Travels in Ireland

It is little wonder that Irish legends are tied so closely to the land and nature. Walking one of the many trails in and around The Burren, you could imagine yourself in another place and time, perhaps asleep under a tree for decades and covered by moss.

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Or trapped by the fairies in a stone wall.

Even the livestock contributes to the feeling. Don’t these cows look like they are about to drop a hot new album?

And these goats on Inishmore could be from a half dozen different fairy tales.

All this before we even get to the majestic Cliffs of Moher, a.k.a. the Cliffs of Insanity if you are a Princess Bride fan.

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Up the coast a bit, the views when walking in Connemara National Park are also pretty spectacular.

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Then there’s the area around nearby Kylemore Abbey.

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Various towns in Western Ireland are noted for traditional music in the pubs, including Doolin, near the Cliffs of Moher. Somehow, although I have many pictures of everything around Doolin, I do not have pictures of the town itself.

We made up for the lack of photos of Doolin when we got to Westport, where we spent several more evenings listening to live music. There really is nothing quite like having the entire pub join when the two older gentlemen who are the evening’s entertainment start on The Fields of Athenry.

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To avoid giving the impression that the entire town of Westport is taverns, or that all we did was visit the taverns, here are a few more pictures from walks in and around town.

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So, let’s talk about food. We had some great meals, including one excellent dinner made even better by the outstanding service at Restaurant Gemelles in Galway (http://www.gemelles.com/). While recognizing that there is so much more to Irish cuisine than potatoes, I’m going to end this post with a potato recipe, specifically boxty. With apologies, there’s even an old rhyme about Boxty:

Boxty on the griddle, boxty in the pan
If you can’t make Boxty, you’ll never get a man

Phaidon’s “The Irish Cookbook” includes a recipe for boxty that involves buttermilk, flour, and baking powder, in addition to the mashed and grated potatoes. That recipe also explains that the most common way of making boxty is to mix mashed potato, grated potato, and flour. I tend to be more of a purist about potato products, so I am working on a version of boxty that includes nothing more than mashed potato, grated potato, salt, pepper, and lots of butter for frying. It happened that I had two very large Yukon gold potatoes, think bigger than most Idaho bakers, so I mashed one of those and grated the other, and it would have been enough for three people. Choose the amount of potato according to your needs, and add salt and pepper to taste.

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