Holy Trinity's Christmas Lunch this year was a huge success: a convivial occasion with wonderfully delicious food that raised €1,400 towards the organ restoration fund. Our highly talented head chef Eric ran the kitchen, and a further twenty or so volunteers
helped in various other ways, including setting up the tables, decorating the hall,providing the trifles and mince pies, helping cook on the day, washing up and clearing away and also organising the quiz and raffle. Santa even managed to pop in too, although he did not risk the chimney this time!
Gerard Jordan asked our head chef Eric about what it is that makes his cooking so special and this is what he learned ......
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It's clear that for Eric the art of cooking is a gift to share, a way of giving back to the community and expressing love for others. He was inspired in this from an early age, firstly by his mother and later by his sister who is herself a gourmet cook. His mother instilled in him the importance of everything being timed properly and for it to come out of the oven at the same time, hot and ready to be served. A large part of his skill also stems from the time and care he puts into planning and researching recipes, testing them out and refining them, and then recalculating the quantities to have the appropriate amount of food to satisfy sixty hungry people! Eric will not only have spent about four days actually preparing the food for our big day, but probably also another forty hours in the planning process.
Eric's focus on the balance and detail of how his food tastes is a top priority, so he always tries to make everything from scratch and to find the freshest ingredients possible. All of us who have tasted his cooking recognise his innate ability to combine ingredients and know what they will all taste like in the finished product.
Eric's techniques are traditional. He describes his dishes as 'slow food'; food which takes time to prepare and which in turn will be slowly savoured.
I was particularly intrigued as to how Eric made the wonderful turkey gravy for our meal and this is what he told me. First he baked turkey legs on a bed of carrots, celery, garlic, apple and onions and the turkey legs were basted with herbed butter and lightly salted and peppered. Once they were done baking he set them aside, gathered the juice from the baking process, carved the meat off the bone, set the bones in a large kettle with sage and some of the vegetables from the roasting process before covering them in water and simmering them overnight. The next morning he had a dark, rich, bone broth. He discarded the bones and then pureed some of the vegetables into what would become the gravy. He toasted some flour, created a slurry, and thickened the gravy until it was just right. Finally, he tasted it and adjusted the spices accordingly. Eric repeated this type of detailed work for each dish he created for the luncheon and I am sure we would all agree the results were exceptional.
Over the years Eric has treated his friends and family to wonderful meals and in the process created great shared memories; we are blessed that Eric can now also share these gifts with us at Holy Trinity.
