Artisan foods, and the people who grow, make, and cook them, are the stars of a new company organising culinary tours of Ireland. Deirdre McQuillan eats her way around Galway
Farmer Richard West, knife in hand, prises open the crenellated shell of another plump and sweet Pacific for an eager taker. "Oysters are like wine; the terroir is important - they get their taste from the waters in which they grow," he explains. We are gathered at his oyster beds in Aughrus Bay in Claddaghduff outside Clifden on the last day of a weekend food trail in Galway, getting an introduction to the riveting history of oysters beside their bag and trestle homes. The shucked oysters slip easily down our throats, their tangy seawater taste unmistakably Atlantic. You could eat the landscape, too, on this balmy summer Sunday morning in Connemara.
The three-day trail has seen us hotfoot from encounters with producers of the raw materials, to venues in which to savour the culinary excellence of talented young chefs, and overnight stays in well chosen surroundings such as John Huston's former home, St Clerans, in Craughwell and the Quay House, Paddy and Julia Foyle's award-winning guest house at the harbour in Clifden. A weekend full of good tastes.
There's a whole programme of trails such as this, dreamed up by cousins Eveleen and Pamela Coyle, from Dublin. Both are mothers, with a flair for hospitality and a longstanding tradition of big family meals, eaten indoors and outdoors, prepared with fresh, seasonal ingredients. Eveleen has a background in publishing and editing and is the author of The Irish Potato Cookbook. Together, the pair make having fun seem easy.
Like everybody we meet on the trip, Richard West works hard and is passionate about what he does. Having spent time in the shellfish industry in Brittany, he returned home six years ago to set up Omey Oysters. He now exports 100 tonnes annually to France and the Netherlands. Ireland has a long history of producing quality oysters, he tells us.
"Virginia oysters used to come from the US to Ireland to be fattened then sold on to England. Even today when you see an oyster, it may have been born in Arcachon in France, then moved for fattening to Normandy, then Ireland, then shipped back to Marenne, near Bordeaux, before ending up in Paris. Oysters travel an awful lot." He bemoans the fact that the "phenomenal" riches of the Irish coast have never been fully exploited.
In the bustling Saturday morning market in Galway, however, we marvel at the produce on sale and the harvest from the seas. Stefan Gannet's fish stall offers surf clams, palourdes, mussels, oysters, monkfish (€21 a kilo), brill, sea bass (wild, from Brittany), swordfish, turbot and silver hake, all mostly landed at Rossaveal harbour. Nearby, "freshly caught fairies" (little dolls with herbs) draw smiles from young and old alike.
There are occasional surprises. The previous day, chef Enda McEvoy of Sheridans Cheesemongers, who provides a seafood lunch while Seamus Sheridan expounds on Irish farmhouse cheeses, shows us a forkbeard, a deep-water fish landed at Rossaveal, which he has never seen before.
Keen chefs keep an eye on the market. On Saturday evening at a chic private house on the seashore outside Clifden, the award-winning Cliodhna Prendergast prepares halibut fresh from the market for us. Her dinner menu is determined by seasonal offerings. She's the daughter of the owners of the Zetland Hotel in Connemara, so catering is in her blood, and her style is fresh, light and spicy. She is currently head chef at Delphi Lodge in Leenane, and she won Food & Wine magazine's chef of the year award last year. Her pannacotta dessert made with yoghurt and cardamom, with a necklace of strawberries, wobbles like a blancmange and tastes sublime. One of our group compares it to kulfi, an Indian ice cream.
Multicultural influences are everywhere in Galway. There's a Japanese chef, Hisashi Kumagai, at St Clerans (a Japanese breakfast is included on the morning menu) and one from New Zealand, Jessica Murphy (formerly of Thornton's), in the lovely, intimate Ard Bia restaurant on Quay Street in Galway. Ard Bia's "modern Irish" menu features seasonal produce such as Connemara smoked lamb with pecorino, and seared tuna with marinated feta, among other cross-culinary pollinations. The bread comes to the table in the small terracotta flower pots in which it is baked - a cute touch. Aoibheann MacNamara, the restaurant's zany and stylish owner, also runs an avant-garde art space on William Street, the location for our lesson in chocolate-making from French pastry chef and chocolatier, Benoit Lorge.
Lorge, winner of six medals, including two golds, at the Great Taste Awards in Dublin, tells us all about cocoa, while swirling away at a glistening puddle of liquid chocolate on a polished marble slab, brandishing what looks like a paint scraper in his hand. For those with a weakness for dark chocolate, it is startling to discover that it isn't percentage cocoa content that counts, but the quality of the bean. For gastronomic excellence, nothing beats the criollo, the Rolls Royce of cocoa beans. We try our hand at filling the emulsion into little chocolate moulds, not as easy as it looks. Handling ganache requires panache.
Lorge was in Sheen Falls for five years, and has now set up his own chocolate shop in Bonane, between Kenmare and Glengarrif, producing 50 kilos of handmade chocolates a week. The Irish, he says, are the third highest consumers of chocolate in the world, but what we eat is of poor quality. He's setting standards, and trying to educate local palates.
Saturday's riverside picnic is another mouthwatering experience. En route from Galway, we stop at Oughterard to check out a little village bakery called The Yew Tree. Elizabeth Falden, a tall, handsome Norwegian, came to Ireland 12 years ago to learn Irish, having inherited a love of the country from her seaman father. In 2003 she set up her artisan bakery with partner Teresa Tierney, and now bakes 15 different types of bread daily, from traditional brown sodas to ciabattas and poppy seed plaits, using Irish and French flours, free-range eggs and pure Irish butter.
Around the corner, we meet prize-winning master butcher James McGeogh, the first Irish butcher to train in Germany and the only one in this country air-drying meat. This is a time-consuming process involving handling the product some 50-60 times. So superb is his air-dried beef, lamb and pork that he has just won the contract to supply 25,000 slices for the Ryder Cup. A new factory to cater for increasing demand for his products from Ireland and the UK is nearly up and running.
After sampling his delicious meats and salamis, we set off for the picnic, driving through the heart of Connemara with the majestic Maamturks and the Twelve Bens rising in the distance. On the banks of the Owenriff river, Eveleen Coyle and her niece Jessica, a designer, have set up a gazebo framing a linen-clad table richly spread with an assembly of the best of Irish food products. There are meat, fish, vegetables, salads, chutneys, mayonnaise, cheeses, country butters, fresh fruits and chocolates, alongside fruit juices and wines. As a picnic, it is a class act.
On a small barbecue, James McGeogh's award winning sausages are sizzling away. Everything we eat has a story behind it. The salami studded with pistachio that melts in the mouth is made by Fingal Ferguson, son of the Fergusons of Gubbeen cheese fame, carrying on the family's gastronomic tradition. We are encouraged to taste Janet's Country Fayre beetroot chutney, and learn that when it comes to country butter, the fresher the cream, the lighter the taste. Fly fishermen casting along the bank look on with curiosity but, like the midges, keep their distance.
The whole weekend, which ends with a pub lunch of fresh crab in Guys in Clifden, proves that standards of Irish food are rising, and that culinary tourism, a growing international trend, is a new way of enticing the epicurean traveller.
Food is human communication. "It's not golf and it's not spa, but it shows another side of the country," Eveleen Coyle says. "Food and nourishment, after all, are an elemental part of our lives. We try to show how much is going on, to showcase the quality of what Ireland has to offer and at the same time to make it fun." u
Fabulous Food Trails cover all regions of Ireland and vary in length from one to five days, though the most popular is the three-day trail. Trips can be tailored on request. www.fabulousfoodtrails.ie