Irish Food? - Page 2

Come on, it's not possible there aren't more Irish dishes.  Isn;t lamb a big thing in Ireland?  Fish?  A lot of Ireland is on the sea!  Come on, guys, now i'm curious. 

The story goes... That the irish did land a lot of fish. Herrings i think.But they didnt like it, or thought it nasty somehow...Anyhoo, the used it as fertiliser for the spuds.Well as we know there was a tattie famine and as they wouldnt eat the plentiful supply of fish, the rest is history. True.

There wasnt much beef around  back in the day. Mostly for the gentry.In fact there wasnt much meat around full stop.Except for the lucky few who .kept pigs.

Just as a btw, the irish cuisine along with our own Scots, contains a huge French influence.

 Seafood is superb in Ireland now. Crab, lobster and salmon are all used,  As is game.

• Smoked salmon with potato cakes, served with sour cream,I can recommend.
• Game broth
• mussel soup with saffron and garlic
• Veg stew with herb dumplings

 
Irish stew made with scraggy neck of lamb, floury potatoes, carrots and onions is always a winner. Cooked for 3 hours or more.  You can buy it in Scotland in tins???

Has anyone tried Dulce...Its a dried seaweed that's eaten like sweeties in Northern Ireland.My inlaws swear by it...Theyre from Belfast. In my opinion, it's just nasty!

 

Waterford Blaa
 

1kg t65 or strong flour
20g salt
45g honey
50g yeast
600g milk
100g unsalted butter, soft

flour temperature + room temperature + milk temperature =  56 Celcius
e.g. if flour temp + room temp is 21 +23= 44 then milk temp should be 12 degrees celcius (56 -44=12)

mix all ingredients except butter for 5 minutes with dough hook on speed 2 or medium speed
add butter while mixing and continue to mix another 5 minutes

turn dough on to floured table,  dust with flour and cover with plastic sheet
leave 45minutes-1 hour.
cut dough into 90g pieces,
rest 15 minutes
shape into rounds, flatten slightly
arrange on tray, closer together than usual.  Dust with plenty of flour.
Allow to prove, lightly covered with plastic sheet.
cook at 170-180 for 25 minutes approx.  Don't cook with steam-you dont want them crusty
The blaas will be quite close together but you cut to separate and this will give the square shape, but you can place them further apart to get a rounder shape
allow to cool on wire racks

• gingerbread -Norman roots, the normans introduced spice in 12th century.
• fraughan tart - tradition during Lunasa. Fraughans are bilberries-a type of wild blue berry
• soda bread-a produce of famine times-the poor quality flour sent by Brits did not raise until the people discovered bicarbonate of soda did the trick
• brown scones
• buttermilk scones- Little Christmas of 6th January was known as Nollaig na mBan or womans christmas-the day was filled with all of the above delicacies women would enjoy
• apple cake and tart- apples are bounty full in Ireland
• brown bread
• currant bread
• tarts-rhubarb, gooseberry,  blackberry etc
• jams-rhubarb, blackcurrant, blueberry, gooseberry etc
• Barm brack- for Hallowe'En
• blaas - Waterford traditon
• yellaman-Northern Eire tradition
• Hot cross buns- Easter Anglo norman, tudor roots
• Simnel cake- Easter.  Norman roots 
• christmas pudding and cake-prior to Anglo Norman invasion this was know as cutlin.
• hasty pudding- made during mayday fesitval
• bread and butter pudding -a pudding such as this was traditional during St Johns Eve
• pancakes-For Shrove Tuesday
• oatcakes-oat bread was very popular as oats grow well in the wet climate
• carrageen pudding-made with carrageen moss
• steamed pudding
• porter cake-often made with stout/guinness

Dont forget the potato did not come to ireland until 1585, it was first a specimen plant in the gardens of the rich and then used to feed pigs and other farm animals but by 1675 the millions of suppressed poor in  Ireland found it an invaluable food supply, it took little space, not much effort to grow and could feed many.
There was a rich culinary tradition in Ireland before supression and the famine and there still is - it has taken on a more modern approach.  Irish food isn't all about potatoes, cabbage or bacon - it has gone beyond that-it is alive today and like all living cusines  its a mix of new and old and still evolving.  If anyone would like some recipes for any of the above let me know.

Try searching at http://www.gourmetrecipe.com

I was recently given a wonderful book by an Irish author, Darina Allen called Forgotten Skills.  Has anyone seen it? The whole book radiates wholesome food, wonderful surroundings, great ingredients.  She has a cooking school in the country, where she raises her own animals, grows her own food and does everything from smoking to salting to just plain cooking. 

Haven't made anything from it yet, but it's a beautiful book.  Nice just to leaf through it. 

