There have been a few excellent readings so far.  Fiction writers Claire Keegan and Kevin Barry, who read in different programs at the Town Hall Theatre, were two of my favorites.  Claire Keegan read an excerpt from her story “Foster”, which won the Davy Byrne Irish Writing Award, offered by the Dublin pub made famous by its place in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Five women writers were among the six short-listed for the 25,000 euro prize. Richard Ford was the judge.  Keegan’s story is about a young girl who is sent to live with an older couple, the Kinsellas, for a time.  The complexity of the relationships in this coming-of-age story are defined by Keegan’s beautifully discriminating prose and the tension and anxiety which are threaded through the  story.  In the Q & A after, she described her slow, meticulous writing process, which has seen her go through as many as thirty drafts on a story.

Kevin Barry’s story, “Fjord of Killary” is told by a character who has bought an old hotel on Ireland’s only fjord, in a remote quarter of the west coast.  The narrator had hoped to balance the pleasant  life of a hotelier with his efforts to work on his poetry, but a recalcitrant Byelorussian staff and the needs of a cast of curious locals frustrate him.  And disaster looms when a furious storm unleashes fabulous amounts of rain and the fjord threatens to engulf the hotel.  Barry had a way of dramatizing his fiction when I saw him read a few years ago when his collection There Are Little Kingdoms was published, but  his presentation was really hilarious when he read this comic piece, which appeared in February in The New Yorker.  It was wonderful but it did sort of raise the question for some of whether, because Barry is obviously aware of and enjoys his performative strengths, he doesn’t risk turning the act of writing into the production of a script for performance.  Whatever, he’s very talented and he’ll sort that out.

Keegan’s stories have appeared in two collections–Antarctica and Walk the Blue Fields. “Foster” appeared in The New Yorker and is in a recently published  anthology of the shortlisted stories from the Davy Byrnes contest.  That book doesn’t seem to have appeared in the U.S. yet, but you can read both “Foster” and “Fjord of Killary” in their entirety on The New Yorker website.

Turkey with Green Mole

prepared by Dani

Well, first off I didn’t find organic turkey cutlets but chicken is a good substitute as far as I’m concerned so this recipe became Chicken with Green Mole.

After chopping up the veggies and cooking them and toasting your pine nuts…

blend it all together in a food processor with the chicken broth.  I think it was at this point… when I was done with the hotplate and Carmen started to heat her butternut squash (not a part of our Cookworks Blog) that the smoke alarm went off.  It was crazy!  I’ve never heard an alarm like that.  It actually spoke… something along the lines of “Fire. Please Evacuate.  Fire.”  It beeped a lot too, but Carmen opened the door and some window and after much fanning, quiet was restored.  So, we went back to our cooking.

Since we were taking turns on the little stove, I used the mole as a salsa for tortilla chips until I could cook up my chicken boobies.   Delicious!After eating a million chips dipped in my mole Carmen and I decided to split a helping (the picture above)  but we went back instantly for seconds.  The chicken was okay, but the mole made it.  I’m totally making this again in the summer when I can grill the meat.

Walnut Grain Burgers

prepared by Suzanne

These were really good, Walnut Grain Burgers! Well so as usual I changed it up a little.I always think of walnuts having a slight bitter taste to them so I used pecans and almonds instead. I did not make as much as they said… thought ten burgers were more than I needed last night. I used two cups of cooked brown rice instead of the two cups of instant brown rice they asked for which would have doubled the amount. Just happened to have left over rice in the fridge. Cooked up the carrot and onion in a little bit of water until soft since I wasn’t making the rice the way they suggested and then blended it all together… same in the end. Went to Bartlett’s Farm and bought these great gluten free rolls that Randy Hudson turned me on to… Against the Grain and instead of lettuce I used arugula. I’ll do these again but I still have bad thoughts about those Black Bean Brownies from last week…ugh.

