On the weekend I arrived for the first time to start work in Waterford , which was somewhere around the August Bank Holiday in 1979, there was a sudden flush of Black limos driving northwards across the bridge as I drove into the town.
On enquiry I discovered that this was the various ministers returning back to Dublin having graciously (on behalf of the Plain People of Ireland) accepted the gift of the estate of Mount Congreve from Sir Ambrose of that ilk.
Ambrose Congreve was at this stage 74, without heir, and determined that his life’s work, that of making the 80 acres that comprise Mount Congreve, one of the greatest gardens in the world, was not going to be broken up and sold to the highest bidder after his death.
The fact that at 98 the man is still going strong in 2004, 25 years later, is neither here nor there.
We, the plain people, gained one of the worlds treasure houses of flowering trees and plants on that day, and, the good news is, we will be able to take a peek at it every Thursday from 7th April next.

I cheated I confess and managed a sneak preview yesterday.

I had been put under some pressure by some Camellia loving friends of mine from Maynooth to get them into the garden before the Camellias were “over”, (i.e. finished flowering).
I, being the local man, was the one who had to persuade gardener Michael White that he might permit us a quick look before the gates swung open, officially ,next month. Being a gentleman he allowed me to bring the two Maynooth ladies in before the start date but, what we wern’t expecting, he then gave us a personal guided tour which was to make this my most rewarding garden visit ever.

I’ve been at Mount Congreve before, 3 or 4 times but I have always wandered alone and ignorant, admiring the plants without knowing whether it was Azalea, Rhododendron, or Magnolia.
I have a very clear memory of wandering through the paths a couple of years ago when we were suddenly surrounded by 4 slavering Alsatians. A large elderly gentleman in a golf buggy who was behind the dogs shouted at us
“Don’t move ! They wont touch you if you keep still !”
I promise you that there are statues who would have envied me my stillness for the next few minutes.
Sir Ambrose (for it was he)was kindness itself when he got to us and called off the dogs but some part of me was grateful to discover that he was in the Bahamas today and unlikely to set the hounds on us.

Now Michael knew that the ladies were anxious to see Camellias and no better man than Michael to show them to us.
Did you know that there are over 100,000 species of Camellia in the world , and, that Mount Congreve has over 600 of them?

Boy did we see Camellias, Reds, Pinks,Doubles,plants that produced different colours from the same branch, whites, oh, such beautiful whites, whites just like Marguerite Gautier must have carried in” La Dame aux Camellias”, we saw Camellias which scented the evening air, ones which had delicate pink veins, like blood vessels , running through their pale petals.
But still Michael told us that they were late this year and would be much better in a couple of weeks. Unbelievable.
On previous visits we had wandered through Mount Congreve on our own and, I thought, having a guide would lessen the pleasure.
On the contrary, Michael’s encyclopaedic knowledge of each plant,where it had come from, how it had performed over the years, but most of all his tangible love and infectious enthusiasm for each of his charges just heightened our appreciation of it all. It was a revelation.
(I must confess that it was just a tiny bit gratifying to learn that one of the last people he had given the personal guided tour to were Prince Charles and Camilla)

I wouldn’t like to give you the impression that the garden only contains Camellias, there were countless Rhododendrons in flower, stunning Magnolias, tall as Oak trees and myriads of Azaleas waiting for May to burst forth.
In fact Michael assured us that Sir Ambrose had designed the garden so meticulously that there was something new to see on every month of the year.

As well as the flowers there are some wonderful landscape devices.

There is an avenue of huge pink and white Magnolia trees which frame a marvellous vista of the Suir stretching down to Carrick.(Capability Brown eat your heart out)
An excavated quarry has been turned into an enchanting Japanese garden complete with Pagoda and keyhole wall window.
There is a natural rock garden where water (when it is switched on) cascades down through natural and man made waterfalls and Alpine plantings.

There are two beautiful walled gardens, one with a Victorian glasshouse and the other providing all the vegetables for the big house.
(Mind you in mid March all that was on offer was Leeks and Onions but I did manage to scrounge some of the windfall “quinces” from the espaliered Japonicas, enough for me to make a little jelly.)

Thank you Michael for an inspiring tour. We have already decided to come back in mid May to see the Azaleas and the Rhododendrons in flower.
And a thank you is definitely due to Sir Ambrose as well.
He has after all spent the last 70 odd years creating a masterpiece.

It all started a couple of years ago when, at a picnic with other members of Eurotoques, Danette O Connell (of the late lamented Danettes Feast in Carlow) produced Claudia Roden’s delicious Orange and Almond Cake*.
I remembered being fascinated with this recipe since the first time I read it some years before in a magazine and had cut it out and pinned it up in my kitchen . And there it stayed, gathering grease.There was something about the recipe (which involved boiling oranges for two hours and then liquidizing them) that both repelled and intrigued. However I failed the courage test and, over time, it fell to pieces, untried.
Then along came Danette and her picnic dessert. It was a huge success, a truly delicious and unusual cake. Wonderfully moist, and with a real tang of fresh orange flavour. I begged the recipe from Danette and this time I got to make it.
The cake became a standard in the dessert menu of my restaurant.
Coupled with a Cardomum Creme Brulee* it became a bit of a signature dish.
Cooking in restaurant quantities,you tend ,over time, to develop short cuts and this recipe with its 2 hour boiling was ripe for one.I can’t remember what genius first suggested cooking the oranges in the microwave but who ever did was bang on and the -very much shorter- cake recipe was born, and became the new standard.

Wearing another hat I give cookery classes with Pierce and Valerie Mc Auliffe in Dunbrody Abbey cookery school. Recipes current in the restaurant tend to turn up at these. That was how I ended up divulging the secrets of my Orange and Almond Cake Mark 2 (The Microwave Version) to a most appreciative group of students.
Now this recipe was bound to be a success in a cookery class. As well as being simple and delicious it provides culinary justification for owning a microwave and proves that we can use it for something other than re-heating and defrosting.
Even better this class provided one of those serendipitous moments which happen (much more often than one would care to admit) at cookery classes.This is the moment when “by your pupils you are taught”.
A student remarked as she saw the oranges coming tender out of the microwave after a mere 5 mts. cooking. – “Wouldn’t that be a handy way to make marmalade”.
The idea kept jumping around my mind as I drove that day back to Waterford. Then another memory surfaced, of my sister in law Una making her marmalade in the conventional way but chopping the mixture in a food processor. By the time I got home I was like a man possessed, barely had time to grab some oranges as I ran through the restaurant, and into my kitchen to make my first batch of ” Fifteen Minute Marmalade“*
It was wonderful, as well as being just about the simplest recipe imaginable, the resulting marmalade was delicious. Possessing a sweet freshness totally undiminished by the usual long boiling.

