B&B Perfection: Virginia's Guesthouse

If we refrained from true gourmet food in London, we certainly made up for it in Ireland. It's no secret that breakfast is my favorite meal of the day, and our first couple of days in the Emerald isle made me a believer in the Irish excellence in this culinary arena.

Based on exceptional reviews on TripAdvisor.com, Jenny and I booked our first two nights in Virginia's Guesthouse in Kenmare, County Kerry. We expected a nice place to stay in a scenic town, what we got was far more than we could have hoped for.

Kenmare is an incredibly beautiful village on the bottom of the famous Ring of Kerry, a scenic drive around a peninsula on Ireland's west coast. The main streets are lined with colorful guesthouses, restaurants and pubs, and the whole town is steeped with a deep, but very authentic, charm and warmth. London was fun, but Kenmare was really a vacation. It was so easy to relax and enjoy the Irish countryside, to lazily stroll up and down main street shopping and watching the tourists and locals alike. It was just what the doctor ordered, as Jenny and I needed a rest after the hustle and bustle of a week in crazy London.

We arrived late at night after a long drive from Cork and Blarney and after meeting Neil, the innkeeper, Jenny and I just melted into bed. Our room was wonderful! It was so nice after a long day of driving to have such a cute and comfortable place to lay our heads. With the notable exception of our one night at Glin Castle for our anniversary, these were the best accommodations in our entire two week trip. But enough about our room - you're here for the food!

I take great pride in my ability to cook breakfast for Jenny, but Noreen Harrington, Neil's wife and chef, is an absolute master. We were greeted in the breakfast room with the tremendous aroma of breakfast coming from the kitchen. Noreen soon popped out and brought us some delicious soda bread (baked that morning), coffee and the like.

For our first morning in Ireland, I was determined to have my first Irish fry. It was a good choice.

A standard Irish fry has bacon, sausage, a couple of eggs and (my favorite) black and white pudding. According to my guidebook, the best puddings in Ireland are made in Clonakilty, County Cork, and Noreen uses this delicacy for her breakfasts. This was very important to me, as I became sort of a B&W pudding connoisseur in my week in Ireland (but that's a different post).

Jenny selected the Banana Pancakes. I'm surprised that she finished them, because she had to stop after every bite to groan with pleasure and remark how they were the best pancakes she'd ever had in her life.

I had to sample them, of course, and I'd have to agree that the pancakes were the best I'd ever had in my life. They absolutely melted in my mouth, with a soft and sweet banana flavor dancing in my cheeks. Noreen said I could have the recipe, and I intend to hold her to it. I'm convinced I can inspire lifelong devotion from my wife if I can master this one dish.

The next day I had a delicious porridge with whiskey cream, which is exactly as good as it sounds. Jenny had fruit poached in syrup with yogurt. It was so beautiful that I felt like painting a still-life of it and hanging it up over our fireplace for all to see. Maybe I'll just frame this picture.

But in the end, the best part wasn't the room or the food (which is really hard to top). Neil and Noreen are just a lovely couple, and it's clear that they love what they do. Virginia's Guesthouse is the rare intersection of a couple that is exceptional at what they do and a town and home that is the perfect forum for their craft.

I arrived in Ireland with a certain level of expectation of what it would be like, and a little hope for how it could be. After two nights in Kenmare, I can safely say all my hopes were exceeded. I can't wait to go back!

Other London Eats

After a long day of walking and sightseeing, nothing attacks hunger like a football-sized portion of fried codfish and a mountain of fries. Jenny and I must have covered 10 miles of London's sidewalks on our second-to-last day in town, and we had to indulge in a British tradition before we left. We hopped in a cab to rest our feet and asked the very nice and knowledgeable cabbie to take us to a great fish and chips place near the London Eye (our plans for the evening).

He knew just the place, and drove us to Masters Superfish, just south of Waterloo Station on Waterloo St. If I'd known then what I knew after dinner, I'd have kissed him.

We didn't eat in a lot of restaurants in London, but I have to believe the dinner we got here was some of the best eats in town. We had nightmares of grease-soaked fish and nasty sides, but this place was really top notch. Jenny and I both ordered the cod, which arrived perfectly fried. And I do mean perfect. The crust was just crispy, and the meat inside was super hot, flaky, and moist, without being greasy.

