Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

Nasturtiums provide wonderful colour in the gaerden at this time of year. But it was their smell which led to their naming by the ancient Romans. They found its odour so unpleasant that they were compelled to turn their noses up at it – and hence the name.

 Nasturtiums ar a very versatile and useful plant. Most people know that their seeds when pickled become what has been termed “the poor man’s capers”, and in fact they are as good as the real capers 9especially with pizza) and what’s more far cheaper. It’s not just the seeds that are edible. The leaves and flowers add a lovely peppery note to salads, as well as colour, and their taste is reminiscent of watercress, to which they are related. What’s more their stems are nice too. Alan Davidson, in the Oxford Companion to Food quotes a recipe supplied by Dwight D. Eisenhower to a celebrity cookbook for a soup containing nasturtium seeds.

 But their utility goes beyond the culinary. Another wonderful book I have in my collection is Roses Love Garlic: Companion Planting and Other Secrets of Flowers by Louise Riotte. I have learned that nasturtiums are a wonderful foil to a whole host of baddies affecting  cucumbers and that they are an excellent way of dealing with aphids attacking broccoli. In this they are among the garden’s martyrs, for it seems they attract such copious quantities of aphids to its own plants that they haven’t time for nearby brassicas.

Our gardens are a riot of produce at this time of the year. The peas we sowed are producing numerous pods. It is a dwarf variety from Italian seedsmen Franchi, called “Piccolo Provenzale”. The individual peas are both sweet and nutty.

 Our French beans are also producing a bountiful crop. Amongst the varieties we sowed was a purple-podded variety from Unwins. They may not have a vast range of exotic vegetables, but their seeds are universally top class.

 Rosie has attempted to emulate the growing practices of the Mexican Indians, by growing runner beans among sweet corn, whose tall shaft supplies support for the beans. She is having marvellous success with this so far. The variety of runner bean she is growing, from Thompson and Morgan, is called “Teeny beany”, while the sweet corn is a new variety from T&M called “Rising Sun”. It was bred with colder climates in mind, and our success with it has only been phenomenal.

 In our Cavan garden Rosie has enjoyed great success with some cherry yellow tomato plants she was given. Already we are enjoying small, bright yellow globes of sweetness and flavour that are just right for salads and sandwiches.

 Bringing on a plant from seed to harvest is a most satisfying experience. In fact I would go so far as to say that it is self-transcending.

I feel it my duty to stand up for broccoli. This vegetable has earned a really bad name, which is utterly undeserved. What most people call broccoli, and what’s sold in supermarkets under the name, is, strictly speaking, not proper broccoli but a variant. It is broccoli calabrese, or simply calabrese, the type of broccoli traditionally grown in Calabria, in southern Italy – the home of the dreaded Ndrangheta who make the Cosa Nostra look like pussycats. This form of broccoli with its uniform dark-green compacted heads is usually served up as an over-boiled, tasteless sludge that revolts everyone, especially children. When I am told in n a restaurant that the vegetables include “broccoli” I know what’s coming, and so it remains uneaten. (It is fine if it is broken into small florets and stir-fired.) The food industry love it because it is cheap and easy to grow, as well as easy to pack and distribute.

 In addition to the calabrese variety there is another variety called romamesco whose heads are a lighter green in colour. And let’s not get into the area of Chinese broccoli.

For me the authentic type of broccoli is known as Purple Sprouting. Certainly it tastes far better than the anaemic calabrese. It also takes a bit longer to grow. Consequently it is far less likely to turn up in supermarkets, or for that matter, in restaurants. It is not some rare exotic that is difficult to grow. Most gardeners will agree with me about its taste, but unless you grow it yourself you are unlikely to know this. Rosie is a devotee like myself of the authentic purple sprouting. A few months ago bought some plants that were labelled as Purple Sprouting Broccoli. You can imagine her dismay and disgust when they grew into calabrese plants that are now producing nice green, firm yet tasteless heads.

Some of the courgettes I sowed in May have started to fruit. Already my mouth is salivating with the thought of freshly-made ratatouille.

Sweet Cicely

Recently the love of my life Rosie acquired some plants of Sweet Cicely (Myrrhis odarata). This is a love plant, with light green lace-like leaves. Its odour is remarkably pungent, being similar to fennel and anise. It belongs to the same family as parsley (Apiaceae) and is distantly related to plants such as caraway and chervil.

 Its resemblance to chervil has led to a crisis of identity in continental Europe. In france3 it is called Cerfeuil d’Espagne, in German Spanischer Kerbel, in Italian Cerfoglio di Spagna, while the Hungarians know is as Spanyol turbolya. These can be translated as Spanish chervil, a name which may owe something to the belief that it originated in Spain. But the confusion is more extensive. A Dutch name is Roomse kervel or Roman Chervil, while the Finns calls is Saksankirveli or German Chervil.