But don’t go yet. We haven’t got to chocolate yet.

At the end of this summer and a shockingly self indulgent holiday in Provence the decision was made ( not really by me) that I should go on another of my diets. Not one to be swayed by fads and trends, and since the Atkins and Weightwatchers had defeated me, I decided -briefly – to have a go off the South Beach Diet. My research for this consisted of borrowing the introductory book from a friend, using all that I found appealing and then waiting for the pounds to fall off.
What I found most appealing (as well as the bacon and eggs for breakfast) was its eschewing of animal fats and espousal of Olive Oil, this,coming after my Provencal holiday, was something I felt I could live with.
Then happens my next moment of serendipity.
I borrowed from the library a book on the chemistry of cooking called “What Einstein told his Cook” by Robert Wolke. In it he had a recipe which seemed tailor made for me and my version of my latest diet. This was a Chocolate and Olive Oil Mousse*. Perfect, no cream, no unsalted butter, just eggs sugar and chocolate.This rang a faint bell and I went back to the ever reliable Dennis Cotter and his” Paradiso Seasons” cook book. Yes there it was , along with a wonderful carrot of a phrase ” I envy anybody trying this recipe for the first time”. I was, and did and was conquered. No it isn’t the least oily, and the chocolate comes across as wonderfully intense when its flavours aren’t dulled with cream.

Now we get to the final chapter, when all the loose ends get tied up.
I was having one of my nights of insomnia when (as one does) I started planning tomorrow’s recipes. Thinking about the Chocolate and Olive Oil Mousse it struck me; what if (Heaven Forbid) the South Beach people were wrong, that Olive Oil was fattening after all, it is possible. Both fat and carbohydrates run in and out of the fattening/non fattening leagues frequently.
But how could one make something out of chocolate without adding any fat at all ? I can see you are there before me. Using cooked Oranges of course.
Thus was born my Chocolate,Orange and Almond Cake*. Either totally healthy (no butter or flour) or totally unhealthy (nuts and chocolate) depending which diet you are following. But totally delicious, totally moist, and loved at first bite by even my sternest critic, my wife .
Eat it warm or at room temperature, accompany it with absolutely nothing or if you feel you must with some Greek yogurt or some fromage frais but never with cream.
We don’t want you getting fat.

*All available under recipes on my web page

Yesterday was my birthday, (56 if you must know) and most of my family kindly gathered around me to celebrate. Saturday night was the birthday dinner. I had bought a 3 ½ kg fresh rod caught Bass from Liam Burke in Ballybricken on Saturday morning.
It came in the door of the shop as I was there and left with me.
This was my night off the cooker so Sile and Caitriona cooked it (exactly as instructed in “Bass with Pak Choy” under recipes) and it was quite the most delicious piece of Bass any of us had ever eaten.
Thanks Liam and top marks to the chefs.

After dinner we were telling the lads about a marvellous walk we had taken along the old Dungarvan railway line.
This Christmas some friends, who are from Kilmacthomas, had walked us along about 4 miles of the old Dungarvan line between Old Durrow station and Clonea Beach. This is a fabulous walk which brings you through a long tunnel and over a very high viaduct before you get to Clonea.
Fired with enthusiasm Aonghus (the son-in law elect) managed to persuade Caitriona and Eileen that we should try it again on Sunday.It was agreed.

On Sunday morning, fortified with an excellent smoked salmon and scrambled egg birthday breakfast, well wrapped and booted (quite a lot of water underfoot) and furnished with two good torches (for the tunnel) we set off.

To get there you have to drive to Kilmac (thomas for strangers), but pass the turn to the village, take the next left, sign posted Stradbally, and drive straight along this road for about three miles, passing through two junctions as you do. You will then come to a five cross roads, called Carrigahilla Cross on the map, where you take the second right turn along the R675 for about a mile. You turn to the right then and go up over hill and dale for a mile or so, you will go under the spectacular and beautifully arched Durrow Railway Bridge just before you get to a junction where you park the car. From this on you are on your feet. Just cross the road and you will find yourself on the railway line.

A word of caution at this stage, this line has not been used for a great number of years and is not suitable for small children as there are many places where the fences are gone and they could fall considerable distances if unsupervised.

The first bit of interest you come upon is the old station of Durrow. Even though most of the buildings are now ruined it is still very recognisable as a station with its signal box, platform etc. It is a little sad to see it now so gone to seed but still fascinating to imagine it as it was , a once busy halt on a busy line.

As you walk the line you will notice that most of the sleepers and their stays are now gone. The remaining surface is loose granite chips which form a stable if sharp surface to walk along.

There are two advantages of walking on a railway line , one, they are traffic free so you don’t have to spend your time dodging Sunday drivers, and secondly the original railway engineers liked to keep the trains on the level so there is no trudging down valley and hauling up hill . On the contrary if a line hits a hill it just tunnels through it, if it hits a valley it just spans it.
This is wonderfully relaxing walking for creaky ankles (mine) and knees (’s)

After a while you notice that the track begins to bore its way into the hill. At this stage the ground becomes quite wet so that the people wearing wellingtons have the advantage. You also find yourself walking through banks of bright green watercress. The track at this point seems to have formed a handy, but very shallow, canal for the local streams so the water is flowing along slowly, a perfect environment for producing healthy green watercress.
A little further on you round a corner and find yourself facing the tunnel.

It is quite dramatic at this point, as it stretches foreward in a dead straight line to the tiny patch of light at the end.
This is about a mile long and goes under a hill called ,according to the map, Ballykeroge Big. Being a class of an amateur word man I decided immediately this must be a version of Ballykeroge Beag or Little Ballykeroge, beag being the Irish word for little, a quick scan of the map however revealed the next townland to be called Ballykeroge Little.
So much for my etymological expertise.

The tunnel itself is terrific, though fairly rough underfoot so bring good torches. Every so often, along its length, it has escape alcoves like little sentry boxes. In quite a few of these the streams have, over the years, carried lime down from the soil which has created the most amazing natural sculptures. There are a few embryonic stalactites and stalagmites and in one of these alcoves a fabulous petrified stream of pure white which looks like a melting glacier.

