EDIT: And here, in perfect synchronicity, is a link to the website of Russell Davies, a man who’s tracking down the perfect breakfast of eggs, bacon, chips and beans. As far as I can make out, he’s not the Russell Davies of Doctor Who.

This is harder than it sounds! The very first time I did it, I’m sure what happened, but the result just wasn’t appetising. I was working from a recipe, I think, without really understanding the principles, and as with risotto, that just won’t work. The second time, I had the pan still on the heat when I added the eggs, and so ended up with tiny pieces of omelette. I also suspect that I wasn’t doing myself any favours by trying to do it with penne pasta, rather than spaghetti or linguine. It wasn’t bad - indeed, it was rather good - it just wasn’t carbonara.
But the third time, which was yesterday, I made proper carbonara. I had a haul of goods from Aldi, one of the two chains of bargain-price markets that have spread across Ireland in the last three years, which included fresh linguine, new eggs, the requisite Parmigiano-Reggiano and some cured bacon. Cured bacon isn’t pancetta, but it’s close enough to work with, and everything else was good to go. With the above, some black pepper, and some fresh, chopped parsley, I had an actual working carbonara.

Now, it’s a matter of repeating the success, and then trying small variations to see what works. Is the penne actually not going to work? I think penne might cool too quickly, having effectively got a lot of vents, whereas the spaghetti sits more densely in the pot, and maybe even traps some heat pockets. Varying the amount of cheese going in will be something to try as well, and then there’s the question of what herbs can be used. Parsley is a good solid option, but how about basil? Rosemary should go well with the bacon - but how about different kinds of bacon, a maple or hickory cure? And I should try it with pancetta. And does the freshness of the eggs make a difference?
So many questions, from just one simple dish!

The one in the house in Ranelagh wasn’t designed at all, as far as I could see - the various immobile appliances had been placed where they fit, and that was that. It was a long, impractical galley of a place, redeemed from true horridness by an old tile floor and a working fireplace.

The current one is a big, open room, as bright as it’s possible to be, given where it is in the house. It has a good amount of storage space, which isn’t optimally arranged, but then again, where has optimal storage? Circular kitchens aside, that is. It’s a bit short on electrical sockets, and some of the high shelves and storage places are a little too high. The fridge door opens the wrong way - at least, I think it’s the wrong way. The “work triangle” of cooker, sink and fridge is well placed, though, and the large kitchen table (seats six for dinner or boardgames) doesn’t intrude on it. Aside from the electric cooker, it also has a wonderful Hammond stove; an ancient, low, cast-iron, solid-fuel affair, some sort of distant ancestor of the modern Aga and Rayburn.

It’s a little short on counter space. It would help if the counter beside the cooker did not get completely jammed with spice jars, and if another area was not occupied by the microwave. There is, of course, the tabletop, but it’s too low for me to work at properly. A butcher’s trolley or the like might be a lot of help, but since we’re not going to be there forever, I’m unwilling to invest.

I think one principle I’ll be following when I do get to lay out a kitchen is that if you can see the walls in the main work area, something is wrong. They should be covered with cupboards, shelves, hooks, cooker vents, or something - plain wall is no use. Counter tops should be at a comfortable height. There should be a window over the sink. The dishwasher should open such that you can still move around, and the same should apply for the fridge, cupboards, etc. There should be about six more sockets than could ever conceivably be used.

Hopefully, I’ll get to apply this thinking soon!

Today is Shrove Tuesday and the 5th of February, which in Finland is the birthday of the national poet, J.L. Runeberg, known for instance for penning the original lyrics of the national anthem. I am going to take a look at all three foods associated with today: pancakes, Shrove buns and Runeberg cakes.

Shrove celebrations take around the world tend to be merry, ranging from the carnival of Mardi Gras to the rather lower-key winterly outdoor activities in Finland, where it’s customary for families to head out for sledding and games. As Ash Wednesday traditionally leads the way to Lent, people most likely wanted to stock up on good, rich foods beforehand.

