I have just finished reading Anne Enright’s Booker winner “The Gathering”.
It had been given to me to review by WLR coincidentally just as it was given the prize.

I notice on the papers that it is not the most popular winner.
It is criticised as being dark and depressing.
I just cannot agree.
True it covers the usual modern Irish themes of abuse and dysfunctional families but it is always lifted by Enright’s humour.
Maybe one has to be ,as I am, a member of a large family to appreciate and like it.

Take this passage which I treasure, (Kitty, like me is the youngest child)

“Liam……..liked three Roman saints with funny names who were turned upside down and had milk and mustard put up their noses which killed them, apparently.
It didn’t seem to bother Kitty as I recall.”

Ok Enright does cover some dark (and important) aspects of family life but she is never defeated by what she witnesses and I found it an uplifting read.
Read it and judge for yourselves.

Made from Joe Moore’s apples.

Tarte des Demoiselles Tatin
( Caramelized Apple Tart)

You will need a large ( 12ins or 14ins) Tart tin but not one with a removable base.

8 crisp eating Apples
225g (8 oz.)Castor Sugar
350g (12 oz). Puff Pastry

Put the sugar into a heavy saucepan and put on a gentle heat.
Continue to heat it – stirring from time to time- until the sugar melts and caramelizes. Do this extremely carefully, taking off the heat if necessary,and just let the sugar go nut brown, if it goes black it will be bitter. Dont forget melted sugar is extremely hot.
Spoon this caramel into the base of the tart tin.
Peel the apples and cut in two.
With a teaspoon carefully scoop out the core without breaking the apple.
Put the apples curved side down into the tart tin on the caramel until they are all tightly packed together. ( You may need more or less apples depending on size)
Roll out the pastry into a large circle slightly larger than the top of the tin.
Place this carefully over the apples.
Cook this for 10 mts at Gas 6 200C. 400F. then reduce the heat to Gas 4 175C 350F and cook for a further 15 mts.
Take it out of the oven and leave for 10 mts then very carefully invert on to a large plate so that is upside down .Be sure to keep the delicious caramel juices.
If you are not going to eat it straight away reheat it while still in its tin and then turn it out in the same way.

I have always been a sucker for a French Chanson, Piaf, Brel, Trenet all reduce me to quivering Francophilia.
My latest discovery, of at least a year, is Georges Brassens, partly because he came from Sète, which is just down the road from us in Herault but mainly because he is just bloody brilliant.
The Brassens song of the summer had to be Les Copains d’Abord, partly because it was on the play list of Nostalgie my French radio station of choice whose title exactly describes its repertoire, but also because I managed to do a sort of weird Karaoke of this song with a Hurdy Gurdy lady in Capestang (see here.)

One of the great rewards of being semi-retired is that every so often one can clear a day and be totally self indulgent. Today was such a day and I finally made good on a promise I made to myself during the summer and did a translation of Les Copains.
I must confess that when I started out I had no idea what the song was about. It turned out to be a fairly innocent sea-shanty.

I didn’t translate the title, it just works better in French, can you imagine Piaf’s standard, La Vie en Rose, having any resonance at all if translated as The Pink Life?
Les Copains d’Abord roughly means Friends First.
Here is a You Tube reference of the great Brassens himself singing it in concert.
Here are his words followed by my effort at translation.

Les Copains d’Abord

Non, ce n’était pas le radeau
De la Méduse, ce bateau
Qu’on se le dise au fond des ports
Dise au fond des ports
Il naviguait en pèr’ peinard
Sur la grand-mare des canards
Et s’app’lait les Copains d’abord
Les Copains d’abord

Ses fluctuat nec mergitur
C’était pas d’la litterature
N’en déplaise aux jeteurs de sort
Aux jeteurs de sort
Son capitaine et ses mat’lots
N’étaient pas des enfants d’salauds
Mais des amis franco de port
Des copains d’abord

C’étaient pas des amis de luxe
Des petits Castor et Pollux
Des gens de Sodome et Gomorrhe
Sodome et Gomorrhe
C’étaient pas des amis choisis
Par Montaigne et La Boetie
Sur le ventre ils se tapaient fort
Les copains d’abord