Marvellous stuff and all just within a few miles of home!

Aonghus and I leave the tunnel

After the tunnel you go along about a mile of sunken track. Caitriona and Aonghus, who spent some time in the far east, said it was just like the Passage of the Dead on the way to the bridge on the river Kwai on which thousands of prisoners had died during construction
It does have a jungle feel to it, with hanging ivy tendrils and mossy walls making it feel quite foreign. Its difficult to remember that I’m still in county Waterford.
The next bit of excitement is the crossing of the Ballyvoyle viaduct. This crosses high over the Dalligan River and gives one a lovely view of Dungarvan Harbour and across to Helvick. This soaring bridge is probably not for people with vertigo as it is a long way down to the Dalligan flowing underneath (not that this stopped my lot dropping stones down into the river and waiting for what seemed like ages for the splash)
The iron railings here look a bit shaky so I wouldn’t recommend leaning on them!
The track then goes on for about another mile or so (some of it quite high over the road and with no railings) before it comes to a dead stop in a farm. The first time we walked this, we struggled down through this farm and ended up sipping delicious mulled wine (which one of the party had had the foresight to bring in a flask) on the beach in Ballyvoyle.
This time we met some cows on the line so we turned back at the farm and retraced our footsteps for the car.

We had one more mission.

We stopped and gathered a bag of the succulent green Watercress.
ThisI turned into a beautiful dark green Leek and Watercress Soup when we got home.
Recipe follows (I am still, after all, a chef)

Leek and Watercress Soup.
(enough for about 10 but it freezes beautifully)

60g (2oz.) Butter
2 tablespoons Olive Oil
2 medium Onions
4 Leeks
3 Medium Potatoes
1 ltr.(2 pints) Stock
5 mts. Picking of Watercress

Peel and slice the onions and potatoes and put them to sweat in a large lidded pot.
Fill a sink with water, slice the leeks thinly and swill about in the water to get rid of all grit and dirt. Drain off and add these to the onions and potatoes.
Again fill the sink with cold water and similarly and thoroughly wash the watercress. You should be careful that there aren’t little snails sticking to the stems, however a good shaking about in the water seems to get rid of them.

Once the onions, potatoes and leeks have softened you can add the stock to the pot and bring it up to a good rolling boil. At this stage throw the drained watercress into the pot, bring back to the boil and simmer for 4 to 5 mts. Liquidise , season and serve.

My lot polished off most of it after that walk.

Afterword:
Should anyone like to see some photos of this walk just click on to
http://www.caitriona.net/c/index.shtml
photo blog entries between 15th March and 21st March. Thanks Triona.

Today is the 11th of March .It is not the Ides of March.
In March the Ides, for some reason best known to the Romans, falls on the 15th.
My youngest daughter, Deirdre, sent me a text message this morning saying “Beware the Ides of March” .
She sent it because she knows me well, and knows this is the sort of thing that will have me running to dictionaries and Shakespeare anthologies in a positive lather of enjoyment finding out as much as possible about said Ides and everything to do with it.(As indeed I just did)

In fact I , unlike Julius Caesar , do not fear the 15th of March. The day I fear is tomorrow, the 12th of March, and thereby (as you have probably just guessed) hangs a tale.

A couple of years ago, on March 12th 2001 to be precise, the same daughter Deirdre asked me to pick her up in school early and bring her out to the hospital where she had an appointment to get her dental brace checked. I duly left her out at the hospital at the appropriate time and decided to wait for her in the car and listen to the radio until she finished.
It was a sunny spring day and as I sat in the stuffy car I felt a headache coming on. Not a particularly bad one but a stinger none the less.
What amazed me then, was that my body started to panic. It was almost as if I was observing what was happening from outside myself. My heart started to pound, I came out in a cold sweat, I started to shake, to gasp for breath, all the symptoms of a panic attack , something I had experienced once before.

Fortunately while my body was having this attack my brain was still feeling calm. This told me that I was sitting in the sun, in a car with the windows up, I should get out and get some air.
I did and immediately began to calm down, and the headache started to fade.

After a while Deirdre came back and I started to drive her home.
On the way I started to tell her about my strange headache/panic attack.
“How long is it now since your Brain Haemorrhage “ she said. I started to think,” well it was about this time of the year…..”
Then I nearly had a second attack but, this time it would have been justified.
The 12th of March is the day before my birthday, not a day I would ever mistake for another.
It had been on the 12th of March 1991 when I had had the haemorrhage.

What’s more it had been at about 3.00 in the afternoon, as it had been when I had been waiting in the hospital car park.

That meant that it had been exactly 10 years ago to the year, day and hour since I had had the haemorrhage which had seen me rushed to hospital to Cork by ambulance, and, from which it had taken me about 5 years to recover completely.
Could it possibly be that some strange time clock in my body had recognised this macabre anniversary and was telling me about it?
As I said I had only once before experienced an attack like the one I had just had in the car. That had happened a few weeks after the initial haemorrhage when I had my first headache since the attack and it had been spookily similar to the one I had just had in the car.
I guessed at that time that my body , rather than my mind, was deciding that I was going to have another bleed and had gone into panic mode. On that occasion also, a walk in the fresh air had calmed me down and got rid of the headache.

It does make you wonder though . Have we got a separate body memory of past traumas? Does this body clock recognise the Gregorian calendar and British Standard Time ? Or was it all just a strange coincidence?

For my part I’m just not sure ,but, I still beware of tomorrow;
the 12th of March.

We in Ireland are particularly fortunate with our native Prawn. Called the Dublin Bay Prawn it seems fairly prolific in the seas which surround us.
This particular crustacean is not unique to our waters , it is just that his name keeps changing as he moves about.
In English he is also known as the Norway Lobster, in France the Langoustine (both names giving you a better clue who his close relatives are) but the name under which he became a culinary film star was the one the Italians gave him ; Scampi.
As Scampi he became the doyen of the bistros of the 60s, 70s and even 80s. He even had his film star scandal when unscrupulous restaurateurs began to cut monk fish tails into appropriate sized pieces as sell them as Scampi.

