myMEGusta

Café Culture?

Close your eyes and imagine you are sitting in a café.

Perhaps on the Champs d’Elysees, watching the Parisians and tourists stroll by as you sip a pricey mineral water or orange presse (fresh squeezed orange juice). Maybe at Café Florian in Piazza St. Marco in Venice, with music wafting in the background, pigeons overhead (wear a hat) and Prosecco in hand.

If you hop into the Wayback Machine (for those of you old enough to remember The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show) and seek out the oldest of the cafes, the ancestors of them all, you will find yourself transported to 17^thCentury Austria, sitting indoors in Vienna, where the concept was born.

During the Ottoman wars, the city had been occupied by the Turks. On being liberated by the Polish-Hapsburg Army, Vienna was quickly emptied of the invaders who left things behind, as people on the run tend to do. Among the remainders were bags upon bags of coffee, and the accoutrements it took to brew it.

Vienna Coffee House

What had been an exotic luxury became available to the masses in the newly invented coffee houses, outlets created specifically to prepare and serve this beverage which was new to most people.  Some traditions which live on today were established in those early years: myriad varieties of coffee preparations to choose among, and the freedom to sit for hours on end, reading, talking, just staring into space.

Cafe Schwartzenberg Vienna

Starbucks lovers take note: Some things never change.

On a recent trip to Vienna, I visited several coffee houses, mostly for a quick coffee or aperitif, but on one occasion for lunch at the venerable Café Landtmann, a fixture on the Ringstrasse since 1873, now a serious restaurant in addition to being a coffee house. From my notes: “venison ragout with allegedly local cranberries, potato croquettes, porcinis and other fresh wild mushrooms.” It was delicious and satisfying, so I passed on the gorgeous pastry display.

The most interesting part of this was the coffee menu, too elaborate to paraphrase here:

http://www.landtmann.at/fileadmin/content/pdf-dateien/Kaffeeposter_Landtmann.pdf

The Viennese coffee house continues to evolve.  I remember my first visit to this beautiful city, many years ago, before tastes and health concerns changed the laws about indoor smoking.  Even in some of the finest and most historical examples, coffee house walls were a little dank, and smoke permeated the air. When I visited in late 2011, I did not encounter any problem whatsoever with smoke in any coffee house or restaurant, although this could be a result of my seeking out non-smoking areas (which did not exist in the past) and ignoring smokers’ siberias. Bottom line: it is no longer a problem.

Franziskaner: Coffee with steamed milk and whipped cream

I need to go back, and research a blog on “mit schlag”, German for  “with whipped cream,” and not ignore the Sacher Torte next time.

It Didn’t Happen in Rio

But it did in Paris.

The exact location was the Discophage, a Brazilian hole-in-the-wall restaurant/caberet in the Latin Quarter, near the Sorbonne. The wife was in back (cooking), with the husband, Carlos, in the front (hitting on customers), and musicians playing sambas (when they weren’t also hitting on customers). Some young French and American women fell in love with the guitarists; I fell for the feijoada.

Feijoada

At its simplest, it’s a black bean stew with chunks of porky things and tongue, served with manioc flour (a tuber also known variously as cassava, tapioca, or yucca), orange slices, kale and a vinegar sauce, accompanied by rice. Normally, a pot of beans and meats arrives at the table with the bowl of rice, surrounded by a bevy of other small dishes containing the various garnishes.

Pronounced “Fey-ZWAH-dah”, its name derives from the Portuguese for “black bean”, and originated in that European nation, although now is more associated with their former colony, Brazil.

I’ve sought it out in New York, and, over the years, have found very credible versions at Brazilian restaurants that come and go, although you won’t find it at the otherwise wonderful churrascarias (Brazilian barbecues) popping up all over.

Business meals in Sao Paolo and Rio de Janiero never afforded the opportunity to try feijoada at the source. Just like in the United States, the locals take visiting firemen to “the local Chamber of Commerce restaurant,” as Calvin Trillin would say, instead of where the locals eat the really good food.

