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By John, 15 July, 2016

Driving in Ireland

Regular readers know that we drive quite a lot. Our favorite Saturdays are spent in the car, exploring scenic locales and discovering foodie goodness.

In June of 2016, we took a long-anticipated vacation in Ireland. Naturally we spent most of it driving through some of the most sublime scenery we had ever explored. Of course we also found lots of foodie goodness, which is documented elsewhere in this blog. This post is for those who are considering a vacation that involves driving in Ireland.

The first thing to know is that it's expensive to drive in Ireland. Gas is expensive, of course, as it is in most of Europe. But the car rental is pricey, too. We rented from Avis at Dublin airport, and were disappointed to learn that they do not honor the CDW (collision damage waiver) insurance that many credit cards provide automatically when you use them to rent a car. The CDW cost nearly as much as the car rental, and it has a thousand-Euro deductible! They also had a super-CDW with no deductible.

By John, 15 July, 2016

Irish Pancakes

Irish pancakes are not like American pancakes. They are thinner, closer to a crepe than to a big fluffy American pancake, with no baking powder. They are typically served with honey or jam, or brushed with lemon juice and dusted with sugar.

Pancakes figure prominently in the Irish celebration of Shrove Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, which they also call Pancake Tuesday. This is the day to use up all the eggs and fat in the house to prepare for the Lenten fast. My mother's side of our family still makes pancakes on Shrove Tuesday!

By John, 13 July, 2016

Lemon-Butter Cod

This was one of those inventions born of necessity. Lorna had bought a lovely piece of cod, but I did not have the ingredients for my usual preparation.

I remembered a wonderful light fish dish that I had had in Xrisohorafa, a lakeside village in remote northern Greece on a similarly hot night many years ago, a simple preparation of fish with olive oil and lemon juice, with some parsley and sea salt. I had some butter on the table so I used that instead of olive oil; it was a fortuitous substitution.

By John, 5 July, 2016

Coffee in Ireland

Coffee in Ireland Travelers from New England soon learn that Ireland has a very different coffee culture. While Americans consume on average .931 cups of coffee per day, the Irish consume only .215, or less than one quarter of the coffee their American counterparts consume.

We explored the countryside and also the biggest cities, Dublin and Belfast, and of course I was on the lookout for good coffee. Here's what I discovered:

By John, 12 June, 2016

Svíčková na smetaně

Czech Svickova

Svíčková na smetaně (hereafter simply svickova) is classic Czech home cooking, but it is often made for fine dining events as well.

It's a braised sirloin of beef with a sauce of pureed vegetables and cream, traditionally served with fluffy knedlicky (bread dumplings sliced with a thread).

I made this with my Czech friend Jana in November of 2015, when the coming winter made her think of her father's Svickova back home in Prague!

By John, 25 May, 2016

A Swedish Feast

We had a Swedish feast. I don't remember why...I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. We had no lutfisk, but I had acquired some Swedish potato sausage and the rest became self-evident.

We had:

By John, 22 December, 2015

Oyster Stew

Here's a Yankee classic, submitted by long-time reader Sue Sullivan.

By John, 18 December, 2015

Fresh Pasta

Mandilli de Saea, photo by Richmond Talbot

What a treat is fresh pasta! When we toured Italy in July 2015, our most memorable meal was a plate of fresh ravioli in Rome. The story is rather longer than this page requires, but the bottom-line result was that fresh home-made pasta is work exploring, so I did.

In this case, it was for Annette's Genoese Birthday, so I made silky-smooth, super-thin Genoese Mandilli de Saea (Silk Handkerchiefs) with fresh pesto. It was fun and delicious!

By John, 17 December, 2015

Savoy Cake

This beautiful, light sponge cake works well in a fancy mold, and it accompanies berries, preserves, or chocolate sauce wonderfully. Unlike the similar Genoise Butter Cake, this one uses no butter.

By Anonymous, 10 December, 2015

Bondir

There is something to be said for a restaurant where you order your favorite dish every time you go, and it always tastes the same. It’s as comforting as the pillow upon which you lay your head, but Bondir isn’t that sort of place. Oh it’s comfortable enough, and the staff is welcoming, and there are no snooty waiters peering down their noses to see which fork you choose. We entered the premises at 279A Broadway in Cambridge on a chilly evening and were offered a seat by a warming fire. We sipped Spanish cava and enjoyed the homelike atmosphere.

