HERBS AND HUMANS

I’ve been reading what Strabo (that’s him above) had to say about Ireland in his Geographica in the first century AD.

“Concerning this island I have nothing certain to tell, except that its inhabitants are more savage than the Britons, since they are man-eaters as well as heavy eaters, and since, further, they count it an honourable thing, when their fathers die, to devour them, and openly to have intercourse, not only with the other women, but also with their mothers and sisters; but I am saying this only with the understanding that I have no trustworthy witnesses for it; and yet, as for the matter of man-eating, that is said to be a custom of the Scythians also, and, in cases of necessity forced by sieges, the Celti, the Iberians, and several other peoples are said to have practised it.”

         Certain scholars have deduced that Strabo actually meant to say that the Irish were “herb eaters” rather than “heavy eaters,” so they basically ate herbs and humans, which is definitely a balanced diet of a sort.  I can't swear that all the actresses in the movie below were actually Irish, but surely one or two of them must have been.

I was thinking about the Old Sod because in San Diego I went back to The Field, an authentic enough Irish pub that does a staggeringly great breakfast.  In the past I’ve had their Boxty, but this time I went for the “Irish Breakfast – Chefs Special!” consisting of “Two eggs, Imported Irish bacon, sausage, black and white pudding, and Heinz baked beans”  It looked like this:

         The clear implication is that the bacon was imported but the black and white puddings were not.  Now, the importation of meat products into the United States is a matter that has long puzzled me – so I went to the U.S Customs and Border Protection website and found a section titled “Bringing meat, poultry or pork/swine products into the U.S.”

In fact they do give a fairly clear explanation.  Essentially the U.S. lives in fear OF Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD), Exotic Newcastle Disease (END), and Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI).  This is not an unreasonable fear.  So if a country is known to have any of those things, then the meat ain’t coming in. 

But that dIdn’t explain the presence of imported bacon on the plate in The Field, until I got to this section titled “The short and sweet answer for many popular products (from countries other than those mentioned on the APHIS site)”

Is sausage allowed in?  “No.”

How about cured bacon? “Unless it is from Canada or two specifically approved producers allowed to sell certified pork products in duty free shops in Dublin and Shannon Airports, no.”

So – my bacon was definitely, genuinely Irish, but it was apparently bought in an airport.  I guess that’s authentic, right?

Above is a picture of Gene Kelly shopping in the Shannon Airport duty free shop, though I can’t see any bacon in that display.  

BOXTY WITH BRILLAT

Oh America – the melting pot; a place where food cultures and national cuisines, clash, fuse together, and metamorphize to become something spectacular and new.  Take the Scotch egg I had a Morrison, a Scottish-inflected gastropub in Atwater Village, a few miles up the road from where I live.

 
I grew up faced with bad Scotch eggs.  I liked sausage and I could cope with hardboiled eggs, but put them together and they made me retch.  I’m made of stronger stuff these days but I still don’t exactly seek out Scotch eggs.  Some of them can be very bad indeed.

The Scotch egg at Morrison however contained a soft-boiled egg, which must be a really tricky thing to pull off in a restaurant, and the sausage is venison!  ALL RIGHT!!  It looked much like this, photographed artfully by my pal George Esguerra :

I’d never had anything like it, and I don’t suppose I’ll get it again unless I go back to Morrison, which I will probably do.

Across the street from Morrison is India Sweets and Spices (above), a supermarket selling delicacies, and indeed staples, from the subcontinent, and occasionally from Britain, e.g. Robinson’s Barley Water.

         I wandered in, pre-Morrison, and bought a few things, including a packet of boil in the bag Smoked Indian Cottage Cheese, aka Paneer Tikka Masala.  Now I had never tasted smoked Indian cottage cheese before, and even after having eaten the contents of this pack, I’m still not sure that I have.  The pack looked like this:

But the cheese actually tasted like small lumps of polystyrene in a nondescript red sauce: the lumps squeaked horribly if your teeth sank into them.  There was no hint of smoke.  They were awful.  The reality looked like this:

Not remotely like the image on the pack.  Still, at least I can say I’ve eaten something I’d never eaten before.

Then at the weekend we went to San Diego and had breakfast in a place called the Field (above), an Irish pub brought over in pieces from the old sod, and reconstructed in the Gaslamp district. The chef was Hawaiian, and he came round and introduced himself, and I was able to tell him that the Rasher and Cheese Boxty I was eating - imported Irish bacon and Irish Cheddar cheese wrapped inside a boxty and topped with homemade white wine sauce - was amazing and it looked like this:

I had never tasted anything quite like it. OK, I’d had all the ingredients but never in this configuration, and a homemade white wine sauce for breakfast (though I did wonder whose home) just sets a man up for the rest of the day.  It was wonderful.

Also In San Diego one evening, at a loss for what to eat, and not feeling all that picky, we ended up in a fondue restaurant that pushes “interactive” $45 set meals that include cheese fondue starter, salad, meat fondue mains, and chocolate fondue desserts. 

I think a purist would argue that if it don’t contain cheese, it ain’t really a fondue – the Swiss even railed against Brillat-Savarin for his 1812 fondue recipe which they dismissed as scrambled eggs with cheese.

We settled for the starter and salad, and although I'd certainly had fondue before, I’d never had it quite this way: an electric hot plate in the middle of the table, a double boiler, the fondue constructed table-side by a slightly over enthusiastic waitress.  We get a lot of over-enthusiasm in California, but it’s preferable to so many of the international alternatives.

But here’s the beauty part, the restaurant was part of a small chain called – maybe you guessed - The Melting Pot.  Oh America, my newfound smorgasbord!