But I hit the mother lode during a side trip to Iguazu Falls, where Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay meet.

Iguazu Falls

This occurred many years ago, so the hotel, not yet trained to focus on burgers, spaghetti and sushi for tourists, instead served a feijoada buffet for lunch.

At least ten pots bubbled with assorted sausages, pork chunks (including belly, another day’s blog), and odd parts, including perfectly braised tongue, all cooked with black beans. Mounds of manioc and rice and orange stood by, with a few different vinegar sauces and freshly cooked kale.

It is a rich, peasanty food, and carries a high risk of overindulgence, particularly as the plate gets loaded with all the components. So, have plenty of kale and oranges, skip the dessert, and Bom Apetite!

Three Buckets of Tea

No, this is not a saga about getting lost and found in Afghanistan.

It is how I see “tea” falling into three buckets: raw tea (green tea being the best known and most popular), processed tea (black tea and oolong, for example), and all sorts of other infusions which have nothing to do with what grows on tea bushes (and which we’re not going to talk about today).

Tea Leaves

All real tea comes from the same type of plant.  What makes the tea in your cup different depends on the quality of the tea leaf when harvested (the smaller the better and more expensive), how it was processed, whether not processed at all, or wilted, fermented partially or fully, how dried (heat or smoke), whether rolled or crushed, and, of course, how it was brewed.

Portuguese Ship, circa 1600

Portuguese traders were the first to carry tea throughout the world, and it is they who introduced it to England, who took such a liking to it (as well as silk and porcelain) as to create a massive trade imbalance with China. To address this, the Brits started selling huge quantities of opium to the Chinese. The societal problem that caused, plus their general dislike of foreign traders, led to the Opium Wars.

Most tea names have to do with production processes (black tea, oolong). Sometimes they are named for where they were grown (Assam and Darjeeling, both regions of India), or for their appearance (shotgun, tea leaves rolled into tiny balls and dried), or for flavorings. Some are blended to a corporate style, such as Twinings versus Bigelow having different flavor profiles in their identically named English Breakfast teas, or Lipton versus Tetley.

Bergamot

Among the flavor enhanced teas, Earl Grey is one of the best known (flavored with oil of bergamot, a type of bitter orange), related to Lady Grey (like the Earl, but with lemon and additional kinds of orange rind). Smokey flavored Lapsang Souchang is a personal favorite. Constant Comment is an example of a spiced tea, with notes of orange peel.

Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous is a product called “Monkey Picked Oolong”, which might actually be wonderful but reminds me of the stale jokes about a wine snob sniffing a glass and opining that it was “picked by a blonde fraulein named Brunhilda in the early afternoon.”

The innumerable types of Chinese and Japanese teas are traditionally consumed with neither milk nor sugar nor lemon, although Indian teas tend to use dairy and a sweetener, probably resulting from English habits adopted during the Raj. Chai tea, often served as a cold latte, is a descendent of this, seasoned with Indian masala blend spices.

Green Tea Ice Cream

Two of my favorite tea concoctions are green tea ice cream and its relative, Starbucks Green Tea Frappuccino, effectively a green tea ice cream milk shake. No, consuming green tea this way is not a healthy choice.

The Japanese Tea Ceremony is well known but little understood, more about an elaborate traditional ritual and showing respect to one’s guests, than anything special about the tea itself, whisked from a fine powder and quite bitter.

Japanese Tea Ceremony

There is a perpetual debate regarding teabags versus loose tea, the latter supposedly being better because “they hide the bad tea in the bags”. For commercial brands, this is really a matter of the packer’s quality control. The newest container is the H-Bag, made by Bigelow for Keurig machines.

