Joe McNamee: The low season of Autumn is full of boons and bounties
Ceps (also known as porcini mushrooms) are a real autumnal treat but if you're nervous about foraging for wild mushrooms, Ballyhoura Mushrooms' dried ceps work just as well in risotto.
A woman I knew once told me she hated autumn, that it reminded her of approaching death.
I understood her point but couldn’t remotely relate to it.
While I mine joy from every season, I have a particular grá for autumn, especially those brief weeks of Mother Nature’s last stand, a riotous blaze on the trees as green turns to shimmering reds, yellows, gold, and then, finally, mottled brown and threadbare, they fall away, leaving tree trunks and branches dark, stark and skeletal.
It is a time to ready ourselves to hunker down and hibernate through the winter, and if we are privileged enough to have homes, we begin primping the nest, stocking up on comfort.
And if you’re anything like me, that equates to celebrating the bounty of the harvest, and seeking comfort in food.
It is a time of apples.
Crisp, sweet Elstars, an audible snap to each bite, or bitingly tart Bramley’s, baked in shortcrust pies for immediate gratification or reduced down over hours with muscovado sugar and cinnamon to make jars of black butter that will taste sweeter still in December and January.
If you’re lucky enough to own a pear tree, then you’ll be carefully laying them down to eat over the coming months, perhaps with some walnuts — or better still, Irish hazelnuts, if you’re lucky enough to come across them — and perhaps Cashel Blue cheese.
It is a time to store and preserve, to stockpile the foodstuffs that will sustain us over winter.
I’m currently ‘in between’ gardens so will have none of my own produce this year but I’ll still find a day here and an evening there, to work with the harvest bounty of fine local growers.
There is something wonderfully fulfilling about jarring, canning, fermenting, stockpiling for the depths of winter when a regenerating earth yields precious little fresh produce, and opening a jar of preserved tomatoes from the larder in darkest December is akin to uncorking a taste of summer past.
Kale, cabbage, leeks, those more robust green relatives of the fey and foppish summer salad leaves, come into their own, making fine bedfellows in casseroles and stews with recently harvested root vegetables, parsnips, carrots, potatoes, doughty tubers laden with energy to warm the bones.
I find the hoo-hah about spring lamb all rather nonsensical, its callow flavours invariably underwhelming, but after a summer’s grazing the difference is marked, the meat is sweet, herbaceous, especially mountain-reared such as Willie Drohan’s Comeragh Lamb, or even carries a marked salinity in the case of the Calvey family’s salt marsh Achill Lamb — a slow roasted leg with roast potatoes or a hearty stew would get anybody through a month of sunless Sundays.
New season oysters and mussels pop with marine umami while the colder seas yield firmer, fresher fish, though I seem to be more of a fair-weather fish eater, resorting in winter to the greater heft of Provencal-style fish soups and stews, bouillabaisses, and burrides.
Autumn to me is deeply fungal.
One year, at Slow Food Terre Madre, in Torino, Italy, a posse of us took off for the mountains of Piemonte, through the magnificent autumnal landscape and to the truffle fair in Alba, to drink Barbera by the gallon and eat endless bowls of pasta with shavings of fresh truffle.
It became my benchmark for the ideal autumnal experience although I’ve had many that came close much nearer to home.
I love to walk in the woods in the late afternoon, as a feeble sun not remotely interested in working overtime begins to shut up shop for the day.
It is cold, damp, even if it isn’t raining, and that funky, fungal whiff of natural decay is in the air.
The collar is drawn in a little tighter as I start thinking of cosy home and crackling fire, and what I might make for dinner if I’ve been lucky enough to chance upon some chanterelles or a cep — to be honest, if I have ceps, I rarely get beyond a lush, creamy risotto.
Well, if autumn really is death, then it is a most tasty and flavoursome death indeed.
If you’re looking to experience Ireland in all its autumnal glory then I’d highly advise hightailing it to the Mount Congreve Gardens, in Co Waterford, where a walk through the magnificent gardens can be followed by a festive afternoon tea experience (Saturday and Sunday, throughout November and December) in the divinely restored Afternoon Tea Room at Mount Congreve House.
Served up by pastry chef and former EuroToques Young Chef of the Year (2016) Maeve Walsh and head chef JB Dubois, already playing a blinder in the on-site restaurant and cafe, savoury options include roast Feighcullen chicken, Ballyhack smoked salmon, and Lisduggan Farm baked ham.
Maeve’s CV is mightily impressive, including multiple Michelin-starred restaurants, at home and abroad, and the shimmering sweet selection includes berry macaroons, mulled wine-infused chocolate tart, traditional Christmas cake, mince pies and orange peel scones.
- Price: €45pp, optional seasonal warming drink, €10. Early booking essential.
- www.mountcongreve.com
The best harvest bounty is local and the Youth Board of Airfield Estate, Dublin’s food education hub and urban farm, and is campaigning to encourage people to connect with and choose Irish produce over inferior imports.
The Youth Board members, aged 15-19, launched Eire Eats Challenge to foster awareness amongst their own age group of the need to support local and educate themselves about food systems.
- Further details: www.airfield.ie/eireeats
Ballymaloe Foods, producers of iconic Ballymaloe Relish, very much walk the walk when it comes to trying to support local, with founder Yasmin Allen and her daughter, Maxine, especially keen to champion the noble if too often overlooked beetroot.
Ballymaloe Sweet and Spicy Beetroot Slaw is made using locally grown Cork beetroot along with caramelised onion and jalapeño.
And though the tremendous tuber’s earthy notes are still identifiable, the sweet, spicy finish adds a wonderful lightness of being to the whole affair.
A bit of a workhorse, it perks up all manner of sandwiches, rolls and tacos and can make a nice pairing with a good cheddar.
It very much comes into its own with grilled burgers or kebabs, especially good on a recent burger, a very fine meat patty wearing nothing but the aforementioned and Coolattin Mature Cheddar.
