Celebrate St. Patrick with much more than corned beef
What comes to mind when you think of Irish food? Corned beef and cabbage? Potatoes? Soda bread?
Two new cookbooks, out just in time for St. Patrick’s Day on March 17, break the shamrock-shaped mold of Irish cooking.
Imen McDonnell, author of The Farmette Cookbook, Recipes and Adventures from My Life on an Irish Farm, moved to Ireland about 10 years ago, when she met and married a handsome Irish dairy farmer.
On her first St. Patrick’s Day, she went to meet his parents, excited to taste the corned beef and cabbage.
Imagine her surprise when out came a beautiful pork loin — what they call bacon — with mashed potatoes and creamy parsley sauce instead. She was stunned.
“It was just so different than how we experience St. Patrick’s Day in the United States,” she said. “Corned beef is not even popular. It’s something people would have eaten many, many years ago.” It’s sort of “poverty food.”
Corned beef might be the Irish American tradition, but in Ireland, things are different.
“It’s still a religious holiday here,” McDonnell said. “Especially in the countryside, people take it very seriously. In Dublin, it’s a massive party. They don’t make the river green or anything, and there are parades and partying. But in the countryside, you might get a shamrock and pin it on your lapel. It’s a quiet day.”
And the food? “People just have a nice meal,” she said.
Roasted meat is what she finds herself cooking the most. The midday meal is a big meal on the farm, “a full roast dinner with potatoes and vegetables and pudding,” she said. “Those are the kinds of everyday big, hearty, farm meals I do. And sometimes fish pie or shepherd’s pie.”
Her shepherd’s pie is a sort of American-Irish version, rather than Irish-American, and it had origins in her cravings for a tater-tot hot dish, a staple of her Minnesota childhood. Not surprisingly, tater tots are not readily available in Ireland, so McDonnell made her own.
“It’s a little bit fiddly, but it’s worth it,” she said. “The homemade ones are just incredible.”
She has found lots of other ways to broaden her Irish cooking palette, fusing other cultural influences. The St. Patrick’s Day recipe in the book is for pork and cabbage pot stickers, for instance, and she has a smoked-salmon taco and a banh mi sandwich.
One thing McDonnell has in abundance because she lives on a dairy farm is fresh milk, and she makes the most of that with a farmhouse tres leches cake, even preparing evaporated and condensed milk from scratch.
“It’s like a million times better than anything from a can in the store,” McDonnell said.
She also said it’s a fun cake to make with kids, who enjoy poking all over the cake with a skewer before drizzling on the sauce, which is made of evaporated milk, heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk and rum.
McDonnell wasn’t a big cook before she moved to the farm. “I used to think I was a cook, but I wasn’t,” she said. Learning to cook sparked the creative impulse to start her blog, which led to the cookbook.
Lexington cookbook author Barbara Harper-Bach wrote The Irish-American Cookery Clinic. Her love of cooking led her home to Ireland. Reading the cookbooks of Myrtle and Darina Allen, Harper-Bach learned that the cooking she knew from her grandmother was rooted in Ireland.
“I realized my grandmother was Irish,” she said.
Last year, she visited Ireland and Darina Allen’s Ballymaloe Cookery School in Shanagarry, County Cork. When she arrived, Allen was in a cooking class with 64 students from all over the world.
“She introduced me to her class, and I told them about my Irish-American roots and my cooking clinics,” Harper-Bach said.
The trip turned into a recipe swap. Harper-Bach shared her favorite recipes and gathered recipes of the best things she tasted.
At a lunch at Ballymaloe House, she fell in love with a raspberry fool.
“The raspberry fool was probably the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life,” she said. “I could not wait to get back and make it. It was the first thing I made when I got back.”
It’s made from macerated sweetened berries and whipped cream.
“You fold that in, and it’s fabulous,” she said. “It would be so great on meringues, or on angel food cake. All kinds of things you can use it for. ... To me, the most outstanding thing was that easy little recipe.”
As with McDonnell, modern Irish cuisine was something of a surprise to Harper-Bach. Fruit was a common component, in pies and in compotes, served with a wide variety of dishes, from breakfast to dessert. And brown bread, rather than soda bread, was everywhere and delicious.
“The brown breads are on every table in Ireland. Every restaurant,” she said “And it’s really good.”
Harper-Bach was reintroduced to a lot of old favorites, too, including colcannon, an Irish specialty that she knew as her grandmother Harper’s mashed potatoes and cabbage.
“There were many many other good things, too,” she said. “A lot of them were already in my recipe box from my grandmother.”
Janet Patton: 859-231-3264, @janetpattonhl
If you go
Barbara Harper-Bach will teach a class from The Irish-American Cookery Clinic at 10 a.m. March 12 at Williams-Sonoma in Fayette Mall. It’s $25 and you get her book and get to sample goodies like her Guinness cake. For information, call 859-272-5856.
