Pig as performance piece: Waterford Food Fair 2008

Hog roast from Gubbeen was on the menu at the Waterford Food Fair farmers’ market in Dungarvan yesterday. Cooking started on Grattan Square at 5.30am so appetites were well-stimulated by the time Fingal Ferguson and his staff started serving blaas stuffed with roast pork to a hungry crowd around 1pm.

It wasn’t the only food on offer at the market – think Chocolate Brownies from Tara’s Cookies, Baldwin’s farmhouse ice cream, the O’Flynn’s Gourmet Sausages that I often pick up in the English Market, apple juice from Killowen Orchard and the Crinnaughtaun Juice Company – but, with waves of pork-infused smoke wafting through the square as it cooked, it was definitely the most spectacular.

When we arrived, as the market opened, I grabbed a half-dozen duck and hen eggs from the Dungarvan and Waterford Irish country markets stall. Buying eggs first thing in the morning may not have been my most intelligent idea but, despite other purchases (hunks of local Knockanore and Knockalara cheeses, jars of Seville Marmalade and Fíor-Mil summer honey, fresh-baked rye and seed bread from the Ormond Café), along with the Sunday newspapers, various scarves and layers that were shed as the day heated up, we still managed to get them home in one piece.

That, of course, was until they were introduced to a handful of mushrooms and a bit of butter in the omelette pan that evening…