Day 3 of Don't Eat Any Irish for Oisin

Yesterday's brekkie was so freakin' deadly, there was no way I couldn't give it another lob. Especially as I barely made a dint on the massive tub of Turkish yoghurt I got the other day, which, incidentally, only cost me €2.50. So it was yoghurt, toasted sesame seeds, currants and date syrup again this morning. I could get quite used to that, even if the very thought of toasted seeds first thing in the morning sounds horribly Californian. But it's at moments like these where I remind myself that even hardasses like Clint Eastwood are from the Sunshine State and he's a total veggie. If it's good enough for Dirty Harry.

As I had said previously, I am using this reverse of the Eat Only Irish as a way to hunt down new tastes and products. With the Clanbrassil Street Halal shops being part of my standard shopping experience anyway, I thought it best to venture further afield. To boldly go, where very few Dubs appear to go to anymore - Moore Street. Whenever I hit the food stores there, Irish people seem to be very few and few far between. FX B's Butchers there is a classic example.They are always really busy, but never with locals. And they flog pieces of meat that Irish people wouldn't know what to do with any more, like hearts, necks, tongue, oxtail, etc. For me, this is always a welcome sight and gives me a certain feeling of optimism. While the Irish have had their taste buds and culinary sense of adventure homogenized by pre-packaged fillets and burgers, there are Filipinos, Cantonese, Hungarians, French, Poles, Brazilians flocking to FX B's on a daily basis, snapping up the cuts of meat  that we sadly no longer consume. I reckon that it's these very people who we should be talking to about our future food habits. It's these very people who can help us to de-industrialize our palettes and help us economize our grub budgets.They have the know how, the passion for great food and flavour and they are here living amongst us.

However, seeing as FX B's predominately stocks Irish bred meat (seasonal foreign game does hit their counter I'm told), I can't really venture in there this week and chat to the regulars. So the other day, I stopped off at the basement food hall on Moore St (it has another entrance on Parnell Street) to stop off at a Polish butchers.

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 I stocked up on their Silesian sausages which would be similar in taste to say Cumberland sausies. They are made and packaged in Poland. While I was on Moore Street, I stopped off in a large Asian deli to try and find something I had never tasted before. That's where I found these little bad boys, golden egg aubergines. 

They came here from India, via the UK and are about the size of plums. I  sliced and char-grilled two of them and stuck them in a Turkish flatbread wrap with some tomatoes, Breton cream cheese and loads of the walnut dip I made yesterday. A bi-winning lunch. 

The sausages were put into a ragu that my dearly beloved made for the whole family tonight for dinner. It tasted darn good but every mouthful I took in only made me think how much better it would be with Hick's sausages in there instead.