Wet, Windy, and Irish

Last night the rain pelted the bedroom window and the wind beat against the flimsy 80s building construction of our apartment. Sleeping inches from the window and wall I felt as if the rain and wind were massaging me to sleep. Luckily, the bedroom was warm and dry, but the weather transported me to the last time I felt so close to the weather. Shortly after I graduated from college I had the audacious idealistic idea to test my ability to live off the grid. Having spent my senior year learning about the environmental crisis and the extent to which the American infrastructure and lifestyle is unsustainable and feckless, I decided I would build a humble dwelling that could supply it's own energy, water and waste. I am fortunate enough to have a small plot of family land that is uninhabited in the northern rural country of the Republic of Ireland. From the dry, sunny, desert chaparral-coastal highland climes of Los Angeles' Inland Empire I resettled in the windiest portion of Europe and an island I'm convinced literally floats in the North Atlantic; it is so thoroughly soaked from top to bottom in water.

When I arrived on the land I found a derelict old historic stone farmhouse. Keeping in accordance with the low-impact project goal, I decided (along with my colleague) to renovate the farmhouse instead of building something from scratch. The corrugated tin roof had been rusted through and large holes were gaping along the rotted rafters. The plaster walls were covered with mold and the shoddily linoleumed cement floor was peeling all over. In order to dry out the room for repairs, we had slung a large blue tarpaulin over as much of the roof as it would cover and secured it with rope around large stones and heavy timber. Fortunately, we had brought a large tent with us that we set up amongst the debris. While rain on a tin roof may be romantic, rain on a tarpaulin is menacing. The angry windstorms that often plagued this time of year in Ireland would drag our heavy stones along the undulating roof all night as the gaps in the tarpaulin would rise and slam down on the tin the rain driving needles against the whole fiasco. The thin nylon tent would test the flexibility of its poles as it heaved to and fro with the wind blowing through the broken windows and large holes in the roof. We were lucky the whole thing didn't come crashing down on us.



The memory last night put a smile on my face. But what does this have to do with food? On a serious budget in Ireland, we had begun making small fires from wood and whatever else we could find in the driest corners of the house, straight on the cement floor. Letting the wind whip the smoke out windows and the roof, we would huddle around our precious baby as we watched a tin can brown in the center. Within that can would be our 75 cents of "Irish Stew". The meal was offensive, globs of fat suspended in what looked like brothy mashed potatoes and always over-salted required so much work that it was strictly its warmth and heaviness in the stomach that made it satisfactory. We slowly would turn the browning can with needle-nose pliers until we could eventually prize open our food.

A couple weeks ago, as the weather had first begun to turn here, I kept that canned stew in mind and since Ryan has rarely experienced the cuisine of the British Isles (cough cough). I decided to make a version of the Irish stew I had so laboriously fawned over while crouched in the corner of a stone house. On a matter of culinary principle though, I refused to use white pepper. The stew was hearty and delicious. A perfect version of my own comfort food. A stew that would pair nicely with a glass of whiskey perhaps with some coffee. Looking out of the apartment at the rain and cold, it was the perfect bowl to hug.

Of course, I replaced the globs of fat with chunks of mutton. I sauteed the mutton in fat, though before adding the other ingredients. For once, I had to do most of the grocery shopping because as I watched Ryan trying to read all the labels on the produce looking for parsnips and turnips I was afraid we'd be shopping for hours. We decided to make the stew luxurious and bought fingerling potatoes from the farmers' market and used bulk yukon golds for the base. Otherwise, chopped carrots, parsnips, turnips and onion rounded out the rest of the ingredients. Simple. Watching my salt use, I balanced the taste with black pepper and spiced with parsley and thyme. I made sure to play Simon&Garfunkel's Scarborough Fair just for effect.



Delicious, warm and hearty, the stew froze and reheated really well.