Very serious tea shops are sprouting up, offering wide selections of the best available teas brewed the exact number of seconds to be perfect, “cuppings” (a fancy word for “tastings”), and tea friendly menus. Two excellent examples are The Steeping Room in Austin, TX (www.thesteepingroom.com) and Savvy Tea Gourmet in Madison, CT (www.savvyteagourmet.com).

A Toast to Wedding Cakes

They can be the perfect culinary marriage of exquisite beauty and luscious flavor.

Or not, since some don’t deserve to be celebrated. Sometimes the prettiest on the outside can be the ones with hearts of stone, or at least they taste that way.

But the one I’ll be enjoying at the wedding of two friends this weekend will be elegant and delicious, which I know because I’ve had cakes from this Chinatown bakery before. Remember the old adage: “You cannot save your cake and eat it too”? This references the superstition that if a woman puts her slice of wedding cake under her pillow, she will dream of her future husband. I’ll be eating the cake.

“Liberated” Wedding Cake

Like many other things that were liberated in the sixties, wedding cakes have undergone a wonderful transformation from the staid norm of white cake/white frosting, to anything goes, like chocolate, red velvet, tres leches (Mexican “three milks” cake), carrot cake or even cupcakes artfully arranged in tiers.

Cupcakes!

Bakers sometimes decorate with real or marzipan flowers, not just squiggles of white fondant which used to be the norm, or royal icing, a hard, sugary frosting so named because it was used at Queen Victoria’s wedding cake. As a side note, her wearing of a white gown started another bridal tradition that lives on today.

Traditional Decoration

Feasts have always been part of celebrations like weddings, so it’s not surprising that cake would be part of the ritual. For example, it is documented that in medieval England the bride and groom would kiss over a pile of pastries, and would have good luck if they didn’t knock it over.

Croquembouche

In France, the traditional wedding cake is a croquembouche, a stacking of cream filled profiteroles bound together with light caramel.

I have never really understood the whole concept of groom’s cake, very popular particularly in the South, and sometimes in masculine, humorous forms representing his hobbies or interests. It is usually darker in color, often fruitcake, and is often wrapped to snack on the next day. Or to use as a paperweight, depending on your opinion of stale fruitcake.

Groom’s Cake for a Football Fan

No Pig in This Poke

Are you old enough to remember when the idea of eating raw fish was startling to most Americans?

Poke

Because of the influence of Japanese cuisine, and its mid-ocean location, Hawaii was the first of the United States to have fully embraced raw fish in a classic local dish:  poke (pronounced poh-KAY or poh-KEE or poh-KEH). This is a delicious mélange of chunks of raw fish, usually tuna, stirred with seasonings such as soy sauce, sesame oil, hot peppers, onions, seaweed, nuts, the possibilities being endless.

There were days, not that long ago, when even the most passionate lovers of raw clams and oysters, or of smoked fish or gravlax, shuddered at the idea of raw tuna, or even medium rare salmon. The emergence of Japanese cuisine here shattered that mindset, and in the 1980s, New York’s Le Bernardin brought the concept to a whole new level, becoming renowned for its elegant, intensely flavored raw fish dishes. Today, their menu still has whole sections headed “almost raw” and “barely touched.”

Crudo: Raw salmon and fluke dressed with Meyer lemon and ponzu sauce

One very popular dish often found on menus is “crudo”, literally, “raw”, but referring to raw fish. This can take on many guises, one or more types of impeccably fresh fish in a seasoning or with a dipping sauce. It’s elegant and, other than finding a totally reliable source for the fish, easy.

Other examples are tuna carpaccio and tuna tartare, the same sourcing issues, but simple as can be, just raw tuna, your best olive oil, and a sprinkling of sea salt, maybe a dash of parmesan or shaving of white truffle. Perfection.

Incidentally, the name tartare, as in Steak Tartare, has nothing to do with the myth regarding Tartars (or Tatars) riding around the Steppes of Central Asia with their steak under the saddle to tenderize it. Raw, chopped steak was traditionally served with tartar sauce (and that was named by the French for the Tartars), hence an enterprising early 20^th century restaurateur came up with the name.

