Beloved Irish chef Darina Allen is the author of many cookbooks, but Forgotten Skills of Cooking: The Time-Honored Ways are the Best—Over 700 Recipes Show You Why focuses on traditional Irish cookery and methods.
She emphasizes that homemade food made with high-quality ingredients are what produces the tastiest food, sharing lots (over 700!) of authentic, but very accessible recipes.
I love this cookbook for Ms. Allen’s non-fussy dishes—she doesn’t use any fancy store-bought condiments, chili peppers, or unlikely herb combinations (mint with cilantro??? I see that a lot, but I don’t get it!) Just simple but beautifully prepared dishes that shine.
She devotes a number of recipes for that Irish St. Paddy’s Day staple: “The great thing about soda bread is that it is made in minutes,” she writes, “you wouldn’t have found your car keys and got down to the village shop in the time it takes to put the dough in the over and take out a fresh loaf.”
If you’re game to bake soda this St. Paddy’s Day, it’s extra easy because it’s made with only a few basic ingredients most bakers will have in the pantry: flour, salt, baking soda, (sometimes currants), and buttermilk, which you can easily make with plain milk soured with lemon juice or vinegar.
2 cups milk + 2 tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar = buttermilk substitute
I find regular soda bread far too dry, but Ms. Allen has another slightly richer soda bread, in which you add a bit of butter, a small amount of sugar, and one egg: Railway Cake or “Spotted Dog.” Here’s my experience of making this festive bread, “Spotted Dog is not a Dalmatian.”
She shares a charming note that many “women of the house” sold their farm’s eggs for “pin” (spending) money, so they only used eggs for special dishes.
My husband John and I visited Ireland a few years back, and I can attest to the quality of the food we found everywhere. Last night, I asked John about his impression of Irish food, and immediately he said, “There was a lot of meat.”
Not a problem for him! He was in hog heaven, having meat three times a day—especially having both sausage and rashers (Irish bacon) for breakfast. Here’s where we first experienced a gargantuan “Irish fried breakfast.”
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| Racket Hall Country House really was out in the country, in County Limerick |
Breakfast included: sausage, rashers, blood pudding, white pudding (both are sausage type meat), eggs, tomatoes, baked beans (Irish, Scottish and English people eat them for breakie), mushrooms, porridge, 3 kinds of bread with jam, cold cereal, fruit, yogurt… as you see, gargantuan!
At dinner, I mostly stuck to fish, and having salmon every night for days on end was a huge treat. Here’s the best salmon I had, at the King’s Head Pub in Galway City in County Galway.
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| Here’s my roast salmon on a bed of rice |
You can find American favorites in most restaurants. Here, John’s hamburger is out of the frame, but we both raved about the super creamy coleslaw.
I also made it my business to test chocolate bars every place we stopped! You could find Butler’s Chocolates in every shop in every county—but although I don’t care of bittersweet chocolate, I found Butler’s milk chocolate way too sweet. And I love sweet things!
My choice: Brona’s chocolate, handmade in County Kerry—it was just right.
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| The milk chocolate was to die for! |
For more about the Irish food we experienced on our trip, here’s “Cream Cakes, Pub Grub, and Everything in Between”…I hope you have something deliciously Irish for St. Patrick’s Day!
Tomorrow, Irish movies!
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