Touching Triskel and Chasing Truffles

 It tasted so good - you would have loved it; 

        It was so deliciously brave - you should have tried it; 

              It was so perfectly itself- if you've missed it, you've missed out.

Life is a truffle hunt.
Nigel Whitehouse. Telegraph

This is a post is about Truffles, about those momentary harmonies of events, times and appetites that come together to create something particular and beyond the control of market or man. This post is not about the famed golden fungi or the loved dolphin. This post is about being there and for those who were not, it is about ineffable truffles that come from experience, this post is about Triskel.

I have heard a few times of a legendary restaurant in Sligo, perhaps you have too? Perhaps you have already guesed that I am referring to Truffles? Like so many good things, it happened in the 1990’s. To put the restaurant into context, the Irish countryside then was not particularly known for its affluence or for its readiness to spend money beyond on necessities of church, pub and Trocaire and yet Bernadette O’Shea opened a pizza restaurant on The Mall in Sligo. 

Mustard Seed, Chez Hans, good restaurants were few and far between and not for the many.  In the popular dialogue, people might praise a pub for its Guinness and a house for its generosity but inventiveness and culinary interest often stopped with the story of what happened on the way to the butcher, an Irish Breakfast or Ballymaloe.  And yet Truffles had pizza that thrifty families would drive miles for.  Its pizza capitalised on Irish ingredients and, like a Michelin star brazened chef, Bernadette O’Shea was unafraid to use local ingredients like local celebrities. There were Leek and Black Pudding Pizzas, Pizzas with Milleens cheese, or the infamous Cabbage Pizza- yes you will eat your vegetable. Eyes still glow with hunger when they attempt to describe the pleasure. As with the best endings, the restaurant never failed, local appetites never withered, its founder turned to other things and all those who had ever eaten there were left with the precious memory of Truffles.

We have our own Truffles in the cheese world. Not truffled cheese, but truffles of cheese, cheese

rarities that are now legend. Maybe you chanced to try it but I have only ever heard,  numerous times of the Mine-Gabhar made by Luc and Ann Van Kampens in County Wexford in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. Heads tilt is soft respectful remembrance of the little goat cheese that conquered Irish and British palates. Now, in my own time, I am witnessing and tilting my head for Triskel.

Triskel is an Irish baa-baa to the Loire Valley goats and the eternal request for chevre. Triskel is the family name to the different raw milk goat’s cheese made by Anna L’Eveque in Portlaw Co. Waterford.  The cheese drew on her French heritage and brought the freshness and delicacy of French Goat’s Cheese to the Irish markets without needing to leave the country. Anna made crottin, pyramids, fresh goat logs that tasted like snow and even ventured into more complex affairs that reminded me of the sublime Louvie-Juzon. Anna L’Eveque’s turns with Triskel began when, in her studies, she helped care for herds of goats and started making cheese; she continued with the cheese and, in order to secure her milk supply she took on a herd of goats (aka...adopted thirty kids). Ely Wine Bar’s host said that they were his fall back whenever he had need,  Mongers were delighted to present this side by side with the French classics, and maybe a little ahead. The taste was clear, fresh, rich without being heavy and soft with a definite nudge, sometimes butt, from a goat.  

Triskel was never without a market but it has proved, sadly and gloriously a creature of time. Anna L’Eveque recently announced that she would finish making goat’s cheese with this milking season.

Word has just begun to get out, it will be a long time before people stop asking for it and a forever before we forget the deliciousness and the braveness of it.  For everyone and everyone else, it is that moment that you savoured or it was that moment that you missed. Did you taste it? It was a Truffles.

Pairing and Libations:

Sancerre or a crisp fresh white wine.
Cider, dry and lightly fruity
Fresh Figs
Fig Compote
Charcoal Crackers

More of Truffles - Bernadette recently opened a restaurant in Dromahair, Co. Leitrim called Luna and (in the 90's) published a fantastic cookery book called, Pizza Defined.
Hungry Breton in Ireland has done a wonderful post on Triskel (and others).