 It was known to the first-century Greek physician Dioscorides and has long been used to add flavour to food and drinks. Allan Davison in his Oxford Companion to Food describes how it has long been an ingredient of chartreuse. What’s more it is also used in Scandinavia to flavour akvavit. Richard Mabey in Food For Free describes one use in French cuisine, where the leaves are coated in a light batter and fried, as well as an old utilisation of the leaves in Cumbria to clean furniture and doors made of oak. Cicely leaves when added to dishes containing very sharp-tasting ingredients like rhubarb, has the ability to cut through the acerbity. There is thus less need for added sugar and indeed the herb can be used in bitter-tasting dishes as a sugar substitute, making it attractive to some diabetics.

Its use as a medicinal plant was never great; Culpeper didn’t mention it. However, the Encyclopedia of Hefbs and Herbalism, edited by M. Stuart, refers to its one-time application to wounds to stop haemorrhaging.

 Check out Gernot Katzer’s excellent Spice pages.

RTE has announced plans for a new five-star travel show, a kind of up-market No Frontiers. It has been inspired by the expensive tastes; some might say gluttony, of our government ministers. Each week the same ugly and incompetent people will zip off to some five or six star resort. They will fly to and from there by a special executive jet, and once there they will dine at the most exclusive restaurants and eat the fanciest chow. They won’t need spending money, because everything will be free. The costs of the journey will be shown to viewers, but these will be so astronomical that no one will be able to afford them. broadcaster toyed with including a “reality” element, where the viewers would vote off each week the most insufferable person, or maybe the biggest glutton, or the one who had spent the most, but they felt that to make the show truer to reality the viewing public would just have to grin and bear it, as it seems the Irish public have to do with their government.

 Really, the cabinet is acting like a crowd who have stumbled on a vast fortune, and are determined to spend it all before they can be caught. Minister Coughlan’s visit to the restaurant in Brussels defies hyperbole though. She got through over forty zakuskis. Now a zakuska is any Russian hors d’oeuvre. It is always served before a meal and is usually consumed with chilled vodka. It can include small pies or blinis with caviar or pickled mushrooms. They are very tasty, but I defy anyone but the greatest glutton to consume more than a dozen. In fact, Mary Coughlan’s consumption was like something from the pages of Gogol.

 She had ikra – caviar. One wonders whether it was Beluga or Ostropolsky or some of that Iranian muck. However I don’t think this is being asked by the hard-pressed fishermen of Killybegs or Burtonport where sturgeon aren’t to be found, but then they’re only catching ordinary common-or-garden fish, just not suitable for Mary from Kilcar’s tastes.

 All of this gluttony takes place far from our shores. Had these ministerial pig-outs happened in Ireland the ministers or their PR lia … handlers could have pointed out that the hotels in question were major sources of employment, using Irish produce. We once had a tourism industry. I think we still do, in spite of the weather. It gives jobs to thousands yet our government ministers seem to dismiss it with contempt.

 There seems to be an obsession with foreign travel. I love travel but I think there is an awful element of one-upmanship and snobbery in boasting about travelling beyond our shores. Our weather is often indifferent, but however much I love La Belle France I’d rather be stung by a bee in Buttevant than by a mosquito in Marseille. What’s more it can be too hot. It’s alright for someone who can make a stab at the lingo, or who doesn’t mind resorting to gestures, but many Irish people, in common with the inhabitants of our neighbour across the “sheugh”, seem dead set against learning even a few words of the local language, holding the opinion that everyone should speak English.

 I beg my readers’ indulgence for this little rant, but I am forced to observe that, thanks to the cuts implemented by this government I won’t be able to afford to go on holiday, even in Ireland. There are still so many parts of the country that I’d love to explore and that I’d love to introduce to my partner Rosie. And as for those making the cuts? They smirk “Wish you were here?!!!” from their luxury suites in foreign climes as they listen to their live pianist.

Recently I was a dinner guest in the Botanical restaurant in the Radison – SAS hotel at Farnham, Co. Cavan, an experience I thoroughly enjoyed.

 The chef obviously understands the importance of balancing ingredients with their unique tastes, textures and appearances. At first these may appear challenging, but the results never fail to impress.

 Fr my hors d’oeuvres I chose a dish of broad beans and forest mushrooms served on potato cakes. This was a true tour-de-force in the art of the ensemble of ingredients. One might say that the broad beans could have been slightly sweeter, and that the promised truffle essence with the potato cakes was an essence in the theological sense, yet the effect was truly satisfying and reminiscent of Autumn, My partner opted for a dish of butternut squash served with pear, which she pronounced excellent.

