Sacrosanct Irish traditions of cooking a turkey are under threat from a cross-Border food safety authority, writes ORNA MULCAHY
WITH THE country facing yet more economic hardship, it’s terrifically reassuring that we are to get some help with the turkey. Not financial help, mind you. That would be too much to hope for. What we are getting is advice from a quango called Safefood which is warning of food poisoning on December 26th as the nation digests the festive bird.
The problem seems to be this, says Safefood: up to 20 per cent of people are at risk of food poisoning this Christmas because they don’t know how to cook turkey properly. Gosh, how totally alarming.
Startling new research released by the organisation this week revealed that almost half of us find the most challenging aspect of Christmas dinner is getting everything ready on time. This is an all-Ireland problem (since Safefood is a cross-Border quango set up under the Belfast Agreement in 1999) with both Catholics and Protestants, and dissenters too, worried about getting the timing right on the turkey and consequently putting their family at risk by not cooking it through.
Surely there is no big mystery to cooking turkey? Nigella might soak hers in brine, and Jamie take his apart and put it back together with stuffing and string, and at the River Cottage Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall may be stuffing a tiny bird into a bigger bird and so on until the goose is fitting snugly inside the turkey. That is all very entertaining to watch on television but, at the end of the day, it is not what we Irish do.
Which is, to leave the turkey alone in a hot oven for as long as it takes to go to Mass and visit relatives and neighbours. Traditionally, the turkey is removed only when all 20 pounds of it have been dried through and through. (Dropping the turkey on the floor as it comes out of the oven, skidding on any residual juices and cursing loudly is an optional step in the process).
Is this not the national recipe for cooking turkey? Sure there are experimental folk who will leave theirs in the bottom oven of the Aga overnight, and others who might rig up some steam to get a bit of moisture going, but these people are oddities and show-offs. The rank and file know how to cook a big bird properly.
No, the big mystery is why an organisation like Safefood is needed to tell us how to cook our turkeys, or indeed to tell us anything at all. Safefood, by the way, is just a neat internet-friendly name. The quango is actually called The Food Safety Promotion Board, or to give it its full title as gaeilge, Bord Cothaithe Sábháilteacht Bhia na hÉireann.
It has offices in Dublin and Cork, a dozen or so all-Ireland worthies on its board including a politician, an ecologist, restaurateurs, a couple of food scientists and a PR person, all under the chairmanship of former PD John Dardis. Safefood’s mission statement is “to protect and improve public health, by fostering and maintaining confidence in the food supply on the island of Ireland, in partnership with others”.
It should not be confused in any way with the Food Safety Authority or the Food Standards Agency of Northern Ireland. Indeed on its website there is a line advising people to turn to these bodies if they have any more detailed queries about food safety.
Still, Safefood puts on a good show with snazzily presented annual accounts, the latest of which show that in 2007 it appeared to employ 35 people and managed to spend almost €10 million of funds from the Irish and UK exchequers. Much of this was spent on advertising campaigns, leaflets and micro-sites for children and parents about healthy eating. There were also conferences on food bugs, and some scientific research. Board members receive a handy €5,000 to €10,000 plus travel expenses.
Previous Christmas alerts from Safefood have included a “Don’t wash your bird” campaign, to avoid spreading germs on the kitchen counter. This year it has launched a new free iPhone application which allows consumers to calculate the optimal cooking time for their Christmas dinner. Just text the exact weight of your turkey and get a text back telling you how long it needs to be cooked for. That’s assuming you know the weight in the first place and that the label hasn’t gotten all blurred in the defrosting.
Please, can someone send in Michael O’Leary to stop this expensive, nannyish carry-on? In his highly entertaining interview with Marian Finucane last weekend, he said that Ireland’s 1,000 odd quangos should be purged immediately. We don’t need them, he said, and we can’t afford them.
Otherwise, we will end up like the UK, where this week pensioners in Warwickshire had leaflets delivered telling them how to put on their slippers properly in case they trip up. The local council has set up a scheme to give pensioners slippers for a fiver.
Safefood, take note. We could take the guff, if there was a cut-price turkey thrown in.