Tuesday, March 14, 2006
More Rain, More Bangers & Mash
I can no longer fool myself, shopping in March is incredibly depressing. The weather tends to be
bad enough to make bicycling an unpleasant experience, the vegetables at the market are the same every week and my creativity is at an all-time low. So why bother shopping for nice ingredients if I can't think of any inspiring dinners to cook from them?It was thoughts like this that led me to decide not to shop at all this Saturday. I could just use up the leftovers from the fridge, add a few bits 'n' pieces from the freezer and the cupboard and maybe get a few little luxuries at Marks & Spencer on Grafton Street on Sunday. I was planning on going to the city centre tomorrow anyway and any excuse is a good excuse for checking out this brilliant food hall.
Just in case you wondered, this is the nicest Marks & Spencer food hall that I know in Dublin. I tend to avoid the one in the Jervis Centre. I hate to be a snob there, but to put it mildly, you can tell that the area is not as wealthy as Grafton Street. I normally like to be more blunt, though. In my opinion, the glubs around there are so bad, I might as well stay in my part of the woods. There are more polyester tracksuits on Mary/Henry Street than you could fit in Foot Locker's Flagship store in London and more bad language than on the Internet. Sadly, this is reflected in the state of the Marks & Spencer in Jervis Centre. People put stuff down anywhere but the shelves it's supposed to go on (and there isn't enough staff to tidy up after them), they leave their shopping trolleys wherever they are finished with them, preferably in the tightest isles (I suppose, I should be happy that they haven't adopted the habit of Crumliners to steel them and throw them in the river, which led to the local Tesco asking a €5 deposit), you often have to dodge overloaded housewives and kids running around in the shop, and the cashier to shopper ratio is appalling. In short, a visit there is an unpleasant experience.
But I'm drifting off into a rant again. I should stay focussed on the positive things in life. I did quite well in the poker tournament on Saturday morning. - Another excuse for staying in. I also finally got round to tidying up the sweets cupboard, where much to my excitement I found a whole stollen. And I found, that there was more space left in there than I would have thought. Maybe I should pop up to Meath Street and see what I can do about that? The temptation eventually proved to big to resist and I decided to brave the icy wind and go shopping. And once I was on my bike - yes, you guessed it - I felt magically attracted by that trecherous square that is Temple Bar market. The possibility of scoring some fresh vegetables to replace the ageing stuff in the fridge seemed very real all of the sudden.
Unfortunately, I was fairly late again and Jenny was nearly sold out. I got the usual leaves and roots and a little present for my friends in Germany (which I will talk about next week when I have handed it over, because it looked yummy enough to be worth a mention, but I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise). I also bought some garlic and white wine sausages and some Chorizo from a butcher. The fish man was all sold out and Dennis' things looked no different than what's on offer at my local greengrocer. From an environmental point of view, I don't see the point in buying organic Spanish tomatoes and South African pears rather than not-officially-declared-organic Irish cauliflower and onions. It might be better for my health, but mainly it's better for someone's bank account.
So I kept my money and ran - straight to Meath Street. I got a few more bits at the veggie shop, a bashed-up box of Hoola Hoops (a steal for €3) and one and a half pounds of Dublin Bay prawns from the fishmonger (for another €3, an even bigger steel). Then, juggling bags and boxes, I cycled back home. Just in time to avoid the rain.
We spent the afternoon indoors. It was too cold and wet to go out and we still had tomorrow to explore the city. Dinner was the usual bad weather fare - bangers and mash. In case you were wondering why were are eating sausages so often, it's got nothing to do with me being German, but with the fact that we were starved of good bangers for so long and are now making up for it. Despite their reputation, neither Germany nor the Czech Republic provided us with the sausage selection Lofty was used to from the UK. They might have a long tradition of eating sausages, but as so often in Germany, they lack choice. There is no such thing as pork & leek, tomato or sage and onion sausage, and beef, lamb or game sausages are only available in specialty butchers, which are very rare. You will always get sausages in Germany, but they will generally be variations of the basic Bratwurst or different kinds of hot dogs. There are a few regional specialties, such as the Bavarian Weisswurst that is eaten boiled rather than fried, but that still does not add up to variety. At first we thought that the situation was not much better here in Ireland. But we were soon to be shown the truth. There might not be much of a sausage culture at the butcher's shops in our area, but the likes of Temple Bar Market and Liston's provide plenty of choice, from Beef to Wild Boar and everything in between.
But where was I? Oh, yes, sausages. The garlic sausages were lovely and fresh, so why not have them tonight? I made a light garlic and white wine gravy to go with them and, to add a German touch, two kinds of cabbage. A nice, warm ending to a cold day.
Christine at 10:33 pm
