Pudding the bacon back into a 'Pig Weekend'
There is nothing like the enlightening experience of tasting local produce, writes Lucinda O'Sullivan
We are seeing more and more the tremendous importance of buying local and seasonal produce and getting back to the old Irish meitheal method of doing business and supporting one another. The farm-to-fork policy linked with this idea is becoming widespread among hotels, restaurants and producers and it not only benefits each of the parties involved but it is so much better and more interesting for the consumer.
Adrian and Geraldine Noonan's Knockranny House Hotel has, for some years, been very focused on the food and dining end of their business. Their head chef, Mayo man Seamus Commons, returned with a distinguished culinary pedigree to his native area a few years ago. He has been winning awards all round him, including Best Chef in Connaught at the Restaurant Association/Sunday Independent Restaurant Awards in 2010, and drawing people from all over the country to experience his food.
Seamus is very keen on buying and supporting local produce and, to this end, he recently organised a "Pig Weekend" at the hotel, which was not only extremely enjoyable, but an enlightening experience, too.
Seamus took the merry group of foodie writers out to where I can only describe as somewhere in the bog outside Kiltimagh where we met one
Roy Eastman to see and experience how his pigs were reared on his 12-acre farm. It is so much better to see these great, intelligent animals rooting around in the muck in the bog than to think of them being reared in an intensive manner. However, it is kind of unnerving to realise that pigs, in general, may be slaughtered from around 12 weeks old, and when you see how defensive the mother is of her piglets it makes one rather sad, and think again about the origins of that rasher on the plate. Eastman grows everything that his pigs eat, so everything they get is totally natural, and we were all rather amused to hear that these well-fed grunters were chomping away on artichokes, no less. No wonder they looked happy.
We then took off from Kiltimagh to Newport, Co Mayo, to meet one of the best known and most widely respected butchers in the country, Sean Kelly, who runs his fantastic artisan butcher's shop with total dedication to his craft.
Kelly is an extremely amusing man, and what he can do with a joint of meat is nobody's business. Heston Blumenthal may think he can transform the appearance of something but we were all mesmerised by Kelly's artfully crafted "duck of lamb". He had unbelievably shaped and crafted a shoulder of lamb to look like a duck -- beak and all!
Kelly is famous for his black and white puddings and was recently made a Chevalier of the Confrerie des Chevaliers du Goute-Boudin (Black Pudding Fraternity of Lovers of Good Food) who came all the way from France to award Kelly a bronze medal, won at the 10-day European Black Pudding Festival held in Mortagne-au-Perche in Normandy earlier this year. Next year he will be returning to France for this event, along with Seamus Commons who has been invited to cook there by the Confrerie. We seem to be very good in the black pudding stakes, for the Confrerie then went down to Rosscarbery to inaugurate Willie Allshire and also to present him with a silver medal for his Caherbeg black pudding, which is another star in the pudding firmament.
Black pudding is actually a very historical dish which has its origins in ancient Greece where it was mentioned in Homer's Odyssey. The proof of the pudding, of course, as they say, is in the eating and we returned after our day out to Knockranny's La Fougere Restaurant where Seamus had constructed a nine-course tasting menu of pig.
Seamus is a big man but has a very light touch, for his food is always ethereally effervescent and interesting. We kicked off with a little tasting plate of elements of pork including a mini-mini sausage roll and pate and moved on to a pairing of a tiny rectangle of pork belly with an asymmetrically cut seared scallop sitting on creamed artichoke -- very apt -- with a truffle dressing. This was followed with lobster and two little crispy white pudding balls, to which sweetness was very cleverly added with a cylindrical piece of apple poached in red wine -- this was, in fact, ingenious. Next up was a pithivier of shoulder pork with cider influences, followed by pina colada sorbet topped with anise pudding. Next up to titillate us, sitting on a rectangular slate, was a little glass preserving jar holding braised cheek and pig head jelly with mustard foam and, to the side, smidgeons of crispy ears.
After the next course of trotters, we moved on to beautiful colourful glazed bacon and cabbage but not as you and I would normally see it. A perfect slice of hot pink bacon was topped with a ball of Savoy cabbage, stuffed with shredded cabbage; it was glazed and shining and wafting of truffle. It was napped with a vibrant green parsley veloute and, to the side, another colourful cylinder of orange coloured turnip.
We then had the lightest possible lemon meringue in a little shot-style glass, followed by an apple foursome of apple yogurt foam, a perfect tiny tarte Tatin, a quenelle of apple sorbet, and a little doughnut ball.
It's quite amazing what one man can do with pork and apples -- far beyond your wildest dreams.
Originally published in