These prawns are not in fact inhabitants of Dublin bay, but, we Irish were one of the first to appreciate their merits. Until the fifties British fisherman usually discarded any netted accidentally, but we had started to sell them a long time before that, direct off the boats, to the Molly Malone’s of Dublin.
Not being categorised as fish they didn’t have to go through the market before hitting the streets, so, as Alan Davidson tells us in North Atlantic Seafood (a masterpiece and, thank god, now back in print since last year) “the prawns were called Dublin Bay because out in the bay was where the vendors got them”

There is really very little which can compare in delicious sweet savour with a good Dublin Bay Prawn. The various warm water varieties which come to us frozen may have the edge in size, and appearance (and in ease of shelling) but for texture and taste our lad is the king.
He is not easy to peel though, he owes me several layers of thumb skin which have sloughed off over the years in the efforts to evict him from his shell.
Another little know fact about him is that he has natural phosphorescence.
(A fact often used as a ruse by commis chefs in the restaurant as they tried to lure young waitresses into the cold room –“Come in here till I show you my glowing prawns”)
On the subject of lewd conversation, the Dublin Bay Prawn stars in one of the best “dirty “ jokes I know.
[ Warning : This next bit contains strong language !]

Lady from Foxrock is in Moore Street Market in Dublin and is rummaging deep and long into the creel of prawns in an attempt to find the biggest ones. The fish wife eyes her sceptically and says “Thems prawns Ma’am, not pricks, they don’t get any bigger with the handling”

I owe a debt of gratitude to my brother in law Milo Lynch for telling me that joke many years ago. I have told it myself many hundreds of times since.

With regard to their cooking there is very little to be said. First take off their heads but keep them .Toss the tails into a large pot of boiling salted water, bring it back to the boil and boil for about 5 mts. (no more). Drain them. As soon as they are cool enough to handle pinch the two sides together to crack the shell then twist the prawn back against its natural curl until you break the shell across the back and then slip off both ends.
Don’t worry, you will get better at it after a while, and the skin does grow back on your thumbs.

Simplicity must be the key to eating these beauties once shelled.
Eat them cold with good mayonnaise, tinted pink with tomato puree if you feel you must. Eat them hot tossed in butter with lemon or garlic or both. In the recipes section I have a good recipe for Prawn Risotto which makes a little go a long way. But whatever else you do, do not throw out the heads. They make the most wonderful prawn stock, use it in Prawn Bisque or Prawn Chowder
both of which you will find again in the recipes under “soups” .

A final story about the Dublin Bay Prawn and this one is true.

In the early 80s I ran a fish restaurant in the Strand Hotel in Dunmore East . I normally got my fish from the auction in Dunmore but one day I was caught short and had to go into Waterford town to Flanagan’s Fish merchants to get some to top up my supply.
I couldn’t find a handy place to park the car so had to park in Christchurch Cathedral a couple of hundred yards from the fish shop.
I got two large bags of live prawns which proceeded to wriggle desperately as I clutched them both to my breast on the way back to the car. As I was crossing the road to the cathedral one managed to escape and lay in the middle of the road doing spectacular back flips. To put down my wriggling bags would have been a disaster so a made a bolt for the car , hurled the prawns into the boot and turned to collect the prodigal.
He was still there, twitching, in the middle of the road but had managed to attract a small audience of astounded and alarmed people. As I looked at them a man who had been closely studying the twitcher raised his eyes from the prawn and looked, questioningly , straight up into the sky.

I got back into my car and slowly drove away.

I love cinnamon ice cream, any spicy ice cream in fact. That delicious combination of warm spice and frozen creaminess just sets my taste buds jangling in a most pleasing fashion.

When I sold the restaurant I sold it as a going concern and therefore lost all my equipment. One of the most precious tools in the kitchen was my old Italian ice cream churn. This had an integral freezing mechanism and worked in basically the same way the old hand cranked salt and ice machines did.
As the salt reduced the ice to a lower than freezing point the beater kept the liquid from forming crystals and so thickened the mixture into that delicious smooth and thick cream we all love.

Domestic ice cream churns, with the best will in the world. just don’t give the same excellent result. I know, I bought one last year. This one has a thick base which you freeze and then insert in the machine and churn.
This method , and other similar ones that I’ve tried, just don’t give the same results as the old salt and ice method or the machine which have their own built in freezer.
Now with either ice and salt, or an integral freezer, the very best way of making ice cream is the custard method. That is one makes a custard with milk (or the liquid of your choice e.g. a fruit puree) Cool it, add it to cream and churn together. Michael Quinn , the chef in Waterford Castle, gave me the excellent tip for Cinnamon Ice-cream of liquidizing a whole cinnamon stick with the milk for the custard which adds a great intense cinnamon tang to the finished ice.
I have a recipe for this method on my web page.
Click on to recipes and then desserts and you will find it.
It works, on my new machine, but not as well as it did in my old churn.

When I worked in the “Wife of Bath” in Kent in the early seventies we used to always make our ice creams by this method; Custard/ cream/ churn.
However in 1975 the local environmental health officer decided that it would have to stop. She said that egg custard made with raw , unpasturised, egg yolks was unsafe for human consumption.(The English got a bit paranoid about eggs at this time, remember Edwina Currie?))
We, in the Wife of Bath, had to go back to the drawing board.
The drawing board in this case, as in so many others, was the food bible of the time ( and indeed the food bible for all time) The Constance Spry Cookery Book.
As an alternative to the “custard” method Constance also gave the” mousse” method of making ice cream. And, God Bless Her , it works.
Furthermore it produces such a thick and unctuous base that, provided one remembers to take it out of the freezer about a half hour before you serve it, this “mousse” ice cream requires no churning and compares quite favourably with the original custard/cream/ churn method.

All of this leads us finally to my recipe for Cinnamon Ice Cream made without a churn.
You will need , at least, a hand held electric beater. A stand alone would be even better. A sugar thermometer is a help but not essential. A coffee grinder which could double as a spice grinder would be useful too but again not essential.

