LCBO Food and Drink Spring 2016

FROM THE EMERALD ISLE

BY JAMES CHATTO & LUCY WAVERMAN  •  PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROB FIOCCA

If Ireland is on your 2016 travel list, or if you’re making plans for St. Patrick’s Day, here’s a menu to get you stoked. And it wouldn’t be Irish without a pint of a certain stout and a drop of whiskey.

IRELAND HAS ALWAYS BEEN a treasure trove of music and literature; these days, its gastronomy is also becoming evermore renowned. Lucy Waverman recently spent time on the Emerald Isle and returned full of enthusiasm for the new Irish cuisine. These recipes are inspired by what she found. Irish cider plays a role in her Kerry Apple Cake, and of course Guinness is the ideal accompaniment for oysters.     Meanwhile, the dramatic renaissance of Irish whiskey continues. The days when almost all Irish whiskeys were made at a single site in Midleton, County Cork,

albeit to different recipes, are over. Old distilleries, mothballed for decades, are reopening and new ones are being built. There should be at least 20 up and run- ning two years from now. And the distill- ers are having fun, experimenting with blends of single malts, unmalted pot still whiskeys and lighter grain spirits, finding fascinating nuances of flavour but with- out losing the essential Irish character— the sweetness of grain without the peaty smokiness of Scotch, the smoothness that comes from triple distillation. St. Patrick would be proud.

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