C’étaient pas des anges non plus
L’Évangile, ils l’avaient pas lu
Mais ils s’aimaient tout’s voil’s dehors
Tout’s voil’s dehors
Jean, Pierre, Paul et compagnie
C’était leur seule litanie
Leur Credo, leur Confiteor
Aux copains d’abord

Au moindre coup de Trafalgar
C’est l’amitié qui prenait l’quart
C’est elle qui leur montrait le nord
Leur montrait le nord
Et quand ils étaient en détresse
Qu’leurs bras lancaient des S.O.S.
On aurait dit les sémaphores
Les copains d’abord

Au rendez-vous des bons copains
Y avait pas souvent de lapins
Quand l’un d’entre eux manquait a bord
C’est qu’il était mort
Oui, mais jamais, au grand jamais
Son trou dans l’eau n’se refermait
Cent ans après, coquin de sort
Il manquait encore

Des bateaux j’en ai pris beaucoup
Mais le seul qu’ait tenu le coup
Qui n’ai jamais viré de bord
Mais viré de bord
Naviguait en père peinard
Sur la grand-mare des canards
Et s’app’lait les Copains d’abord
Les Copains d’abord

Les Copains d’Abord

No, it was not that sort of craft
Not like Medusa on her raft
As they say deep within the port
Deep within the port
They sail along swinging the lead
Through the Atlantic and the Med
They call themselves Copains d’Abord
Les Copains d’Abord

Tossed by the waves but never sunk
They thought all literature was bunk
And feared not witchcraft or the sword
Witchcraft or the sword
But then their faith was deep and true
In both the captain and the crew
These were the freemen of the port
Les Copains d’Abord

They weren’t the men for the soft times
Like the sailors from other climes
Or those from Sodom and Gomorrah
Sodom and Gomorrah
Nor were they like the special friends
In La Boetie or in Montaigne
But were rough buddies and hard chaws
Les Copains d’Abord.

But they were far from saints as well
They let the gospels go to hell
But were all of one accord
When the south wind roared
Jean Paul, Pierre, Phillipe and Co
Believed in only one Credo,
One gospel one confiteor
Les Copains d’Abord

At the first signs of battle cry
They would be standing side by side
One hand upon the boarding sword
On the boarding sword
There was no need for SOS
Each man could sense his mates distress
This was their only semaphore
Les Copains d’Abord.

At the renunions of the mates
No one was missing none were late
Only those who had lost their sword,
Gone to their reward.
They’d be rembered all their lives
As would their sweethearts and their wives
No dead man ever was ignored
By Copains d’Abord

Oh there are lots of boats out there
From Biscay up to Finisterre
But never were such friends on board
Such good friends on board
They sail along swinging the lead
Through the Atlantic and the Med
And call themselves Copains d’Abord
Les Copains d’Abord.

(or Lamb dressed as Venison)
This dish should properly be Gigot de Mouton en Chevreuil. but as with chicken (when was the last time you ate a hen?) all our sheep are now dressed as lamb and all our mutton is now called lamb.
Strangely in France both are for sale, the mutton considerably cheaper than the lamb.
This comes from a recipe of Elizabeth David’s from her very first cook book Mediterranean Food published in 1950 but of course the recipe goes way back further.

The French are as duplicitous as any of us and they revere game as they revere mushrooms.I looked the history of this dish up and found housewives saying that if you produced this you could boast of your husband being a great hunter and everyone would believe you. I’m sure there are similar recipes for turning pork into boar and hen into pheasant.

But it is not to pretend that it is venison that I still cook it, its that the marinading process does wonderful things to the meat, making it tender and flavoursome and yes, quite gamey, and rather like smoking salmon-to preserve it- it has produced an unexpected delicacy.
Try and get your hands on a well hung leg of lamb and don’t cook it too well,
a nice bit of pink in the middle makes the meat moist and tasty.

