How We Do Irish

I love the drive through my neighborhood Saturday mornings on my way to the shop.  Everything is still quiet, just waking up.  A few of the businesses are open but empty; the bar lights are on, but there is no one serving.  Well-dressed church stragglers scramble across the street to mass, perhaps for a wedding or baptism. 

            Today is not one of those days.

            Today is St. Patrick’s Day, which is bigger than Christmas for residents of Dogtown.  The neighborhood has been chaos since Friday afternoon.  The shamrocks painted on the roads have received a fresh coat of green; the banners on every lamppost that have tattered and torn over the last year have been replaced; Johnny on the Spots have materialized at every corner; dumpsters large enough to park a tow truck inside of have cropped up at random intersections, and I’m excited to see that this year they are artfully and brightly decorated instead of their usual forest green tinting.  Soon the clans will arrive, proudly flying their colors on the breeze; the dancers shall stomp; the pipes will wail their battle cries; and the streets shall run brown with the libation—nay, the lifeblood—of our homeland, that lush green country far across the sea.

            In my apartment, though, all is quiet and calm.  My St. Patrick’s Day celebration always starts the night before, at my buddy Dan’s birthday party.  No matter what day of the week it falls on, his party is always March 16, and I always go because I’m always off work March 17.  (“The police block off my streets, Boss, there’s no way I can make it to work!”)  I’ve done it for five years running, so now it’s tradition.  St. Patrick’s Day is all about tradition, after all. 

So I sleep late, and take my time waking up.  Why, oh why did I think it was a good idea to stay out till 3am???  I listen to The Irish Brigade while enjoying my coffee and Irish cream.  Why?  Because I did it my first year here, and it just stuck, so now it’s tradition. 

The sounds of the flute and bodhran get my Irish up as I make biscuits and gravy.  I know Bs and Gs isn’t a traditional Irish breakfast or anything, but it’s what I made my first year here, so now it’s just what I do every year.  I never had Bs and Gs growing up; my mom didn’t know how to make them, and I hated the ones they served in the school cafeteria.  Canned gravy is awful.  Then one summer weekend at The Kingdom (my aunt and uncle’s little spot in the country on a small lake) I watched my cousins make their Bs and Gs gravy from scratch.  And then I ate it.  And I liked it. 

When I got home I did a bit of research online and decided to try it out for myself.  The first time I tried it just happened to be that first St. Patty’s day here in Dogtown.  And ever since then, everyone I’ve ever served it to has proclaimed my Bs and Gs to be the best Bs and Gs they’ve ever tasted.  And I am not giving you the recipe. 

 

I take a slow stroll down to Neighbor Mike’s house, where my cooler and food await.  Today is one day when I rush for no one.  I stick to the side streets, avoiding the crowds.  People drinking on their porches call out hellos, Happy Paddys, and Top o’ the marnin’ to yas.  A few snow flakes waft about lazily.  Somewhere off in the distance I can sense the chaos; it’s like the whole neighborhood is vibrating. 

I dropped my stuff off at Neighbor Mike’s place last night before going out, and helped him prepare the pulled pork.  All I did was cut a 10-pound bone-in shoulder into small chunks so it would fit in the crock pot and season it all with his homemade rub, but he said that job normally takes him 45 minutes and I got through it in about 10 while he worked on the corned beef. 

 

All the meat came from the shop.  Burt corned several briskets and eye of round in tubs and trash cans (clean ones, of course) for days.  Corning beef is similar to curing/pickling a ham (did you know hams are actually pickled?).  Pink cure is used, along with a bag of spice that smells a bit like pine needles and acts like battery acid.  Throw that in a bunch of water along with some peppercorns and other stuff, and just let it work its magic.  The inside turns an unnatural bright red.  Also, the “corn” in the phrase “corned beef” has nothing to do with actual corn; (obviously; I don’t know about you, but I’ve never eaten a Rueben with corn on it . . .) “corn” was an old British term for “grain”—as in, a grain of salt—and lots of salt goes into brining . . . well, anything.  So, ten pounds of pork, twenty pounds of beef—not to mention the cabbage and potatoes to go along with it—and I brought the wings.

 

A lot of love goes into making our wings at the shop.  First we make a paste—not a sauce, a paste—out of our pork/poultry rub and Italian dressing.  Slather that all over the wings and fling them into the tumbler to let them . . . assimilate for a while.  Next the wings are placed on a rack and smothered in more rub . . . on both sides.  They they’re smoked at 325̊ for about an hour, until all the brown sugar turns almost black . . . that’s how you know it’s good.  The sugars caramelize, but since it’s cooked so gently, the wings don’t get very crispy on the outside—they’re tender and juicy all the way through.  Any time we pull a few racks out of the smoker, I set aside a drummette for myself; and by the way, some of those drummies are more like legs, even by American size standards.  The wings are addicting, but don’t smile after eating a few of them:  the rub sinks into all the crevices between your teeth, so bring your floss.  I brought these to a party once, and the next day a “wing virgin” was heard to say they were the best wings he’s had in his life—so much so that he’d dreamt about them all night.  And I got ten pounds of these babies.  (I get invited to a lot of pot lucks, in case you were wondering.)

 

A fire in the backyard, a blues band in the living room, Irish car bombs poured in the kitchen, and motorcycles in the garage; this is how we do Irish.  Each year the band and guest list may change, the weather will definitely be different, (two years ago I wore shorts and a tank top; last year it hailed; this year it’s sleeting) but certain traditions will stay the same. 

I think it’s human nature to build and hold on to traditions; it’s safe, it’s soothing—to be sure that this will be what it is, when it is, from now on.  I suppose that’s one of the things that separates us from the animal within.  And after a certain amount of time when someone asks why you do it, you just say, “Because it’s always been done,” even though technically it hasn’t always been done; the tradition had to start somewhere.  Some traditions reach back generations—even millennia—tying us to ancestors and eras we could never hope to know. 

The dying art of butchery is an ancient tradition utilized the world over that predates the domestication of livestock—it’s a craft that was employed long before humans were capable of documenting it.  Keeping this tradition alive creates a relationship between past and present:  an unseen connection beyond anything physical or spatial, unbreakable by even the most modern technology.  No matter how the world has progressed or regressed, people still eat meat, and the fundamentals of the trade remain the same as ever.

I suppose tradition can be appealing because there will come a time when your life won’t be what it’s always been—it’ll be new, it’ll be different, it’ll be chaos . . . it’ll be scary—but you can still maintain those old standards, like immoveable pillars.  It’s funny to think that without really intending to, I began weaving my own St. Patty’s traditions five years ago.  Since then, people, places, and events have woven themselves into and out of this tapestry of my life; altering the stitching in some places, fortifying it in others.  As we blaze new trails in life, sometimes we must wander alone, and sometimes we must journey empty-handed, but there are still things we carry with us that don’t fit in a satchel or even the palm of a hand; and it can be comforting to know that forging new paths in life doesn’t have to mean leaving everything behind. 

 

(*Gasp*  The first actual faces on the blog!  Like, real people!  Like, maybe I don’t just make all this shit up!  This is Brown Bottle Fever, a two-man blues band that proves that simplicity is the greatest form of elegance.  If there’s anything that plays a bigger part in my life than food, it’s music.  It is possible, after all, to gormandize more than just comestibles—if you believe CBGB.  So you might see a plug now and again.  A first-time listener approached me after their set and said, “You said they were good; you didn’t say they could do . . . that.”  Give ‘em a Google, you just might like ‘em.)

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