Then there’s ceviche. Whether it’s raw or cooked depends on how you define “cooked”. Applying heat to proteins will denature them, the same effect as soaking in an acidic liquid such as lemon or lime juice. Some traditional ceviche, particularly shellfish like shrimp or lobster, is cooked and then marinated. One of my happiest ceviche memories was in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, where the local version included vibrant jalapeno peppers.

Enjoying sushi near Tsukiji Market

A favorite travel memory is of Tsukiji, the giant wholesale market area in Tokyo, best known for its fish division, and more specifically, for crack of dawn auctions of tuna sourced from around the world, and every other kind of seafood imaginable. Because the market has become so wildly popular that tourists started impeding business, not to mention safety concerns (FAST forklifts racing by), access is now strictly limited. But, it’s worth a visit, and a sushi breakfast at one of the many restaurants surrounding the market is a treat not to be missed.

The only time I’ve felt unsafe approaching raw fish was in the mountains of Japan, at a tiny, family owned ryokan (inn) where uncooked fish from the stream was served. Because the parasites that affect land animals can affect humans, eating uncooked fresh water fish can be dangerous. But the host would have lost face (and we as well, having said we eat everything) had we not consumed it. What to do? Dip it in the bubbling soup pot when they weren’t looking. There’s a solution for everything!

Slurp!

How else can you describe the delightful sensation of eating an icy cold oyster, briny and maybe with metallic or nutty overtones, and accented with lemon or maybe a splash of a sauce?

Oysters!

Looking at an oyster bar menu, you’d think there were dozens, if not hundreds, of species of edible oysters, but there are only five. Like grapes, oysters develop and taste differently depending on where they were grown. The chemical composition of the sea water, salinity, and temperature are among the factors that cause a particular bed to have its flavor and shape nuances.

All oysters which humans eat fall into one of these groups: Atlantic (bluepoints, Malpeques, Gulf oysters), Creuse (Europe and the Pacific Northwest), Belon (flat shaped), Kumomoto (tiny Japanese oysters now a mainstay in the Pacific Northwest) and Olympia (also small, the indigenous oyster of the Pacific Northwest).

Another mistaken notion about oysters is that they should only be enjoyed during the R months. This used to be true due to the deterioration in flavor and texture during the summer spawning months, not to mention unreliable refrigeration and spoilage in hot weather. The latter is no longer an issue and the spawning problem has been corrected by highly controlled oyster farming. Some oysters are now bred to not spawn at all.

A few hundred years ago, oysters were so common that everyone residing near the ocean ate them. Then the natural beds, including New York Harbor, one of the world’s largest at the time, started to falter. By the time the Titanic sailed 100 years ago, they were offered only on the first class menu: plain and a la russe (dressed with with vodka and horseradish).

As the United States was growing westward, oysters were an important food shipped by train from places like New Orleans and the Chesapeake Bay, either tightly packed in barrels (oysters in the shell keep well for a long period of time) or shucked and either chilled or canned.

Two old fashioned oyster delicacies are stew (oysters poached in butter, milk, cream and a little Tabasco) and pan roast (stew plus Worcestershire sauce and paprika served over a toast square). New York’s Grand Central Oyster Bar still makes these dishes in the same steam heated, 1 – 2 portion pots used 100 years ago.

Fried oysters are another decadent treat, especially when tucked into a po’boy sandwich eaten while strolling New Orleans’ French Quarter.

Oysters Rockefeller (baked with a thick sauce, greens and spices) is probably the best known of the hot oyster dishes, but there are countless others, Bienville (richer sauce, mushrooms, shrimp and cheese) and Suzette (bacon, green and red pepper, a little like clams casino) among them.

Every oyster lover has their preferences.  My favorite is the flat Belon, unfortunately the most expensive and hardest to find here in the United States, but the most flavorful. I like medium sized oysters the best; giants are just as tender and tasty, but a little unwieldy to eat. I’ll take oysters from as far north as possible, finding those from Southern waters to be less flavorful.