Gigot en Chevreuil
(will serve 6)

1 leg of Lamb

Marinade:
1 Carrot
1 large Onion
2 sticks Celery
2 tablespoons olive oil
150ml (¼ pt.) Red Wine
150ml (¼ pt.) Red Wine Vinegar
small bunch fresh Parsley
4 Cloves Garlic-crushed
Sprig of Thyme and Rosemary
1 Bay leaf
1 Teaspoon crushed Peppercorns
2 teaspoons crushed Juniper Berries

For the sauce you will need 1 ½ teaspoons redcurrant jelly.

Chop finely the carrot, onion and celery and cook together in the oil until lightly browned. Then add all the other marinade ingredients, bring to the boil and simmer for about 30 minutes. Leave this get completely cool.

Take ever scrap of skin and fat from the outside of the lamb, have ready a container in which it fits nicely, pour over the cooled marinade and cover well.
The lamb should rest in this for 4 or 5 days, turning every day to make sure all of the meat is benefitting from the marinade.

To Cook.

Lift the meat out of the marinade and pat it dry with sime kitchen paper.
Strain the marinade, conserve the liquids and discard the vegetables and herbs.

Preheat the oven to 220 C, 425 F, Gas 7
Put a little oil in a roasting tin and put in the lamb in the hot oven to roast.
Keep the lamb at this temperature for 30 to 40 minutes until well seared on the outside and then lower the temperature to 175C, 350F, Gas 4 for another 30 minutes.
It should now be still med rare, if you want it well cooked cook at this temperature for another 20 to 30 minutes. In either case take it out and put it somewhere warm to rest for 30 minutes before carving.

Use the strained marinade to deglaze the pan (if it is not burnt) or just heat it with the red currant jelly and some salt and pepper.

Serve with some crisp roast potatoes, and some mashed (or better crushed) parsnips, celeriac, or carrot or a combination of all three.

This is a delicious and special way of cooking lamb.

Daughter Dee with Ano, all scrubbed up and heading for a wedding in Kilkenny

Yesterday I quoted a line from this poem by Yates, this in its turn sent me back searching for the words, learned in school about 42 years ago and now mostly forgotten.

It is an odd poem, Yeats sounds a little pettish at times and I wonder if there wasn’t some one he was trying to attack by writing it.
Despite that the image of the fisherman is beautiful and the last lines are up there with his best.

Although I can see him still,
The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill
In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies,
It’s long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.

All day I’d looked in the face
What I had hoped ’twould be
To write for my own race
And the reality;
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.

Maybe a twelvemonth since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,
Imagining a man,
And his sun-freckled face,
And grey Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark under froth,
And the down-turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream;
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, ‘Before I am old
I shall have written him one
Poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.’

I took a bite on a piece of crisp rasher rind last week and broke off one of my front teeth, right down to the gum, my resemblance to Pogue front man Shane Mc Gowan was immediate.
I went straight to my dentist (a young slip of a girl) who told me that the good news was that there was enough root there to crown it, the bad news was that the job was going to cost about a thousand Euros.

Groucho Marx when faced with the same dilemma had an excellent reposte;
“Cavity emptor,let the biter beware!”

I went to see Joe Wright’s Atonement last night, it is an amazing film.
I haven’t seen a film with such a sense of pictorial style since Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon.

The shots and set pieces were just so wonderfully arranged, the swimming scene down by the lake could have been painted by Lavery, the tableau at the front door when Robbie returns with the twins was a visual delight with the young Bryony spiralling up the stairs in behind her sister.
The incredible panorama of Dunkirk beach was another beauty, unfortunately in this case one that went on too long.

It was probably just as well it was visually thrilling because the performances were singularly unengaging, Knightly’s particularly so, but then it was such a highly stylised film I wondered if this was intentional.
Vanessa Redgrave, as the elderly Bryony gave an eloquent performance although I did notice myself s admiring the performance, rather than feeling empathy for her guilt.

But it was most enjoyable, and when it finished I would have been quite happy to watch the whole thing again.
It is rare I think in film to find such a detached style, more usual in art or poetry.
In fact I was reminded of Yeat’s words when I left the cinema.
Maybe Joe Wright has made a film that is “cold and passionate as the dawn”
It is well worth seeing.