Eating Irish: Ain’t It Awful?

Brunch & Pub Supper Recipes for the Dubious and Delighted

What would the leisure hours look like, if it weren’t for holiday parties, especially the less-ballyhooed fêtes of March?

You have Pi Day (yes, I’m going to a Pi Potluck) — and of course, St. Paddy’s Day, which is often relinquished to drinking.

The truth is, St. Patrick’s Saint day is an excellent occasion to break a fast like Lent, or eat until your belly pokes out of your pants!

I’m a book-learned cook. There are no “recipes handed down from my Grand.” I have to tell you, the idea in my maternal O'Halloran family that there was such a thing as “Irish cuisine” would‘ve generated a big laugh, or maybe a cold potato thrown at your head. 19th and 20th century Irish-American food lore is about food scarcity and drowning your troubles— not plates of delights. My mother and her sisters’ idea of a great meal was going out for Chop Suey in downtown Minneapolis.

My mom eventually learned how to cook, loosely, from a tome given to her by her friend Mary Lou Sullivan in 1958, The Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook.

Oh, what a laugh it is! This was a bestseller in its day, designed to sell as much Jello and ketchup to America’s post-war housewives as they could stomach.

Revised, enlarged, and SCORCHED. My mother’s copy from 1958. Everything is as awful as it looks.

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Some of the recipe copy writing is just pure bull, concocted by what I imagine to be a sadistic queen high on diet-pill-speed and a corporate deadline.

Take, for example, this non-starter, “Irish Butter Sauce”:¹

Do Not Under Any Circumstances Make This Nonsense: Butter with ketchup and nutmeg? COME ON.

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I was a grown woman before I found out the real meaning of Irish native cuisine, and particularly Irish dairy, on my first trip to Belfast. I remember peering out the window of our plane from Boston, seeing the green pastures, the red and white-backed cattle, and thinking, “I come from California, but even our green isn’t like this!” —So vivid it made your eyes sting.

I checked into the Europa Hotel, famous in the city for surviving 33 bomb blasts. They were very good to me.

All over Ireland, the national identification with the US civil rights struggle and anti-apartheid movement, is ever-present. They don’t know where or why Americans lost their way . . .

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The bellman carrying my bags urged me to catch breakfast, as if he was inviting me to a secret ball. Well, he was. I was so naively green myself, I didn’t understand his tip until I tasted the best butter, milk, and cream that ever came from the cow. A revelation.

Their butter is natively bright yellow, and even the cream has a warm color to it. It’s not “white.” I said to the server, “Is this real?” She indulgently laughed at me, even though she must hear this incredulity a dozen times a day.

I dreamed of packing my suitcase with that butter.

My Europa brunch carried on in the same splendor, each food group: The fried eggs sported stand-up yolks. The native honey was served in a big warm pot next the Irish oat porridge and a bottle of Bushmills. I put four different freshly ground juicy sausages on my platter.

Are you crying yet? You should be. The best eggs I ever had in my life, at the Europa hotel buffet.

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My culinary hosts gave me a crash course on Irish farming, gathering and hunting history, and the beautiful poetry that describes the Irish palate, long before the potato ever came along.

Take the following poem from the 8th century: “The Hermit’s Song,” or “Marbán to Guaire.”

To what meals the woods invite me

All about!

There are water, herbs and cresses,

Salmon, trout.

A clutch of eggs, sweet mast and honey

Are my meat,

Heathberries and whortleberries for a sweet.

All that one could ask for comfort

Round me grows,

There are hips and haws and strawberries,

Nuts and sloes.

And when summer spreads its mantle

What a sight!

Marjoram and leeks and pignuts,

Juicy, bright.

Doesn’t it just put you in a mood?

I told my Belfast friends that if I showed them a copy of my Betty Crocker cookbook, it would confirm every ugly stereotype they have about Irish-Americans and bad taste.

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Take for example, this wretched menu for a St. Patrick’s supper.

I’d like to see Bing Crosby (!!) try to swallow one mouthful of this dreck: Green Fruit Cup, Canned Asparagus, Molded Lime Fruit Medley, Green Icing.

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So what will I cook this coming St. Patrick’s Day, now that I am informed by my ancestral betters, but nevertheless tainted by American white trash?

Brunch

I’ll start with breakfast on Sunday.

I’m going to bake breads. Not just Irish Soda bread, with currants and mace, but also black bread and sourdough.

I know this sounds like I’ve gone over the deep end— okay, maybe I have— but I found an inexpensive grain mill for our Kitchen Aid, and presto! Fresh flour from any whole grain you pour in the funnel.

Hypnotizing, watching the grain mill do its thing

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I’m going on a trek tomorrow to find the best butter and cheeses in town. That could be Trader Joe’s, or Grocery Outlet, or maybe the Harley goat dairy up the road.