 For a main course I was truly tempted by so many of the proffered dishes. There was a dish of wild boar and apples, which certainly would have continued the autumnal gustatory atmosphere of the hors d’oeuvres, but I opted for my old friend sea bass, pan-fried in a herb crust and served with salsify, one of my favourite vegetables but alas almost impossible to get unless you grow it yourself. The tender sweetness of the salsify married so well with the almost creamy delicious of the sea bass. Rosie opted for a Venison Wellington, an inspired dish given venison’s similarity – I would say frequent superiority to beef. It was truly delicious. Its one fault, if fault it was, that it left no room for a dessert. This part of the menu showed that it was the equal of the others, and was not tagged on as an embarrassed after-thought, I was tempted by the pear and frangipani tart, but opted in a spirit of timidity for the medley of Italian ice creams served with a pistachio tuille.

 The menu in its totality offered a rich variety of dishes. I was particularly touched by the number of main courses specifically for vegetarians. One element that the framers of the menu might like to include is to mention the location from which some of the items, especially amongst the main courses, comes from. It is always interesting to know that the beef or duck comes from a local producer, while I suspect that many of the vegetables and fruit must also have come from near at hand. Even if some of the items had to come from further away I am sure we are all comfortable enough with globalisation to be comfortable with this. The staff were a true epigone of helpfulness and courtesy. I recall the banter we had concerning what made the selection of ice creams truly Italian!

I read in a recent edition of the Cavan Echo that the HSE (add an IT to it and you get what they are) have reduced the expenses payable to psychiatric nurses and support workers in the community. This is but one more example of the cowardly actions of a bankrupt government, which is actually pursuing a mild form of Nazism through its actions.

Have the expenses which county councillors pay themselves for attending useless junkets been reduced? I somehow feel the actions of a qualified and experienced health professional are more important than the wasteful and self-aggrandizing crap they get up to.

But these are the very scum who are coming around asking us for our votes. No wonder some aspirants want to get onto the bandwagon, Personally, I wouldn’t let any of them round the house. Who’s to say they’re not casing the joint?

In the last local elections I cast a blank ballot for the county council. I was going to spoil it by drawing phallic iconography on the back, or maybe applying labels to some of the “rabbit-in-the-headlights” mug-shots, with pithy yet pertinent legends like “wanker”, “trick”, “bastard”, “thunderin’ eegit”” etc. but I couldn’t be bothered. I’ll probably do the same this time too. Now there are one or two candidates standing who are not turds, whom I like and genuinely respect, but that’s just it. I cannot consign someone I respect to the role of a runner, a mere go-between between the public and an incompetent, arrogant, unaccountable, incompetent and probably corrupt county council executive.

I would like to give a plug to my good friend and fellow bon viveur Anthony P. Vesey. Alas I don’t have a vote in his electoral area but I hope he does well and really gives it up the arse to the blueshirts.

(No doubt there will be some gobsh … readers who will be offended by what I’ve written above. Yippee!!!! While others will have to have it read out to them or repeated third hand before they get offended. I’m sorry but I do not see the value of giving the name of a pearl to a turd.

Continuing with my nettle theme we all know one of the common treatments for nettle-stings – a dock or docken leave, whose cooling juices soothed in principle the worst ravages of nettle-stings – but never seemed to eradicate the pain. Dock-leaves belong botanically to the rumex family. This also includes the common sorrel, often made into a pleasant soup on continental Europe, as well as forming a key ingredient in tart sauce served with salmon in Belturbet’s Rendez-vous restaurant.

Who of us in our lives hasn’t been stung? No, I’m not talking about involvement in a love-affair that has gone tits up, or being caught in a dodgy pyramid scheme, but rather that burning pain that you get on your hands and legs when you fall into long grass and which shows that your body has been penetrated by the horrible little spines of the common stinging nettle.

These beasts can grow up to six feet high. Personally I detest them; they represent decay and rankness. You find them in great abundance in unkempt graveyards and so I believe they are the last, ultimate floral wreath for the dead therein, coming up when all the other flowers have decayed and those interred have been forgotten by friends and family alike.

But my disdain for nettles has never been shared by herbalists. As I have mentioned in my most recent Echoes of the Past in the Cavan Echo an infusion has long been taken against skin rashes. Seventeenth-century herbalist Nicholas Culpeper was loud in his prasies of them. He said that they were governed by the Planet Mars. As medical knowledge in his day was still governed by the classical idea of the bodily humours he said that nettles, as Martian plants, had to share the Martian aspect of being hot and dry. They were a perfect foil for wet and damp conditions “and the superfluities thereunto attaching”, so they were just the job in springtime. There was nothing they couldn’t cure. What’s more he advocated drinking them with wine, a risky piece3 of advice, given that he was writing during the years of Cromwell’s Commonwealth and when the Lord Protector and his agents took a dim view on alcohol. One thing he did not consider them useful for, and indeed he denounced the idea of them “promoting venery in men” ie giving lads the horn, as completely erroneous.

Nettles are delicious food. We picked some last spring on Turbet Island. Rosie froze them and still has a supplyy which she’s going to make into a delicious quiche – which will be eaten by one very real man!