Brian Bóru's Delight

The dessert I call "Brian Bóru's Delight" is a simple one, especially compared to the Victorian Tea Trifecta. It is a combination of two simple, old-fashioned desserts: a bread pudding, and a fool.

What is a fool, you ask? It doesn't sound familiar to most modern diners—in fact, my pastry instructor in culinary school didn't immediately know how to explain the Fool to my class. A fool, simply put, is a fruit-flavored whipped cream. It's sort of a precursor to the modern churned ice cream, as it is light, airy, and sweet, but not frozen (as churn-freezing ice cream is a relatively recent development.) Heavy cream is whipped to stiff peaks, and then a purée of fruit, often sweetened, is added in by folding gently. In this recipe, I replaced the purée with fruit preserves, because it's hard to find blackcurrant purée (or indeed, much of anything from blackcurrants) here in Michigan.

Bread pudding is a more familiar item, and in this case I've used a simple white bread, good quality butter, and raisins with a little twist suggested by my friend Brian over at The Boychik Balabusta (a blog you ought to read)—soaking the raisins in Irish Breakfast Tea and whiskey.

Beef, Carrot, and Stout Casserole with Barley

Irish food has a reputation of being a conglomeration of boiled things. The fact that one of the more well-known items is "Boiled Breakfast"—an item lauded in songs like "Boil the Breakfast Early" by the Chieftains—doesn't help in the least to dispel this rumor; nor does the fact that Irish Stew is the one of most commonly prepared items from the Irish kitchen.

Beef Chuck is an excellent cut to make into stew; it's generally somewhat tough, and contains a great deal of connective tissue—this is what makes it a good candidate for long, slow, moist cooking. This method creates a tender, well-textured meat in a velvety stew.

Stew is a hearty dish, a belly-warming dish, something that can keep you going for a hard day's work, or a hard night's drinking. Served with colcannon, this stew is a consummately Irish meal.

The Kilkenny Salad

There are two courses, or plates I suppose, that benefit from having names as opposed to being called by their components: salads and desserts. Think of some well-known salads: A Greek Salad, a Caesar Salad, a Cobb Salad, a Waldorf Salad; none of these are named by their components, but rather by an eponymous title of some type, denoting a general style for the salad (it contains Greek ingredients,) it was created by or for a particular person (Caesar and Cobb,) or at a particular place (the Waldorf hotel.) My tendency when naming salads is to go with a thematic name, rather than something directly related to the origin of the salad or its components.

This plate, for the most part, takes its ingredients straight from Irish cuisine: There's potato cakes, made like biscuits; there's a pear, poached in a syrup made from Harp Lager, sugar, and lemon zest and juice; A quenelle of goat cheese, seasoned and mixed with chopped parsley; and a vinaigrette made with lemon juice and salad oil, lightly seasoned with salt and pepper. The salad itself is made with arugula, spinach, and an assortment of baby lettuces, a very springy, slightly spicy mix of greens.

Garlic Soup

It's no secret that I'm a fan of garlic. Between garlic sauce, zchug, and my penchant for Italian foods, garlic is consumed rapidly in my kitchen. This soup, however, takes the metaphorical cake, using more garlic per serving than any other recipe I've made, as far as I can calculate.

Served with some soda bread croutons, this soup is refreshing and hearty, and full of flavor without being overpowering. Granted, I like garlic, so you can take my opinion with a grain of salt, but...

Garlic has health benefits, too—from warding off vampires to anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and anti-fungal properties evident from lab tests. It's been used as a panacea since time immemorial, seen as a cure for a wide variety of ailments. It can help prevent scurvy, and has other traditionally-believed effects on the common cold, blood sugar, and heart problems—though not all of these claims are fully supported by science.

We know for sure that eating enough garlic will leave you smelling like garlic, so this soup is best shared with a large group of friends, if only to ensure that you won't be the only one whose very pores exude garlicky goodness.

Re-constructed Corned Beef and Cabbage

When St. Patrick's Day rolls around in the US, every food-service establishment with a changeable kitchen breaks out some form of corned beef, often in the "Traditional" construction of Corned Beef and Cabbage. Miss Kagashi over at The Steamer's Trunk has an excellent little write-up of St. Patrick's Day, including a discussion of this dish:

Corned beef and Cabbage is thought of as the staple dish of St. Patrick's Day, and this is true outside of Ireland. Back in the old country, a thick meaty rasher of bacon was the main course to the cabbage and potatoes, not beef. When thousands of Irish immigrated to America in the 19th and early 20th centuries, they found their usual cuts of pig to be far too expensive—so they took a cue from their Jewish neighbors who were enjoying corned beef.

This doesn't, however, mean that we have to abandon the concept entirely: rather, it is useful as a starting point for new versions of an Irish (-American) classic.

A St. Patrick's Day Feast

This Friday (admittedly one day after the actual holiday,) I shall be creating yet another feast at Off the Beaten Path Books, themed on the immediately proximal day of excess and Irish pride. Seeking to avoid the traditional perception of Irish food as bland, boiled stuff, I have come up with a menu fusing traditional recipes with modern presentations and sensibilities.

For those of you in the area, seats are still available, so head to the event page to purchase your seat now—$25 gets you the whole menu.

The menu will be as follows:

Corned Beef

Cabbage and Roasted Fingerling Potato Salad

Garlic Soup

Soda Bread Crouton - Potato Crisp

Kilkenny Salad

Poached Pear - Goat Cheese - Oven-Baked Potato Cake

Mâche - Arugula

Beef, Carrot and Stout Casserole with Barley

Colcannon - Soda Bread

Brian Bóru's Delight

Bread and Butter Pudding - Whiskey Sultanas

Whiskey Sauce - Blackcurrant Fool

"What butter and whiskey will not cure, there is no cure for."