Irish Traditional Cooking combines the delicious, historic recipes of Ireland with colourful anecdotes and detailed appreciation of the dishes in Ireland’s culture. Imbued with a passion to preserve the traditions of Irish cooking, Darina Allen has journeyed all over Ireland, researching and recording different recipes and regional dishes. From County Cork where she learnt from Joan Twomey how to cook apple cake in a bastible on an open fire, to County Kerry, where she collected bairneachs (limpets) off the rocks to make the traditional Good Friday soup, to Granny Toye in County Monaghan who passed on eighty years of pancake-making experience.

Ireland’s rich culinary heritage is brought to life in this comprehensive and entertaining appreciation of more than 300 traditional dishes. Each recipe is complemented by tips, tales, historical insights and common Irish customs, many of which have been passed down from one generation to the next through the greatest of oral traditions. Darina’s fascination with Ireland’s culinary heritage gives great detail and breadth to Irish Traditional Cooking. Sections on Broths & Soups, Fish, Game, Vegetables and Food from the Wild illustrate how comprehensive this book is in its treatment of Irish Traditional Cooking. Darina uses the finest of Ireland’s natural produce to give us recipes such as Sea Spinach Soup, Ballymaloe Irish Stew and traditional Irish Sherry Trifle. The result is a book which will entice you to discover the pleasures of the emerald isle’s cuisine. Irish Traditional Cooking won the acclaimed Langhe Ceretto-SEI prize.

Editorial Reviews

“As well as the wonderful food, her book is rich in anecdote, folklore and history.” – Daily Telegraph, April 2004

“Darina Allen’s beautiful and unpretentious vision of cooking is connected to the land. I find this book important and irresistable.” – Alice Waters, Chez Panisse

“One of ‘my dog-eared’ favorites.” – Natasha Richardson, The Times

“The book is sure to become the authoritative source of the cuisine of Ireland, every kitchen should have a copy” – Food and Wine

“Will make your mouth water and entice you to cook some magical food. A real treat!” – Antony Worrall Thompson, Daily Express

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Irish Traditional Cooking continued…

Review

`Irish Traditional Cooking’ by leading Irish cooking school owner, Darina Allen is the fourth Irish-centric book I have reviewed and the second which warrants attention as a sound source for genuine Irish recipes. The other worthy book on this subject is `the Irish Heritage Cookbook’ by Irish-American high school teacher and culinary writer, Margaret M. Johnson. Of the two, Allen’s book is the more scholarly in that it endeavors to give a relatively complete and authoritative view of the cuisine of all Ireland. While Ms. Johnson’s book is very good, it is a much more personal view of both Irish and `Irish-American’ cooking.

One area covered by Ms. Allen which are not covered by Ms. Johnson is the native Irish pantry with items such as homemade sausage, homemade vinegar, homemade marmalade, and the like.

It’s interesting that the two books take very similar approaches to Irish cooking. Unlike the classic Italian cookbook, neither proceeds by course, but primarily by principle raw ingredient. And, unlike Ms. Allen’s great `ballymaloe cooking school cookbook’, this book is totally Irish.

Ms. Allen’s chapter subjects are Broths & Soups, Eggs, Fish, Game, Poultry, Lamb, Beef, Pork, Offal, Potatoes, Vegetables, Food from the Wild, Desserts, Pancakes, Breads, Oatmeal & Other Grains, Cakes & Biscuits, and The Irish Pantry. In addition to all the recipes, and there are certainly a goodly number for the price, there is an excellent historical foreword by Irish culinary historian, Regina Sexton. There are also numerous heading sections on groups of recipes such as nettles, herrings, eels, and many others. There is also an excellent little Appendices on Irish cheeses and cheesemaking; The Potato and the Famine; and Cooking Pits of the Fianna (Bronze Age sites associated with Ireland’s early pre-Christian heroes such as Finn McCool (Fionn Mac Cumhaill)). The number of Irish Farmhouse cheese sources, 48 in all, is truly impressive. Since I suspect almost all of these cheeses are not available at our local megamart, I wish she would have given commonly available French, Italian, or American cheese equivalents.

Almost all of Ms. Allen’s recipes seem relatively short in procedure and in number of ingredients. I am very fond of how Ms. Allen has put her ingredients list in the margin rather than above the procedure, and I am also happy that all units are in purely English units, rather than both English and Metric. This is not because I disapprove of Metric. In fact, I prefer it, but in a book for an English or American audience, it is simply easier to read if all units are in our most familiar units.

One of my more interesting discoveries in this book is the almost total absence of yeast baking. In the chapter on breads, there are 23 recipes, of which only three (3) include yeast. All others are leavened with baking power or baking soda plus buttermilk or both. With the great popularity of beer in Ireland, it is odd that there is no more yeast breadmaking, especially with brewer’s yeast. While I am very fond of Irish Soda Bread, I find it lacks something compared to a good yeast bread; however, if you are yeast impaired, 20 recipes for chemically leavened quickbreads is a great source for breadmaking.

I am also struck by the large number of recipes using apples in both this book and in the previously mentioned book by Ms. Johnson. The dessert chapter alone gives us 12 our of 34 recipes with apples. Oddly, the Irish notion of an apple dumpling recipe is quite different from the Pennsylvania Dutch recipe of a single peeled and cored apple encased in pastry. The Irish `dumpling’ is much more like what we would call a `crumble’ or `cobbler’, as it is a layer of sweetened apples covered by a pastry layer. One may have to use a little local knowledge for the apple recipes as Ms. Allen recommends no apple varieties for most recipes and when she does, they appear to be varieties native to Ireland such as `Bramley Seedling cooking apples’. I guess Macintosh apples should do fine here.

This book is a real winner if you happen to love mashed potatoes. Among the champ, colcannon, and boxty recipes, there are at least 12 recipes for mashed potatoes, not counting the various recipes for making dishes from leftover mashed potatoes such as griddle potatoes and potato & caraway seed cakes.

Overall, while Ms. Johnson’s book has a great selection of recipes, Ms. Allen’s selection is even broader, without being more difficult. If all you want is easy recipes, Johnson is excellent. But, if you want a great lyric evocation of the foods native to Ireland, Allen’s book is superior. – B. Marold, Amazon Review