Let Them Eat Stew

As a novice blogger, seeking to make his mark in this increasingly vast blogosphere, rather than submerge into the blog-bog, I have sought advice form the great and the good as to what makes a blog stand out. Both agree that the key to good blogging is to 'keep it tropical'. I was half way through a riveting piece on the cultural legacy of the Lilt ladies in Carribean post-feminist literature when I noticed the typo.

Topicality, I have found, is trying. On the one hand you risk coming across all Jamie Oliver, and God knows one is enough. Fundamentally decent and as the man is, there is still a disconcerting Victorian sensibility to his evangelising - Master Jamie Oliver Esquire's Society for the Nourishment and Embetterment of the Socially Reprobate? The alternative consists of extrapolating a broad social trend from a trite observation of your own, rather insular, social circle and pronouncing its universality. "Have you noticed how Brie is the new Camambert?". Well er, no actually. I haven't. Avoiding both pitfalls I'll aim for a point somewhere between culinary social engineering and artificial food fad; make the political personable.

I did think for a moment of sharing my recipe for Barack O'Brownies; brownies you can believe in. This certainly ticked the zeitgesit box but sounded vaguely racist. Climate change? Now there's a topical issue (and tangentially tropical too). Each mouthful of food, save only lichae, fungus and lentils, propels us ever closer to the kind of natural catastrophes that the editorial board of the Bible couldn't even imagine. But secretly, in my heart of hearts (look deep inside and you'll find it in yours too), there's a little voice that says, "Don't worry. Listen to the oil companies. This is a normal part of the earth's atmospheric cycle. Now go on, take the car to work, it's raining unusually heavily and frequently for this time of year". No, Mother Nature is not my mews.

With one quick flick through the papers, and more revealingly my wallet, it was clear that there is only really one topic worth addressing - the scoop of the day. So, here it is, today's special; SecretEatingHabits takes on the recession.

I must begin with a confession. I am as yet to feel the full force of this recession, at least in my pocket. Fortunately I am not plugged into our shortcircuiting economy. My equity is non-existent, but at least it's not negative and, relatively speaking, I'm making a killing in stocks simply by having none. Such is the gratifyingly perverse logic of our times. But then, as you will know, the recession is not really about money. Recesion is a state of mind.

As a nation we are currently being basted in the rancid drippings of economic punditry. There is no greater soul destroyer, quencher of passion nor suppressant of appetite than an economist in full, pessimistic flow. This bilious marinade has left us permeated with the dull flavours of insecurity, regret and worst of all, prudency. These were just some of the ideas percolating around in my head as I grazed for lunch in the Epicurean Food Hall on a day where the weather above the atrium aped the admonitory economic forecast.

Property aside, little else tracks the ascent of our nation's wealth as neatly as our shifting eating habits. Under one glazed roof, the Epicurean Food Hall assembles the various constituents that have become staples of the contemporary Irish diet. Italian, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican food; Gourmet Coffee, Bagels and sushi; all have become imperceptably, blandly familiar.

On this day, like so many fellow-travellers, I was hungry in body and soul. A little bit sad and led to believe poor too. A snuffling head-cold was developing apace behind my eyes and nose. It was a lot to ask a meal to cure me of such a malady. 8 Euro for a panini*; the same for 6 slivers of raw fish on gritty rice? 3 Euro for a coffee? For sure these offerings were not up to the task. As hope was giving out I circled by a new counter, the Pie Kitchen. Here was what I was looking for though consciously unaware of the fact. For 7 Euro, I chose a bowl of Irish stew with soda bread.

Sitting, haunched over my lunch, I had a moment of lucidity, though perhaps the steam from the stew put some mist in my eyes. First and foremost this was a good bowl of stew, with a singular purposeful flavour, rather than the vane hope of coherence that many one pot dishes are predicated on. It fed me in all the ways I wanted to be fed. Cheaply and lastingly. This meal has fed families larger than we would have the stamina to produce, who worked harder than we could ever fear we would have to, with means far less than we have now (for the moment anyway). I did not eat again until just before bed.

Mostly, dare I say it, it had the nourishment of hope. It was a meal that said this country did alright before. It will again. As much as was gained in the past decade of affluence, some things were lost; among them the last few threads that linked us with our cultural diet; solid and satisfying (if a little unimaginative). We can do worse in these lean times than to look back, lose a little of our ill-fitting 'sophistication' and embrace those elements that sustained our race, and here I'm talking beyond the plate. Regression. It's the new recession. We can lose the panini now.