In Ireland, Shrove Tuesday is rather colloquially known as Pancake Day or Pancake Tuesday, for obvious reasons. Although my household is accustomed to eating pancakes throughout the year, usually for weekend breakfasts, I realise that there are Irish people
out there who only eat pancakes on this one day a year. (I find this rather incredible, but there you have it.) Many people would also buy their pancakes ready made in shops, content to heat them up in the microwave. While this is not an anathema to me as such, I definitely consider shop-bought microwaved pancakes roughly equivalent to a portion of Burger King chips in relation to homemade garlic potatoes. Inferior in all ways, but sometimes they simply are all that there is. How and ever, today chances are very high that workplaces with canteen will serve pancakes, and/or people will have pancakes at home. As a sidenote, when I was growing up in Finland, I was accustomed to having my pancakes, made irregularly regularly at home, with sugar only, or perhaps with jam if I was feeling adventurous. I was intrigued when in Ireland I discovered the habit of eating pancakes with sugar and lemon, and delighted when the Lemon crepes cafe and its predecessors introduced me to the wonderful world of pancakes with savoury fillings and an unimaginable number of sweet fillings.

Shrove buns, on the other hand, are a Finnish phenomenon. The buns themselves are made of pulla, yeasted brioche-like dough, and often decorated with sugar. Once they are baked and cooled, you cut the top off, perhaps carve a little well into the bun itself, although I wouldn’t usually bother, and then apply a liberal dollop of strawberry jam or marzipan, followed by another generous serving of whipped cream, and then top the whole thing with the hat you originally cut off. They are magnificent with coffee when you return in from an afternoon of sledding and/or skiing, or as a dessert, again with coffee, following another tradition of the day, a dinner of thick peasoup. I defend my decision not to include peasoup in the group of day-specific foods in that while traditional on Shrove Tuesday, for some reason it’s also associated with Thursdays throughout the year. That and three is a nice round number.

My last example of day-specific foods also comes from Finland. Runeberg cakes bear their name in the honour of the poet Johan Ludwig Runeberg and their appearance marks his birthday on the 5th of February. They are solid almond cakes topped with raspberry jam and icing. An extensive blog post discusses their proper preparation here and I am happy to let the writer do so on my behalf, because frankly I have never found these cakes very appealing myself. I find them entirely too dry, although on reading that blog post I am led to wonder whether all the cakes I have ever attempted to eat have simply been too dry to begin with. I have never seen them eaten with whipped cream, ice cream or vanilla sauce (Finland’s answer to custard) and I suspect that application of something vanilla-y like that would improve them considerably in my mind. Having said that, Finns tend to keep their dry cakes and cream cakes very separate.

Three sweet rich things to choose from, ironically, on the day that to some marks a transition to a period of restraint. Me, I’m looking forward to the Chinese New Year.

I recently inherited a goodly stack of canned and jarred New Mexican food from friends who were leaving the country. They’d had it sent to them from the US, and hadn’t got to using it. One of the cans contained something called “huevos rancheros sauce”. I had never as much as heard of this stuff - Mexican food is just about known in Ireland, and we still think of it as burritos, guacamole and salsa.

But the illustration on the can, and the instructions on the side were reasonably clear, so I gave it a shot. It came out pretty well, but next time, I’m going to chase after more authentic ingredients. I’ve only just discovered that tortillas are made from nothing but maize flour and water, and once I work out whether rolling will subsitute for a tortilla press, I should be well on the way to making them. I’ve made a more European flatbread from plain or wholemeal flour and water, with a little salt and pepper, and that was fine to roll, if a little sticky.

This time, I poached the eggs, although I see from some further research that frying them is probably more authentic. I had kidney beans, rather than pinto beans, and potato waffles rather than hash browns. But I suspect that once I get the tortillas down, everything else can be varied. The sauce doesn’t seem to be too complex, either, being basically a green salsa. And I think that maybe a red one could be used without purists thinking too badly of me.
The more homely scrambled and fried eggs allow for a fair degree of experimentation as well. To my mind, the best scrambled eggs are moist, fairly coherent, and not too thoroughly scrambled, so that there are bits of white in among the yellow still. This is remarkably hard to get right; there’s a combination of temperature, timing, and proportions of ingredients that I can’t seem to quite get right. I’ve produced very good scrambled eggs, but never yet perfect, and I think a lot of my problems lie in the temperature - I’m starting to think that an even, fairly low temperature, just enough to have the butter bubbling a little, is what’s needed.

Fried eggs, now… it’s hard to do perfect fried eggs. The ideal here is to have the white firm and solid, but not rubbery, with the very edges a tiny bit crisped, and the yolk in a single bubble on top, pinked over, and still a little runny at the centre. My mother could do these perfectly - which is no doubt why I think these are ideal - but the technique, as I remember it, seems to call for more oil than seems reasonable, and tipping the pan sideways with one hand while you flick hot oil from a spatula onto the top of the egg with the other. Turning the egg right over is workable, but not pretty. Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking suggests that you could add a little water to the oil, cover the pan, and let it steam to a cooked state, which I’m going to have to try.