They served the fish with some chips (duh), a pickle and a pickled onion. Taking a bite of fish with a sliver of onion and some malted vinegar, fresh lemon juice and a tiny dollop of tartar sauce was heaven. We both finished the whole plate and rolled ourselves out the front door for the walk back to the Thames.

The only thing that would have made the meal better was my other favorite foodstuff in London, real ale.

For those who haven't studied beer, this is lightly carbonated beer sold in pubs around London. Most beer is heavily carbonated and kegged under pressure. Real ale is lightly carbonated and is pumped by an old fashioned hand pump from casks below the bar. It's served slightly chilled, but not cold. My pint of Fuller's London Pride pulled from the cask was one of the best beer experiences I've ever had.

I can't say the same for London's hippest after-hours street food, kebabs. My friend Steve tipped me off that this was sort of the "Waffle House" of trendy London, the food people grab when they're tired and woozy after a night of hard clubbing. I can see why.

I had visions of well seared meat chunks seasoned with some cucumber based sauce, a la backyard cookout. In reality, a kebab is a pita shell filled with a pound of greasy meat and topped with so much stuff you can't actually eat it like a sandwich. Jenny and I shared one, and promptly got a little sick. The thing just sort of sits like a brick in your stomach, which is good if you're intoxicated and need something to deliver the left hook to put you to sleep.

Irish Soda Bread Revisited

In my last post I'd prepared a basic Irish soda bread to go with my beef stew. The bread was incredibly dense, and frankly a little flavorless. It was great for mopping up stew, but ultimately it was better suited as a trencher than as wheat bread.

Alanna at Kitchen Parade kindly dropped me an e-mail with some concerns. Over the last 2 days I've searched the internet for a good recipe and tweaked the process, baking 4 loaves in the process. I think I've finally hit the nail on the head.

There were 2 problems with the ingredients in the recipe. First, there was far too much white flour in the mix. I tried baking a loaf with a 3:1 ratio of wheat to white, and not just a 1:1. Even though that loaf turned out brick-like in consistency, the flavor was a great improvement. The second problem was that the process of kneading the dough killed any leavening provided by the baking soda. What I needed was a recipe that had baking powder in it. That way I could knead the dough for consistency without sacrificing leavening. This deviates from tradition, but it makes a huge improvement in the quality of the finished product.

After a few attempts at tweaking I found this recipe. It had a good mix of flours, as well as baking soda to perk up the loaf. But there was a little more that could be done to improve my bread.

While we were in Ireland, Jenny and I visited a traditional Irish farm at the Muckross House in County Kerry. The ladies there had a loaf of soda bread baking in every cottage, with lots of free samples. The bread there was cooked in a bastible, a sort of Irish dutch oven hung over a peat fire and topped with coals. The bread cooked inside this oven was still a bit dense, but soft and incredibly flavorful. I came across this site proposing using a mixing bowl as a simulated bastible in a conventional oven, which I thought would work well for my purposes.

I prepared two loaves, both quite a bit larger than the loaf I'd made for my stew. I'm starting to think that this is critical, since a small loaf turns into a hockey puck with even a short time in the oven. Alanna passed on her method for measuring flour, which I call the "fluff, scoop and sweep method." It's basically shaking the flour violently in a closed container to aerate the flour before measuring it in measuring cups. Call it a cleaner sifting method. My wheat flour is in a tupperware, so I just shook it in it's container before removing the lid and measuring.

I kneaded the dough per the recipe for 3-5 minutes until it softened. I was surprised that you could actually feel the dough give and turn into a bubble-gum consistency. I ended up using a bit more buttermilk than called for (1-2 extra tablespoons) to keep the dough tacky, but not so sticky that I couldn't work with it.

I baked one loaf covered (removing the cover after 30 min), and the other in the open oven. Both loaves had the same consistency, but the covered loaf rose much more beautifully. The covered loaf is on the left.

Cooking the bread covered creates a more humid environment for the baking bread, which I think keeps the crust softer and allows for more even expansion in the oven. The covered loaf was also on the top rack, which helped keep the bottom from turning rock hard. Next time, I'll cook the bread covered for the entire baking time, which I think will improve the crust. Don't forget to tap the loaf on the bottom to check doneness. It'll sound hollow like a drum.

Each loaf is a whopping 38 points, but that'll make 20 pieces easily.

The finished product was everything I hoped for - a dense, rich wheat bread that has a hearty crust and an interior that melts in your mouth. I think that the trial and effort paid off in a recipe and method that will be popular in my household for quite some time.

