Ireland

I ended yesterday by saying today would be Portugal, but as we're moving from west to east, it turns out we hit Ireland first. There's a lesson to check your facts first...

A nice easy one for us again as I've some family connections in Ireland and it was my last day in the office before holiday proper starts. It's not a famous vegetarian cuisine either, but we settled on a luxury version of an old favourite: Colcannon, made with floury potatoes, cream, butter, sweetheart cabbage (Savoy is surprisingly tricky to get hold of here) and some spring onions. I loosely followed this recipe on BBC good food. I don't think I've ever actually made it with cream before but the general verdict was "this is delicious, you can make it again". So that's a win for Ireland right there.

The protein part of the meal was fried eggs, so all in all a satisfyingly simple dinner. I had planned to make soda bread, but we still had some Icelandic rye bread leftover, which is sort of similar, (it also uses baking powder as a raisong agent) so I may have to try Irish soda bread another time. The Icelandic rye bread was also really good toasted with butter this morning, so I definitely plan to make it again at some point. I reckon it might be nice cooked on a campfire, Australian damper style too.

No Irish dessert, but we finished off the Icelandic skyr cheesecake, which was even better than yesterday, another dish we will make again.

I had hoped to finish it off with a pint of the black stuff, but Friday rock at Tivoli is calling so that may also be put off for another time. We're fortunate to live reasonably close to an excellent real pub, run by 3 Irish guys, and they know how to keep their Guinness, so there's no lack round here!

Tomorrow, we finally get to Portugal, hopefully.