`Lock the doors, bring out the handcuffs." Pierce McAuliffe has a captive audience of a dozen for his light-hearted demonstration of traditional Irish cuisine. His sparring partners in the flow of repartee are his wife, Valerie McAuliffe, and Martin Dwyer. He and Valerie own the Neptune Restaurant in Ballyhack, Co Wexford, a sleepy, scenic fishing town, while Martin owns Dwyer's restaurant in Waterford city. This is the first year the trio are offering demonstrations of dishes such as brown soda bread and boiled bacon; afterwards we will get to eat the delicious-smelling results.
Today's menu includes Glazed Oyster Cut of Bacon, Green Cabbage with Apple and Onion, Champ, Fillet of Salmon Baked in Cream with Cucumber Sauce, Bailey's Bread and Butter Pudding and Brown Bread IceCream. Our green-aproned chefs confess that these dishes are made "modern style": the cabbage is tossed in butter with onion and apple, and the icecream is a bit of a cheat. "It's a traditional Irish meal with modern twists," says Martin, with one of his hearty laughs.
Just as well they include that proviso, because there are questions right away from the audience. "Why are you putting sugar in the brown bread mix?" asks Bernadette Sweeney from Donabate suspiciously. "It counteracts the sour taste of the buttermilk," Pierce replies. Bernadette doesn't recall her grandmother using sugar when she used to bake soda bread in a skillet pot over the open fire in her farm in west Wicklow: "We used to call it a cake of bread. She put sods of turf over the pot. My mother grows flowers in that pot now, out the back door. Everything changed when we got the Rayburn cooker."
Martin notes diplomatically that the word "traditional" almost always results in a row. "I've seen people coming to blows over whether to put carrots in an Irish stew." Meanwhile, Nick Trevor, from London, is delighted with the simplicity of the brown bread mix: "In London every kind of bread you can buy nowadays has sundried tomatoes in it."
We move on swiftly to the business of the bacon. Martin takes it, steaming, out of the pot and cuts off the rind and some of the fat: "I know it's unfashionable but I like to leave on some of the fat." He rubs it with a honey and mustard sauce and pops it in the oven to "crisp the fat and impregnate the meat with the flavour of the sauce."
Valerie throws together a bread and butter pudding in a trice, using buttered currant bread and custard made with free range eggs. The secret, she confesses, is "a good dollop of Bailey's" in the custard and a dusting of freshly grated nutmeg on top of the pudding.
Next we move to the vexed issue of the cabbage. "It used to be cooked in the water the bacon was boiled in," says Valerie. "On Sundays you would `put down' the cabbage before going to mass," adds Martin. "You could be gone for over and hour and the smell was noxious," says Valerie. "That's why a lot of children don't like cabbage."
She chops up cabbage, apple and scallions and "sweats" them in butter in a pan. "Darina Allen does cabbage like this," says Bernadette. "Darina revolutionised the cooking of cabbage for me." Not to be outdone, Pierce retorts: "We gave her the recipe."
Valerie allows us all a sniff of the simmering cabbage so we can find out for ourselves that with this method, there are no bad smells. "Delicious," we all croon obediently.
Pierce is now hovering purposefully over a marvellously dark pink piece of salmon. "This is filleted wild Ballyhack salmon," he announces proudly. Martin explains that farmed salmon just isn't the same as wild, because "they are all in cages and their muscle tone is flabby". Pierce tweezes out the rib bones "to make it easier to carve" and slices up the salmon into "darns." All the fish needs is 10 minutes cooking in the cucumber and cream sauce.
"Have you heard of the American expression `surf and turf'?" (fish and meat dishes) asks Nick Trevor. "Yes, that's what we're having here today, bacon and salmon, a sort of ancient Irish surf and turf," says Martin.
There isn't much left to do now, except a sauce for the bacon (with more honey and mustard, and a bit of cream), and finishing off the champ (steamed potatoes mashed with milk and scallions). We don't get a demonstration of how to make the ice-cream, because that would mean sitting through 20 minutes of "whipping with an electric beater", explains Valerie.
The demonstrations are given on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with the same menu each day (other courses are available throughout the year). "Traditional Irish cooking is cottage cooking, which doesn't give you a great range to choose from," says Martin. "We wanted to concentrate on local ingredients for our first season," adds Pierce. "Waterford is synonymous with bacon and Ballyhack is synonymous with salmon."
Nick Trevor, who is holidaying in self-catering accommodation at nearby Woodstown House with his wife Jenny and son Freddie, (four) is keen to try making some of the dishes. "We cook up all sorts of things every day," he says. "Nick is an expert cook," says Angie Boyall, who, with her husband Charles and son Nicholas (three) is holidaying with the Trevors. "Yes, Nick discovered the secret of not cooking cabbage in water years ago," says Jenny.
But youngsters Freddie Trevor and Nicholas Boyall are not keen to try the cabbage when it appears for our lunch. There are high-pitched moans of "yuck" and "I hate cabbage". They aren't much impressed with the exquisite darns of salmon either, but never mind, we adults consume everything with relish.
Later, over tea, we feel rather full. This Irish cuisine is rather heavy for humid summer weather. But who's complaining? And the recipes we get to take away with us are simple enough even for a duffer cook like me to follow.
The only tense moment is when Bernadette tries the bread: "I'm very sceptical of this brown bread made with sugar," she says, wrinkling her brow. "Oh," she chews with great concentration. "It's actually very nice."
The Ballyhack Cookery Centre can be contacted at 051-389284
