I'm not Irish

[calimac]

I'm seeing more St. Patrick's Day references in my reading list than usual, so this may be a good time to explain the effects of my not being Irish. Not even a little bit, unless something really surprising comes up when I take the genetic spit test.

B., however, has some Irish (though she's mostly German), and that came up when we were discussing what to have for dinner tonight. She's Catholic, and it's a Friday in Lent, so nothing with meat, and I won't have time today to make a complex dish. But the Irish in her didn't take to the idea of tofu or polenta on St. Patrick's, so I said all right, I'll roast her some tiny potatoes. She likes that, and there's nothing more Irish than potatoes.

I, however, do not eat potatoes. At all. I'll have to have something else. Which is OK, but it gives me the opportunity to bring up a natural phenomenon in the form of a rule of thumb (that is, it's not precisely true, but it works as a generalization) that applies only to me.

[My liking of a culture's food] + [My liking of that culture's music] = [constant]

That is to say, the more I like the one, the less I like the other.

The two extremes of this are Irish and Cajun/Creole. Potato is, I'm reliably told, entirely ubiquitous in Ireland, and not eating it would be a real burden there. (I've never been.) On the other hand, I adore Irish folk music. It is my favorite folk music in all the world. I can listen to it endlessly. Do you know a 1970s group called the Bothy Band? Gee, I'd like to be able to sing like that. I even like a lot of ersatz Irish music, like Enya and the stuff from Riverdance.

At the other end, I love Creole and especially Cajun food. I have visited Louisiana four times in my life, and each time my primary goal was to eat. There's nowhere else I've taken entire trips to for that purpose. But I don't like their music. 95% of jazz does nothing for me; zydeco doesn't appeal either.

That applies across the board. What's my favorite European cuisine? Italian. (Special virtue: it eschews potato.) But what's the biggest hole in my appreciation of classical music? Italian opera. Just don't care for it. My Italian music canon consists of Gabrieli canzonas, Rossini overtures (just the overtures), and Respighi suites and tone poems, not a representative selection.

Even in the rest of the world. I eat Asian food of almost all kinds, except Japanese which I have to treat with great caution. But Japanese composers have written by far the finest Western classical music in all of Asia, really great stuff.

What other food is Irish? I think mostly of boiled meat, a method of cooking it that doesn't much appeal to me; it's usually served inextricably mixed with potato (e.g. Irish stew), and is out on a Friday in Lent anyway. Irish-Americans traditionally eat corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's, though I dunno what they'll do today (descendants of Ulster Protestants in this country tend not to consider themselves culturally Irish), and the dish's claim to be Irish and not just Irish-American is dubious. Jews also eat corned beef, but as a Jew I have to say that I find Irish corned beef to be exceedingly goyische. I think they boil it.

Comments

[voidampersand]

Here's the lunch menu at "Ard Bia at Nimmos" in Galway:

Tomato + fennel chowder
market fresh fish, shellfish, herb crème fraiche
Honey mustard Colleran’s ham sandwich
smoked scamorza, spiced apple relish, soda bread
Ard Bia hummus, grilled veggies + sourdough
pink pickled onion, pesto
Organic quinoa + Galway goats cheese salad
sprouting lentils, carrot, beetroot, toasted seeds
+Burren smokehouse salmon
Ard Bia Game + Gubbeen chorizo burger
apple aioli, home baked bap, paprika wedges,
Oisins leaves

Notice the complete lack of boiled meats and the dreaded starch. Galway also has multiple pubs with live Irish music every night. Just saying.

[calimac]

A few years ago I had dinner at one of the canonical "Santa Maria barbecue" steakhouses, and despite the complete absence of any mention on the menu of potato accompanying the steak, it came with a huge pile of French fries bigger in volume than everything else put together. The likewise accompanying salad and beans were listed on the menu, but apparently the potato was considered so obvious it wasn't necessary to mention it.

Not the only time I've encountered such a practice.

Consequently I'm not taking a menu's word for it that there was no potato. I would take your word from your experience eating there, but you don't seem to be offering that.

And if it's true, then kindly pass it on to Mary Kay Kare, who is the person who told me that her experience in Dublin was that everything came with potato, often 2 or 3 kinds, and that she got so tired of it she went to an Italian restaurant, a notably potato-less cuisine, where she found that ... everything came with potatoes.

[calimac]

Oh, and "paprika wedges"? Wouldn't that be slices of potato covered with paprika?

[voidampersand]

Good catch! But since they declared the spud on that item, that means maybe they are not sneakily hiding potatoes in all the other items.

[calimac]

It seems to me they are hiding potato: right here. I mean, the way I figured out that it must be potato is that I know paprika doesn't come in wedges. So what must it be on wedges of? Well, this is Ireland - or England, or America - so it must be potato. Because it goes without saying.

And since the burger that comes with this is the item on the menu I'd most want, there I'd be, struggling with the potato question again, trying to decide if dealing with this is more or less trouble than just ordering something else.

I have enough trouble at home dealing with mandatory potato on many menus; it's much worse in Britain; I have no doubt it'd be worse still in Ireland. I couldn't eat in one pub in Galway and throw away my paprika wedges for the whole trip.

[voidampersand]

I showed you a menu of five dishes, only one of which has potatoes in it, and that proves that everything has potatoes in it and there is nothing you can eat?

Ard Bia is a fancy restaurant. I wanted to show you its menu because it was such a contrast with your dire portrayal of Irish cuisine. Not just the potatoes but the boiled everything. My experiences eating in Ireland have been excellent. The foodie revolution is in full swing and there is an abundance of fresh and local produce, dairy products, meats and seafood.

[calimac]

The problem, as I thought I made clear, is that the burger is the only entree on that menu that appeals to me, and it's the one with potatoes. So I'd be stuck, in the manner I described. It wouldn't be impossible for me to eat there, but as an answer to my particular problem, it doesn't really work.

It's not that everything has potatoes. It's that I'd be stuck between choosing something with potato and something that I don't want. This is not a menu that appeals to me. You weren't to know that originally, but after I wrote that I'd be stuck in this way, you should have known it.

I get this all the time in England, and even at home. I don't see why it'd be any better in Ireland, a country built on the potato. You say you found a country loaded with trendy foodie places, but Mary Kay said she found a country loaded with potato, and from my POV she's just as reliable as you are.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Heh, that's interesting about the food music thing.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I've had corned beef once in my life. It's not an experience I want to repeat.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

My. I love a good boiled dinner: cabbage, corned beef, potatoes, and often carrots. So Good!

De gustibus.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Was it in an Irish or Jewish context?

A lot of Ashkenazic Jewish ethnic foods do not appeal to many outsiders - particularly gefilte fish, my favorite, which repulses any non-Jews I describe it to.

The one exception is latkes. These are potato pancakes, so everybody loves them. Except me, and it's my ethnicity.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it wasn't Jewish, but I have no idea if it was Irish; it was many years ago. Are there generic American dishes or meals made with corned beef? It may have been one of those. The flavor was unpleasantly strong, in any case.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

If the cuisine was general American, then the corned beef would have been Irish-American or adapted from it. Jewish corned beef, because it hasn't been boiled to death, may be considered even more strongly flavored.