People keep asking me “What do you do with your time at all now Martin since you sold the restaurant?
My customary answer is to grin and say, “As little as possible”

Lies, lies and more lies.

I know that every retired person in the world has a mantra about how full their life is since they stopped work, I’m no exception.
Take next week for example.

Tomorrow, Monday, I have a Euro-Toque commissioners meeting in Dublin. This is in the catering college in Cathal Brugha street at 11.00.
This means rising at 6.30 to get the 7.30 train to Dublin.
The meeting will be followed by a lunch with the powers-that-be of the catering college who are keen to find ways that we can mutually help each other, an excellent idea.
This will probably mean that I miss the afternoon train and not get back to Waterford until 8.30.

On Tuesday I have my customary slot in WLR in the morning.
This week I realised that Monday was going to be busy so I wrote and prepared my radio piece on Saturday last.
I only do a 10 minute piece but I reckon on spending at least 2 to 3 hours getting that ready, and the recipes sent out to their points of distribution, not to mention putting them on my web page.

Tuesday afternoon is going to be spent getting ready a class I am doing for the students in Failte Ireland on Wednesday afternoon.
The class is all written up and decided on, it is a two hour class so took considerably longer than 3 hours to get ready!
I’ll be bringing a lot of the ingredients there myself so will have to do a bit of telephone ordering, I also realise that I need to start getting recipes together for my piece in the local paper, Waterford Today.
These I usually send out in five week blocks, I am conscious that the last piece from my last block will run out this week so another five pieces must be got ready before the weekend.
I have a French class on Tuesday night, this is run by Alliance Francais and I have been attending it since the autumn.
As we intend to buy there in the next few years it is important that I improve my language skills if I am not going to have to rely on Sile for all transactions above the level of food buying, eating and drinking.

Wednesday morning is going to be spent preparing myself for my marathon class in the afternoon, this will be a solo demonstration so I will have to plan meticulously to insure that I will be doing something at all times in the period, and that the end results are dishes which will look and taste well.

My brothers and sisters have decided to put together a history of the Dwyer family of Cork . This is going to be a large project and we are putting a lot of research into it, as any reader of my blogs over the last few months will have noticed.
On Thursday morning we are having a meeting in my brothers office in Cork about the book so that will consume most of that day.
The night will be spent getting my pieces ready for Waterford Today as the following day is Patrick’s Day and I am declaring that a holiday!

Retirement can be quite busy, but only if you want it to be!

Book cover, a young Peel with his wife Sheila

This is the title of John Peel’s autobiography/biography.
(He had the first half written when he died and his wife, with help from his children, completed it after his death)
The lord knows why he decided to call it this but then John Peel’s attraction was always based on the fact that he was a maverick and an eccentric, a perpetual raver who managed to become an British institution without ever attaining respectability.
A breath of fresh air.
He first came into my life with the Perfumed Garden in the sixties, a late night miscellany of cutting edge music, poetry and Peel’s own ramblings.
He had the ability of appearing to talk to each listener one to one even when addressing millions.
The public mourning which greeted his death amazed the media in England last year.
On anecdote near the end of the book I think sums up his appeal.
John was in a pub when towering local with a “fearsome crew-cut” stood over him and said;
“You’re ma f****** hero, see when ah wis at school, nae c*** gave a f*** aboot me but ah used tae listen to yer show aw the time. F*****’ brilliant, big man!”
This speaks volumes for John’s communication skills.

Many things in the book made me laugh aloud.
I’m just going to give you two, if you buy the book yourself you’ll find the others.

When John was about four he crashed into a greenhouse in his tricycle and needed a fairly severe stitching up.
The was performed on the dining room table by the GP without benefit of an anaesthetic. John claims he was still too shocked to cry.
He then discovered that this lack of tears made him a local hero and he was spoken of as “The Boy Who Never Cried” .
He resolved never to cry again.
(This resolve must have served him well during his years in a particularly brutal public school)
Then he met his adored wife Sheila, (whom he always referred to as Pig)
“Since then” he says ” I have cried almost without cessation, at everything, from Little House on The Prairie to Liverpool’s triumph in Europe.”
His most successful crying effort was when he was re-living his Fathers return from the war for a television crew in the spot where he saw him return.
“As I told it I could feel something ungovernable rising within me and fancied that I would have some sort of a seizure at the completion of my account. In the event, I gave a rather theatrical moan and slumped to the ground in tears”

Another anecdote from his childhood which I loved was when his mother, never the most tactful of women, brought him into Browns of Chester to be measures for his first prep school suit
“She sought assurances in a booming voice, that clothing could be found that would adequately cover what she characterised as an excessively large backside”. he then “shrivelled to nothingness” as “the centre of Chester came to a standstill as other customers and members of staff craned to see the malformed body part and its unfortunate owner”

We had the benefit of a broadcaster without a peer while John Peel was with us.
I also feel that he would have made an excellent comic writer.

Menu

Provencal fish soup with cod brandade toast

Mulled apple tart, Cashel Blue sorbet

This was our menu last night for a special Euro-Toques dinner in Paul Flynn’s restaurant in Dungarvan Co. Waterford.