Now I just need to work out how to either make my own huevos rancheros sauce, or find a place in Ireland that sells it. And that can’t be too hard, can it?

Ah, Dunne & Crescenzi. How you are truly my amore! But why, why must you be so disorganised? You know I adore your smoothest coffee and most delicious antipasti, but let me be honest with you: even on the best of days, you leave me waiting! There is only so long that I can covet your delights at my lonely table, and longingly gaze at the wonders of your fabulous homeland on the shelves.

Let me put it this way: today was not one of the best days. We stopped over for coffee and lunch, pleased that the rare sunny weather in Dublin actually for once allowed us to sit outside. The location of the establishment is such that you cannot avoid the odd passing beggar, but they rarely stick after being told off. I sent Drew to inform the waiting staff that we would be outside, and he returned with the information that they would be along soon with the menus, so we sat to wait.

And we waited. And waited. Without going into detail, we had to go back inside to ask for the menus again, to bring them to our table ourselves, then again to put in the order when nobody came out to take our order, and then forty minutes later to enquire where our food might be, although our coffees had admittedly arrived relatively swiftly. At the end I didn’t even bother asking for the bill, I merely went back inside again.

The very hassled looking waiting staff let slip that they had a very troublesome party in the other room, who had sent perfectly good dishes back three times. Now, I can understand demand for quality, especially if you have a special occasion, if you have allergies or whatever, if you have difficulty getting the staff understand you. But 1) there is such a thing as over-demanding and being difficult simply for the sake of being difficult and 2) just how far can you upset the workings of a professional restaurant that way?

It is a pity that such things cloud the glory of Dunne & Crescenzi for me, for both the physical aspect of the restaurant(s) and the food are phenomenal. I had the antipasti misto, which is a selection of cold cooked vegetables, mushrooms, some rocket, cold meats and slices of bread, and Drew had the crostini, sliced lightly toasted bread with various Italian spreads on them. One of the spreads was D & C’s own pesto sauce, which to me remains the best pesto I have ever tasted. This time, we did not sample the wines, but simply sated ourselves respectively with an espresso and a latte. The coffee, too, ranks among the best in the city.

The overall bill came a little over 20 euro, and while further apologies for delays certainly mollified me somewhat, I was left to wonder whether D & C is best enjoyed on weekday afternoons around 3 pm, when most of the rest of the populus of the city are firmly in their offices and the staff have time for the customers.

We were onto the boat at half nine in the morning, and well out to sea by ten. The boat owner - referred to by everyone as The Skipper -  guided us to a likely spot, and those who had rods set up cast their lines. I wasn’t among that number, still sorting through a rig that had apparently seen me coming and decided to be a challenge. The trouble with un-tangling a fishing rig is that there are hooks on it, and they can get caught in each other, the line, and your skin. But I eventually got it sorted out, and dropped weight, rig, and line overboard.

The idea with this style of sea fishing is that you let the line reel out until the weight hits the bottom, and the line goes slack. You then wave the rod up and down so that the weight bounces on the sea bed, and the lures attached to the rig move. I can’t imagine that they really look like food, but fish seem to respond to anything that moves, such that within an hour of starting, I was pulling up mackerel at a rate of one every ten minutes or so, sometimes with more than one on the same line.  Success depends, as far as I can see, on what lure you have, and whether there are any fish down there. Different species definitely go for different lures - I had nothing but mackerel on the first rig, and then pollock and whiting on the second, while a Russian guy at the back of the boat was pulling up all possible colours of wrasse, and a few odd looking things we were told were poutings.
My youngest brother and I were fishing into the same bucket, and he decided at the end of the day that apart from one fine cod he caught, and a few others, he didn’t want many. I came home with about ten mackerel - two large ones, and the rest smaller - a smaller cod, a blue-and-pink wrasse, half a dozen pollock, one quite large, and about four good whiting. They’re all now in the freezer, waiting for me to decide what to do with them, except for the two large mackerel, which we had today.

