This all started with a mail from my old college friend, full time anthropologist and part time folk singer, James Flanagan, late of Baile Mhuirne, now of Hattiesburg, Mississippi in the US of A.

Now Jim knows me well, he knows that at least two of my passions are for food and etymology, so when he was dangling the following carrot in front of me he was both going to guarantee he get an answer and also give me hours of harmless fun trying to find same.

Jim wrote :

“I’m doing some Christmas gigs in Michigan with the band Legacy and in my role as MC and continuity man will be singing Amhrán an Steampaí. As you recall from the song it’s a food made with lots of sugar and mouthfuls of brandy with great aphrodisiacal qualities. However, neither Theodora Fitzgibbon nor Darina Allen mentions it in their Irish traditional food/cooking. The first line of the song says Is anall ó Shasana a tháinig an steampaí ‘gus thíos I gCorcaigh a chuireadh an slacht air”. A goggle search turns up a Jamaican dish called Stamp and Go which might well be related. It’s a kind of pancake. Any ideas? Have I piqued your interest?
How’s everybody?
Jim”

Piqued my interest ? I was enthralled.
Partly because I felt I had a rough notion what it was but then had to find chapter and verse.
As Jim said neither Theodora, nor Darina listed it.
Neither did Myrtle Allen, nor Florence Irwin nor could it be found in Alan Davidson’s excellent Oxford Book of Food. I then trawled through Biddy White Lennon’s and John Mc Kenna’s Traditional Irish Food books to no avail. (I am nothing if not thorough)

I then turned to dictionaries.
Chambers was dumb on Stampy as was my large, double volume, Shorter Oxford although that did eliminate Jim’s Jamaican connection (see below).
Then it was the turn of the Irish dictionaries.
The (I would have thought) comprehensive Mr. Dineen couldn’t help me nor could the more compendious O Donaill/De Bhaldraithe, at least not on first reading.
It was in fact there, under a slightly different spelling that I caught my first glimpse of Steaimpí (again see below).
From there it was a comparative doddle to re look at all my previous books, but this time in search of Boxty Cake. Alan Davidson was the man who finally cracked it.
His source was our own Regina Sexton whose Irish Traditional food is hiding somewhere in my shelves (or else on holiday in the Languedoc)

So I was able to reply, an hour or two later, to Mississippi:

“Jesus Jimmy you know my weaknesses.

I have spent the last two hours knee deep in every Irish cookbook
and dictionary I possess.
Focloir Gaeilge Bearla by O Donaill/De Bhaldraithe
provided me with the first reference:”

Steaimpí ……(Ciste) Cake made of grated raw potatoes, ‘Boxty’

“The Shorter OED rules out any relationship with the Jamaican Stamp and Go
as that is a Cod fish fritter taken from on a naval slang term for a command at sea.
I found then it, under Boxty in The Oxford Book of Food:”
“…..another variant dish (of Boxty) called Stampy was made in the same fashion as Boxty Bread but prepared with the new season potatoes and often enlivened with cream sugar and caraway seeds.
In the south west regions (of Ireland) the end of the potato harvest was marked with a Stampy Party when the harvest workers were rewarded with copious amounts of stampy bread.”
Boxty Bread ( I know) is made from a combination of mashed cooked and grated raw potatoes with flour, baking powder and milk.
If you remember the Irish song” Sweet Potato cake”;
(I’m sure it must refer to Stampy)

“Did you ever bring potato cake
in a basket to the school,
Tucked underneath your oxter
with your book, your slate and rule,
And when teacher wasn’t looking
sure a great big bite you’d take,
Of the flowery flavoured buttered
soft and sweet potato cake.”

The addition of Brandy to further celebrate the end of harvest sounds just about right for the people of South West Ireland.
So here is a cobbled together (and totally untried) recipe for stampy.

