The Sausage Season

If anyone thinks this job is a picnic they should have accompanied me yesterday, as I left the comfort of my Sunday morning pit, drove over to Harold’s Cross to collect fellow food scribe Marilyn Bright and plodded down the long and immensely featureless drive to Portlaoise. We were bound for the Craft Butchers Association Speciality Food Contest where we, along with other members of the Irish Food Writers Guild were acting as judges.

This event is the first of what I think of as The Sausage Season – prelude to a succession of similar functions, heats and finals, to determine Ireland’s champion sausage maker. if you haven’t tasted 60 sausages, 30 puddings and 4 drisheen in an afternoon, you haven’t lived!

The first section was a pot-pourri of miscellaneous specialities ranging from pork pies, through pates, vol-au-vents and quiches to a real retro Chicken a la King! We stuck to our task, bestowing a sprinkling of gold and silver medal awards. Afterwards, we had barely time to viisit sections judged by others, noting with particular approval some smoked Angus beef from that fine butcher Whelans of Clonmel, before we had to scrutinise another section, beef and lamb products. There was some very fine eating, notably the ingenious scotch roast, a breast of lamb rolled back on the rib and displayed like a guard of honout – James McGeough of Outerard – we might have known! And we had the pleasure of finding the ultimate overall winner – a wonderful Moroccan spiced crown roast, complete with couscous stuffing from Lawlor’s of Rathmines, Dublin.

A glass or two of Chablis while we speculated on the outcome then it was into a lengthy award ceremony. Then homeward, through the inevitable 5mph crawl through Monastrevin and Kildare.

Home at 8pm to find, for dinner…. rack of lamb! Still, good to know that the future of Irish butchery is in good hands.