I’ll open some of the blackberry jam we made last fall, (they grow here wild in huge brambles) and find the jar of “Poison Ivy” honey we got at the farmers’ market.

Irish soda bread dough with currants and mace

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I’ll use Guatemalan beans to make my San Francisco-special Irish coffees, with real cream from the Marin County Strauss Dairy, and Jameson whisky, thank you very much.

I’m going to save my big meaty meal for dinner, with a Beef and Guinness Pie that owes as much to Betty-Crocker-style short-cuts as it does anything else. It tastes “gourmet” but it has a couple tricks that any harried “I Hate to Cook” housewife will appreciate.

Ready?

(And if you want the lime jello mold you are ON YOUR OWN).

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Guinness Pub Pie

Beef and Guinness Pie takes a couple hours to cook, but it’s dead easy, and a comfort food like none other on a rainy, cold night.

So, what are you having?

Ingredients:

• 4 tablespoons butter, separated in half

• 1 tin of anchovies in oil

• 2 cups of tiny onions, peeled and cut in half. Of course you can use any onion, but the look of the small ones is irresistible

• 4 cloves minced garlic, and green garlic, for even more Irish style.

• 3 carrots, peeled cut into bite-size pieces. NO MINCING.

• 3 ribs celery, chopped into bite-size pieces, like the carrots

• 20+ button or crimini mushrooms, cut in half.

• ~4 pounds of pounds of chuck beef roast, chopped into small bite-size pieces. Ask a butcher to prep the meat for you; it’s the hardest part of the job, and they can do it so quickly with their ever-sharp cleavers.

• Salt and Pepper

• 3-4 tablespoons flour

• Rosemary, fresh if you have it.

• 2 cans of Guinness stout — get a six-pack so you can adjust or share

• 2 splashes of Worcestershire Sauce

• 2 cups grated cheddar cheese; you’ll divide it in two.

Crust:

• Purchase a roll of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, ready to go.

• Or, get a package of Dufour Puff Pastry, even more exquisite— also found in most supermarket freezer aisles.

• This pie is going to be devoured so quickly, you can’t go wrong. Of course you could make your own dough by hand, but save yourself! This isn’t French pastry, it’s IRISH STEW.

Instructions

• Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.

• In a Dutch oven fitted with a lid, heat 2 tablespoons of the butter over very low heat, along with the tin of anchovies.

• Stir the mélange around to let the anchovies melt into the “sauce.”

• Add the chopped-in-half tiny onions and garlic and sauté, stirring, about 10 minutes.

• Add the bite-size pieces of carrots, celery, mushrooms, plus the remaining 2 tablespoons butter.

• Sauté over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the mushrooms are dark in color and the moisture released by them has evaporated— about 20 minutes.

• In a bowl, season the beef pieces well, with lots of salt and pepper.

• Brown the beef in a large skillet. (This is a different pan from your Dutch oven, where the veggies are gently cooking).

• Add the flour and rosemary to the fry pan and cook over high heat, stirring often, for about 5 minutes.

• Shut down the flame on the beef and go back to your simmering veggies in the Dutch oven.

• Add the browned seasoned beef.

• Pour in enough Guinness beer to just cover the beef.

• Everything you need is in the Dutch oven now. You want to simmer it a bit, to reduce the liquid, and cook the beef through

• Set your heat to medium low. Simmer for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, uncovered.

• Check after an hour, for tenderness of the meat. Add more salt or pepper to taste.

• Pour yourself a glass or another Irish coffee while you wait.

• Turn off the heat.

• Fold in half of your grated cheese, 1 cup, into the “stew.” Melty-melty.

• Now is the time to lay on the crust, with your pre-prepared dough. Please, use my cheats from the supermarket! It’s so easy and everyone will think you are genius.

• Piece/stretch the dough on top of your stew in the pot. Now it looks like a pie!

• Pinch the dough shut around the edges, using the tines of a fork.

• Slash the center of your “pie” lightly with a knife.

• Brush with the egg yolk, place on a baking sheet and bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, or until the pastry is puffy and golden. You’re only baking the crust off now, nothing else.

• Take out your pot and let it sit while you get the table together. Put out the remainder of the cheese in a bowl, and a bottle of the Worcestershire, maybe bowls of green onions.

• Dig in, raise your glass, and vow to fight on!

  

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1. There is no historical basis for so-called "Irish Butter Sauce." It appears to be completely fabricated by Betty Crocker's test kitchen - another example of mid-century American cookbook writers inventing "ethnic" recipes with ingredients that have no connection to the cuisine they claim to represent. Adding ketchup and nutmeg to creamed butter and calling it "Irish" may be one of the more hilarious examples. Have you seen similar things in your old cookbooks?