Churnless Cinnamon Ice-cream

200g (7oz.) Caster Sugar
150ml (5 oz.) Water
6 Egg Yolks (Free Range of course)
1 1/2 Cinnamon Sticks (or 3 teaspoons of FRESH ground Cinnamon)
250 ml (9 oz.) Cream
250 g (9 oz.) Crème Fraiche

You need a small but solid pot to make the syrup.
Put the sugar and water on to boil in this and simmer for about 5 mts.
(You want to bring it to 230 F on a sugar thermometer.)
Beat the egg yolks together well in a non plastic bowl.
Now the next bit requires great attention and care to avoid burns.
While still beating pour the very hot syrup on to the egg yolks.
Once that is done you continue to beat the mixture until it cools.
It will thicken and turn paler.
(This is the moment when a stand alone beater would come into its own, because it takes about 10 mts of patient standing to achieve this. I should know as I don’t have a stand alone one any more either)
Now you can have ready the cinnamon.
Don’t think that the grey ground cinnamon which has been in the back of the cupboard since the last time you made a Christmas cake will do for this. Throw this out. Either open a fresh jar for the occasion or break up a stick and a half and grind them to a powder in a coffee grinder.
(Sticks of cinnamon will keep their flavour for a lot longer than ground.
As a bonus you will have a subtle cinnamon flavour from your coffee for a few weeks because no matter how hard you try the flavour will linger in the grinder)
Once the egg mixture is cool beat the cream and the cinnamon together . Start by beating the ordinary cream with the cinnamon and then, once it is stiff , beat in the Crème Fraiche until you have a uniform stiff mixture.
Fold the egg mousse into the cream using light movements and with a large spoon. You do not want to get rid of the trapped air which is what keeps the ice cream from setting into a brick.
Now pour the mixture into a container which has a good lid and freeze overnight.
Take it out of the freezer and into the fridge for a half hour before you serve it.
This is particularly good with any apple tart but its finest moment is when it is partnered with the traditional French tart of Caramelised Apple ; Tarte de Demoiselle Tatin.
(That is there too, in my recipes section, under desserts )

One of the joys of not running a restaurant any more is the fun I have found again in the simple domestic act of cooking.
The only real pressure deadline I have on that front now, is to have two original recipes ready for Tuesday morning on time for my piece on Waterford Local Radio.

It is quite likely that there very few truly original recipes around at this time. Several times I have come up with what I thought was a novel and stunningly original food combination only to discover, on the internet, that someone had got there before me. (This happens to other people too, however else could one account for the proliferation of my published recipe for Baileys and White Chocolate Tart appearing, with identical ingredients and method, on other peoples sites.)

Yesterday, Sunday, I decided would be a good time to cook a Chicken.
We had a good, free range one in the freezer which I took out and zapped on defrost in the microwave to commence the thawing process.
(N.B. Two sacred anti-foodie cooking processes mentioned in one sentence)
It being Sunday the thought came to my head that a stuffed chicken would be a comfort in the chilly, if sunny, day that was outside. Also the gardener (in the guise of the wife ) would be arriving in soon tired, cold and in need of comfort food.
Now I am watching my fat intake at the moment so have a notion that Olive oil would be a better prospect than butter, that puts an interesting slant on the stuffing.
We are, since the flight of the gosling daughters only two for lunch so we don’t want to cook the whole bird. In fact I very rarely cook the whole chicken any more. I now look upon it as a three meal bird. One meal, the legs and thighs, one the breasts and then another of soup made of the stock obtained from the carcass.

Since stuffing was the notion of choice, and butter was at the moment a banned substance (at least in the amounts that I think needed to make a decent bread stuffing) so, I needed to progress on the olive oil front.
Black olives seemed an obvious addition. When I went looking for some I also found some sundried tomatoes.

A note here about ingredients. Sile had bought the olives on a stall in Georges Street in Dublin and they were good, pungent wrinkled tasty olives. The bland smooth ones one buys in glass jars are not worth buying. The Sun dried Tomatoes were brought in from Italy by our friends the Schleibtz’s in the Waterford market, who then softened them in olive oil for several days before selling to us.
Just as they tell us that we are what we eat, our dishes are only as good as the ingredients we put into them.

Stuffing needs a herb, basil was the obvious choice but I had attacked our pot of basil last week making pesto so that was a non runner. Thyme, however was to hand. I always associate thyme with Provence since the time we camped there with the children when they were little. We were walking through an orchard of olive trees when we were all struck by the marvellous smell we were making as we progressed.
We discovered we were marching through a bed of wild thyme.
Heady Stuff that!

So that was the stuffing sorted but we still needed a sauce. A sauce with some sweetness to counteract the briny bite of the olives seemed in order. My usual tomato sauce seemed a bit dull.
I have just finished reading William Blacks gastronomic adventures of Italy; Al Dente. He passes on various recipes as he travels and most seem to start with a soffrito. This is a softened mixture of aromatic vegetables used in many Italian recipes as the basis of a sauce. So a soffrito with what my vegetable rack could offer seemed the obvious choice of sauce.

I had a couple of carrots, some onions and some hard yellowish Dutch tomatoes fit only for the pot. To compensate for the poor tomatoes lack of flavour- giving sun I would add some sugar, some vinegar and some bottled tomato passata

One more problem presented itself as I got the meal together. Olive oil, unlike butter doesn’t solidify as it cools so my stuffing was particularly unruly and reluctant to sit neatly in the pocket I had made so carefully for it in each chicken breast.
Necessity in cooking is always the mother of invention and frequently, as in this case has most serendipitous results.
I had some thin smoked streaky rashers in the fridge so, to control the recalcitrant chicken stuffing, I wrapped each breast firmly in these (which I had previously stretched until paper thin with the back of a large knife.)

The final decision was then what to cook with these. I decided on baked potatoes as they would cook in the oven at the same temperature and take much the same time as the chicken.
We had also bought some Brussels Sprouts which we boiled plain to eat with the chicken.
This was the only unsuccessful decision. I should of course have remembered Ford Madox Fords words which are a sort of definition of Provence :
“There, there is no more any evil, for there the apple will not flourish and the Brussels sprout will not grow at all”

Now I do like sprouts but discovered that that they have no affinity, in fact I thank they harbour a definite antipathy, to the cuisine of the sun.
We should have had just a salad.

Here Follows the actual Recipe.

Black Olive and Tomato Stuffed Breast of Chicken.
(for 2 )

2 Breasts of Free Range Chicken (wing bone in )
110g (4 oz.) Coarse Bread crumbs
4 tablespoons Olive Oil
12 stoned black olives
4 Sun dried Tomatoes
1 teaspoon chopped fresh Thyme.
6 Streaky Rashers

Soffrito;
1 med Onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 carrots, peeled and finely chopped
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
2 Tomatoes (Blanched,peeled, and chopped)
1 teaspoon Sugar
2 teaspoons White Wine Vinegar
110g (4 oz.) Tomato Passata (Or the same weight of chopped tinned Tomatoes).

