Monthly Archives: August 2012

Lobsters for supper

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We had lobsters last night for supper, four of them from Tommy. He dropped them off in the morning in a SuperValu bag and I kept them in the salad box in the bottom of the fridge in the garage until I was ready to cook them.




To cook them I filled the large metal pan with sea water and brought it to a rolling boil.  I then took out the box from the bottom of the fridge and brought it into the kitchen. The kids crowded round to watch as one by one I picked them up and dropped them head first into the water. One of them twitched and boiling water was splashed all over the floor.



I left them for 20 minutes by which time the water had come back to the boil. I took them off the heat and fished them out onto the side. Taking a large heavy kitchen knife I split them and cracked the claws laying each half into a large bowl.




Whilst I was doing that I melted half a pat of butter with chopped garlic and salt and pepper.
Once all the lobsters were split and in the bowl I poured the melted butter over them and brought the bowl to the table.



We ate them with our fingers, sucking and slurping at the shells until our hands and faces were slick with them and their juices.  We used small metal picks to tease out every last morsel of meat. Some of best nuggets come from the small round piece of shell that connects the legs to the body. Twist them off and ease out the piece of white meat inside.  It may hardly be a mouthful but it is sweet and good.




Listening to Candi Stanton before lurching up to the Tin Pub for too many more pints of Murphy’s and dim memories of us all dancing with our famous neighbour to It’s a long way to Tipperary!

The first mackerel of the summer

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The first mackerel of the summer were a gift from Tommy. We had watched him for a couple of hours laying pots for shrimps across Kitchen Cove. I was hoping he might have caught some as well and we could have eaten those sat round the fire in the evening.


When I saw that his boat was in I took a walk down the pier to see what he had. He and Joe were sat in the cabin with cups of coffee. We talked briefly about the weather and how bad it had been. Maybe two days of it being good but that was it and the rain and grey would close down again. He was still catching lobsters and they were still going to Spain. It seemed that their financial troubles had not dimmed their appetite for good fish.



He then offered me a mackerel or two. I took them in my hand – slippery and hard still bright with their colour from the sea.  As I thanked him I said that we had friends coming that evening and so he gave me some more so that I was cradling them against my chest. We then poured them into a metal bucket and I took them back to the Cottage.


He had a whole tray of them – 30 or 40 fish, some pollock as well and was going to be handing them round to his neighbours.


I filleted them down by the rocks and put the fillets in the smoker for 10 minutes. We will have them this evening eaten with our fingers.


Later that evening we saw Paddy and Mary in Arundel’s. It was their grand-daughter’s christening. They both shook my hand and we talked about the weather. Paddy put my drinks on his tab. Two pints of Murphey’s and three bottles of coke.


So what can you buy in Bantry Market with 15Euros and a bit of loose change.

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There is a frustration in making the half hour drive to Bantry for the market  to open your wallet to find that  the  100Euros you put to one side to take with you for the shopping  was still on the side along with the cash-point card.


I had 15Euros in the wallet and a pocketful of loose change. I had already spent 4Euros of the loose change on a couple of old George Orwell paperbacks which with the benefit of hindsight had not been such a good idea.


The fish stall was selling bags of haddock for 5Euros so that was a start. He threw in a bag of bones – bait for the prawn pot.


I will be able to pick up a bag of potatoes later in Durrus.  Some vegetarian food was needed for the barbecue and this was going to be the only chance to get something. So some of the money had to be spent in SuperValu on 4 veggie quarter-pounders.
That was almost all of the loose change gone but I still had a 10 Euro note.
I recognized the guy on the Gubbeen stall from last year and the years before. Would he do me a favour and let me take a bagful of cheese, sausages and bacon on the promise that I would be back next week with a better trimmed wallet. He was happy with that. So three types of cured sausage, 5 packs of bacon and round of Gubbeen and a great chunk of the matured cheese went into the bag. I will need to make sure I bring my 28Euros with me next week.


The last of the lose change went on a loaf of sourdough bread leaving the 10Euros for The Olive Stall.  Two different types of olive, one of them picked out with red chilli, a handful of pickled green chilis, I was warned that although there were meant to be mild they had a good kick to them, a bag of smoked almonds, a purple bulb of garlic and a small bag of semi-dried tomatoes and I was done.



The iPod was still on shuffle in the car and a couple of King Creosote tracks came on quickly after each other on the way back. The rain was coming down again, flattening the sea.                                                                                       

An arrival

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We drove through Ireland overnight having arrived at Dublin at 1.00am on a lurching ferry. The whole country was thick with rain, great white gobs of it coming through the dark and being picked out by the beams of the headlights. As the roads tightened and drove deeper into the country after Bandon broken signs in the hedgerows warned of floods and the trees and green vegetation bent heavy with the weight of water crowding down and around the tarmac in the tunnel of light in front of the car. I saw three foxes bolt away tail streaming behind them as we passed.
Once we got to Durrus the rain stopped but the country was filled with wet. We could hardly see the sea on our left as the road followed its familiar twists and turns through the dark. I was tired now and this was only part of the journey I could feel sleep start to tug at my eyes.

 We pulled up next to the grey gate of the Cottage when we got to Akakista. Everything was slick with wet. Great puddles of water on the pier and the fuschia hedge bent down wetting our trousers as we stumbled out of the car and collected the bags to be dumped on the floor.

The kids went straight to bed as I took my first walk up the pier. 

The tide was up and high only a foot or so from the top. The stream by the Butter House was in full spate with the water coming off the hills and the only sound was the water and the angry awakening of the gulls on Owen Island. The sea had made it way through holes in the concrete and they poped and gurgled with the movement of water in the harbour. 
Everything smelt of the sea, that clean iodine smell, and fish – bait for the lobster pots.


Then to bed for a few hours before a trip to Bantry  Market. Waking four hours later the sun was out briefly but the barometer was hovering from rain to stormy.