I simply grilled them under a low heat, having covered them in a herb mix from Finland called kalamauste - literally, “fish herbs”. The mix is mostly dill, with some others - chives, lemon balm, and hyssop, I think, thrown in. They came out unbelievably well, with the skin blackening and blistered, and the fish cooked through, but still succulent. We had them with leftover breakfast pancakes, and a green vegetable mix from Marks & Spencer - broccoli, leeks, and savoy cabbage, and a little herb mayonnaise. I ended up putting more of the mayonnaise on the greens than the fish, though; they didn’t need anything more.
Plans for the others are as yet unformed - I think I’ll probably grill the cod. The wrasse is going to be interesting; I’d like to do something that leaves the colours of its skin intact, but most recommendations I’ve heard or found involve more complex processes, starting with removing the skin and bones. Pollock is one of the candidates for the “new cod”, but I think flouring and frying is in its future, as I gather it doesn’t have the same clear taste as cod.

I’m utterly charmed by being able to guarantee the origin of the fish by hauling it out of the sea myself, though, and it was a lot of fun. I’ll definitely be going out again. Although, admittedly, it’ll take a long time for us to finish the fish we have.

I went to talk to Michael at his stall in the IFSC market last Wednesday. About five months ago, he had spotted a gap in the products available from street and farmer’s markets - nobody was selling burgers, let alone good burgers. Since he was looking to move out on his own into the food business, this was too good to ignore. He can now be found in the IFSC Market on Wednesdays, Donnybrook Market on Thursdays, Leopardstown on Fridays, and the Red Stables in Raheny on Saturdays. He’s looking into other sales areas; mobile catering, Christmas festivals during November and December, and other markets.

He sells organic beef burgers, with the beef sourced from Leitrim Organics. All his other material is Irish as well; he gets the burger buns from the Bretzel Bakery, and makes his relishes and pickles himself. He concentrates on simplicity, not trying to sell a wider range than he can handle, although he’s still experimenting (Portobello Mushrooms and Cashel Blue cheese were mentioned in that vein). He also sells organic drinks.

Even considering the terrible weather while I was talking to him, there was a constant flow of customers - mostly repeat customers, given how definite they were about what they wanted. And having tried the burgers then, and seen how he operates, I’ll most definitely be back for the mushrooms this week. Michael’s stand is an excellent addition to the IFSC Market, and any other market he’s in, and I recommend you try his products as soon as you can.

Pork is very much a seasonal food for me. I’m pretty sure that traditionally, pigs wouldn’t have been brought in until late October, when they’d stuffed themselves on acorns and anything else they could find, but from September onward, pork and apple sauce commend themselves greatly. Some say gravy and apple sauce is overdoing it; I disagree. You want apple sauce for the pork, and gravy for the mashed potatoes.

And pigeon. I know pigeon’s not commonly eaten any more, except in really classy restaurants and in very rural areas - a divide which amuses me greatly. My father used to go pigeon-shooting after the grain fields were cleared. When I was old enough, I went along, and got to go on decoy duty, which is where you belt out after a shot takes down a bird, and arrange it on the field so that it looks like it’s feeding, and lures in more pigeons. City pigeons are flying rats, and in respect of what they do, country ones are similar scavengers. Loose grain makes for far finer birds than stray rubbish, though, and we sometimes brought home twenty, thirty, forty birds in an evening. Oddly, though I recall the taste perfectly, I can’t remember how it was cooked.

In line with that, I’m planning to go sea-fishing with my brothers next weekend. Last time they were out, they got a good selection of fish, mostly mackerel, alongside a few others, and they report that it’s a zero-skill matter, unlike fly-fishing, which I’ve never quite had the patience to learn. We’re going out from Kilmore Quay at an early hour, so it’ll be a bit of an expedition from Dublin.

Nina and I picked blackberries in Bushy Park last weekend - not many, a couple of handfuls each, eaten on the spot - but enough to show that they’re out there. We may have to go hunting for more. I last made blackberry jam in 2005, and due to my over-enthusiasm for getting a good set, it was like rubber. This year, if we get enough to make jam, I’ll barely bring it to the boil before I bottle it up - blackberries are clearly not lacking in pectin.

When I’m down in Wexford, I might wander down to that secret white-damson patch, and see if there are any there still. I can’t for the life of me recall the picking season for the things, but I do remember damson jam as being excellent; a midway point between the tartness of rhubarb and the sweetness of plum.

Something we never had when I was a kid was venison, but my family are in touch with someone who can get it. So if things work out well, this autumn’s menu may also involve that. Last time we had it, we roasted it, having marinaded it overnight in a bottle of shiraz and more herbs and spices than you could shake a cinnamon stick at. I’m minded to try grilling next time, and maybe a casserole or the like. Or game pie, if I can get some more kinds of game…