May the sons of your daughters smile up in your face

the bottle: 2010 Guinness
the movie: The Snapper, 1993
the meal: Boiled dinner of corned beef with cabbage and root vegetables with Clementine parsley yogurt horseradish sauce. Irish bread and butter pudding with Bushmill's whiskey sauce
In spite of the fact that this is the weekend of both the ACC Tournament, as well as the grand opening at the SXSW Film Festival of my good friend Mike Woolf’s sweeping new feature Man on a Mission (check out the trailer and look for it soon at a theatre near you), it seemed a natural in this blog’s first season to pick up the universal mantle of St. Patrick. But it was a challenge to get the angle just right.

At first, I thought the best approach might be a grand and epic tribute that goes right to the heart of the Irish matter—the controversial tale of the “Lion of Ireland,” as depicted well in Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins, who led the IRA against British rule and founded the Irish Free State (Eire) in 1921.

But this felt just a wee too grand.

Then I considered doing the story around the 1974 Guildford pub bombers in In The Name of The Father, because our family lived close by in Cobham at the time, and as a child that memory is indelible. But even though Daniel Day Lewis is tremendous in that very good Jim Sheridan movie as the wrongly convicted youth Gerry Conlon fighting for justice to clear his father’s name, it felt too close to home in its nerviness around the Irish problem.

Back and forth texts and emails with me mum configured a way to make one of our favorite films—The Field—work for St. Patty’s Day: The (mountain) Croagh Patrick in County Mayo is a short way from the village of Leenane where the film The Field was made. The passionate devotion to the land in Ireland (which is the subject of the film) could be allied with the single-minded determination of thousands of pilgrims every year who climb the rocky mountain, some of them barefoot and shirtless, to seek the favor of St Patrick. Well done, Mum! This movie perfectly captures some of the key dimensions of the complex Irish soul—parsimony, strength, patience, and violence. But the story of Bull McCabe, played by Richard Harris in an absolutely peak performance, felt just a bit too heady, and the movie, while brilliantly Lear-like, is tragic.

So I briefly ruminated over my Guinness about the possibility of going apolitical and boisterous with Alan Parker’s The Commitments, based on the debut novel of Roddy Doyle, about an unlikely group of young musicians who form a band and try to bring soul music to Dublin. It’s a great movie, but this one just felt too random.

After reviewing a long list of Ireland-centric favorites, like Hear My Song, Circle of Friends, Waking Ned Divine, and the Secret of Roan Inish, I came up empty pint-glassed.


I finally ended up back in the Roddy Doyle camp with the dirtily and deeply grounded The Snapper. Why? Because it’s just so basic, so raw, and so real. And after last week’s post, I thought…how appropriate. There are no fireworks, no extravagant Irish vistas, and no brooding Irish heroes or anti-heroes. No old country, no IRA, no tortured Irish history lessons, and definitely no boxing. This movie is so small it could fit into a dorm room-sized shotgun row home in a working-class neighborhood the size of a postage stamp in some forgotten outer suburb of Dublin. To me, this movie captures what St. Patty's Day is all about here in the U.S. It's really just an everyperson nod to our Irish roots—a celebration of our ordinariness and simple, common values. Here is a movie about family connection, love, growing up, community, and all of the real and small daily trials that we share as average people. A laugh over the dinner table, an argument while watching the telly, and a shared pint at the local with friends is what St. Patty's Day is all about, and this very smallness is what makes it so grand.

When Sharon Curley (Tina Gellegher) gets unintentionally pregnant, or “up the pole” with her “snapper”, the fireworks are all interpersonal between her tight-knit but boisterous lower-class family and the entire town that comments from the sidelines when Sharon refuses to identify the father. It is raucously funny while being tender and human, and Colm Meaney as Sharon’s caring dad, captures this double-barreled persona unabashedly. Give this man the Irish Oscar in the form of a pint of Guinness at the local pub and everything in the world will be ok.

A striking aspect of this film is its un-Hollywood-ness -- everyone looks real. Maybe even a bit too real. Teeth feature prominently and not necessarily in the Best Makeup category. But this for me is why it’s such a good movie. It’s messy, un-slick, raw, and rough-edged with dialogue that is fast and with brogue, so listen carefully.