Paul is a very clever chef and manages to steer a clear path through the various traditions of food to produce something which is modern, exciting and yet steeped in the simple ingredients of his region.

Our soup was a very good example of this skill.
This was a traditional fish bisque, carrying all the intense flavours of the sea that only a well made stock can, flavoured with fennel, as they do in Provence but packing a few extra punches as well.
Orange peel and rosemary were detected as was the extra punch of both star anise and Pernod. (There were a lot of highly analytical chefs at this dinner)
Paul shows his assurance with food by realising that the bisque base could carry these flavours and still shine through.

The next course couldn’t have been more different .
The lemon Sole was served on the bone, very simply, the cucumber and the chermoula being relegated to mere garnishes.
The star feature of this course was the fish, barely cooked, and served while still retaining its bite, moisture and flavour.
I have never eaten better lemon sole.

The Pork plate was something completely different.
Having acknowledged the nearness of the sea to Dungarvan Paul now gave us a flavour of Watertfords traditional farming mainstay, the pig industry.
On our plate this time were a Cruibin, boned and stuffed with black pudding, a piece of belly of Pork caramelized with mustard and honey and some excellent colcannon (I would have liked more, but then I never get enough vegetables today)
The belly was a triumph, crisp, fatty and full of flavour, the cruibin was delicious but I still hanker after the way they were cooked in Snaffles in the seventies, coated with breadcrumbs and grilled until crisp.

Next was a warm chocolate mousse, so much the better for being warm instead of hot, mine was scoffed in embarrassing quick time.
The final dessert was one of the highlights of the meal.
These were little tatins of spicy apples with nuts and red wine used in their cooking and served with a sorbet rich with little chunks of Cashel Blue.
Together these tastes were enough to make your mouth sing.

Paul had yet another surprise to pull out before the finish.
Our petits fours were little marshmallows flavoured with passion fruit.
They exploded with flavour as they melted in your mouth.
I won’t comment on the wines, I was the designated driver and only allowed myself a few sips of Elysium Black Muscat , and another few of an excellent Spanish Moscatel which we drank with the apple.

A memorable meal

I remember many years ago reading George Bernard Shaw’s thesis about the rationalisation of English spelling.
To prove that there was absolutely no logic in the present rules of spelling English he offered an alternative spelling of the word fish.
He claimed that the word “ghoti” could be perfectly logically used to spell fish.
Take “gh” as pronounced in cough
“o” as pronounced in women
“ti” as pronounced in station.
And ghoti=fish.

I am just reading a book about the origins of language called
The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher.

In this he quotes a poem which he wrote himself about the difficulties in trying to apply rules to the tenses to English verbs.

He dedicates it to the memory of his frustrations in trying to learn English.

The teacher claimed it was so plain,
I only had to use my brain.
She said the past of throw was threw,
The past of grow – of course – was grew,
So flew must be the past of fly,
And now my boy your turn to try.

But when I trew,
I had no clue,
If mow was mew
Like know and knew
(Or is it knowed
like snow and snowed?)

The teached frowned at me and said
The past of feed was – plainly – fed
Fed up, I knew then what I ned.
I took a break and out I snoke,
And shook and quook (or quaked? or quoke?)
With raging anger out she broke:

Your ignorance you want to hide?
Tell me the past form of collide!
But how on earth should I decide
If it’s collid
(Like hide and hid).
Or else-from all that I surmose,
The past of rise was simply rose,
And that of ride was surely rode,
So of collide must be cullode?

Oh damn those English verbs, I thought
The whole thing absolutely stought!
Of English I have had enough,
Those verbs of yours are much to tough.
Bolt upright on my chair I sat,
And said to her “that’s that” – I quat.

Guy Deutscher

Afterword, Later the same day.

My friend Heinz Lechlieter has sent me the following, another poem about the difficulties of foreigners coming to an understanding of the rules of phonic English.
It must be a nightmare!

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Well done! And now you wish perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead, it’s said like bed, not bead-
for goodness’ sake don’t call it ‘deed’!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(they rhyme with suite and straight and debt)

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth, or brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s doze and rose and lose-
Just look them up- and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart-
Come, I’ve hardly made a start!

A dreadful language? Man alive!
I learned to speak it when I was five!
And yet to write it, the more I sigh,
I’ll not learn how ’til the day I die.

In his book on the O Dwyer family, “The Dwyers of Kilnamanagh” Sir Michael O Dwyer says that after the battle of Kinsale and the Flight of the Earls some of the O Dwyer family moved to France.
There the name became francized as Haudaoire (which if you pronounce with a good french accent comes out very like the Irish O Duibhir)

I Googled the name out of idle curiosity this morning and was pleased to discover that the French branch was also involved in the culinary arts.

As Sile left to go to school this morning she said she would be late, “Unless I galvanize myself “.
Now the sad thing about being married to a word pedant/dictionary eater is that the pedantry, like the molecules in the third policeman’s saddle, begin to rub off on you after a while.
She had no sooner said it than she began to conjecture herself whether that made her like a galvanized bucket.