Steaimpi Uí Fhlannagáin

1lb (450g) Raw Potatoes (peeled and grated)
1lb (450g) Cooked Mashed Potatoes
1lb (450g) Self Raising Flour
2 Teaspoons Baking Powder
2 oz. (60g) melted Butter
4 oz.(150ml) Cream
2 Eggs (beaten)
3oz. (90g ) Caster Sugar
1 Tablespoon Caraway Seeds
2 Tablespoons of Brandy.

Mix all together and make into four balls.

Flatten these into four round cakes and put on greased baking sheets.
Mark with a deep cross so they can break into four farls when cooked.
Cook at Gas 4,175C 350F for 35 to 40 minutes.
Eat hot with (of course!) more butter and a glass of brandy.

(Pay all medical insurance before consumption)
I reckon it was called Steampai becouse it was mashed
(or stamped) before being made.
If you make it, and live let me know and I might try it myself.
(As for its aphrodisiac qualities, discretion is probably the better part of vigour

And could you send me the words of the song as I can’t find it in Google.

Slan
Martin

Which he did:

Amhran an Stampai
From the singing of Sean O Liathain agus Diarmuid O Suilleabhain
on Ceoltoiri Laigheann

Is anall o Shasana a tháinig and stampaí
Is shíos i gCorcaigh a cuirfeadh an slacht ar
Do bhí súicre a dhothain ann is bolmacaí brandí
‘S an té a bheadh ‘na ithe san, ba mhire na an stal é

Is raitheannach……………

When we moved in to this house in Waterford we were aware that our back garden was up against the back of the local GAA pitch, Walsh Park.

It has hardly intruded on our lives at all since then.
Every so often our house is filled with a huge exhilariting cheer as some one scores a goal just yards from out back door.
This always fills me with nostalgia . As a child in Cork we lived just across the river from Park Ui Chaoimh so the sounds of football and hurling matches were equally a part of our lives there.

Today, a county final between Ballygunner and Ballyduff had the most people we have seen so far present and they lined our fence.
I couldn’t resist taking this picture out the bedroom window!

Ballyduff won, for the record.

We have just come back from an exhilarating and also frustrating few days in Thezan. This was exhilarating because the place just looked so wonderful in strong Autumn sunshine and frustrating because it was such a short break.

Sile’s sister and Beau Frere, Maire and Padraic came for a visit and, because they are great walkers, we brought them up the Gorge d’Heric, a superb mountain walk of about 5 klms which had defeated us in the height of summer but was a perfect challenge for late October.
After two days they went further up the Languedoc, to find even more strenuous walking, we had various builders, plumbers, and internet connecters to see, but discovered the joys of Autumn walks in the evening around Thezan and even went on a trip to see the 12th century cathedral in Maguelone, on a lake in an Etang in on the shore of the Mediteranean, this involved another 5 klm. walk as Le Petit Train was off for the winter.
It was well worth it though, except for my stupidity in forgetting my camera.

I just have to make do with this image purloined from the net.

The rest of the shots are my own .

This is the Gorge d’Heric, in the Monts d’Epinousse.
A great hill walk up a paved path. You ascend most
of the way along a stream which is full of waterfalls
and rock pools (and French families having picnics
in the summer)

After about 5 klms you catch a glimpse of the old village,
Le Hameau d’Eric it must have been a very isolated series
of farms with stone Lozeres on the roof. Now it serves
as a cafe, a fairly just reward for the walkers who got this far.

After Heric we went a few klms up the road to my favourite
village of the area, Olargues. This has a perfect Roman
Pont de Diable one of about 60 in the south of France.
The legend of these beautiful bridges is the the Devil built
them on condition that he could have the first soul that passed
over them.
The canny villagers, of course, sent over a cat and so the
gullible devil was foiled again.
Something tells me that they may have also owed something to Roman engineering.

The following day, having seen most of our builders etc.
we took another road from the village, a road previously
untrodden, up an embankment called Le Homme Mort
Possibly due with its proximity to the graveyard.

Here we got a great view of the variety of reds and gold
displayed by the various vines grown in the small vineyards
close to the village.