Then there’s the debate about garnish: cocktail sauce or lemon or mignonette (shallot/vinegar sauce, very popular in France) or maybe a few grains of caviar. I’ll take lemon any day.

Oyster Plate

Special plates are made for serving oysters on the half shell, indented to keep the shells from sliding around.  A plate with a reasonably high rim, covered with crushed ice from the fish market, works just fine.  And there are oyster forks, a nicety but certainly not a necessity.

All oysters can make pearls by building a smooth surface around a particle irritating it, but those that make jewels are not eaten by humans. Tales of finding valuable pearls in oyster bar orders are urban myths.

Tiny pearl resting on black spot

Morning in Myanmar

Schwedagon Pagoda, Yangon

Yes, the emerging political news is exciting, but so were the chili laced noodle soups that were part of every breakfast during my 2011 visit there.

Dawn in Bagan

The current news coverage is stirring up wonderful memories of what a fascinating, sometimes bizarre, place this is.

Formerly known as Burma, it is a genuine third world country, incongruously dotted with pure gold pagodas, some topped with priceless jewels.

The food is not why you go to Myanmar, but it is delicious, a cross between Thai and Indian flavors. Unlike peripatetic gourmet chefs who eat everything in sight, this normally intrepid eater was very careful to limit her menu to hot foods, avoiding anything room temperature other than in the hotels.

I loved the eggplant dishes and ubiquitous curries, especially the ones made with butterfish, a large smooth river fish which tastes a little like swordfish. Much to my surprise, I came across wines made in Myanmar, drinkable and an inexpensive alternative to the few pedestrian and pricy imports available.

One supposedly tasty treat I declined to sample was fermented tea leaves, a room temperature snack which looked and smelled about as appetizing as it sounds, particularly having seen buckets of it in the market swarming with flies.

Arriving in Yangon (formerly Rangoon) is a study in contrasts. On landing the first time, the third worldliness smacks you in the face. But returning there from an excursion north, to much more rural Bagan, felt like being back in civilization.

Internet and email usage are severely restricted (if you can get on at all), and I know some of my friends worried when I went email silent for several days while there. Credit cards are not accepted (most hotels have signs to that effect) and ATMs do not exist; you trade crisp $US for local currency, the newer the bill, the higher the exchange rate, and old bills aren’t accepted at all.

The culture shock is compounded by the strange traffic pattern of driving on the right in cars with the steering wheel on the right. This was explained by my tour guide: “When we got rid of the Brits, we changed the driving pattern immediately, but the cars, all used, still come from Japan” where they drive on the left.

Enjoying a Cheroot

On a totally non-culinary note, I was fascinated by cheroots, cigars made of tobacco and wood chips wrapped in corn husks, traditionally popular in Myanmar, although I only saw older people using them. It is rumored that the aroma permeates one’s skin, and this deters mosquitoes, but this may just be a dubious excuse for a questionable habit.

On another cultural note, I am surprised at the near absence of thanaka in the recent news photos (other than the April 4 page 4 photo in the New York Times) and as I was viewing the trailer for the The Lady, the new film about Aung San Suu Kyi. This astringent paste made of tree bark is ubiquitous in Myanmar, worn primarily by women as makeup, applied either in smears (as one might put on blusher) or in elaborate designs. There is even a thanaka museum where you can sample it.  Any takers?

Thanaka Vendor

Bottom line, visiting Myanmar was a fabulous experience, but I would not recommend it without a good guide, given cultural, language, and logistical challenges. Absolute Travel (whom I used) http://www.absolutetravel.com/ is a great place to start.

MyMEGusta Reviews: Peeking Behind the Wallpaper, by Arno Schmidt

Arno Schmidt, one of the leading chefs of his day, has now published a lively collection of memoirs and anecdotes focused on what really goes on in hotel food and beverage, some at the highest echelons, spanning three continents and nearly a half century.