Sile in a Hurry.

It was like a red flag to a bull to a true word pedant and she wasn’t gone out the door before I had started Googling and indeed OEDing (Oxford English Dictionary to the unitiated) the whole Galvaized spectrum.

Now where as I knew that Galvanization was some sort of treatment for the preservation of iron I had always imagined that the use of the same word to indicate hurry was some sort of local Cork effort, possibly connected with the Galvin family.
I was wrong.

The man behind all of the Galvanizations is one Luigi Galvani (1738 to 1798)

Luigi Galvani

Apparently he was a pioneer of producing electricity by chemical means.
He then went on to apply, by experimenting with (one hopes) dead frogs

Luigi at play

Thus the sense of hurrying oneself’
or as the OED would have it;
“To stimulate a muscle or nerve by Galvanic current”

But to get back to the bucket.

Apparently this chemically produced electricity had a second application viz:

“To coat with metal by means of electrolysis, especially coat iron with zinc as a means of protection against rust”

So there you have it.
There is a relationship between the bucket and the hurry after all.
Bravo Luigi!

As I wrote recently when I started out doing this blog it was intended to be foody, filled with interesting recipes.
Checking back I haven’t given a recipe on “Words” since the end of November, and that was for Sile’s Christmas Cake!

Here is some redress.

I was giving a dinner party over the weekend and I wanted to do a fishy starter as I had already decided to do my Cassoulet of Duck as the main course.
I went into my local fish shop, Billy Bourkes, and as luck would have it, he had some spanking fresh scallops.
A quick trawl through my own recipes yielded a recipe for Scallops in Garlic Butter which were served on a Potato Cake to mop up the delicious garlicy,buttery, scallopy juices.
I just happened to have some cooked spinach left over in the fridge so I popped this in with the potato, and managed to get some Dill to add a little more interest to the sauce.
It was delicious.
Here is the revamped recipe:

Scallops with Dill and Garlic
On a Spinach Potato Cake
(For 4 as a starter, 2 as a main course)

When cooking scallops the most important thing to avoid is over cooking.
This toughens the flesh and turns them into little balls of rubber.
They really need very little more cooking than to be heated thoroughly through.
As they are very expensive and their juices are delicious I always serve them with a garnish to soak up the juices.

225g (8 oz.) cold mashed Potato
225g (8 oz.) Spinach
2 Eggs
4 oz. fine breadcrumbs

12 Scallops
Sunflower Oil
4 oz. Butter
1 Bunch Fresh Dill, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic (crushed)
2 tbs. White wine

First cook the spinach in plenty of boiling salted water.
Drain well and gently squeeze dry.
Chop this well and mix with the potato.
Now make the Potato Cakes:
Dip your hands in flour and make into 4 large or 8 small potato cakes.
Beat the 2 Eggs and dip the cakes in this and then in the breadcrumbs.
Fry on both sides in hot oil until brown and crisp on the outside but still soft and creamy inside.
Keep these warm.
(Or you can make up in advance and re-heat)

Trim the scallops if necessary and if they are large slice in two laterally.
Put the sunflower oil on a pan, let it get very hot, and fry the scallops in this for about one minute on each side.
Put these then in a warm place with the potato cakes.
Turn the heat up in the pan and throw in the wine and the garlic.
Bring these quickly to the boil and then beat in the remaining butter,and the Dill boiling briskly until the liquid foams up , thickens and forms a sauce.
Spoon this immediately over the scallops and the potato cakes and serve.

Thanks to Caitriona for the photograph

Spring breaks through again
(Thank God!)

We were at the Chester Beatty Library in
Dublin at the weekend.
(Many thanks to the Hayes-McCoys for taking us there)
In a brilliant new (to me) site in Dublin Castle
the library must be in one of the most attractive museum
settings in the country.
As well as a spectacular display of both Christian
and Eastern illustrated manuscripts there are some
beautiful examples of Eastern art.

And some of the fascinating incidentals of oriental life
like these Netsuke which were designed to decorate belt toggles.

There was a Durer exhibition on while we were there.
Among his engravings and wood cuts,was his classic
Four Horsemen of thr Apocalypse.

(For anyone with a taste for 70s trivia it may interest
you to know that the Irish Folk/Rock Band “Horselips”
called themselves after these gentlemen, as they
spoonerised their name into
“The Four Poxmen of the Horselips”)

His skilful but at times slightly unusual take on female
anatomy did make me wonder if he might not have
been allowed copy ladies bottoms from life but had to
make do with bottoms displayed by the 14th Century
equivalent of rugby players.

I say this in all respect to Durer because I saw only
two weeks ago a portrait he did of his Father in the
Tate in London.

This portrait is just full of the most affecting humanity.
I had to buy a post card of it to take home.

While we were leaving the library I noticed a horse mounted Garda patrolling outside warily.
I didn’t realise until later that there was a riot going on in O Connell Street while we were going through the museums’ treasures.

Gold and Silver