County Kilkenny, or Liv­ing the Dream

It’s hard to believe, in the cold light of a Lon­don Mon­day, that we were ever in the delights of the Irish coun­try­side with noth­ing more to worry us than how many apples to pick from the orchard behind the cas­tle! This morn­ing finds me dis­cov­er­ing that we for­got to go to a con­cert for which I had really good tick­ets last night (good hard thwack on fore­head), com­ing to terms with the fact that my pass­port expires in six months and there­fore I need to go queue up at the wretched Amer­i­can Embassy and get it renewed. What’s more, the school appli­ca­tions that were on my desk when we left are, for some curi­ous rea­son, still there, blank as ever. And some dreaded long divi­sion has appeared in Avery’s home­work, so we all have lit­tle worries.

How­ever. The fact remains that a week ago today, we woke up in Dublin, checked out of our lovely hotel, and hit the roads to Co. Kilkenny in a blind­ing rain­storm. The rain fol­lowed us through the coun­try­side, pass­ing road signs of dreamy romance: Co. Cork, Lim­er­ick! Avery and I amused our­selves by try­ing to trans­late the Gaelic into Eng­lish, watch­ing as the greener-than-green scenery flashed by. We had lunch in a dar­ling lit­tle town called Abbeyleix in Co. Laois, just off the motor­way, at Cafe Odhran, a tiny lit­tle estab­lish­ment that winked out of the rain. Avery ran to do recon­nais­sance on the place and returned to say breath­lessly, “There’s a soup of the day, which must mean it’s a nice place!” Lovely panini of pancetta and a local Irish Brie called Bal­la­colla, very flavour­ful and sharp and worth an order from here, and then Avery was des­per­ate for a pud­ding but too shy to ask for it, prob­a­bly because of her scratchy throat, but we per­se­vered and finally she got her apple crum­ble. Then we were back in the car which was, by the way, com­pletely packed to the gills so that Avery was squashed under books, pil­lows, rain­boots, etc.

An unevent­ful drive until we reached Kilkenny at which point the direc­tions from Land­mark Trust were, let’s see, laconic at best. I have a pet peeve about direc­tions that say “fol­low the Thurles road,” as opposed to “make a left on Route 639.” How do I know which road is the Thurles road? So back and forth in the mist along one 5-kilometre stretch of road look­ing for “church ruins on your right,” grrr! Finally we repaired to a tacky fur­ni­ture store to ask real direc­tions, and the sweet pro­pri­etor had use­ful bits of advice like actual mile dis­tances and road signs. We passed through dar­ling lit­tle Fresh­ford, the near­est vil­lage, and I was thrilled to spy a series of tiny shops and, most won­der­fully, a butcher! I made a men­tal note to return for pro­vi­sions. And we were finally off in the right direc­tion, and there were church ruins, as it turned out OUR church ruins! And imme­di­ately after that, Clo­man­tagh Cas­tle looked huge and dark in the distance.

We were greeted by the ulti­mate in Irish hos­pi­tal­ity, the house­keeper Mrs But­ler, who threw open the Dutch door and let out a waft of warm peaty air, the dul­cet tones of Irish radio float­ing with it. “Sure and you’ve made bet­ter time than I thought you would, and this bein’ a nasty rainy day for it,” she said, and gave us a tour of the cas­tle, up and down wind­ing ancient stone steps, around mys­te­ri­ous cor­ners, fling­ing open this and that bed­room door. “Now this is the blue room, and it’s said the ghost, a lovely kind one to be sure, is to be found here most fre­quently,” so imme­di­ately Avery claimed that room (although her enthu­si­asm waned a bit at actual bed­time). John and I chose the only bed­room in the cas­tle proper, the oth­ers being in an ancient farm­house addi­tion attached to the cas­tle itself. The kitchen was huge and intensely warm, with a mas­sive Aga-like Irish Stan­ley stove on one wall and a cosy deep cush­ioned win­dowseat next to it. “I know that’s where I will be read­ing,” Avery gloated.

We let our bub­bly host­ess go home, set­tled in a bit and then headed to Fresh­ford to get food, since noth­ing makes me more ner­vous than an empty fridge and empty cup­boards. We repaired to “M Bergin, Vict­ualler,” and found our­selves served by a lovely, shyly friendly young butcher. I was in my usual posi­tion when speak­ing a for­eign lan­guage (and Irish Eng­lish is def­i­nitely a chal­lenge, how­ever much the illu­sion that’s it’s Eng­lish): I ask a ques­tion that’s per­fectly under­stood by my lis­tener, and then… I can’t under­stand a word of the answer! Case in point. “That looks like lovely pork. Where do you get it?” And a stream of lilt­ing mys­tery came back at me! So I smiled encour­ag­ingly and asked for a pound of stew beef, chose a nice green cab­bage, some mush­rooms, cel­ery, onions, pears and apples from the boxes off to the side of the butcher counter, and departed in a soft flurry of indis­tin­guish­able communication.

