Getting ready for St. Patrick’s Day
My ethnic heritage is more Irish than anything else but I’ve always had mixed feelings about St. Patrick’s Day. In Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day is a holy day of obligation and I can’t speak to how the Irish view St. Patrick or his day. In the U.S., though, while I think it’s a good thing to celebrate the contributions of Irish-Americans to our culture, I’m not sure how combative drunken leprechauns and green beer fit into a conception of “contributions.”
But I’m here to talk about food and food on St. Patrick’s Day brings up images of corned beef and cabbage as if the entire Emerald Isle gorges on the stuff every March 17. The problem is that corned beef and cabbage isn’t Irish – it’s Irish-American. Calling corned beef and cabbage Irish cuisine is a bit like calling fortune cookies or General Tso’s chicken Chinese cuisine. Now I like corned beef and cabbage and have had more than my share of it throughout my life, but I think I want to go Irish, not Irish-American this coming St. Patrick’s Day.
It’s almost a stereotype that Irish food is based on potatoes but it’s a little less well-known that pork and lamb are the dominant meats (not beef) and the use of offal is not infrequent. Salmon is also a feature of Irish cuisine as is shellfish, depending on location and time of year. Potatoes are not the only root vegetable, as you can see a lot of recipes with parsnips, turnips, or carrots. Breads are important.
You do see potatoes a lot. Boxty is a kind of potato pancake except it’s made with grated and mashed potatoes. Colcannon is a combination of mashed potatoes and kale or cabbage. Champ is the same thing, except substitute scallions for the kale and add cheese. Shepherd’s pie is ground lamb topped with mashed potatoes and then popped in the oven until the potatoes begin to brown. So as I’m planning my Irish dinner on the 17th, right now I’m leaning towards boxty only because I’ve never made it before and I’m always up for a challenge. On the other hand, every picture I’ve seen of boxty shows it with eggs or sausage or some other breakfast presentation so it may not be appropriate for dinner.
For the main course, my first two choices would probably mean that I don’t do a side of potatoes. Right now, I’m leaning towards coddle, which was born as a means of using up any leftover meat on Thursday since Catholic Ireland didn’t eat meat on Fridays. Bits of sausage, bacon, or pork are rendered and then onions, potatoes, and carrots are added to create bulk and additional flavor. I’ve seen recipes that add a little cider or a little Guinness stout to create more of a braise. That idea with cider sounds really interesting.
The coddle is competing with a couple of alternatives. I’ve made Irish stew dozens of times and it’s easy and wonderful. It’s made with lamb, onions, potatoes, and sometimes carrots and is cooked at a low temperature for a long time. Going in an entirely different direction would be cockles and mussels. Shellfish are popular along the coast but this particular dish probably gets its fame from a traditional song. Molly Malone is a sad tale about a Dublin fishmonger who dies young from a fever. Alternative titles are Cockles and Mussels and In Dublin’s Fair City. Most of the recipes I’ve seen are similar to the French moules et frites (mussels and fries) but substitute onions and leeks for fennel, skip the parsley, and add some flour to thicken the sauce. One intriguing option was to substitute cider for wine in the braising liquid. If I go with the cockles and mussels, I can use a side of colcannon or champ (or even boxty). I’ll let you know how it works out.
I’ve compiled a list of links to use if for researching Irish food. Because this is my blog and I feel completely free to be utterly arbitrary, I chose not to include any sites that either (a) lead off with corned beef and cabbage or (b) include green beer anywhere on the page.
Ithe sásta (I don’t speak Irish and got this from Google translate. If I’ve made an error, please let me know.)
BBC – Top Ten Foods to Try in Ireland
Food & Wine – Seven Actual Irish Dishes to Make St. Patrick’s Day