And , as it was Halloween Night I took this shot of a Witches finger

(To our surprise we were “Tricked or Treated” by the children
of the village that night. When I asked them what Halloween
was about they told me it was about getting Bon Bons)

We found both Pomegranates and Quinces (above) growing in
the wild on our walks.
Presumably they must have escaped from cultivation.

In the house I was delighted to see that my Provencal
recipe for Orange Liqueur was progressing well and that
both the colour and flavour of the Oranges and cloves were
being leached into the alcohol by hanging in its vapours.
It should be delicious by Christmas.

In a little Brocante in Olargues I bought this glass oddment.
At first I thought it must be a lamp but, as Madame correctly
told me, this was impossible as the ground glass seal would
not permit combustion.

Any ideas anyone?

No prizes for any old mass server for telling me what this is.

The man in the Brocante Fair, from whom I bought it this
summer ,gave me a reduction when he discovered I was
bringing it back to a presbytery !

From a small chapel inside the Catedral de Cordaba inside the Mezquita de
Cordoba…

A very modest St. Roch, his plague scar nearly at his knee,
but then what would you expect from a church built inside
an Islamic Palace.
Thanks Michael for the picture.

One of the ways that computers have made my life much easier is to do with the organisation of my recipes.
I have, since 1990, been giving out two or three recipes each week on my local radio station, WLR, this amounts to a fair bundle of recipes.
Previous to my purchase of a computer in 1999 I wrote these recipes out in long hand and brought them down to the studio with me where there were typed and sent out to people who sent in a stamped addressed envelope.
Now of course I type my recipes straight into the computer and email it to the station and also put it up on my web page where it is to be easily found and downloaded under “Recipes”
There are now over 600 recipes available there on line.
Nowadays of course the people downloading my recipes are no longer just the people who listen to me giving them out on the radio.
Thanks to the advent of efficient search engines a lot of people just search for recipes on line before they cook.
I have a counter on my recipes section which tells me which country the people who use my recipes come from, this is provided my an excellent (and Irish) company called Stat Counter
The thing that continues to amaze me is the variety of countries that hit on my recipes, here is a read out by country for the last 500 hits I have had on my recipe page (roughly the last week-my brothers think I should charge for the service!)

As you can see the largest number looking are from Ireland, as one would expect, followed, again as expected by our neighbours in the UK, and then by our nearest neighbours on the other side, the USA.
It is after that that I am surprised by the variety, 7 hits from France I find flattering, but then I do have Irish friends there, 5 hits from Liechtenstein is amazing considering their population, as is the 3 from Bulgaria (maybe returned émigrés who have developed a taste for Irish food?), 2 hits from the Dominican republic is a surprise, I had to get out the old atlas to find it (south of Cuba, in the Caribbean).
However the most startling hitters are the people who have downloaded six of my recipes in the last week who come from “Unknown”.
Is there some country out there who is able to de-list it self to achieve anonymity, or could it possibly be that I am being downloaded into the kitchens of people yet to be discovered, or, better still the cooking pods of extraterrestrials.

When my three daughters were little their Granny gave them a large book of nursery rhymes which they loved.
I spent a lot of their childhood reading this book to them.
Because it was such a large book, it included a fair amount of less well known nursery rhymes, as well as the classics, among them was “Bobby Shafto”.
I will quote it as it was in the book:

Bobby Shafto’s gone to sea
Silver buckles at his knee
He’ll come home and marry me
Bonny Bobby Shafto

Bobby Shafto’s fat and fair
Combing back his yellow hair
He’s my love for evermeer
Bonny Bobby Shafto

To be honest during the hundreds of times I read it to the girls it just passed through my head like water, without any thought as to its meaning.
Something brought it to my mind lately and the more I thought about the words the more they amaze me.
Could this possibly have been the first gay nursery rhyme?