Tater tot shepherd’s pie
The Farmette Cookbook by Imen McDonnell
1 tablespoon sunflower or canola oil, plus more for frying
1 large onion, chopped
2 to 3 medium carrots, chopped
1 pound ground lamb
2 tablespoons tomato purée
Splash of Worcestershire sauce
2 cups lamb or beef stock
For the tots
4 large russet potatoes, baked and cooled
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons fine salt
Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat, then cook the onion and carrots for about 10 minutes, until softened. Turn up the heat, crumble in the lamb, and brown, pouring off any excess fat. Add the tomato purée and Worcestershire sauce; fry for a few more minutes until browned. Pour in the stock, bring to a simmer, cover, and cook for 20 minutes. Remove the cover and cook for another 20 minutes to reduce the liquid.
Meanwhile, peel the potatoes and shred them on the large holes of a box grater. Transfer to a a large bowl, sprinkle in the flour and salt, and gently mix until combined.
Scoop a 1/2 tablespoon of the potato mixture into a short cylinder, about 1 1/2 inches long and 3/4 inch wide. Press the mixture in tightly and then press the tots onto a baking sheet, and repeat with the remaining potato mixture.
Line a second baking sheet with paper towels; set aside. Pour 1/2 inch of oil into a large frying pan and set over medium-high heat until hot, about 5 minutes. Fry the tots in batches of 8 to 10 pieces (do not overcrowd the pan), turning once, until light golden brown on both sides, about 1 to 2 minutes per batch. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the tots to a baking sheet lined with paper towel, and season with salt. Repeat for all the tots.
Preheat the oven to 375. Put the meat mixture into an ovenproof dish. Top with the tots to completely cover the meat. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the tots are starting to turn golden brown and the mince is bubbling through at the edges. Serve with a salad of crisp garden greens.
You can also freeze tater tots for future use: Let the fried tots cool, then transfer them to an airtight container or bag. Arrange them in a single layer in the container or bag and place them in the freezer. You can also just pile the shredded potato on top of the filling and bake as directed.
Serves 4.
Farmhouse ‘tres leches’ cake
From The Farmette Cookbook by Imen McDonnell.
Unsalted butter, for greasing the pans
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for coating the pans
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
6 large egg whites
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
3 large egg yolks
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract, divided
1/2 cup whole milk
1 cup evaporated milk (see recipe)
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup sweetened condensed milk (see recipe)
1 tablespoon dark rum
Preheat the oven to 350. Butter and flour the bottoms and sides of two 8-inch cake pans; set aside.
Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and cinnamon in a large bowl. In another bowl, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer until stiff peaks form, 7 to 8 minutes. Gradually beat in the sugar. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, beating to blend between additions. Beat in 2 teaspoons of the vanilla. Add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the milk in two additions (you begin and end with the flour mixture.) Pour the batter into the pans; smooth the top.
Bake for 25 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 325 and continue baking until the cake is golden brown and the middle springs back when pressed, 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and let the cake cool in the pans for 15 minutes. Invert onto a wire rack set inside a rimmed baking sheet.
Whisk together the remaining 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, evaporated milk, 1 cup of the heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk, and rum in a medium bowl. Poke holes all over the top of the cake with a skewer. Slowly drizzle half of the sauce over the cake, letting the liquid soak in before adding more. Let sit for 10 minutes.
Invert a plate on top of each cake. Lift the rack and gently invert the cake onto the plate. Drizzle the remaining sauce, including any liquid collected in the baking sheet, over the cake. Whip the remaining cream and frost the staked cakes with it.
Sweetened condensed milk:
4 1/2 cups whole milk
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon butter, to thicken milk (optional)
In a heavy-bottom pot, bring the milk and sugar to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat to low and simmer gently for about 2 hours, until the volume is reduced by half. The mixture should barely simmer and never bubble at any point. Stir every 15 minutes or so to keep the milk from burning on the bottom. After 2 hours, stir in the butter (if using.) Remove from the heat and let cool. The mixture will thicken further after it cools. Pour it into a jar and store in the refrigerator. Allow it to come to room temperature before using. Makes about 1 3/4 cups.
Evaporated milk:
2 quarts whole milk
In a heavy-bottom pot, bring the milk to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat to low and simmer gently for about 2 hours, until the volume is reduced by 60 percent. the milk should barely simmer and never bubble at any point. Stir every 15 minutes or so to keep the milk from burning on the bottom. Remove the pot from the heat and let it cool. The milk will thicken further after it cools. Pour it into a jar and store in the refrigerator. Allow to come to room temperature before using. Keeps for two weeks or more in the refrigerator.
Ballymaloe Cookery School’s raspberry fool
From The Irish-American Cookery Clinic by Barbara Harper-Bach
1 pound raspberries, fresh or frozen
3/4 cup sugar
1 pint whipped cream (cream that has been whipped, of which you will use 1 pint)
Lay raspberries out flat. Sprinkle sugar over the raspberries and let macerate for one hour. Purée in blender and put through strainer to remove seeds. Fold into the whipped cream. Serve in a beautiful urn to serve over ice cream or with cookies, meringues, panna cotta, etc.
This story was originally published March 8, 2016 at 12:48 PM with the headline "Celebrate St. Patrick with much more than corned beef."