Thence in turn to each of the lit­tle gro­cery stores around the vil­lage square, over­hung with yel­low­ing trees and bright green grass. One shop was tended by a sweet elderly cou­ple, she with a per­fect Lady Bird John­son bee­hive lac­quered hairdo, and he pleas­antly deaf and smil­ing. There we acquired but­ter, milk, salt and pep­per, herbs, apple juice. Onto another shop where we found bread, spaghetti and tinned toma­toes, and then I felt safely pro­vi­sioned and could go back to the cas­tle to set­tle in.

Avery was in heaven to dis­cover that in the sprawl­ing lawn out­side the house, actu­ally between the cas­tle and the church ruins, was a pair of horse jumps! “Some­one must have rid­den cross-country here!” she exclaimed, and was per­fectly happy to go rac­ing across the wet grass in her school shoes, promptly soak­ing her­self to the skin, the per­fect posi­tion for a per­son recov­er­ing from a bad cold to be in. Into the house to sit by the stove and dry out. And I had my first expe­ri­ence cook­ing on a stove that’s peren­ni­ally ON. Over the next sev­eral days I had the MOST fun devel­op­ing a rela­tion­ship with the var­i­ous strate­gic heat sources. For those of you who have cooked on an Aga or a stove like it, this will be old hat. But for me, it was like putting together the pieces of a puz­zle to fig­ure out how hot it would be under the heavy iron lid if I just opened it for a minute, or if I left it open for 10 min­utes, and then there’s the lit­tle rec­tan­gu­lar space to the side of the burn­ers that holds a bit of heat slightly above warm, but not hot enough to get above a lit­tle siz­zle. Such fun.

I deter­mined to cook noth­ing all week that Irish peo­ple wouldn’t tra­di­tion­ally eat, and thank­fully I had bought at the Geor­gian Museum in Dublin a tiny book­let of tra­di­tional Irish recipes. But the ovens? For­get it. I could never get them cool enough to put any­thing in with­out burn­ing it, even with a lid. So the beef stew we had the first night was a bit less liq­uidy than yours will be, in a reg­u­lar oven whose tem­per­a­ture you can con­trol better.

Irish Beef Stew
(serves 4)

3 tbsps but­ter
1 pound beef cubed for stew
1 white onion, sliced thin
2 hands­ful small but­ton mush­rooms, cut in half
1/2 cup beef stock from bouil­lon cubes
good splash Irish whiskey
good pinch dried thyme leaves
good pinch “mixed herbs“
salt and pepper

Melt the but­ter in a good heavy casse­role (the cas­tle yielded a le Creuset) and over fairly high heat saute the beef and onions until the onions are soft, then add the mush­rooms and stire well. Cover with stock and whiskey, add herbs and sea­son­ing and cover. Place in not-too-hot oven for about 20 min­utes. Serve with:

Col­can­non
(serves 4)

3 tbsps but­ter
1/2 white cab­bage, shred­ded
3 green onions, sliced
4 boiled pota­toes
1 cup-ish cream
salt and pepper

Melt but­ter in a heavy skil­let and saute cab­bage and green onions, then set aside. Mash the pota­toes with the cream and mix into the cab­bage. Sea­son well.

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These two dishes were LOVELY together, and we invented a nice left­over dish from them as well, which was a per­fect lit­tle lunch for John next day.

Sally the Ghost’s Cas­tle Pie
(serves one)

left­over beef stew
left­over col­can­non
bit of butter

Put the left­over beef stew in an oven­proof dish and top with left­over col­can­non. Dot with a lit­tle but­ter. Bake until warmed through.

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Sally the Ghost, you ask? Yes, indeed, she appeared first time as I was cook­ing din­ner and set­ting the table. I reached into the sil­ver drawer for three forks and was JUST think­ing, “I need a small one for Avery,” when I looked down to see that all there was in the drawer were… two large forks and one small. No doubt the work of the ghost whose pres­ence we read of in the Irish Land­mark Trust log­books, one of our favorite bits about stay­ing in an LT house. Every­one who stays leaves sto­ries of their adven­tures, and Sally popped up in many accounts. Later, Avery left her a note of thanks and an invi­ta­tion to help her­self to an apple should she feel peck­ish, and in the morn­ing there was an apple with sev­eral bites from it, atop the note. Proof pos­i­tive if ever we were in doubt.

Well, sadly the Embassy beck­ons, so I must go do my paper­work. Avery is hap­pily ensconced mak­ing a black felt witch from a kit her lov­ing Nonna sent her in the post, and I have no excuses to post­pone my duties. More on life in the cas­tle soon…