Very relaxing to sit up in bed of a Saturday morning, chewing on your piece of toast and drinking your rich brown tea, while you read of the fleshpots as described by our resourceful and word spinning restaurant and cookery experts. Not to mention the wine advice. You feel almost replete as you go through the starters, the main course and the rest. And you don't have to do a thing except to salivate.
Is Irish cooking really as advanced as some claim? Well, a continental visitor to that splendid hotel in Kerry recently mentioned here insisted that its food fell into what she called the grand luxe category. Some of the virtue resides of course, ill the quality of the raw material.
A travel book on Ireland, A Year of Liberty, published in 1867, gave an account of a Lucullan feast in quite different surroundings. This was on the shores, of Lough Derravaragh, the stretch of water, you will remember, where the Children of Lir spent the first three hundred years of their existence in the form of swans. Then on to Moyle. Anyway, our English friend W. Peard, MD, LLB and companions, who had been fishing successfully on the lake, put in to the shore.
He writes: "Did you never see fish roasted sub Jove? . . . Let me tell you how an experienced cook did it. From yonder cabin some live coals, supported on an armful of peats, are brought there are plenty of stones on the beach for our fireplace - the glowing cinders are piled in the centre, the turf arranged on end in contact with them, and some bits broken to fill up the crater. The mess consists of five. (In ordinary parlance, there are five diners and the caterer serves out a sixpounder and a four.
"The fish is ready as soon as the fire, cut in slices, with a peeled osier inserted into each. These are placed upright before the fire (supported by a long sod cut for the purpose), and dexterously turned by the forefinger and thumb of the accomplished chef." No mention of sauce, pepper, salt, parsley or anything else. Just roast trout. The writer remarks that the boa, "after sucking down a sheep, requires forty eight hours' repose before again feeling comfortable. Some of the crew felt exceedingly like boas after dinner."