By the Museum: Where the Corrib River meets Galway Bay

The Spanish Arch

The legendary Druid Theatre, in Druid Lane

Roddy Doyle opens the Cuirt Festival 2010

The Cuirt Festival opened Tuesday evening at the Galway City Museum beside the River Corrib with remarks by Padraic Breathnach, Director of the festival,  the Deputy Mayor, members of the Arts Council and the main speaker, novelist Roddy Doyle.  It’s always a great evening of wine and talk and the weather was beautiful.  In fact, in the two weeks I’ve been in Ireland there hasn’t been a drop of rain on me.

From there we proceeded to the Town Hall  for the opening readings with Booker Prize winners Roddy Doyle and Anne Enright.  Mary Gaitskilll was supposed to be on the bill with Doyle, but she was among the missing on the wrong side of Eyjafjallajokull’s ash cloud.  A number of Irish writers have come to stand in for the stranded foreigners, so the international flavor of the festival is  muted this year.  The New Yorker has partnered with Cuirt  and is sponsoring three fiction readings, each with two writers, one Irish and one from elsewhere.  This was one of those readings, with Doyle and Enright each reading one of their recent New Yorker stories.  After the reading the two generously  stayed on stage for about 45 minutes taking questions from the crowd.  After that we went off to the Hotel Meyrick, whose Oyster Bar is this year’s festival club location.

Hours later I come to work and open a box of books to receive and what do I find?… Think Again by JonArno Lawson.  A collection of poems for young adults.  It all just fit together so tightly that I couldn’t possibly chose another subject.

I would like to point out that the book isn’t written by a young adult, but for young adults and that it’s not a total Debbie Downer… it has poems of all kinds.

Wide Awake

Wide awake and worried, and wondering what

to do:

Do I don’t I will I won’t I wonder so, and so

Would you if you were me I wonder though

If I would worry just as much, if I were you.

a good place

on any given day whether you are

feeling good or standard or bad

you can sit in this place

among the docks

and pick yourself out a spider

crab for $1.20 a pound

fresh and live

they will cook it for you

and you take a wooden hammer and a piece

of newspaper

to a slivered wooden table

and watch

the commercial fish boats

docked there

while you crack your spider crab

and eat it

in the sun

and suck at your beer

while the people around you are easy

and normal and tired.

yeah.

hammer that

spider crab

while the sun shines through the

beer.

—Charles Bukowski

Philip MacDermott’s Sherry Trifle

After a skyped recipe query from his daughter Cláir of Nantucket, my host in Malahide, on the sea just north of Dublin, Philip MacDermott, decided he should whip up a sherry trifle for his sister’s visit.  It was only after it was finished that I realized I should have photographed the stages of preparation for a Cookworks entry.  But anyway, with only the finished product to view, here’s Philip’s recipe.

In a flat-bottomed glass bowl or square dish about 4″ deep, place an inch-thick layer of sponge cake.  Slather that with a layer of jam (flavor’s your choice; Philip used strawberry) and cover all with another inch-thick layer of sponge cake.  Now soak all of the sponge cake with 125 ml. (a bit over 4 ounces) of sherry (this one got Amontillado).

Over this now layer approximately 12 ounces of either fruit from canned fruit cocktail drained of its syrup or a mixture of your own freshly chopped fruits. Cover all of this with 12 fluid ounces of flavored gelatin or Jell-o (Philip’s choice again was strawberry) and leave it to set.  We left it overnight, but it will usually be firm in a couple of hours.

When this is firm, cover it with a one-inch layer of custard.  And finally, cover the custard to near the top of the dish with whipped cream.  This last I suppose might be optional.  Whatever, the Sherry Trifle now sits there beckoning you–well, challenging you, really.  Enjoy, as they say.

]]> http://nantucketblogworks.com/2010/04/20/a-cookworks-offering-from-dublin/feed/ 0 Bookworkers IMG_0073 http://nantucketblogworks.com/2010/04/19/april-19th-poem/ http://nantucketblogworks.com/2010/04/19/april-19th-poem/#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 19:58:44 +0000 Bookworkers http://nantucketblogworks.com/?p=865 ]]>

Word from across the pond…  Dick, who’s person is located in Ireland right now, sent us this poem to post.  Thanks Dick. The Song Of Wandering Aengus

a sigh from her

then one from me–

two pages turn