The US saw a new side of Northern Ireland at a festival in Washington DC this week - cuisine, dancing and tolerance, writes Denis Staunton.
Rev Jim Mattison, the cooking cleric, is sweating heavily in the 38-degree heat as he introduces a handful of Americans to the delights of making your own bread and butter pudding.
"I have buttered my dish and I have buttered my stale bread," he announces, as his audience gape in silent horror.
A Presbyterian minister from Poyntzpass, Co Down, Rev Mattison is one of more than 160 craftsmen, artisans, singers, dancers, storytellers, sportsmen and farmers from Northern Ireland who have descended on Washington DC's National Mall for the 10-day Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
One of three focal themes of this year's festival, along with Virginia and the Mekong River, Northern Ireland has created a village of tents showcasing everything from linen-making and Lambeg drums to heavy industry, innovative farming and eel fishing. Stages dotted around the village feature simultaneous performances by pipers, fiddlers, singers, rhymers, mummers, storytellers and dancers and a small playing field on the side allows visitors to try their skill at hurling, rugby and football.
Rev Mattison, who gives cookery demonstrations at home for charity, is on the Tastes of Ulster stage, warning against the use of low-fat ingredients and explaining that he cooks everything at 200 degrees, regardless of what it is.
"I know it looks absolutely revolting and you're saying, 'why on earth would you eat that?", he says, as he displays the mushy, buttery mixture. "I can assure you, it's the nicest thing you'll ever taste. It's full of Northern Ireland Ulster-Scots goodness."
Rev Mattison had just launched into a detailed history of the plantation of Ulster and the origins of Ulster-Scots cuisine when he was drowned out by a ferocious racket from the tent next door.
This was the Sterritt family, Lambeg drum-makers from Markethill, Co Armagh, greeting the North's Minister for Culture, Edwin Poots, with an impromptu display. At the Sterritts' tent, I picked up a glossy brochure from the Orange Order, whose presence in Washington has angered some in the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH).
"They delight in their anti-Irish, anti-Catholic, loyalist, unionist viewpoint and they delight in their sectarian triumphal marches," fumed Jack Meehan, US president of the AOH.
Another AOH man wrote to the Washington Post suggesting that including the Orangemen in the Folklife festival was like inviting the Ku Klux Klan to appear at a Martin Luther King Day celebration.
In fact, the only formal Orange presence at the festival is a couple of historians, David Hume and Jonathan Mattison, who are taking part in panel discussions about Ulster-Scots traditions.
Nancy Groce, the festival's curator, tells me that some Orange Order people thought it would be a good idea to bring over a full band to march down the Mall. She insists that nobody at the Smithsonian, which has full curatorial control of the festival, really gave the idea serious consideration.
"From the very beginning, we said that no one would be marching and no organisation would have its own tent. We didn't want this to become a trade show," she says. "I think there are some very sincere Americans who have a reductionist view of Northern Ireland. Some of these people haven't been to Northern Ireland recently."
Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness didn't object to the Orange presence and he received loud applause at the festival's opening ceremony when he declared that a new era had begun in the North's history. "For decades, indeed centuries, our history was one of conflict, division and war. The war is well and truly over," he said.
McGuinness was one of half a dozen Northern Ministers in Washington this week to use the festival as an opportunity to tell Americans how much Northern Ireland has changed and to try to attract US investment. US politicians and administration officials treated the Ministers's visit as a historic event, and Senator Edward Kennedy said they were an inspiration for all who believe in the democratic process.
"Protestants and Catholics, bitter enemies for decades, have come together to work for all the people of Northern Ireland, and they are making impressive progress toward a shared and peaceful future," he said. "Hopefully, the success they're making will be a model for other troubled lands as well."
For Groce, however, the festival is less about politics and conflict than about enabling Americans to get to know how people live in the North.
She says there was "a wee bit of skittishness" on the part of Northern Ireland officials about some of her choices, such as a couple of mural painters who are painting on makeshift gable walls on the Mall.
She was determined, above all, to avoid projecting the image of Ireland that many Americans have. "This is a shamrock- and leprechaun-free zone," she says. "I'm hoping they'll just chat to people from Northern Ireland when they come here."
Right in the middle of the festival ground is a tent housing Andrew Galvin and Joanne Haire, call-centre operators from Strabane, Co Tyrone. They weren't there on the day the festival opened because their desk had not arrived, but Groce is convinced they will be among the hits of the festival - chiefly on account of their accents.
"It's very hard to get at issues of dialect and accent. They're from Strabane and they train people in how to talk to Americans," she says.
In choosing participants in the festival, the Smithsonian sought to achieve a balance in terms of age, gender and geography as well as between the two communities, but Groce says that any anxiety about how the parties might get along together evaporated as soon as they arrived in Washington.
"Everybody just banded together against the Americans."