Ulster Fry

http://www.europeancuisines.com/

Cousin to the Irish breakfast or "full Irish", the Ulster Fry is possibly the single dish most closely associated with Northern Ireland.

There are, however, some vital differences between the Fry and the Full Irish. Officially, the Fry does not contain anything that can't be fried in bacon fat. This means that ingredients that have sneaked in from other regional Irish and British fry-ups (such as baked beans) don't belong in the Fry.

The Ulster Fry is available all over the North both for breakfast and (in cafes and casual restaurants) as a lunch and dinner dish. It's as close as this island comes to the "all-day breakfast" concept. The Fry is meant to be hearty and substantial, and any attempt to render it in low-calorie form is destined to fail, as the ingredients (except for the potato farl and soda farl) are already too high-cholesterol for grilling them to make much of a difference if you're going to be eating them all at once. The key to keeping an Ulster Fry from doing long-term harm to your cardiac health or your waistline is simply not to eat it every day, or maybe even every week. But if you're going to make it, make it the old-fashioned way.

The is a basic roster of ingredients without which an Ulster Fry isn't genuine.

They are:

• Streaky bacon / bacon rashers
• Sausages (typically the kind referred to in these islands as the "chipolata")
• Black pudding (an Irish sausage containing blood, a grain such as oats or barley, and various spices)
• Eggs
• Potato farl (a potato-based griddle bread, rolled out into a circle and cut into quarters, then baked)
• Soda farl (soda bread baked on the griddle, also in quarters: "farl" is an old word for quarter)

Other ingredients that sometimes get involved, either as a garnish or as elements of other regional breakfasts that have slithered into the equation from the outside, are white pudding (a sausage like black pudding but without the blood), tomatoes, mushrooms, and fried bread.

Making a successful Fry is something of an exercise in logistics, as the various ingredients need different cooking times. You'll need to work out first how many guests you're having.

For each fry-eater, you'll need:

• At least one egg: two if your guest is a two-egg person
• Two slices of bacon (more if desired)
• One slice black pudding: one slice white pudding, if you're making that too
• One farl of potato farl
• One farl of soda farl (Note: you could probably make this using sliced cake-style soda bread, but it won't work as well. Also: the Fry uses white farl, not wheaten bread.)
• Half a sliced tomato if you're bothering with tomatoes (some people don't)

Once you've sourced your ingredients and have everything ready to go, you start out by frying the bacon in a heavy frying pan (cast iron is best), as you need its fat to fry everything else in. (A local cook with access to lard will refresh the pan with that, if necessary. However, no one would look down their nose at good Irish butter in this context if the bacon fat runs low. But some Northern cooks would simply say, "You didn't fry enough bacon.")

First, preheat your oven to a low "holding" temperature -- say 100F / 50C -- and prepare a a covered platter to keep the various ingredients hot on while you're working with the ones that come after them.

Having fried up the bacon, remove it from the pan to the covered dish and keep warm. Then fry the sausages in the bacon fat. (Prick them first so they won't burst while frying.) When they're done and removed to the warm covered platter, fry the slices of black pudding (and if you're adding it, the white pudding.) Once the pudding slices are done, remove them to the warming platter and fry the potato bread and soda bread. Then, when those are finished, put them in the warming platter with everything else, and fry the egg or eggs.

Place the eggs on warmed plates and arrange the meats and fried breads around them. Serve with a sharp brown sauce (the British / Irish version of HP Sauce, now available in some North American groceries, is perfect), salt and pepper, and hot strong Irish breakfast tea.

About finding the raw materials: Some of the ingredients of the Fry are rather specialized. For North Americans, standard bacon will work fine -- it's not identical to Irish bacon rashers, but perfectly acceptable.

The recipe and technique for making soda farl can be found at our soda bread page. The potato farl recipe is here.

Finding black and white pudding can sometimes be something of a challenge in the US (less so in Canada, where the British / Irish breakfast tradition is somewhat better represented, especially at the British-based chains like Marks & Spencer). Fortunately, some of the higher-end supermarket chains in major US markets have started carrying black pudding and sometimes even white pudding, either locally made or imported. If you have one of these high-end chains nearby, it's worth checking to see if they have one of the great Irish pudding names like Clonakilty. (Also, if you're lucky enough to have a specialty store near you that handles Irish or British foods, you might see if they can order black pudding in for you.)

Additionally, a company called FoodIreland.com has started producing Irish-branded foodstuffs in the USA under license from their Irish makers, as well as carrying locally-produced bacons and puddings which are being made by Irish people now living and working in the US. These products enable you to get quite close to the genuine effect without paying insane import prices for the original Irish foods. They carry Irish-style white and black puddings and the Irish-style (chipolata) sausage, as well as Irish style "back" bacon (the pork cut from which Irish rashers are sliced is equivalent to the North American pork loin).

Also: iGourmet.com carries Irish teas, as well as various jams and jellies, the famous Kerrygold butter and Lakeshore mustards and sauces, and a nice collection of Irish cheeses, if you're interested.

(This recipe is part of the 2008 Festival of Traditional Irish Saint Patrick's Day Recipes at EuropeanCuisines.com.)

Gaelic Steak

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This dish is a fairly modern one -- dating back not much further than the last century -- and the name "Gaelic" may be doubly appropriate, since the basic concept may possibly have been adapted into Irish cooking from that other great nation of the Gaels, Scotland.

Naturally this works best with Irish beef. But those who have no access to that should seek out a butcher who at least ages his or her beef for ten to fourteen days before sale. Prime ingredients are important for this dish.