Most of the method I think I have already given you.
Mix the breadcrumbs with the olive oil, stoned olives, chopped sundried tomatoes and thyme and use this stuffing to fill the cavities you have made in the chicken breasts. Wrap these firmly and carefully in the stretched rashers. Cook for 35 to 40 mts at Gas 6, 200C, 400F.
For the Soffrito; Melt the vegetables slowly in the oil, add the sugar, vinegar and passata. Season well and simmer until a rich thick tomato sauce. Serve beside the carved chicken breasts.

Last week I lost all internet connection. Everything looked like it was working correctly but I just couldn’t get on to the internet and send or receive e mails.
I rang all the usual suspects, my daughter, a local engineer, no avail, (at least not on the phone.)
Caitriona said that it was a broadband problem, get on to Tececom (I only have broadband for a month or so.)

Now I loathe talking to these slick IT experts on these helplines. They talk in jargon and make huge presumptions about my technical abilities-which are zilch-and they charge a fortune by the minute for doing so.

I was however backed into a corner having none of my technically literate daughters at home, it was just me and a talking charging anorak to get me back on the internet.
(How, I say to my self, did I manage before……..)
There was a minor temptation to kick the machine hard and pretend it had broken irreparably but, I took my courage in my hands, and proceeded.

I explained my problem to the, I must say quite pleasant sounding , man at the other end. I went on to say that I was a 55 year old computer illeterate so please go slowly.

He said he thought he knew what the problem was and to get myself a biro or pencil. I thought I was going to have at least an hour of writing ahead followed by complicated workings on the machine so, expecting the worst, I did as I was told.

“Now ” he said ” Pick up your modem and stick the pencil in the hole in the back”.
(there followed a short hiatus while he explained what and where my modum was.)
Then I did just as he asked.
He than told me to type up 192.168.1.254 on my address thingie.
Then, Nirvana!! I was back on air.

This to me has shades of how my mother used to start the hoover by twiddling the flex in the plug.
On request (I was after all paying still) he explained that I had a “lazy Modum”
“so do you mean to say” said I “that by twiddling a pencil about in its backside you shock into action again”. I was answered with a dubious “Yes”

A week later, no recurrance, so I can now share my new found technical expertise with you.
Should your computer break down you now know what to do.
(I’m sure it should work for the tele and the fridge too.)

With me going to France is like an addiction. The more I get of it the more I want. Given that I now have all this free time it seemed obvious that and I should use some of her Christmas school holidays by going to France. Given as well that now Aer Arann were flying direct to Lorient in Brittany from Waterford Airport once a week this seemed the obvious place to start from. The joys of not having several hours driving before and after our holidays was seductive.

We booked return flights with Aer Arann out on the 1st January, back on the 8th.

Then the comparatively easy problem of where to find a gite in the reasonably near vicinity of Lorient for that week had to be resolved. Drawing a rough 3 hours driving circle around the port of Lorient left one with three options. Northern Brittany (called West Cork with croissants by a cynical friend), the Vendee (quite the most numbingly boring part of France, great beaches OK, but in January?) or the obvious solution; the Loire.
Sile and I had worked together there a unbelievable 31 years ago and had already been back several times with the children on various camping holidays and we are both addicted to the Chateaux (unlike beaches ,OK in January).

Thanks to an excellent web site www.frenchconnections.co.uk we found a lovely gite for 2 near Saumur. This was called Les Hautes Guissinieres near Gizeux mid way between Angers (our old stamping ground) and Tours and within day tripping distance of several Loire Chateaux we hadn’t yet been to.
So far so good, but it got even better. This was our first January trip to France and we mailed the Nairns -the gite owners-about getting logs for the fire. They mailed us back to say that because of our enquiry they had tested the fire for the first time, discovered that it smoked so had gotten a wood burning stove installed, plus a plentiful supply of logs in the garage. this seemed an excellent portent of things to come.

We set out on the 1st, having, for once, been wonderfully abstemious on New Years Eve, and the trip to Waterford Airport (10 mts. door to door) and the flight all went perfectly. No trouble with our right hand drive hired car (up graded to a Golf) other than madly flapping one’s hands about trying to change gear with the door handle and concentrating very hard to keep on the right side of the road.
The day of our arrival was New Years day in France and we had correctly surmised that the whole of France would be firmly closed on this day. There were two exceptions. Every florist in Brittany was doing a roaring trade as the entire male population bought large bouquets for their ladies (why did I keep thinking it was for Mere rather than Femme ?) and the odd boulangerie was opened so, we were able to buy some bread. It was imperative that we got a substantial lunch somewhere as the only food we had with us was some emergency Wexford cheddar and crackers.

We had tried to book a table in a starred restaurant en route but had not booked because they had kindly sent us the price of their prix fixe for lunch on this feast day; €120 per person (mind you for a stunning 8 course meal)so we imagined that it was going to be Pizza somewhere. As I was driving looked up the Michelin and found a “Bib Gourmand” (moderate but good) in Ancenis called Le Toile au Beurre. This was just near our route, and, a mobile call established that yes, they could take us at 2.00 which would be just as we got there.
This turned out to be the sort of French restaurant you dream about but rarely see any more. Decor plain to the point of austerity in an old shop where all the old beams etc were lovingly preserved. The lunch menu for three courses was €25 (very cheap for what it contained) we were in business.
The chef had a great sense of the locality so we were able to eat great specialties of the Loire. I had a delicious starter of smoked Sandre (Pike-Perch) native to the river, had a bisque of Ecrivisse, the river prawn which- even though they are now mostly imported from Bulgaria – are quite delicious.
I had a main course of Eel, Pied de Mouton mushrooms and more Ecrivisse all tossed in delicious garlic butter, and Sile ate some poached Sandre, for dessert we both had some very French pear and Almond tart.
We left a couple of hours later much satisfied and with a bottle of Bourgueil St Nicolas (just down the road from our gite) kindly packed by the proprietors for our cheese and cracker supper.

The Gite itself(which we found with very little trouble) was superb.
It was a 17th century attachment to a main (unoccupied at this time) house which had been lovingly converted to a small gite for two. It was all open plan on two floors, all the original features carefully maintained down to the great Tufa stone fireplace and the original pegs keeping the beams in place.
Our supper of Wexford cheddar slipped down a treat with the fine Bourgueil and we fell in to the bed at about 9.00 to sleep -was it exhaustion or the quiet of the countryside- for a refreshing 12 hours. Amazing!