Starting the old fashioned way, as a lowly teenaged kitchen apprentice in post-war Austria, and eventually rising to be Executive Chef at stellar properties like The Plaza and The Waldorf Astoria, the author paints a vivid picture of life behind the scenes, and how the industry evolved over the course of his long career.

One of my favorite anecdotes has to do with dignitaries meeting at a hotel in Geneva, any of whose illness could have derailed delicate negotiations on Indo China (e.g. the partitioning of North/South Viet Nam), as the chef recalls dangerous (by current standards) food safety procedures which could have killed off, or at least sickened, major players and caused an international incident.

A breakthrough innovation during his stint at the Waldorf Astoria was Chef Schmidt’s hiring the first full-fledged female chef at a major hotel, Leslie Arp Revsin, a crack in the glass ceiling which enabled future generations of women to aspire to jobs never before open to them. She was among the women who prepared a 1978 Showcase of Women Chefs dinner there for Les Dames d’Escoffier, an organization of women leaders in food, beverage and hospitality (www.ldei.org). (Full disclosure, I’m a member, and remember that dinner!)

Photographs of elegant hotels and dining rooms are complemented by actual menus interspersed among the stories. And, there are delightful descriptions of how foods were prepared in kitchens with coal burning stoves, long forgotten in our age of high tech. The Wiener Schnitzel at a hotel near Salzburg, Austria in 1949, described in delicious detail made me think of the perfect, puffy and fresh and greaseless example I enjoyed in Vienna just a few months ago.

But the real fun lies in the stories of interactions among the “players”, truly little armies of workers who make things like seamless banquet service seem easy. For example the chapter about the Waldorf Astoria, goes to great detail about the complexities of leading a team to get great food out via multiple channels – private clubs, huge banquets, room service, and, yes, several restaurants – efficiently and economically in an often highly politicized environment.

For more information, or to purchase a copy, go to http://www.arnochef.com/ .

From Deadly Mush at Sea Level to Spargelfest at 35,000 Feet

On these beautiful days of spring, thoughts go to those pointy treats poking their heads up as the days get warmer: asparagus!

The Asparagus Emerges

But they have not always been good thoughts.  Growing up near Hadley, Massachusetts, the self-proclaimed “Asparagus Capital of the World”, meant eating it, a lot, in the season. Cooked to death, never peeled, this asparagus was vile, its acrid flavor reminiscent of the abominable olive green stuff in cans.

It was not until years later, when I had properly cooked asparagus for the first time, that I realized what all the fuss was about and became an asparagus lover.

In these days of globetrotting foods, we can get very good fresh asparagus all year round, but well traveled asparagus simply is not as good as the fresh product available from farmers’ markets or, at the farm stand, harvested in the morning and in your pot later in the day.

Green and White Asparagus

Native to the Middle East, asparagus inspires festivals every year throughout Europe, where white asparagus is the norm, versus the green which is most popular in the United States.

The only difference between the two is in the growing method for the white known as “hilling”, more complex and expensive, as the stalks are kept literally in the dark, buried under mounds of dirt, preventing the development of chlorophyll. When the little purple heads emerge, the farmer reaches deep into the soil with a sharp knife to cut at the bottom and, voila, a single white asparagus shaft

Harvesting White Asparagus

I remember the beautiful market around the cathedral in Freiberg, Germany, during asparagus season, known as Spargelfest: Bins heaped high with white asparagus of varying thickness and purity of its whiteness, all at different prices, and the shoppers presumably knew the difference among them.

Restaurants mirror the market and the home cooks in presenting special menus, for example three courses comprising asparagus soup, asparagus with hollandaise sauce, asparagus with ham.  It’s a reminder of what life was like before everyone took favorite vegetables for granted year round, and when they feasted on short-lived seasonal treats.