A few favorite scenes worth noting for flavor:

While watching the telly, a very pregnant Sharon gets up to go to the bathroom and Da' asks her where she’s off to. She responds, “My uterus is pressing into me bladder," at which point Da' moves uncomfortably in his chair, “Now stop that Sharon, I don’t want to hear that sort of thing! Its not right.” It's played pitch perfectly by Meaney.

And again while watching the telly alone with his wife, played by Ruth McCabe, but finding nothing to watch, this wickedly good moment: Meaney casually looks over and says, “I suppose a ride is out of the question?” And non-chalantly back while knitting, she replies, “Hang on till I get this line done.”
Meaney, almost flabbergasted: “Are you serious?!”
McCabe, matter-of-factly: “I suppose so.”
Meaney: “F’ck’n great. Not messin’ with me? I’ll go up and brush me teeth.”
McCabe, without looking up from her knitting: “That’ll be nice.”

Choosing the meal for the occasion was much easier, thankfully. (We thought it best to refrain from green or potato-themed meals.) There is but one classic St. Patty’s day dish and that would be the “boiled dinner.”
Otherwise known as corned beef with cabbage and root vegetables, it’s not as insipid as it sounds. In fact, this meal is subtle in the power of its elementalism, and the interplay between the meltingly sweet corned beef with the earthy root vegetables is fantastic.

This preparation is extremely simple and allows for a Sunday’s worth of tournament basketball finals on the telly while simmering quietly in the oven. After about three hours or so bubbling away in the bay leaf, clove and peppercorn broth, I add a variety of root vegetables to add some life to the more classic potato, carrot and cabbage combo. Try adding a rutabega, a yam or sweet potato (or both), some turnips, and even a jerusalem artichoke. Be careful not to overdo it, though because the right balance of corned beef to veggies is important.

A key component for this dish is a horsey sauce of some kind. In this case, we drizzled a Clementine yogurt and parsley horseradish sauce over the brisket before serving, which adds a zesty brilliance to the earthen flavors in the bowl. This pour spreads out and mixes it up into the broth flavoring every bite with a counter tang that explodes gracefully on the tongue. In the soft boiling process, this corned brisket (nitrate free and as clean as we could find) transforms into a perfume-y, moist and fatty base layer that slides down the throat in a river of rich meaty broth.

For dessert, Sara extended the Irish theme with a gorgeous Irish bread and butter pudding with Bushmill's whiskey sauce. Just look at this shot. If photography can sell food, this is testament to the notion. The burnt caramelized edges and soft, moist, inner core of this little bread pudding are truly luxurious. The bling in the Donegal tweed cap on this wondrous little sweet is a rich, caramel-y Bushmill's butter sauce that takes bread pudding far from a hardscrabble Irish bog and plants it firmly in the kitchen of Martha O’Stewart.

Of course there could only be but one bottle that is suitable for this occasion, and that would be a can of the black gold of Ireland, the blond in the black dress, the one and only Guinness. (Short of taking the portable DVD player and a tupperware of the corned beef down to the local pub, this can is the next best thing to the draft. Inside is a secret widget that recreates the nitrogen-pour effect that one can only get at the pub.) For the last remaining soul on earth who does not know, Guinness is the popular Irish dry stout that is based on the porter style that originated in London in the early 18th century and is one of the most successful beer brands worldwide. A distinctive feature is the burnt flavor which is derived from the use of roasted barley. It’s not an overpowering flavor at all, but rather a musty and toasty, rich, creamy swallow. It’s a beautiful complement to the subtle flavors in this meal.

Enjoy this bottle, movie, meal holy trinity with some good craic, and celebrate St. Patrick with us in style. Slainte!

Recipes available here:
Corned beef: http://bit.ly/deKPo4

Irish bread and butter pudding with Bushmill's Whiskey sauce: http://bit.ly/bCbFmX

Horseradish sauce: http://bit.ly/bNesZd
Add zest from one Clementine and one lemon, 1 tbsp Clementine juice, fresh cracked pepper, fresh parsley