Archive News
Ray plans to cook up a storm at Food Fest
Date Published: 21-Mar-2013
Most of us need ever know how to butcher our meat but it’s good to know where the different cuts come from and how to get the best out of them.
For the second year running, Ray Colleran will be giving a butchery demonstration at the Galway Food Festival alongside chef and festival co-organiser, JP McMahon who will be doing the cooking.
And while Ray certainly has the gift of the gab and is by no means shy, the event last year in the Festival tent at the Spanish Arch was his first public demonstration and he thoroughly enjoyed it.
Last year, he used a pig, this year it’s lamb, an apt choice coming up to Easter. In fact the demonstration takes place on Good Friday and Ray is banking on having enough ‘heathens’ in the crowd, who won’t be abstaining from meat, to volunteer as tasters!
“We got a great response to it last year. I brought along a whole pig and I explained how every bit of it could be used. This year it’s a lamb and JP will be giving a recipe for each bit though we will also be concentrating on slow cooking, using a shoulder. I know that JP has recipes too for the heart and sweetbreads.
“Most people think they don’t have time to cook something for four to five hours but they do. You just put it in a low temperature oven, like 120c, and leave it for anything between four to five hours. The longer it’s left, the better.”
Ray is the third generation running the family business, John E Colleran & Sons, which was established in 1935 by his grandparents, John and Bridget, and is saddened to see that he is one of a handful of butcher shops left in the city centre. He stresses that his definition of the city centre is what is known as the Heart of Galway.
At one time there were probably a dozen butcher shops in the city centre when there was an abattoir in Newtownsmyth. Now, most people get their meat in the local supermarket.
But the recent meat scandal (evidence of horse DNA in beef burgers) has actually brought new customers to butchers, says Ray, who says he has a loyal customer base.
“We have had the same type of customers for years down through the generations. We know who they are, what they like, how they like it but recently we have seen some new faces, younger people, and I believe it’s because the meat scandal has made people think about where their food is sourced.
“We have been getting our meat from Burkes in Kinvara for years. It’s all about traceability now and that’s a good thing, that people want to know where their food comes from,” says Ray.
But of course, customer demand has changed over the years as people’s palates have become more sophisticated, due to increased overseas travel and the city’s increased multi-culturalism.
Now, a butcher’s skills have widened to include knowledge of marinades and sauces and how to present pieces of meats, practically ready to go into oven.
Ray appreciates the power of display and if meat is presented nicely, the more likely it is to be sold. Most of his own staff – there are 18 employed in total between the shop in Mainguard Street and the factory in Liosban – have attended cookery courses and he hopes to entice another city chef, whose work he admires, to do a demonstration in the factory soon.
He names Kevin Higgins and Paul Hickey from his own shop as having great skill and experience and, like himself they have the personal touch with customers, something which is rarely if ever found in supermarket chains.
Ray is proud of all the staff, who have been with the company for varying lengths of time, with the longest-serving being there 35 years and the most recent having joined just three weeks ago. He is a young man who was on a Job Bridge (a scheme for unemployed people) with them.
Ray’s father, Paul, a former city councillor, ran the shop with his brother Enda, whose children, Donal and Maeve are also involved in the business.
Ray was only 17 when he started working in the family firm, following a year in catering college in Dublin’s Marlborough Street after he did his Leaving Cert.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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