Ladies in Red

"I’ll never forget the way you looked tonight, the lady in red, the lady in red….my lady in red". Chris de Burgh.

I grew up making chimney stacks of kraft cheese slices. In fairness to me it was not a matter of taste, it was all about what was in the refrigerator and the fun of pulling back the clear plastic film and folding the cheese again and again until it was just that, a pliable red brick chimney stack of that substance that is not quite cheese. It was easy entertainment, it was edible play-dough.

I think that you look at the writing on the wall as something that is just there until you stop to read and think about it. I know a lot of people who buy orange-red cheese slices or supermarket red cheddar blocks. When children tell me that red cheddar is their favourite, I have been known to point out that cows produce creamy white milk. Red cheese is an artifice - or is that a blood moon I see on your milky cappuccino?

Red is a fabulous colour. I vividly recall, I have never forgotten a scene in Schindler’s List where a very young girl in a red coat makes her way through the grey distraught streets.

Then there is this stunner, the less tragic, more glamorous woman in a red dress in the Matrix; she catches the still novice Neo out.

And in case you are not convinced….then there was gold.

We like red. We like bright colours. In the shop the cheese that we most often have a request to taste on basis of looks alone are the Red Leicester, Mimolette, and for those brave mouldy souls, Shropshire Blue.

There was once a biological trigger for this love of colour in our cheese. In older precious times, when cows grazed on grass in fields, the spring and summer growth was rich and the milk the cows produced was full of beta-carotene from that abundance. When concentrated into the fats and proteins involved in cheese making, the milk gathered a golden hue, which was magnified to an even greater degree if the cream of the previous days milk was mixed with that day’s cheese. This resulted in such rich hues that it would attract the eyes of the greedy and the hungry – I imagine that there were many hungry and greedy eyes in the 17^th century.

As always, when there is a market there are short cuts and people found other ways to give colour to their cheese and convince people of the milk’s value without actually putting much into it. 

I have often wondered what was used to colour cheese before the Americas were discovered and steady trade routes established. One article I read put the importation of annatto (the natural miracle dye) as late as the 18^th century, two centuries after our cheeses was being tinted (or our products tainted). Carrots are an unlikely source. Prior to the Horn Carrot (from Hoorn, Netherlands), our modern orange carrot was absent. There were purple ones from Asia and red or white carrots in Europe; we owe our orange carrots to a dining conceit bred for the William of Orange of Holland. This root of orange only takes us back as far as 1721.

And so we do a little more digging, most likely in the garden or on dry banks near the sea. 

Marigold, a delightful flower, might have been used or there was our Lady’s Bedstraw, which also acted as a natural rennet.  Saffron has also been mentioned. These natural botanic dyes changed the colour of the cheese but the former two left a certain bitterness to the taste, and the latter to the pocket. However looks have matter and cheese makers wanted there cheese to matter more.                                                           

Cheese had to wait for annatto, made from the husks of the seeds of the achiote plant found in South American and in the Caribbean, to give the cheese a rich golden colour without that bit of a bitter flavour. Cheese makers coloured their cheeses to distinguish them from others, to make a particular creation and other times just to make them more attractive. 

But what is it about ladies in red? Those woman willing to stand out of the crowd.  Is it a declaration of vitality? of hot blood? or of something tasty to eat?

“The place was noisy, hot, smelled of sweat, and the beer wasn’t cold. I was ready to leave. Then I saw the woman in the red tailored suit.  

It wasn’t just a red suit, it was a created red suit. The woman lived up to it…. She looked as out of place in that smoky atmosphere as I would have looked in a Salinas lettuce-pickers’ camp…. I got up from the table and tapped her on the shoulder.”  High Priest of California by Charles Willeford.

My woman in a red dress? This evening I am going to try on a Red Leicester Toastie and on the other half, a Shropshire Blue Cheese Toastie –the latter with a  little apple & plum chutney on the side, sometimes you go wild. 

Not the neverending nineties.

It is not the neverending nineties.  They are not vegetarian dishes without imagination, they are delicious.  We call them classics – like a well dressed aunt.

And I have seriously well dressed aunts.

As a recovered vegetarian I used to and still laugh at the predictability of most vegetarian offerings in power player focused restaurants.  Power players in that fish or beef headlined the offerings like a dinner table where one person dominates the conversation. I’ve been to many a (wedding) banquet where the non-meat eaters main course, one could smell the fungal words even before the server uttered them, was a mushroom risotto. The chefs did not want for imagination or taste, maybe just a spectrum of it.

That writ, there are things that have been held on to because people will not let them go.

My first memory of a meal that brought cheese into me like Cupid’s arrow direct to the gut was at Salty’s, a pub in Yarmouth on the Isle of  Wight. I ordered blue cheese and bread for lunch. Looking back it was probably meant to be a shared dish but my enjoyment did not know that. The combination of good bread and cheese still delights me. If I returned to Salty’s, I think I know what I might order some twenty years later. 

