture I have broken two rules;
One It is cloudy, two I have used jam sugar which is enriched with pectin.

To get over the jam sugar first, this is available widely here under various brand names. Purists will tell you that it doesn’t give the same flavour as the traditional long boiling with ordinary sugar and in this I agree.
I think it makes a much better product.
Because the fruit and sugar take only four minutes boiling to set (one minute in the case of jelly) the taste of the fruit is both fresher and more pungent.
I notice that Raymond Le Blanc in The Four Seasons agrees with me in this.
Neither my mother or my mother-in-law would.

Then there is the matter of clarity.

When I was training myself to be a chef one of the tasks I gave myself was to make the perfect Consommé.
This involved making a good flavoured and coloured stock (by roasting bones and then boiling these to extract maximum flavour and then reducing this stock to further concentrate the taste)
Then, with long stove hours behind one, came the ultimate job to achieve the perfect end result: Clarification.
This action was performed with egg white or mince meat or both.
When properly done it resulted in a perfect limpid liquid which had lost most of its taste in the clarification process.
The chef’s job was then to try and reintroduce flavour with more reduction or(as was the habit of the times) copious addition of port or sherry.

I think most people can spot the moment when this process went horribly wrong.

In a slightly different, but related way, there was always a huge hoo-ha about the clarity of jellies.
This was achieved by a strange woollen bag, called a jelly bag, which looked like nothing but an oversized woollen condom.
This bag was tied on the rungs of a chair, upended over another, so the fruit juices could gradually ooze out into the waiting pot without any pressure whatsoever thereby ensuring perfect clarity-and also that most of the flavour stayed in the bag.

Me? I just pour the stuff through a sieve and push through as much of the pulp as will go, thereby getting way more flavour for the jelly.

I am delighted to report that before she died my mother was initiated into the art of making cloudy jellies by a woman’s magazine.
The food writer managed to cut through years or prejudice by inventing stuff called Bramble Scramble. this was -in essence-cloudy Blackberry Jelly.
And so a jelly by another name smelled even sweeter, my mother discarded the jelly bag and was amazed with the intensity of the flavour of the finished product.

This year, sadly for the last time as our friend Joe Moore passed away during the summer, we have an abundance of apples from Muine Beag so I decided to make some jelly.
I decided to tart up the product a little to give it a little extra flavour.

Joe Moore’s Apple Jelly

About 3 Kilos of Apples (mix eaters with cookers for best flavour)
2 Vanilla Pods
2 Cinnamon Sticks
2 Lemons
A Handful of Sloes or Blackberries (optional)
2 Lemons
Jelly Sugar to weight.

Quarter the apples and discard any rotten bits but leave in the skins and the cores.
Cover these with water in a large pot, add the cinnamon and the vanilla and bring to the boil,add the sloes (these are mainly for colour)
Boil well until the apples are soft and have yielded most of their flavour.
Line a large sieve with a tea towel and sieve the mixture through this into a bowl.
(The advantage of the tea towel is that you can squeeze out the pulp in the end thus getting maximum yield and flavour-and cloud!.)

Add the juice of the two lemons and measure this carefully, extract and keep the vanilla pods from the pulp.
In a large pot (give space for a big bubble up) pour in the juice and add a kilo of the sugar (or a portion of same) to exactly match the amount of juice.
Stirring to dissolve the sugar bring this up to a rolling boil and then boil it so for a measured minute.
Pour into pots (cut up the vanilla pod and put a slice of this into each one for posh and extra flavour).

This is excellent with toast in the mornings, with cream on scones, or served with pork or lamb or indeed turkey!

For the last three years I have been going to French classes run by Alliance Française here in Waterford- and most enjoyable they are too.
This year we have a new teacher, Linda, and she is a firm believer in the hands on method of teaching, if we perform some activity, or learn a French song we will pick up the language en passant.
I am rather inclined to think she is right.
This week we were all instructed to bring in the ingredients to make a Yoghurt Cake,Le Gateau au Yaourt and much fun and vocabulary was accrued while we mixed the same, and then brought the mixture to our respective houses to cook.
Here are the ingredients;

Le Gateau au Yaourt

250g Vanilla Yoghurt
300g Self Raising Flour
200g Caster Sugar
3 Eggs
50ml Sunflower Oil

The method is, tip everything into a bowl and beat until smooth.
Then pour into a 1kg, well buttered, loaf tin.

Pre-heat the oven to 200C, when it has reached that temperature put in the cake and immediately reduce to 180C
Cook at this temperature for 35 to 40 mts.

And here is the finished product.

Around this time of the year I develop a deep desire for the comfort of eating a stew.

I have this nasty feeling that stews are no longer made, it is getting more and more difficult to get the sort of beef needed for a stew, ideally a piece of shin which has the sinew to survive the long cooking process and still remain together and juicy.
For anyone out there who has given up on stews here is a reminder.

Stew
(for 4 to 6)

110g (4oz.) Streaky Rashers
1 Kg.(2 lbs) Stewing Beef
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
2 Tablespoons Flour

3 Onions
3 Carrots
3 Sticks Celery
2 Bayleaves
Sprig of Thyme

Half Bottle Red Wine
Half Pint Stock

Salt and Black Pepper

Cut the bacon and the beef into chunks, peel the onion and cut that and the carrots and the celery into chunks.
Toss the flour and some salt and pepper over the beef in a bowl and coat it.

Put the olive oil in a pan and cook the rashers in this until brown and crisp.
Transfer the rashers into a casserole but leave the fat in the pan.

In this pan cook the beef cubes, in batches until brown all over (keep the flour the is left in the bowl) then toss these pieces on the rashers, again leaving the fat in the pan.

In the same pan cook the vegetables until they too acquire some colour then toss these on the meats.

Toss the remaining flour on the remaining fat in the pan and stir these together.
Add the stock and the wine and bring to the boil, season with salt and pepper and then add these to the casserole with the herbs.
Put on the lid and then cook at Gas2 150C 300F for about 2 hours.

Test the meat, if it is not tender enough leave it in for another 30 mts.

Eat with baked potatoes, mashed potatoes or Rice.

Taken in Graignamanagh about two years ago.
(thanks Iris for the photo)

This is the third November in a row when I have given up the drink for a month.
The real reason I do it is to prove that I can.
And I can! Without TOO much hassle and the lack of hangovers is great to live with.
But I do, I confess, find myself glancing towards the calender every so often and doing little fraction sums, for instance tomorrow, being the twentieth, will be two thirds of the way through to the Ultima Thule; December.