Civil Disobedience in Abbeyleix
Irish Food History and Socafro gives us some advice.
They’ve broken through the wall of the bank in Abbeyleix.
Dough is already streaming out the bank doors: sourdough loaves; fresh yeast Vienna loaves; pastel de nata; sourdough rye; rhubarb tarts; walnut and caramel; maple and pecan scones. There are reports of humongous amounts of Craic coffee being taken from the building, whilst locals are apparently helping themselves to assorted items, including local Merry Mill porridge, Portlaoise honey, Nutshed butters and much more.
However, gardai have reported that the scene at the bank is calm, except for those who have been waiting more than ten minutes for a table at the new Mueller & O’Connell Cafe in the Old Bank House in Abbeyleix, and who are, reportedly, “hangry.”
If we lived in Abbeyleix, mind you, we would be out lying on the Main Street of the town.
This is not a death wish. It would just be our way of protesting against the truck drivers who skimp paying the toll on the N7/N8 by turning off at Portlaoise and driving through one of the prettiest towns in the Midlands.
It should not be allowed, and we would be happy to lie down in the middle of the road to protest against these 40 ton hooligans and articulated toll-dodgers.
We would be able to maintain the civil disobedience by making regular forays into the new Mueller & O’Connell café. Start the day’s protest with some local porridge with toasted almonds and strawberry jam, or maybe one of the bakery’s great sausage rolls, or maybe the Bircher oats with yogurt and Abbeyleix honey, and of course a good coffee or two.
After our morning spell on the picket line, we would be back in for the fine pulled pork sandwich, cleverly served with batons of crisp apple and rocket, and snuggled in between the house sourdough. Or we might have the very fine ham and cheese toastie, or maybe the mushroom soup with tarragon and slices of sourdough which was on the blackboard on the Thursday lunchtime when we called in.
After that bout of deliciousness, we would happily return to the protest, encouraging pre-school kids and mothers-with-prams to join in, exercising our right to civil disobedience, and making Abbeyleix a better place.
Mueller & O’Connell have already done their bit by creating a fabulous bakery, and now a great café in this handsome old bank house. So a few hours bringing the Spirit of ‘68 to County Laois is the least we can do.
Irish Food History, A Companion. Was there ever a book so well named?
Irish Food History: A Companion is just that: a companion. It is a friend with whom you can discuss and debate the finer points of sinfulness that might have occurred if you decided to buy tea on the black market during The Emergency. It’s an acquaintance with whom you can debate whether Maura Laverty was correct in asserting that certain vegetables were “part of Protestantism and foreign aggression and couldn’t be good or lucky”. It’s the mate who would surely agree with you that whiskey is “the mother and mistress of all medicine.”
And you can both shake your head in disbelief over the revelation that whilst Maura Laverty was on a retainer of £250 per year, plus a tenner for every extra public lecture she gave, Myrtle Allen was paid five shillings for each fortnightly cookery column she wrote for The Irish Farmers’ Journal.
Best of all, Irish Food History: A Companion is companionable. It’s good company, witty and well-turned, finely fettled and amusing. Unlike so many tracts which emerge from the academic industrial complex, which seem to believe that you won’t take them seriously unless they are impenetrably opaque and written in the very thickest of post-modern treacled prose, this Companion is exceptionally well-written and lithe.
Get this: it’s fun. A collection of essays by a gaggle of academics that is fun? Who knew that could even happen.
It is an enormous book, extending to 800 pages, with a total of 28 essays ranging from Food in Irish Prehistory by J.P. Mallory all the way to Margaret Connolly’s essay on The Matriarch of Modern Irish Cooking: Myrtle Allen, 1924-2018: her life and legacy.
The book benefits enormously from the inspired design by Brenda Dermody, which marries text and images seamlessly, making it a pleasure whether you choose to plough through, or to cherry pick.
The growth of Ireland’s gastronomic culture over the last three decades urgently needed to be matched by an academic conduit that brought scholarly rigour and arm’s-length analysis to what has been happening, and what has been discovered, about Irish food.
Editors Mairtin Mac Con Iomaire and Dorothy Cashman have now done just that with Irish Food History, A Companion. Perhaps their finest achievement, however, lies in the fact that they have birthed a text that is as aesthetically beautiful and emotionally sustaining as a great farmhouse cheese or a great meal cooked by a contemporary Irish chef. The 28 authors of the book get it, and so should you.
Socafro – and what’s the best piece of advice you were ever given?
Whatever it was, there is no way it can compare to the little slice of wisdom which JD Jeje imparts in the course of detailing his recipe for Bake & Hake on page 26 of his book, Socafro.
“If you ever go to Trinidad, try Richard’s Bake and Shark on Maracas Beach,” writes JD.
Okay so. Noted. We’re off to Maracas Beach.
That’s the thing about JD’s book. Some cookery books instruct you, but Socafro enthuses you. It is exuberant, wild, and irresistible. Socafro somehow mixes up the energy and vibe of JD’s beloved soca music and afro beats and forms them into a series of recipes and dishes that trade in the language of pure joy. Quite how a guy with mixed Trinidadian and Nigerian parentage who lives and cooks in Waterford manages to pull this off is some sort of magic, an act of heroic imagining that delivers sustaining, delighting food.
Socrafo is an enchantment of a book, one that demands that you mix up a rum punch and put some Burna Boy on the cd player before you start cooking. And eating what you cook – the jerk chicken curry, the egusi, the jollof rice, the lemon-lime ice cream – takes you straight to Lagos, or the Caribbean, and definitely takes you to Maracas Beach where Richard is frying up the Bake and Shark. Socafro is the beat of emotion and enthusiasm, the heartbeat of great food.
If you enjoyed The Irish Stew this week, we’d appreciate a ❤️
Great piece. Couldn't agree more about Irish Food History, A Companion!
‘They’ve broken through the wall of the bank in Abbeyleix’ Is the best opening sentence I’ve read in a while… 😂 Brilliant.