But as soon as they brought the bread basket, what we thought of as reality began to twist and bend. There was “sea bread” in which black squid ink ranged across the slice like the negative of a photo of the Milky Way. The bread also contained shrimp and seaweed. I think the shrimp may have been dried and ground to a powder. The bread had the heartiness of wheat and a briny flavor that reminds you of the scent of the ocean when you walk in the froth of waves in the cool of a summer sunrise. I ate it in fascination tinged with disbelief.

By John, 13 October, 2015

Finnan Haddie

Finnan Haddie One of our favorite breakfast or lunch dishes on a cold rainy day is this old Scottish favorite made from smoked haddock in a white sauce, with the white sauce made from milk in which the fish was cooked.

Finnan haddie is smoked haddock. You can sometimes find it frozen at your fishmonger. That's OK - Finnan haddie is said to have been invented by a penurious Scot who wanted to salvage a load of haddock damaged by smoke in a warehouse fire. Rather than let it be discarded, he claimed it was the Irish ("Fennian" or "Finnan") style and sold it for food. So this recipe was never developed to use the purest, freshest, local ingredients - it came from a salvage operation!

Finnan Haddie can be a tricky dish. In general, people that like it the way they like it (follow that?) and any deviation is simply wrong. For example, one of our favorite restaurants used to make it one way, and Lorna loved it. Then the new chef changed the recipe and she won't eat it any more. It wasn't a big change - he didn't add pickles or substitute mussels for haddock - he just makes it thinner.

So this recipe is for a thicker version. It's easy to thin it by adding milk or cream, but it's a little more work to thicken it up again.

By John, 6 September, 2015

Braised Green Cabbage

Braised Green Cabbage This is an easy recipe, good for when you have a cabbage from your CSA and you really don't want any more cole slaw...

It's a savory dish, good with homey fare like meatloaf or hamburgers. The flavors mingle over two hours of slow cooking to become something unexpected and delicious.

I did this in a heavy Le Creuset braising pan. If you do not have one of those expensive kitchen luxuries, don't worry! You can do this just as well in a glass or enameled baking dish covered tightly with aluminum foil; the secret is to confine all the flavors in a small volume with enough area to spread out.

By John, 2 September, 2015

Blueberry Slump

This easy crowd-pleaser is known variously across New England as Blueberry Buckle, Blueberry Cobbler, Blueberry Slump, and Blueberry Grunt. The basic idea is simple: a bed of berries topped with sweet biscuit dough and baked until the berries burst into a delicious sauce for the tender biscuits.

This is great hot with ice cream, or cool with whipped cream. Make it with wild Maine blueberries if you can, especially while they are in season in August.

Blueberry slump is very easy to make; this one was made at work in the Actifio Food Truck by my friends Debbie Goswami and Chandrika Venkatraman.

By John, 13 August, 2015

Strawberry Pie

Strawberry Pie This is a delightfully light celebration of late spring.

It's easy, and it's a good choice when strawberries go on sale at the supermarket because you have to use them fast before they spoil.

This one was made by my friends Debbie and Sonali at work. We used a frozen pie crust because rolling out a homemade pie crust is not very difficult, but it is a good way to get your work clothes dusted with flour!

Italian Meal 2: Lake Garda

The second discovery meal of the trip was in Sirmione, a beautiful resort town on a skinny peninsula that juts northward in gorgeous Lake Garda somewhat like Nantasket juts into Massachusetts Bay.

We had not planned to visit Sirmione, although a drive to Lake Garda was one of the optional drives we had hoped for. But we slept late after the opera and the preceding night's late dinner, so a long drive in the mountains and lake would have taken too much time from Venice.

Sirmione is a resort town, with basically one road in and out, little parking, fine hotels, beautiful beaches and a castle at the end of the peninsula. The northern half of the lake is surrounded by great mountains, and the eastern shore is covered with vineyards growing grapes for Valpolicella, Bardolino, and Amarone wines. It reminded us of a cross between Provincetown and Santa Cruz, with the wine country and a castle thrown in for good measure.