Drisheen and Tripe

When I used to go to “Irish camp” in the Aran Islands in the summers—where hordes of teenagers were supposedly working on our Irish language skills but were in fact idling without much supervision and hoping to work up the courage to talk to the opposite sex—I first ate drisheen with the family where I boarded. This was rough-and-ready summer camp, and we were spread out among the islanders like so many refugees, sent out to classes in the morning, and left to roam the island or swim all afternoon before we attended a ceilidh every night and eagerly hoped to meet girls. The bean an tí, literally the “woman of the house,” had a large pot of sheep’s blood in a windowsill where it sat for a day or two until it was thick. Not surprisingly, we few teenagers boarding with her affected great disgust. Then she mixed it up with cream, a little oatmeal, and some leaves of tansy (a wild herb with a faintly minty flavor). She packed it into a mold and steamed it, then she sliced it, fried it, and fed it to us for breakfast with a fried egg and buttered toast. And all the complaining stopped. I was hooked—it was the most flavorful, delicate black pudding I’d ever eaten, a gustatory experience that stopped me in my tracks.