We all know that the British Navy at this time subsisted on “Rum Sodomy and the Lash”
Into this brutish and women free environment let us insert the same Bobby:
A young plump blond midshipman, his trousers fitted with silver buckles, with a penchant for combing back his luxuriant locks.

One presumes it is his sweetheart who sings;
“He’ll come home and marry me”

Why do I think that so unlikely?

I went searching the internet for an picture of the same Bobby and this pottery figurine was the only contemporary image I could find.

I rest my case.

I suppose I have been aware of these for years but just recently began to realise how useful they can be (when my daughter softened a potentially harsh comment with a wink 😉
Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered seeing them listed in Schotts Miscellany and on searching I found a listing there.
The important thing to remember (for the uninitiated) is that these must all be viewed sideways.
They vary from the very basic Hi 🙂 to the rather more complex Rose @}->–
They include such basic emotions as a frown 🙁 astonishment :-0 and indifference :-I and even (this one I like) drunkeness :*)
They even have some descriptions of people, like the pope +:-) , Elvis 5:-) , and even a fairly passible Abraham Lincoln =):)=
They even have a chef! C=:-)
You will find a listing here

In the meantime I leave you with this message.

😉 from C=:-)

Its been a busy little week.
It started on Monday with the Euro-Toque Food Awards in The Westin in Dublin. The Westin chefs did us proud and I was hoping to just relax and enjoy this one but unfortunately Myrtle Allen didn’t feel up to the trip so I ended up introducing it, again.
Most of the work however was very ably done by Nevan Maguire who presented the prizes.
There were six awards, to Glenilen Farm for their yoghurts and fromage frais, to Flahavans for their porridge, Ditty’s bakery in the north for their breads, farls and biscuits, Michael Mc Grath in Lismore, a butcher to treasure, Coastguard Seafoods in Co. Louth who keep all the boys in Dublin in excellent fish and a special award to Darina Allen for services to food.

Flahavans had been my nomination. I went on a Slow-Food trip there last spring and was immensely impressed not just with their product but also with their green-ness. They have re-harnessed the Mahon to supplement their electricity and have also converted an old boiler to burn their (previously discarded) chaff which now dries and steams the oats.
I visited Michael Mc Grath a few weeks ago with Myrtle and bought some excellent lamb, the best I’ve eaten for some time.
He is one of the last of a dying breed of farmers/ abattoirs/ butchers who tell us something about the real meaning of traceability.
Glenilen in West Cork which I visited –again with Myrtle- last summer are doing a marvellous job with their dairy, their Quark is superb and the yoghurts and cheese cakes just brilliant.
I was delighted also to see Darina getting an award, she has truly carried on her mother in law’s pioneering work and has contributed an aware and canny breed of kitchen workers from her school. One of the great moments at the Terra Mardre in Turin last autumn was when Alice Waters stood up to say that she would always be happy to employ any of Darina’s graduates.

On Friday I found myself again filling in, this time for WLR’s Billy Mc Carthy at the Ardkeen Food Fare in The Waterford Museum of Treasures.
This was a brilliant affair, the stalls were outside the door in marquees and scattered throughout the museum, the museum staff gave food and wine related tours and in the little theatre there were various talks, interviews and tastings.
And it was all for People in Need.
My job was in the theatre, mainly being a sort of M.C but also being involved as the host in a sort of interview they labelled; “Martin Dwyer in conversation with Paul Flynn of the Tannery and Kevin Sheridan of Sheridans Cheese”
I discovered the main function of an interviewer is to get the guests to talk but must admit, with my normal garrulity, I found it hard not to put in my oar for an hour.
Our final speaker on the night was Darina and she gave a wonderful talk on the theme that cheap food is never cheap.
There were prizes there too.
Best food in show went Cramers Grove unctuous Pistachio Ice Cream and the wine prize was to Alberto Zenato’s fabulous Ripassa red.
A busy week but a good one for food.

This is an overblown crop of the shot of Tramore Church whichI took from across the bay which has somehow acquired a nice impressionist feel.