FURTHERMORE
By Gerry Moran
A funny thing happened in the supermarket the other day. Actually, it wasn’t so much funny as strange and it wasn’t so much strange as unusual. I’m doing a bit of shopping and on my list is pepper – white pepper. I’m partial to white pepper, especially on a tomato, a taste I acquired many, many years ago while cutting rushes on the River Barrow and lunching with my workmates on the riverbank – a lunch that consisted of hard-boiled eggs, cooked ham and tomatoes. Tomatoes layered with white pepper, which my workmates were partial to and who introduced me to the ‘delicacy’.
I also love a good sprinkling of pepper on an Irish stew, a habit I acquired from my late father.
And so I wander down the condiment aisle in search of my ‘fix’! Well there were condiments to beat the band but white pepper I could not find. I go in search of assistance and come upon a young man, maybe 18 or so, a few aisles over stacking shelves. “Excuse me,” I say, “but where can I find some white pepper?”
“White pepper? White pepper?” he repeats to himself, just a little puzzled.
“It’s in a little tube about two inches high,” I tell him.
“Mmm. Follow me,” he says and he leads me back to the condiment aisle where the two of us diligently search the battalions of little bottles stacked there. No luck. Another employee arrives, scans the shelves and points to a few tubes of white pepper on the lowest shelf which were not very visible. Then my man turns to me and says: “I never heard of white pepper.”
I cannot believe what I’m hearing. Black pepper he is familiar with but not white. Good God! I grew up with white pepper, the only pepper I knew and only came upon black pepper in my late teens or early 20s. How things have changed. And I don’t doubt but this ‘kid’ never heard of dumplings which I loved in my mother’s stew, seasoned with pepper, white pepper. And I know I’d be at nothing telling him about crubeens (pigs’ feet) which my father used to bring home from Maggie Culleton’s after a few pints in Seán Byrne’s.
And that got me thinking about foods from my childhood which, not just this kid, but my own children know nothing about. I’m thinking of gruel, a watered down bowl of warm porridge laced with sugar for when you were ‘run down’. Similarly with good old goody which is plain white bread in warm milk with sugar and, something perhaps very few people are familiar with, my mother’s speciality – tomato fritters, a fried tomato encased in a pancake. To die for.
I am presently consulting with the chef ie. my wife about introducing my mammy’s fritters into our diet.
Finally, a verse of mine in keeping with this week’s ‘culinary’ theme.
Food for Thought
Presuming it’s true that: ‘You are what you eat’
Will those who eat lamb inevitably bleat?
Will they who on beef and steak like to dine
Develop appearances that are simply bovine?
And what of the man who likes chicken and duck
Is he doomed to waddle and cackle and cluck?
Should pork be your preference when dining out
Will you get floppy ears and a snuffling, pink snout?
If salmon or tuna’s your favourite dish
Will you grow a small fin and swim like a fish?
And the vegetarian will, I suppose,
Sprout cauliflower ears and a carrot-shaped nose.
And what of chop suey, chow mein and foo yung
Will lovers of these look like old Mao Tse Tung?
Will he whose favourite is weiner schnitzel
Talk und valk like Herr Adolf Hitler?
As for curry, souvlaki and frogs’ legs, by gum
Eat too much of those and God knows
what you’ll become.
Yes, presuming it’s true that: ‘You are what you eat’
best steer clear of the cattle and sheep and frogs’ feet
Indeed here’s my advice which I state loud and clear
Eat little or nothing – stick to whiskey and beer!
