Tastes of Dublin 2016
On June 16 this year, fun, some sun, a few showers
and a mix of celebrations and cuisines.
Pat Keenan forgoes a Bloomsday
mustard and gorgonzola sandwich
for World Tapas Day at Taste of Dublin
where he scoffed paella, croquetas and octopus
There was a lot to eat on June 16 in Dublin. |
| Enjoying World Tapas Day on Bloomsday: Kathryn Mc Donnell, Spanish Tourist Office and Pat Keenan, HOLIDAYezine.Photo: Jacinta Mc Glynn, Travelbiz.ie |
It was after all Bloomsday, the day set aside each year to celebrate a stroll through Dublin by the fictional Leopold Bloom on an ordinary day, June 16, 1904, in James Joyce's novel Ulysses.
The tastes of Dublin that day were described by Joyce, for breakfast we are told Leopold Bloom "ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls." We learn that he "liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod’s roes" Hencod as Joycean scholars explain is female cod's roe. The book continues: "Most of all, he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.”
"The feety savour of green cheese"
And for lunch Leopold followed up on his earlier 'fine tang' with a sandwich of "fresh clean bread, with relish of disgust, pungent mustard, the feety savour of green cheese"…that the Joycean will translate as gorgonzola… "sips of his wine (Burgundy) soothed his palate" I decided to forgo my usual Bloomsday traditional gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of Burgandy at Davy Byrnes (www.davybyrnes.com), I swapped my boater for an umbrella and passed on to the Iveagh Gardens, off Harcourt Street, where Taste of Dublin was in full swing. And this year, June 16 was also World Tapas Day. Some years ago Spain’s tourism agency, Turespaña cleverly devised World Tapas Day as as an international celebration of Spain's famed miniature cuisine to be held on the third Thursday in June and so this year bumped into Bloomsday.
The Spanish Tourism Board in Ireland stand was thronged with happy foodies sampling paella, pulpo (traditional Spanish Galician dish of octopus,smoked paprika with sliced potato),and assorted croquetas wines and sherries from The Port House http://porthouse.ie/ and Galicia on the Atlantic northwest corner of Spain - Turgalicia http://www.turismo.gal/portada?langId=en_US
The Irish are no strangers to Spain, annually over one million of us take sunny breaks there and munch our way through thousands and thousands of tapas washed down by gallons and gallons of Spanish wine, beer and cider as I discovered recently in Asturias.
3 Tapas Recipes
Spanish omelette
https://youtu.be/Z_pb1HANSSE
Gilda
https://youtu.be/7UHFh0pXUXY
Bread, tomato and Serrano ham
https://youtu.be/8zmvwMxqZks