The Full Dublin Coddle

“The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink and somebody to love you."

Those are the tellingly tender words of Brendan Behan. The highly acclaimed Irish poet, playwright and novelist, once described himself as a “drinker with writing problems”.

Sadly for those who appreciate stellar writing, it wasn’t Behan’s problems with literary creativity that caused and then repeatedly aggravated the diabetes that ended him in 1964. It was the booze. He was 41.

The “highly acclaimed” accolade hardly does your man credit. Brendan Behan is routinely rated as being an equal to his fellow Dubliner, Oscar Wilde. We’re talking here about the best of the best.

As well as being a big drinking, “fine doorfull of a man” – as the New York Times called him shortly before he died – Behan surely would have heartily approved of a curative Coddle on the Morning After the Night Before.

I have no proof to say he was a Coddle fan, but I reckon that questioning my conviction is on a par with querying if the Pope wears robes.

A Coddle’s effects are as sublime as its contents are simple. Potatoes. Onions. Carrots. Sausages. Bacon. Butter. Pepper. Bay leaves. Salt. Parsley. Sage. Plus a bit of Adam’s ale and some slowly-simmering heat.

It’s that gentle simmer (coddling) that most likely gives the dish its name. It might however come from “caudle”. That’s an old English beverage for the sickly. It’s a restorative that perhaps originated as long ago as the 1300s. Made from warmed beer or wine thickened with eggs, a little bread and oats, and enriched with spices and honey or sugar, it eventually came to be served in a two-handled “caudle cup”. What a grand plan if somehow your hands aren’t too steady.

On the Morning After, intone to yourself the makings of a Coddle and you’re beginning an incantation that’s equivalent to a stake in a vampire’s heart. A Coddle’s like the sun’s first, piercing rays that immolate the life-sucking monster stalking you from the Night Before.

I’ve confronted that monster – in its full range of ghastly guises and sizes – on (ahem) a few occasions. I’ve lived to tell the tale and it goes like this. More than silver bullets and garlicky necklaces, a Coddle will ward off the demons that hunger for your first wary eyelid opening.

Cooking begins.

Hangovers are repulsed by Coddles. They flee from its banishing delights. Quite simply, a Coddle is ‘The Cure”.

Interesting that an often Irish-tagged expression for a palliative to the Night Before should be known as ‘The Cure”. Though it’s maybe not from Behan’s era, I reckon he would have liked the jokey implication of a respectable-sounding medical procedure to counter the hung-up taboo of suffering from a demonic hangover.

As pretty much permanently hungover gadabouts in London during the perpetual happy-hour that was most of the ’80s, my mates and I used to call two Big Macs with choccy shakes the McCure.

In contrast, Coddle is not a fast-food relief for the Morning After. It requires some pre-drinking thinking. It demands the exceptionally advanced ability to accurately predict and be fully prepared for the future.

That predictive perception means that Thursday evenings are responsibly spent preparing your counterstrike for Saturday – and, maybe – Sunday morning. Like this:

Dublin Coddle for four brunchers armed with simple soup spoons and napkins

1 heaped teaspoon of butter

8 high-class pork sausages – the classier the better, so no daft things with cheese in them

1  250g pack of the best smoked streaky bacon you can find, roughly cut into 1 cm pieces

2 big-ish peeled spuds, cut into pieces about the size of a shot glass

3 peeled large brown onions, very roughly chopped

3 peeled large carrots, cut into bite-sized chunks

1 good chicken stock cube thoroughly dissolved into a jug with 1 litre of boiling water

3 bay leaves

1 heaped tablespoon of very finely chopped sage leaves and stalks. Please: fresh sage

3 heaped tablespoons of fresh parsley – finely chopped, stalks ’n all.

1 level teaspoon of salt and two – that’s two heaped teaspoons of white pepper. Yes, white pepper. Most definitely, white pepper.

Creating your Coddle

In a good sized cast-iron casserole pot placed on a medium heat, fry your bacon bits in the butter so they just take on a bit of colour.

Take the pot off the heat and lift out the bacon with a slotted spoon.

Your bacon-fattened pot now goes back onto a medium heat to fry the sausages a goldy-brown all over. Take them off the heat and cut them into bite-size pieces – probably into threes.

Wonderfully, that’s the hardest part over and your work’s almost done. In celebration, why not pour yourself another Guinness?

All the ingredients now go into the pot and back onto the heat. Give the whole caboodle a caring stir and let it gently – gently, mind you – come to the boil.

The very moment that happens, turn the heat to low and let it cautiously simmer with its top barely ajar for 50 or so minutes – until the spuds are just cooked through.

Those spuds will absorb a lot of the saltiness – so check after about 40 minutes and salt again if you need to. And perhaps add more of that awakening white pepper.

Let your now satisfyingly seasoned Coddle simmer for the last ten of its 50-ish minutes, and that’s it. Coddle completed.

Remove the pot from the heat and let it cool enough until you can refrigerate – but not freeze it – in readiness for the impending Morning After.

When that inevitability arrives, you can reheat Dublin’s generous gift on your stovetop, prior to ladling it daringly hot into your fellow brunchers’ big bowls.

And I’m sure Brendan Behan would agree that it should be served with a round or two of chilled, creamily-headed Guinness. This will prove for all to clearly see that light rises above darkness on the Morning After the Night Before.

Slainte mhath!

(That’d be a Gaelic drinking toast for “good health” and is kinda pronounced as slarn-chur-var.) DM