Therefore, I hope that I do not become so difficult a creature as to forget those food unions that give and gave me joy and, when I fall off my high horse request for innovation, humbly bow in thanks.

I made a list and have been most delighted to realise that these classic combinations are always innovations of the particular.

For starters, goat cheese and beetroot; white soft curds against the biting red of the beet which bleeds it’s way in. If you have a dinner party and you are not sure what to offer – go ahead, cook a beetroot bomb shelter salad, but good luck choosing a recipe – there are so many.

River Cottage roast the beets with thyme and garlic and finish th salad with redcurrant berries. Down in County Cork they undermine the vegetarian focus and add black pudding – sure tis pudding? Or in America they seem to love candied nuts, and so do I (though I am not sure about the cinnamon). And for a different game altogether, play with Ottolenghi of London and Jerusalem who purees it all up.

Come il cacio sui maccheroni.  The cheese on the macaroni, and for those of us who don’t know how delicious good pasta is, it is the Italian equivalent for the icing on the cake. Good Pasta has wonderful flavour and needs very little dressing (note dressing, not costuming) and so some of the favourite recipes are the simplest. 

Carbonara - Felicity Cloake discusses the variants rather well. 

Macaroni and Cheese, here she finishes with a recipe close to what my mother (of five) used to make. 

Bold and brilliant, cheese and pepper in Rome’s cacio e pepe and, in relation to Dublin’s current accommodation crisis, this garlic and chili recipe is traditionally made without cheese as the rent in Rome was such that they could not always afford the cheese icing.  My Italian tells me that this is not true, but tall tales and histories are another time loved union.

It could be like Cloud Atlas where these food souls appear again and again through time and space, finding each other in unique combinations. Here are a few more for the roll call. Cauliflower or Broccoli and cheese, Beer and Cheese ( or a nice washed-rind or cheddar and a pint), Apple and Cheese (school lunch), Egg and Cheese (omelettes or, the omelette in a pastry, Quiche Lorraine), and just to remind you that it is not always bread and cheese – sometimes they put it in it, Pao de queijo.

And so a bow, may these classic combinations live for another day, tonight’s supper – Buffalo Mozzarella with Tomato and Basil. Carpice? Caprese.

Mantecatura

I may have fallen beyond the limits of the art of translation; but I have noticed that when conversation takes you down unexpected avenues and you continue willingly with it, you find yourself in a new realm of meaning, which is not where you meant to go but perhaps that is only because your sense of direction is not that subtle.  Case in point, Mantecatura, I was reading about risottos (a favourite past time, anti pasta time, of the gluten intolerant) when I found this word.

from Oggi

Having an Italian in my life I leaned against his kitchen’s doorway and asked for a definition of this word.   He described it as a bringing together, the final incorporation of flavour and flavours before you serve a dish, as he tossed the hot pan of pancetta, wine, pasta and freshly added egg and parmigiano-reggiano that would momentarily be served as carbonara, to demonstrate.

He more memorably defined it a few days later when I attempted to cook an Ottolenghi feta-fish stew. When pushed to give an opinion, “Well, did you like it?”, he responded, “it had nice flavours but it lacked….mantecare”. I had failed to bring Ottolenghi’s fabulous Mediterranean stew with a feta twist together.

And so I have come to think a little more of Mantecare, the combination of elements and those steps or points where you amalgamate parts into a greater whole. In a risotto, where the word is generally used, it is the last of a successful series of steps when you generously add Parmesan, maybe some butter, and if you are my Australian friend, a final drop of the white wine and mix it through.  

Mantecatura is more than parsley sprinkle or mint sprigs used to dress a dish, or salt to bring out the flavour. It is elsewhere to the foundation of good cooking, which is good ingredients; use a good stock in a risotto and the rest of the ingredients, bar the cheese, are food thrills.

The essence of Mantecare strikes me as being more than adding a bit of butter or cheese to risotto. Here is where I wander from translation, is mantecare the generosity of ingredients and thought when you taste something in the process and decide that it is good but something more is needed? Is it the hat upon which you stick your feather and then tilt it to a cocky angle? I made a cake yesterday, whiskey and chocolate and while the recipe stopped with sprinkling more booze upon the cake, I thought it could go further. If I stopped there it would have been attention, not love.  From a different angle, it is a creator standing before a work and not finishing until they utter, “it is good”.

And so the cake received a dressing, an icing of orange and sugar to set off the chocolate and whisky. While it is not beautiful, my cooking and dressing rarely is, I hope that this time I have approached mantecare.

Land of Kings and Butter

Before I came to Ireland, under the wing of my stepmother, herself being from Mohedian House in Croghan, Boyle, Co. Roscommon, I had been told that Ireland was the Land of Saints and Scholars. I had looked at Desmond Guinness and Jacqueline O’Brien’s book on the Great Irish Castles and Houses like the tale that it was, of a foreign land.