The principal problem the following day was to get to a market, as, it being the Sunday after the New Year, most of the shops were still closed. We found one fairly grubby, and packed Super U which provided us with the bare necessities (and where I insisted in buying a “Bag for Life” to swank it up in the Irish Supermarkets-this was to prove an essential purchase later) We found a market on the outskirts of Saumur, tiny but with all we needed.
French markets in winter are a revelation. With no tourists around there is much less tat and a totally different selection of winter vegetables.
We bought some Coeures des Choux , hearts of young cabbage which, Madame the stallholder told us, we should blanch and eat with a vinaigrette, and some small Jerusalem Artichoke type vegetables( NOT Topinambours Madam assured us, much stronger) and some delicious examples of my favourite potatoes which go by the unappealing name of “Les Rattes”.
All these were to eat with some thighs from some Poulets Fermieres, and, for afters, a Galettes des Rois- a traditional Loire cake for the Epiphany, puff pastry with an almond filling- much like a Pithiviers-but which Madame La Boulingiere assured us contained “a bean” for the feast, this like our own bean in the Barm Brack signified wealth to the one who was given that slice.
So, fortified with the prospect of feasts to come, we headed off to investigate Langeais Château. This was a feast in itself.
We had never heard of Langeais before we found it just about 10 klm down the road from our Gite. This is not surprising when you consider that the Loire area is awash with famous châteaux. Castles which would be dazzling stars in other regions fade beside the big guns of the Loire like Chenoncaux with its stunning bridge construction on the Cher, or Villandry with its marvellous ornamental vegetable garden.
Langeais’s great interest for us was its marvellous collection of 15th and 16th furniture and tapestries.

These proved beautiful and most unusual. The locks on some of the early oak chests were of such amazing and complex construction to be alone “worth the journey”.
From an historical perspective Anne of Brittany married Charles V111 of France here in 1491, thereby uniting huge tracts of France for the first time.
A fascinating part of the marriage contract was that she agreed to marry his heir should Charles predecease her without issue. This he upped and did so she had to marry his cousin Louis X11 in 1498. The same Louis she had previously refused. So much for the privileges of royalty.
Back in the gite that night we feasted royally on our market purchases. We ended up pot roasting the chicken legs with the “not topenambours” and whole cloves of garlic. The result was marvellously flavourful with the soft vegetables providing a sauce with the positively gamy (to our battery reared mouths) chicken. The “Bean” in the Galettes des Rois turned out to be a rather pretty china thimble which I got, then promptly dropped and smashed thereby ruining again all chances of wealth during 2005.
This little incident was to come back to me later.

And so the week went on, Chateaux, and food, food and Chateaux.
Highlights were being brought around Chinon Castle alone by Didier, an English speaking guide. There we saw the room where the Dauphin failed to fool Joan of Arc by hiding in the crowd and making one of his underlings pretend to be him. We loved Amboise Chateau with its amazing Tour de Millimes where the horsemen were able to ride up a spiral ramp right up to the ramparts from the street far below. We ate excellent Saussison de Toulouse, Rillettes d’Oie (a fabulously rich goose pate). We always ate at home at night but often ate lunch out. We had tender smoky and rare lamb cooked on charcoal in a small restaurant in Amboise, an excellent and unexpected potato and cheese Pizza in a Creperie in Noyant, and even had a picnic of left overs on a table by the river in Chinon.
We were drinking well too. The area had great reds and very good sparkling whites these from Saumur and Vouvray which are great value at €3 /€4 each. The non sparkling whites, although very good were a little above our budget.
We decided to buy some red to take home.
Wine snobs we are not but we do like a nice bottle, or two.
The decision was made to try and get some St. Nicolas de Bourgueil in “bag in box” (the only way to carry wine back from France by plane-if you are sniffy about drinking your wine from a plastic bag you can always decant it at home) and that I would take this on the plane in the innocent Super U bag masquerading as some last minute purchases, hiding the fact that it weighed in at a good 10 kg. The trouble was where to begin.Bourgeuil is full of small individual vignerons. As we approached the town our state of the art Golf told us that we needed to buy petrol. Obedient as always to things electronic when they get uppity I stopped at the nearest garage and filled up.
When I went in to pay my bill Madame le Garage smiled at me in a sufficiently charming fashion to give me courage to exercise some of my French on her. I explained that we were just entering a village of hundreds of vignerons and we needed to get some, not too dear, wine to take home in a bag in box. This was no trouble at all to Madame.
” You must go to Thierry Lamoureux in Le Fondis. He is the most meticulous wine maker, it is what we drink at home and he does bag in box.”
She then wrote out directions, drew a map and looked up the phone book to give me his number. (Ireland of the welcomes? Eat your heart out)
To cut a long story short we found Theirry, were conquered by the quality of his wine and left with an arm stretching 10litre bag in box, and all for €33.