X86, that's interesting.  I'll have to try something from it to see.  Strange that she would have bad recipes, since she seems to have a school, and in a school you have to have recipes that turn out. 

I don't have that cookbook so i can't look at the recipe.  Could it be that she uses imperial measures and they're not the same as the american measures?  The british fluid ounce is smaller than the US one, and many other measures are different. 

7 course Irish Banquet   a 6 pack of beer and a boiled potato.

As I've said, I've attended a number of cookery courses at Ballymaloe (Darina Allen's school) - she is/was (she may have retired now, because it's been a few years since my last visit there) a great Irish cook, cooking with Irish ingredients in Ireland.  Can't get much more Irish than that!

The problem may be that, as suggested by Siduri, the recipes are written in either litres etc (metric) or in Imperial measures (pre decimalisation) - I know that years ago, when giving American friends some of my Scottish recipes, they claimed the results were unsuccessful - it turned out they were using US measurements (for example, an Imperial pt and a US pint are not the same).

There is an attempt to introduce a type of appellation controlee here in Ireland. And a few foods have been given PGS -Protected geographical status, Timoleague brown pudding, Clare Island salmon, Imokilly Regato cheese and Connemara hill lamb,  as has a type of potato and eel, I think the Waterford blaa and Clonakilty blackpudding are going for it too.  There are some great artisan producers here and I heard on the radio today that more artisans are opening business now partly because the recession has lead to a reduction in rents and other costs that were too prohibitive for small producers during the boom.There is a positve outlook for the farming and argicultural sector regarding exports too.  So all in all, things are looking up for Irish food I think!

Good for them - ensuring that some foods have a protected status can only help to ensure that the product remains true to its roots.

I know that Scotland has tried to ensure that many of its 'native' and 'special' foods and drinks have some kind of protected status, too.

I've been amazed at the strides that have been made in Irish foods as served by pubs/small cafes in recent years.  So much of it used to be heavy, stodgy, badly prepared foods.  Nowadays, so many take a real pride in the produce and how it is cooked and served.

Quote:

Originally Posted by X86BSD 


That is GREAT news! I found a recipe for the blaa on Wikipedia of all places. Now if I could find a recipe for making the cheese and the brown pudding I might have some worthwhile additions to my Irish menu

Ah yes, but don't forget the:

• Vegetarian
• Vegan
• Raw food
• Low Carb
• Low Fat
• No sodium
• Gluten Free
• and all the rest of the choices that potential customers have

options as well you cannot afford to miss anyone, right?

I've eaten at Richard Corrigan's restaurant a few times and have to say, IMO, he is THE best Irish chef I've ever come across.  Mind you, I still like Paul Rankin, too!

At the risk of stirring up trouble (something I seem to have no problems doing here) being full Irish I can tell you there is no real Irish-centric cuisine.  Now, If you want to count the fact that the 'gaels' pretty much owned all of spain, France, etc, etc, then I guess we do have something of a culinary history.  Most of what you see as 'Irish' cuisine today is really adaptations of what you see in the United States.  

Of course there are the regulars like Boxty, Colcannon, champ, etc, etc, however most of historic Irish cuisine was nasty, nasty stuff.  In my own research I turned up the fact that most of Irish cuisine was whatever could be hauled out of the sea and boiled to hell.  Most vegetables in Ireland were introduced there including the potato.  In addition birds were sometimes caught and they were slathered with clay and then baked whole in a fire, guts, feathers and all.  On the upside, once the bird was done, all you had to do was crack the 'clay pot' and the feathers came off with the clay.  Nicely done!

500 years of British assault and tyranny really ripped the heart and soul out of the Irish culture.  There was a very rich and vibrant beginnings of culture through their music and language, and were beginning to develop more organization as such when the Irish were subjected to slavery and abuse from other cultures, IE. beginning with the spanish invasions and then of course British colonization which I will avoid for political reasons.

Once Great Britain had cut-down all Irelands trees, (thank you Cromwell the Butcher) burned all of Irelands beautiful harps and burned all of the music for harps, and cut the hands off all known harpists in the land they had effectively begun to change and destroy her culture forever.  To this day none of Irelands original musical subculture has been re-gained.

All that being said, once you destroy a people-groups culture nothing much else can really emerge.  The Irish were scatterd to the four-corners of the globe, and generally followed the Brits as they tried to colonize (read subjegate) other cultures.  As slaves they populated the Barbados and other sugar-rich colonies, (hence why you still see black people with stark red hair and freckles there at times) Africa, and India.  Where-ever the British tended to go, not long after they would bring the Irish to be the 'sub-culture' in the area filling the roles such as nurses, butchers, housemaids, bakers, and other support functions.

my two cents worth.

WOW.

Just....

WOW.