It's good to be back...

Jenny and I had a blast on our UK/Ireland trip, but we're happy to be home. Our vacation was long enough that we just hit the right point at the end where we were eager to come home and sleep in our own bed and eat normal food.

We both gained weight over the vacation, which I guess is to be expected. I have a very hard time feeling bad about it, because every ounce gained was well spent. I mean, we didn't eat tons of junky food. We enjoyed the local food and drink, and had a good time going out.

Still, two weeks of restaurant eating really takes a toll on our bodies. We just feel lazy and tired, and we just feel loaded down. We generally have a really good diet, nutritionally, so we definitely notice the difference. S0 as soon as we got home, we entered "detox mode" and got right back on the program.

Don't think for a second that it's all iceberg lettuce and celery sticks for us. Getting tons of fresh fruits and vegetables is a big part of it, but mostly detox mode consists of filling, but light meals loaded with flavor, but light on fat and portion size. I'm talking about good chicken salads, pasta with turkey meatballs, egg sandwiches and other light staples we have around the house.

Another example is the beef stew I made two days ago in my crock pot. I didn't serve up a huge bowl of it, just enough to make a hearty dinner. Inspired by my new Irish cookbook, I baked up a small loaf of wheat soda bread to go with it.

Our trip was indeed fun, but now that we're home it's time to get back to work. Armed with a kitchen stuffed with produce and a few good menu ideas, I think we'll be back to form in no time.

London on £20 a Day

As I've mentioned frequently on this blog, Jenny and I don't eat out much here at home. This poses a pretty big problem when we travel, in that we have a hard time getting mentally and biologically adjusted to eating out 3 meals a day.

I'll admit it, we're a bunch of cheapskates. The idea of paying so much for a meal that we could make ourselves is hard to stomach at home, let alone in the expensive city of London. We also just don't like eating lots of heavy foods when we're on vacation. It slows us down, and it also counteracts the exercise we get while sightseeing.

After our first £40 dinner, we decided something needed to be done. Fortunately for us, on the second day we discovered that most markets offered a huge line of pre-made sandwiches and other lunch items at pretty reasonable prices.

Now that sound you heard was the collective screams of horror from our British friends. I'm sure that pre-packaged sandwiches from Tesco, Marks and Spencer and Benjys are the British equivalent of a hot dog from your local gas station, but from the viewpoint of a couple of health-consciouss cheapskate Americans, it was a gift from Heaven. We could eat relatively cheaply, and keep track of our nutritional needs thanks to awesome labeling. They even had packaged fruits and vegetables.

The food is of good quality, too, especially compared to convenience foods in the US. Everything is packaged in transparent containers, so you can actually see the food before you buy it. The nutritional information is complete and easy to read, and the majority of places have a good selection of lighter items.

But the biggest effect wasn't related to food. We soon developed a routine of going to a local shop, gathering lunch, and finding a scenic place to enjoy our food. For example, the meal shown above was eaten in the gorgeous Green Park, close to Buckingham Palace. The weather was beautiful, and it being a bank holiday the park was full of Londoners soaking up the sun. There isn't a restaurant around that can match that kind of ambiance. Lunch became our daily siesta, where we'd kick off our shoes and relax.

Sure, we missed out on a few restaurants and eateries, but we also got to enjoy lunch under a tree near the Greenwich Observatory (lunch in the western hemisphere) and a few bites sitting in the square overlooking Parliament and Big Ben (a little noisy, but what a view).

An additional benefit was that we could sample some more, uh, interesting foodstuffs. My favorite was a curiosity called a scotch egg. The full size version, which I didn't sample, is a whole hard-boiled egg covered with sausage and a layer of breadcrumbs.

The miniature version replaces the egg with a dollop of egg salad. The wrapper said to eat them hot or cold, but I think they'd taste about 10 times better heated, especially for breakfast. Oh, and each mini egg was 1 point. Personally, I'd never thought to wrap eggs with sausage and breadcrumbs, but the combination wasn't bad, especially after walking for 5 hours to build an appetite.

Whew...whatta trip!!

Jenny and I are back from our travels abroad, and I'm primed to deliver posts on a variety of foodie subjects.

Needless to say, we had a blast. The British Isles are beautiful and full of things to see and do. I plan on covering the trip chronologically, detailing our exploits in London before covering our trip to southern Ireland. Stay tuned!