Ireland. The land of Guinness, rain, butter, potatoes and music. Probably the best description one can ever give. I already said I’ve been spending Christmas in Ireland for a long time now. Well, except for the Guinness, my Christmas are pretty much those things: rain, butter, potatoes and music. And as far as music is concerned, I couldn’t be happier.

This year was a bit different from others. We always take part in a benefic event on Christmas eve to raise funds for the homeless. Great musicians from Ireland, as well as a band from Galicia (guilty!) lead by Glen Hansard get together in Grafton Street and sing songs for hours to help those in need. This year, due to the amount of people that gathered on the street, we were asked to stop it, which was a very sad moment for all of us.

On the bright side, we were still in Ireland. The music keeps going no matter what. So we went to Whelan’s and sang some songs, celebrating Christmas Eve the best way we could given the circumstances.

But Ireland is not only music, every place on earth is also food. And this year our ferry got cancelled, so we had to take one on the day before. It was great because I knew about the Eatyard. For those who still don’t know about it, Eatyard is a food market in Dublin, located next to The Bernard Shaw. It’s a small but cozy market. All looked amazing, and I’m really sorry it was not open for the whole weekend because it was Chirstmas time.

But let’s talk about food. I went to Veginity and ordered the vegan fish and chips. I love fish and chips and I love trying food makeovers. This one was very good. Chips were nicely done, the “fish” was nice in texture and looked great too. For me, the best was the seaweed, though I would have loved even more on top of that delicious garlicky sauce (I always want more seaweed, what can I say?) The guys also tried BOX burger, but although they rolled the dices, they had to pay for it. They had this game going on in which you could win a burger if the three dices spelled the word BOX, kind of a great idea.
After that, we went to a supermarket to buy Christmas day lunch. In Spain we typically celebrate Nochebuena (which literally translates to “good night” and celebrates Christmas Eve with a family dinner), but due to the busking we have to reschedule it for lunch on the 25th, as in Ireland they, well, we all celebrate Christmas Day with a big family meal.

In the morning, 24th December we all got up early and went for a stroll around the Temple Bar Food Market. Even though it was Christmas Eve, they opened from 10am to 2pm, which allowed us to buy some nice yellow beets for the roast, and seaweed butter from Albernethy butter. Because we were staying just for a couple of days, I didn’t buy the smoked butter, which is in my “to buy” list for next time. I also bought a bean and sundried tomato salad from Lilliput Trading Co. which I’ve been buying for years.

And what about our Nochebuena? It was full of music and…wait for it…potatoes! Oh God, Irish people love their potatoes. They love them and embrace them, and cook them every possible way. They have this places called chippers which basically are places where they serve any kind of fast food, and chips. I think, at first that was the name given to fish-and-chips shops, but I’ve heard too many true Irish people saying chipper for any place with fast food and chips on the menu. Probably the best place I’ve tried has been Abra Kebabra. The first time we went there was a couple of years ago after a long night in Naas, co.Kildare. It was open at 4am, and although they also served kebabs, burgers and other types of sandwiches, everybody had their chips on the table. I saw they served loaded fries, something new for me at the time, which by its pretty descriptive name are potaotes loaded with toppings. My favourite flavour, although garlic and cheese is there to remind me how I love that combo, is taco fries. I know, for a healthy eater it’s not paradise, but you have to indulge sometimes, especially in Nochebuena. At least it’s better for your health than getting wasted…

On the 25th, for lunch, we ate a traditional roast that I cooked. One thing I hate in apartments whenever I travel is their fire alarms. I always end up having problems because of the mist of my humidifier or because I decide to roast gammon on, guess when, Christmas day. The alarm goes off. Yes, but what do you do if a fire alarm goes off and there’s no fire, nor smoke? You open windows and start dancing the towel dance next to it. Towel, slippers or whatever you have nearby that makes the air move. But then it goes off again, and again. And desperate, you call reception and ask them what to do. They told me those are very sensitive devices and they are not only activated when there’s smoke, but also because of the temperature. We had to stay with the windows and doors open for a while, but I cooked my f*cking roast! Nobody tells me not to cook mwahahaha. (Actually a couple of days later, the same happened with some taco fries I did myself, we laughed this time hehe)

Taco Fries (Sílvia’s recipe)

Ingredients (Serves 4)

1 kg of frozen potato wedges

25gr mature cheddar

400gr minced beef

1 onion

1 garlic clove

Salt, black pepper and if you have it, fresh cilantro.

Method

Cook the potatoes in the oven at 175°C until cooked (more or less 20 minutes)

Meanwhile cook the onion and garlic with oil and add the minced meat.

Cook until almost done and then pour over the potato wedges.

Add the cheese on top.

Bake for 5 minutes or until the cheese is melted.

Serve with generous splashes of chilli sauce and chopped cilantro.

Christmas dinner went a little bit better. Maybe because we celebrated it with the great Mr. Casey, our host and Irish family for several Christmas now. He cooks the turkey, Olga cooks the veggies and stuffing (oh god, she knows how to cook), Sonia always gets Italian sweets (I’ve become really fond of having pandoro and coffee after Christmas dinner). Some other years I helped doing other stuff, this year we arrived kind of late, so I just cooked the brussel sprouts, changing my usual recipe a bit.

Ingredients

2 kg of sprouts

4 tbsp of honey

2 tbsp of balsamic or malt vinegar

7 garlic cloves

200 gr pinenuts

Olive oil

Method

Chop the garlic and cook with some oil. You can either boil the sprouts first or simply cook them in the pan. For myself, I usually skip the boiling step, for the Irish family I stick to their preferences and boil them first. Always adapt to the people you are cooking for. Add the honey and vinegar when they are ready and a little bit roasted. Turn off the heat and add the pinenuts. Cover for a minute and serve.

If there’s vegans in the family, you can substitute the honey for agave, maple syrup or even jam. You need sweetness and thickness, so whatever comes to mind (nope, not nutella).

The rest of the days passed kind of quickly. I just remember buying loads of Mic’s chilli sauce for the whole year (man, I love these sauces, and their designs by Steve Simpson are the best) I also remember stopping at a couple of pubs, some of them three times, like Against the Grain where they serve Galway Bay Brewery beer, which are really nice and they have board games and food (sweet potato fries are very nice, and they serve it with Mic’s beer and chilli sauce…perfect combo). We also stopped at the Phoenix Park and cuddled the deer for a while. ^-^

And on the 27th, our last day, we went to Temple Bar to get a Crumble from Queen of Tarts…oh no wait! We didn’t because it reopened on the 28th. My world died for a couple of hours, time that I spent researching where could I buy a crumble when almost everything was closed. The thing is I needed to buy a crumble. Last year, after being in Dublin for a while, our great friend Georgina (which we terribly missed this year) bought a crumble from Queen of Tarts in order to take it to my aunt’s house in London. It was so good, Carlos and I wrote a song for it. Yes, that good. This year I really wanted to bring them back the same stuff, but we had to buy it in other place. I must say it was delicious, yet not the same…but at least we found a crumble in time.

And in a boat we got to Holyhead and travelled Wales and England to arrive in London.