Castle Ryan, Lough Key, Co. Roscommon

I have since met and known some of those princes.  Those Georgian Houses I have loved but they are relics of the past, those living in them have to fight to hold on to them and to work very resourcefully in order to live in them with dignity; weddings, festivals, country hotels help span the difference.  It is easy to forget what makes legends legendary or to bring to mind the excellence of friends whom you have come to know so well, too well. Sometimes I forget.

Graceful Georgian Squares in the cities, countryside themes of large houses, long private walls, dignified parish corners and neat white washed cottages offer immediate satisfying charms as you survey the land. If you will forgive me, so much of this often reminds me of the presence of occupation and colonialism, and the subjugation and poverty of the Irish.

There are exceptions, but there is also a majority. This easily admired landscape locates the visual and historical wealth of the land on it and into it, more often than from it.

I am largely ignorant when it comes to the history of Ireland. I have heard of ancient tombs, Newgrange (and eventually Loughcrew), a Cattle Raid, Warp Spams, the Famine and the English, the Revolution, Yeats, the Troubles and the Church and now the EEU.

I forget how generous and sophisticated Ireland is and how its richness and its resourcefulness seep up from the earth and its past. While the Irish endured long attempts to subjugate their character, they were not without eminence.

Three points have recently illuminated my mental map. I have remembered what I should have known from Uí Maille, Cockagee and, go figure, Butter. 

As I was setting the table at a friends I put down an extra place in case one more should arrive. It brought to mind a (most likely true) story of Grace O’Malley (Gráinne Mhaol) who, when refused hospitality by the Lord of Howth, kidnapped his son and asked as a ransom that the Lord of Howth should forever set a place at the table for an unexpected guest.  When he acceded she returned his son; the place is still being set.  

Known as the Pirate Queen of Mayo, Gráinne Ní Máille was not exactly a pirate or a Queen but she was a sovereign and, I think, she was simply operating on an earlier, different or exterior value system to the English. Your ship near her waters was simply fair game. Grainne was a head of her Clan and led them as such. She petitioned directly, in Latin or through interpretation, for the return of her imprisoned relations from Queen Elisabeth I and the removal of the local governor Richard Bingham.

Her request was (partially) granted. I wonder if the Queen did not have some time for this other woman leading in a man’s world. Her story is rather terrific and completely of this land - generous and independence, with negotiation.

Then there is Cockagee, a cider being made in Slane, Co. Louth. It is made in a manner similar to cidre-bouché.  Cockagee references goose turd (Cac a gheidh) and the small green apples of that name that

were delicious and highly valued for their virtues in cooking and cider making in the sixteenth century. That particular apple bite is most likely lost to us though the maker of Cockagee cider, Mark Jenkenson, has searched. He has however found and brought into Ireland the process of keeving. It is old and apparently Breton way of preparing cider. The pulp of the apple macerates in the pressed juice, thus releasing pectin that produces a gel which is siphoned from the pressing – leaving the juice ready for a long fermentation. Mark talks of a history of cider making in older Ireland.

I forget that Ireland made things, that it was not just the famine and a history of potatoes. Cider, mead - it is not just a pint of Guinness that we can raise our glasses too.

Finally, Ireland was not always known for its food but it has long been known for its butter. It suits us.  Butter did not suit the warmer, olive oil laden, more southerly, formerly unrefrigerated climates. Pliny the Elder mentioned butter as a delicate part of the strange barbaric northerner’s culture and discussed its medicinal qualities. This, I suspect was another way of saying that it improved bread.

Butter is rich in this lands history. We have bog people and we have bog butter. The ancient Irish were burying it in firkins in the bogs (for

preservation from enemies, time and post-raid munchies) thousands of years ago. 

It has been buttering our bread for a long time.  From maybe the 1750’s, the butter market in Ireland provided an income source for farmers and even moderate success to some Irish families. The Farm by Lough Gur, Co. Limerick, tells the story of the rare middle class Catholic family in the mid 19^th century; making and selling butter was part of their financial success. We even networked for it, Ireland had military roads for military movements and butter roads for butter – I know which road I’d rather go hitch hiking on.

From Cork Harbour butter was sent to different parts of the world: Spain, the West Indies even South

America. The Butter Exchange (1770-1925) in Cork was where the butter was graded and auctioned before it was shipped.  The best butter was graded as first and the least as bishop. I do wonder at the name selection.

Butter is not just to be found on the breads. Buttery, some of the soft washed rind Irish cheeses that I admire, Ardrahan, Brewer’s Gold, Durrus, Milleens, all remind me, to various degrees of sweet, salted or cultured butter. It seems appropriate that what makes such a beautiful flavour in the cheese should resonate so well with what else one knows to value in this strange and wonderful land.

Brewer’s Gold (from abitmoreveg.com)

It is easy to forgot how naturally rich and wonderful Ireland naturally is, until you set out a few things and places for supper - butter, cheese, cider and a setting for the unexpected.