It's Not That Inspiring

Farmleigh Market

Wine & Cards in the Sitting Room

After a long day in her professional kitchen, Sarah, wife, mother and co-owner of the Gallic Kitchen (shop owner, farmers' markets vender and café supplier), transitions from preparing and baking her savory pies and sweet tarts to the house kitchen where she begins cooking the evening meal for her family of four as well as the additional eight or so HelpXers living in the house.  At this time, we HelpXers are sent to the sitting room with a bottle of wine to sit in front of a warm fire and chat about our days, lives, hopes and dreams or to play a couple of hands of cards.  The next hour or two allows Sarah and her husband Patrick some uninterrupted family time with their eight your old son, Arthur (“Artie”) and ten year old daughter, Florence (“Flo”). 

When dinner is ready, usually between 9:00 and 10:00, we file into the large kitchen/dining room, set the table and breath in the delicious smells of whatever Sarah has prepared.  The first night we were here in Durrow, dinner consisted of salad, roasted potatoes (we’re either in Idaho or Ireland given the amount of potatoes we eat!), and a tender and juicy lamb chop with a tasty mint sauce.  Now, when I say mint sauce, don’t you dare envision our American hyper green colored gelatinous mint jelly because this is NOTHING like that!  For those of you who have had Baby Bird’s chimmichurri, picture mint as the herb, no spice and a little sweet.  I am on a mission to perfect a mint sauce of my own.  Side Note: after many requests, stay tuned for a rough recipe for Baby Bird’s chimmichurri.  I say rough because I do not do tsps and cups; I do flavor and consistency and the level of spice for each batch depends on my mood!

Regardless of the tastiness of Sarah’s meals, the obvious problem with the current dinner situation is this: when exactly does Sarah get to change gears from go, go, go, always in charge and sit down, relax with a glass of wine, and enjoy the precious hour or two with her children and husband?   So, naturally, we boldly offered to assume the dinner making responsibility whenever Sarah wanted to break her daily routine and, what was that?  Take a break? 

Roast Chicken and Root Vegetables

Two nights later, Sarah cashed in her get-out-of-jail-free card and passed the torch to Jonathan.  Needless to say his crowd pleasing, and my personal favorite, meal of salad, roasted chicken, root vegetables (this time being parsnips, rutabaga, and carrots), and homemade gravy was a hit!  In addition, we were able to teach a few HelpXers how to properly roast a chicken and introduce two or three to the wonderful world of parsnips.  When asked what a parsnip looks like, I always flash back to a book I read as a child entitled Bunnicula about a bunny who by day is a cute, loveable, furry pet but by night is a wily and conniving vampire bunny who sinks his fangs into helpless vegetables and sucks them colorless.  A parsnip looks like a carrot after Bunnicula has finished with it.  Never read the book?  I have yet to find anyone else who has so don’t start questioning your childhood literary exposure yet.

Anyway, Jonathan’s meal went down so smoothly and deliciously, in fact, that then next day immediately brought a discussion of what Jonathan was making for dinner that night!  The truth is, while Jonathan’s chicken dinner was amazing, crispy skin and all, judging from the smile on Sarah’s face while for once only juggling a glass of house white and conversation with Flo, I think that first and foremost she was grateful for her gift of down time.  Glad to help, we’re here all week!  Ok, more like four to five weeks.

Grateful for Jonathan agreeing to cook dinner two days in a row, and being the generous and considerate hosts that they are, Patrick and Sarah didn’t want to add the burden of having to devise a cost effective meal for thirteen (the children had two playmates for dinner), so the following day came with a menu suggestion: Irish fish pie.  Here I am, a berry pie lover, a Dutch apple pie lover, a stone fruit pie lover, slowly becoming more open and accustomed to the idea of savory pies (Sarah makes a delightful duck confit pie), but I gotta tell ya, the idea of a fish pie did not get my glands flowing. 

Having never made or eaten Irish fish pie, or any fish pie for that matter, my curious and knowledge hungry husband hit the books.  From what he could gather from an Irish recipe book and a few dodgy online recipes, Irish fish pie seemed to be a variation of shepherd’s pie (brown your mince (ground meat), add peas, carrots, onion, spread on the bottom of a baking dish, cover with gravy, top with mashed potatoes and cheese, and bake).  I repeat.  Mashed potato topped fish, not inspiring.  Nevertheless, Jonathan accepted the challenge and sallied forth telling me to trust him, he’ll make it tasty.  Alright, fish pie it is.

I thinly sliced and sautéed two large leeks and a couple of slices of streaky bacon (belly bacon as opposed to back bacon) while Jonathan peeled the potatoes and set them to cook on the stove.  We then cut the various fish into bite sized pieces: cold smoked salmon, fresh haddock and a couple of other white fish filets.  He lightly poached the fish in a liquid of water, wine, onion, salt, lemon juice and herbs while I steamed some green peas.  Jonathan’s next move was, in my adoring opinion, a little bit of crafty culinary genius.  Using the now somewhat reduced poaching liquid as a base, he added milk, nutmeg and black pepper (channel light béchamel) and to cater to our gluten free HelpX friend, Muriel, instead of thickening the sauce with roux (oil/butter and flour), he thicken the sauce with mashed potatoes!  Now that we had our mise en place, it was time to begin layering: fish, bacon, leeks, green peas, sauce, mashed potatoes, light sprinkle of leeks for crispiness, and into the oven.

As everyone knows the creamy, rich marriage created by the union of the bland but substantial potato and the sharp but flavorful leek, is a promising start to any dish.  Needless to say, upon pulling the delightful smelling dish out of the oven and tasting the baked potato and leek topping, my spirits were lifted and I thought, ok, this fish pie business has potential. 

Fish Pie!

One by one, we each dished out a serving of fish pie and salad and found our seats at the table.  With a forced open mind, I forked a bite of fish, mashed potato and stabbed a few peas and hoped for the best.  I do have to admit, while the texture of mashed potato and poached fish and steamed peas offset only by a few crispy leeks was not the most stimulating, the flavor of PigWizard style fish pie was not as bad as I envisioned, bordering on pretty darn good!  The rest of the table, some skeptical and some excited for the meal, nodded their heads in mutual consent of a job well done. 

Upon asking Sarah for a critique on how this fish pie would stand up to tradition fish pie, she said that the main differences were that traditional Irish fish pie is made with béchamel as the sauce (richness) and one of the layers should be mashed hardboiled egg (texture), which Jonathan had noted in the recipe search and accidentally forgotten to add (thank God, in my opinion), but all in all, he had done very well!  Even ten year old Flo, who apparently does not typically like fish pie emitted several shouts of, “Delicious!”

Pleasantly surprised by the overall flavor and rather enjoying the smokiness of the fish and the potato-leek combo, I worked through my meal only to ultimately decide, along with Jonathan, that we probably do not need to ever eat fish pie again!