It wasn’t just the unexpected kindness of the people, the weather didn’t let us down either, mainly dry and cold and crisp. Ideal for stuffy castles and wood burning evenings chez nous .The week was over in a flash. Saturday morning had us packed and ready and not able to believe that after a mere 90 mts in the air we would be 10 mts from home.
More fools us.
It was a fairly miserable journey from Gizeux to Lorient. Even though it was mainly on motorway driving in the dark is never fun and there was a lot of rain. We arrived eventually 15 mts before out check in time. We emptied the car and struggled with our six pieces of luggage- including the weighty shopping bag in box- to check in. Nearly home we thought.
We arrived to consternation in the airport. Lorient is a tiny airport. Everyone there at that time was waiting for the Irish flight. It had been cancelled, we were not told why. No Aer Arann rep in the Airport, no solutions, no possibility of another flight home. Sort yourselves out .
There was huge distress. People had booked holidays in Ireland, people were going home after holidays, business people were about their jobs.
The Air France reps were patient and helpful. The choices were few.
Re-book a car and try and get on to a Ryanair plane somewhere in France.(Tomorrow at the earliest, and then people said they had got the last seats tomorrow.) Drive to Dinan and get a flight to London, Maybe get home by Monday afternoon.
The last solution was to fly this afternoon to Orly in Paris, coach across the city and get a business class seat on a flight to Dublin that night. Business class is modern parlance for first class. Cost €750, per head.
We had no choice, is a primary school teacher. School starts on Monday. We handed in our credit card. They took out €1500 plus some small change.(I was the one who had broken the thimble after all)
We then spent the next three hours in Lorient Airport, got our flight to Orly,coached successfully from Orly to de Gaulle in 35 mts along the Parisian periferique driven by a madman who thought he was driving a mini instead of a 45 passenger coach. We arrived in the airport in plenty of time and decided to check in to get rid of the baggage before having a quick meal.
This was the moment when bombshell number two burst.
The check in lady said, “I’ m afraid this flight has been over booked we will have to put you on standby”.
Sile then decided that enough was enough. She raised her hands and her voice: “Do you mean to tell me that having spent €1500 four hours ago you now have the temerity to tell me the flight is overbooked”. I must say that when roused is magnificent. This kind of a scene is child’s play for someone who can silence 30 four year olds by clearing her throat.
The check in lady was terrified, she could only say ” I’m sorry. I’m sorry”. She then said that she would summons her superior and if we would come back in 15 mts he would sort us out. We went off, had an airport sandwich (even the French can’t manage an airport sandwich) and got back in 10mts. The waiting list area was now crowded with people like us. The Air France people were running in and out of each others desks like the usual decapitated chickens. An emissary was sent up to us. “Are you the business class people who were dumped? Come and meet God” (or words to that effect)
God, in his incarnation as the Air France Boss was surprisingly young but obviously had clout.
If we were prepared to waive our claim on tonight’s flight (on which there was a possibility of only one seat) Air France would be prepared to offer to disgruntled business class customers the following ; to put us up in a hotel tonight, feed us, give us a place in business class on the first flight out to Dublin tomorrow, and compensate us for our discomfort to the tune of €1500 worth of Air France vouchers to be used by us, or by anyone appointed by us in the next year. My yes was immediate, Sile had to be persuaded , we were brought over to a quiet area to be given the vouchers.
He discovered straight away that the flight the following morning didn’t have a first class so the ante was raised to €1800 in vouchers. We accepted graciously.
As this surreal scenario unfolded in front of us I couldn’t help but be amazed by the irony of our being recompensed by Air France’s error for the dumping by Aer Arann.
We then had a comfortable night, a bad airport hotel meal, too much wine to compensate for the trauma and got our flight to Dublin the following morning.
However there was one more strange twist to the trip home. As we queued up to check in that morning we noticed more people being bumped off the flight. I could all but sense Sile beside me getting ready to say to the check in man “Come on make my day!”. This wasn’t necessary. On the contrary we got large yellow priority stickers put on our luggage, were put on the first row on the plane with a seat put down between us in case we crushed each other unintentionally. We were offered complimentary champagne before we even took off, fresh hot towels as soon as we did, and generally fussed about as I imagine business class passengers usually are.
Bear in mind that this happened after we had been offered an extra €300 in vouchers for the indignity of travelling economy.
Then that really was it, we went back to Waterford by train that day, collected our car from the airport and life went back to normal. We have started to try and get some compensation from Aer Arran. So far they haven’t answered our calls. We’ll let you know.
I must warn you though, it hasn’t cured my addiction to France .

Post Script.
A month later Aer Arann rang and offered us €230 to return the cost of our flights home and €250 each as a consolante towards the flight from Paris.
We accepted.

Post Post Scriptum.
Two months later our travel insurance company has sent us a cheque for €101.56 to compensate for the delay. How they arrived at this figure the lord only knows, but, every little helps.

Post Post Post Scriptum
In April we used roughly€500 worth of the vouchers on return flights to Paris for the two of us.

Last Scriptum.
The final solution.
December 8th 2005
As the vouchers were due to run out next month
I sent all remaining ones to Air France and they rang me this morning with the final encashment values.
€735.

So for our €1500 purchase of tickets we got.
Dinner and B&B in Paris Hotel
1st Class Flight home
€101 Insurance compensation
1st Class flight Lorien Paris
€500 return to Paris
Cheque €735

And that does not include the €730 compensation from Aer Arran.

I dont know, you do the sums but it seems to me we got out OK

And got a story out of it!

James Joyce refers to an Epiphany as a “sudden spiritual manifestation”
I relate the moment when I decided to cook instead of teach as one such.

My epiphany happened on the number 17 bus as it went from Blackrock to Rathfarnham.
I had decided that with a bog standard degree in English and History teaching was the only suitable career choice.
I had just finished a years post graduate course in teaching for primary schools. I was a very poor teacher and had loathed nearly all of it but had convinced myself that now at 21 was the time I just had to adopt that life of “quiet desperation” which I saw as my lot if I became a teacher.

At the moment of salvation I had no idea that I was being saved mind you.
I had been summoned to the office of the principal of Sion Hill Teacher Training College in the middle of the summer shortly before the results of the exams were due.
In my innocence I don’t remember having any premonition of the news I was going to receive. The moment of salvation was delivered by the principal, a kindly and intelligent nun , breaking the news to me that I had failed the exams, failed so gloriously that she wouldn’t recommend me to repeat. In retrospect I realise that this was an extremely humane decision to keep unfortunate children from yet another unhappy teacher.
Initially I was devastated. I had a job as a teacher all lined up. I had met the girl I intended to marry. I was thinking of houses to live and long summer holidays. I was assuming that the acute feelings of misery, which my inadequacies as a teacher filled me with, would get better with time.
I was feeling fairly shell shocked as I got on the bus. I sat upstairs and I could see the two towers of the generators in Poolbeg when suddenly,
from nowhere, I was filled with a wonderful glow of happiness.

This was my epiphany
The decision had been taken from me.
I no longer had to teach.
I could do what ever I liked .
No more the terror of facing 45 savage (to me!) 10 year old boys, all well conversant with my various Achilles heels.
No more the guilt of feeling that, far from educating the children , I wasn’t even keeping them in control.

I decided there and then that whatever career I choose was going to be one I enjoyed.
The question was what did I enjoy doing?
I was living with my , recently widowed , sister D at that time and I seemed to have come the house cook and discovered that not only did I enjoy it but I also seemed to have a natural aptitude (possibly allied to my natural aptitude for eating.)

Obvious answer, I decided to give cooking a career try.

Within a week I had got a job as a general dogs body in Snaffles, one of the best restaurants in Dublin at that time. (The perception of cheffing as a sexy trendy career choice was about 20 years away.)

Within two weeks I was cooking lunch there on my own and, almost 35 years later, that is what I have been doing ever since.

The funny thing is that I can never look at those stripey towers in Poolbeg since without getting a little lift.