Brotherly love

BROTHERLY LOVE


Source: www.speakup.com.br
Language level: Advanced
Speaker: Justin Ratcliffe

Brother Anselm is a brother in more ways than one. On the one hand he is a brother in the Benedictine Order. Although an Englishman by birth, he lives in Ireland and is the head chef at Glenstal Abbey in County Limerick. And such are his culinary skills that he has even published a recipe book. Brother Anselm’s Glenstal Cookery Book.

And he is also a brother in the sense that he is the older brother of the famous English actor, John Hurt, who wrote the foreword to his book. Brother Anselm, who was born “Michael Hurt,” actually left the monastic life in the early 1970s ad married and had children, but he later returned.

When he met with Speak Up, we asked him what role the liturgy played in the food he prepared at Glenstal Abbey.

Brother Anselm

(Standard British accent)

Well, not much, except that, of course, it gives you special occasions for a special meal, if it’s a feast, then, as far as I’m concerned, if it’s sufficiently important anyway, it becomes a gastronomic feast as well. So, obviously, for things like Christmas or Easter or so on, you do a gala meal, but we do it a bit more often than that. St. Patrick’s Day of course, and but there’s…lots of days which are solemnities, which we would celebrate, so I put on a special meal for that. And I would think in terms of a good starter, which might be sort of melon and smoked salmon and a nice dessert.

A very handy one, if you want just to quickly sort of smarten up a menu for a day, is a Baked Alaska because it’s got a sort of something about it, you know, but we do other desserts, of course, special desserts, like chocolate mousse, and cheese and biscuits put into the meal as well, and, of course, there’s always good meal. There has to be good meal!

CAMPING TRIPS

We then talked about his famous younger brother, John Hurt. As Brother Anselm says, they often cooked together during their youth. They would go on hiking holidays around the beauty spots of England and Scotland.

Brother Anselm

As like as not, you’d pass a butcher’s during the day. And if you did, you picked up a couple of steaks, you see, which we would then cook on a stick over the fire in the evening. And with…you’d get that nice sort of wood smell! We had instant mashed potato. I was very basic, certainly no special cooking skills, really. Instant mashed potato…and we had this Spotted Dick for pudding it’s a suet pudding, full of raising and whatnot. So that when you got into camp, the first thing you did, you’d light the fire, get the water boiling and get the pudding on, ‘cause that needed cooking for about an hour and a half. And if we couldn’t get a steak during the day, we’d always have a few tins of stew.

BROTHER ANSELM’S RECIPE

O’FLAHERTY’S DELIGHT

This is a delicious dish though perhaps it is not for those who are worried about cholesterol! The garlic butter can be made by boiling garlic cloves for 10 minutes and then mashing them into the butter. Who was O’Flaherty? Well, he must have lived in the west of Ireland, where salmon and potatoes were plentiful! Quantities are left open.

Ingredients:

Smoked salmon, sliced

Potatoes, parboiled and sliced

Grated cheese

Garlic butter

Cream

1.   Rub the inside of the dish with the garlic butter

2.   Put a layer of potatoes in the bottom.

3.   A layer of smoked salmon on top.

4.   Sprinkle cheese and pour cream over.

5.   Repeat steps 2-4, ending with a layer of potatoes cheese and cream.

6.   Bake at 180 degrees until potatoes are fully cooked and brown on top.

From Brother Alsem’s Glenstal Abbey Cookbook, Columba Press, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, 2009.