Asparagus with Hollandaise and New Potatoes

Lufthansa even offered a Spargelfest menu in transatlantic First Class that week, and it was delicious, all things which could be easily prepared in flight and really tasted good in the stratosphere (a novel thought).

Getting closer to ground, green and white asparagus are both easy to prepare, although need to be approached differently, and occasionally you’ll find purple (an expensive novelty).

One myth is that thin asparagus is tenderer than the thick. Not so. They have the same number of membranes, and so the toughness is more concentrated. The stalks are thickest at the start of the harvest, which ends when the spikes become so thin that they are like grass, left to mature for the summer, to reemerge the following spring.

All asparagus needs to be trimmed at the bottom (there are two schools of thought: the snappers and the cutters); my approach is to look for where the woody part starts and cut. Green asparagus benefits from being peeled, but just the lower half, and cooked only a few minutes until tender. White asparagus is much woodier, and requires both trimming the bottom and nearly complete peeling, difficult as it breaks easily, and takes longer to cook.

Peeling White Asparagus

You don’t need a fancy vertical asparagus cooker. I use a wide, shallow pan with an inch of salted water, boil the whole stalks horizontally (makes for even cooking and less leeching of flavor and nutrients), dump into a colander and shock with cold water. Then it can be served whole or cut into bite-sized pieces for salads or to be reheated for a few seconds in butter or olive oil just before serving.

However you cook it, boiled, steamed, roasted, grilled, asparagus is delish year round, and a special treat if you live in a place where they pop up fresh.

Frozen Thoughts for Ireland’s Big Holiday

Saint Patrick’s Day went south forever for me when I had the misfortune to win a high school essay contest about democracy.

The sponsors (the Lions Club or something like it) had the bright idea to plunk me on their float in the Holyoke, Massachusetts, St. Patrick’s Day parade, the third largest in the United States after New York and Boston, at least at the time. Before I could respond with horror at the thought my mother gleefully accepted for me. I had to sit up there for hours with a frozen smile (due to my mood and the extreme cold) in a formal dress and borrowed mink stole. Not good.

I often wonder why corned beef and cabbage has become so wildly popular at this holiday. If Americans really liked it, they’d have it more often.

Irish Smoked Salmon

Made well, it’s a good dish. But the watery steam table meat and overcooked cabbage that make their appearance every March 17 are not representative of Irish cookery, although it certainly is true that these inexpensive foods have long been staples in the Emerald Isle.

Instead, give me some nice Irish salmon. Travelers to Ireland find this wonderful fish is widely available, and the restaurants come up with delicious preparations.  Smoked Irish salmon is also a great treat, and available at good delis here.

Then there are the Galway oysters, another goodie for the traveler to seek out. And, for that matter, any kind of seafood will be a find on this little island.

Galway Oysters and Guinness

The quintessential Irish stout, Guinness, makes a big St. Patrick’s Day splash, pumping large sums of money into promotions to gain the largest possible share of this big beer drinking festival. It is actually lower in calories than most beers (other than the “light” beers), and is a classic accompaniment to those famous oysters.

As for other beverages, Irish whiskey is like a cross between Scotch and Canadian: in a nutshell, the same ingredients as Scotch with the Canadian production method (no smoking of the barley). I’ll leave that, Irish coffee made with it and green beer, to the leprechauns.

On the vegetable side, my favorite is Colcannon, a homey dish which is incredibly easy to make: boiled potatoes and chopped cooked cabbage (or kale) mashed together with butter, salt and pepper.  If you really want to be decadent, make a pool in the center and throw on a pat of butter (maybe some real Irish Kerrygold in honor of the holiday).

Colcannon

I’ll celebrate this year’s warm weather St. Patrick’s Day by avoiding parades and sipping some Vinho Verde (green wine, not from the color but because it is bottled and consumed very young) from Portugal. And maybe roasted salmon with steamed baby bok choy, not very Irish, but in the right spirit.