Ómós Digest #113: Tropical flavours in Irish cooking
by Cúán Greene
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Le meas,
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Tropical flavours in Irish cooking
After a stint of travelling, every islander north of the equator will feel it — an overhanging gloom induced by the annual farewell of sunshine and with it, a goodbye to its glorious sun-enriched food offerings. My first bite of mangosteen and cherimoya (custard fruit) earlier this summer in Thailand will forever remain imprinted in my memory. Sharp, acidic and sweet all at once, with hints of bubblegum and tropical complexity. It is everything one might look for in a dessert, not to mention a fruit. I can still recall the aromatic flavours and aromas of lemongrass, kaffir lime, fried garlic and fermented shrimp that permeate the streets, leaving one on an unceasing pursuit for the next meal. Similarly, the mouth-puckering freshness of an acidulated Som-Tam salad, spiked with eye-watering heat from fresh green chilli made me comprehend papaya’s purpose in life, or how a squeeze of lime and a scattering of finely diced white onion studded with coriander completely changed my taco experience in Mexico City. Not to mention the Mediterranean’s sun-soaked peaches and apricots, a lemon tart made from 10 local Meyer lemons, or a fresh fig plucked from the tree so ripe it leaves your hands sticky, as if they were brushed with jam. When you eat food with knowledge of its source, it not only tastes how it’s supposed to, but it nourishes you as it’s meant to.
My mother’s been known to take a French melon home in her suitcase. It serves as a glorious gift and an effective way to delay her post-holiday blues. Often in a desperate effort to relive that moment, standing in the fruit aisle of an Irish supermarket, the melons set an unprecedented temptation... “Maybe, just maybe these melons will be as good as the one brought back in my mother’s suitcase.” Of course, following the first bite, hope becomes instant disappointment. What replaces the honey-soaked nectar is an unripe mouthful of chalky banality and a reminder of why the industrialised food system sucks!
In one way these analogies explain why food picked at unknown ripeness, stored for unknown degrees of time and shipped thousands of miles around the world is an ineffective method of achieving flavour and an inadequate means of nutrition. As Dan Cox, Chef of Crocadon Farm and Restaurant in the UK stated at Food on the Edge this year, “Flavour is a clear sign of nutrition, and as nomads, we went in search of vitality”. It also describes why we as people find the burst of citrus, the warmth of chillies, and the tropical flavours of exotic fruits to be so desirable. In fact, ever since the beginning of trade, access to foreign foods became a high-quality luxury one could avail of. However, they have now become a cheap global requirement in what and how we eat.
Over the last decade as a chef I have gone back and forth about what makes up Irish food. My travels took me to Denmark, where I went headfirst into Noma locavorism. At the time it made total sense - to discover what Irish food really was, working in a restaurant where local produce to the point of extremity was championed, seemed appropriate. I remember looking down at restaurants in Ireland at the time using products like mango purées, coconut and passionfruit. But 10 years on, I’m now a little tired of dill. I’m sick of split sauces. There are only so many ways one can manipulate a carrot, potato or cabbage before it gets tiresome. What’s more, I’ve come to understand that local, isn’t a guaranteed certification for environmentally responsible agriculture.
Earlier this week in The Gloss magazine, Katy McGuinness asks, “Does Ireland have a food culture?” She interviews a host of academics and chefs in the know, including Food Historian Regina Sexton of UCC, who attributes Ireland's lack of culinary food culture to poverty. “People were eating to survive, rather than to enjoy.” So if you are trying to recover tradition, you are hamstrung. Instead, you have to consider the recent culture of place, product and cooking.
“If we focus solely on the indigenous food of our past (albeit there are many wonderful things about it) we are at risk of ignoring the diverse community and cooking styles in practice in Ireland right now.” - Cúán Greene, Totally Dublin 2022.
This week, in conversation with my old lecturer, Mairtín Mac Con Iomaire, it’s clear he is aligned with these thoughts. To paraphrase - food is always adapting. Our cultures continually adapt. The traditional food of our land is peasant food, carrying little complexity and weight, which in turn, translates poorly in the context of gastronomic cuisine. If we are to develop our food culture, what needs to be done is to embrace our recent and emerging culture, not necessarily be stuck in the past. This mindset is certainly one I agree with and it reminds me of the article I wrote for Totally Dublin in 2022. I make the point about how immigration has positively impacted the way we eat as a society in Ireland today. In the article, I acknowledge that perhaps traditional foods that many of us identify as ‘Irish’ today, are in fact the food of yesterday. Although I highlighted a route in which Irish food might take, I failed to explain the methodology required to achieve it. I’ll attempt to do that now…