EuroCuisineGuy, our local expert at the whiskey end of things, suggests that the cook should select a stronger-flavored Irish whiskey like Jameson's, which is robust enough to stand up to the deglazing process that produces the sauce without losing its unique character when the alcohol cooks off. Additionally, there are versions of this recipe that call for flambéeing the steak in the whiskey. EuroCuisineGuy suggests that this is just showing off, and feels strongly that simply reducing the whiskey and then further reducing the sauce after adding the cream produces a better flavored final result.

Ingredients:

• 2 8-10 ounce sirloin steaks at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon oil
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1/2 cup Irish whiskey
• 2 1/2 cups heavy cream
• Ground black pepper to finish

Method:

Pat the steaks dry with kitchen paper and season with pepper. Heat a cast iron frying pan or other heavy pan over high heat. When very hot, add the oil and butter. When the butter foams, add the steaks to the pan one at a time, and turn after 20-30 seconds to seal both sides. Lower the heat to moderate and complete cooking (3-4 minutes for rare, 4-5 minutes for medium, 5-6 minutes for well done). Leave each steak undisturbed on one side for half the desired cooking time: then turn. When finished, remove to warmed plates, and keep warm.

Add the whiskey to the cooking juices. Be careful if you are cooking with gas, as the whiskey vapor might catch fire. If it does, lid the pan immediately to stop the burning. Scrape the pan with a spatula to loosen the nice burnt bits and dissolve them and the meat juices into the whiskey. Allow to come up to a boil and reduce for a few minutes, stirring and scraping all the while.

Add the cream, lower the heat slightly, and allow to simmer for a few minutes and reduce further. Check the seasoning (you may find that you do not need salt for this dish: don't just season it without checking). Having seasoned the sauce to taste, pour it over or around the steaks, as preferred, and serve immediately.

French fries / chips are a good accompaniment for this, as are fried mushrooms, and a fresh green vegetable like new peas.

(This recipe is part of the 2008 Festival of Traditional Irish Saint Patrick's Day Recipes at EuropeanCuisines.com)

County Cork Irish Stew

http://www.elook.org/

Serve: 4

Ingredients:

• 8 sm Lamb Chops Thawed 1 md Onion Chopped
• 1 Salt And Pepper 1 lg Leek White Thin Sliced
• 1 tb Vegetable Oil 12 sm White Onions

Directions:

Parsley Bay Leaves 1 1/2 c Celery Stalks Diced Peppercorns Thyme Rosemary 1 1/2 c Peas 1 lb Potatoes 3 To 4 Medium Chopped Fresh Parsley 2 c Finely Shredded Cabbage Season chops with salt and pepper. heat oil in saucepan wide enough to hold all chops in a single layer. Brown on both sides. Spoon off any melted fat and add enough water to cover chops. Bring to a boil and add parsley bay leaf peppercorns thyme and rosemary enclosed in cheesecloth. Lower heat and simmer. Meanwhile peel potatoes and shape into bite sized rounds. Chop trimmings from potatoes into small pieces. Add potatoes trimmings cabbage onion well-rinsed leek white onions and celery to chops and liquid. Simmer 20 minutes then add peas. Add a little more water if needed during cooking. Simmer 10 minutes more or until potatoes are tender. Correct seasoning. Garnish with parsley and serve.

Colcannon Soup

http://www.elook.org/

Serve 4.

Ingredients:

• 2 tb Butter
• 2 Leeks trimmed and chopped
• 4 c Diced cabbage
• 3 Baking potatoes peeled and Diced
• 4 c Chicken stock
• 1 c Milk Salt and Pepper to taste
• 6 Green onions

Directions:

Sliced Heat butter in a dutch oven. Add leeks; cook gently until just wilted. Add cabbage and combine well. Cook a few minutes. Add potatoes and stock. Bring to the boil. Simmer for 20 minutes or until potatoes are very tender. With potato masher gently mash some of the potatoes so that the soup thickens. Stir in milk. Season with salt and pepper. Add green onions and cook 1 minute further.

Irish Pot-roasted Chicken

http://www.elook.org/

Serve: 4

Ingredients:

• 1 x Chicken about 4.5 lb
• 4 oz Oatmeal
• 1 x Medium onion chopped
• 2 tb Butter
• 3 tb Stock
• 1 x Salt and pepper
• 6 oz Bacon
• 3 x Med. onions sliced
• 2 lb Potatoes
• 1 x Seasoned flour
• 3 tb Dripping or oil
• 4 x Med. carrots

Directions:

Sliced If there are giblets with the bird take them out wash all but the liver (reserve that for another use) and cover with water add salt and pepper bring to the boil and simmer for half an hour. Wipe the bird inside and out and remove any lumps of fat from the inside; sprinkle with salt. Mix together the oatmeal chopped onion butter or suet stock and seasoning stuff the bird with this mixture and secure well. Heat the dripping or oil and lightly fry the bacon then chop and put into a casserole. Quickly brown the bird in the same fat and put on top of the bacon. Soften the onion and briefly saute the carrots then add to the casserole. . Strain the giblet stock and make it up to about 1/2 liter. Heat and pour over the chicken. Cover and cook in a moderate oven (350C) for about an hour. . Meanwhile cut the potatoes into thick slices and blanch them in boiling water or steam them for about 5 minutes. Toss them in seasoned flour and add them to the casserole adding a little more of the giblet stock if needed. Cover with buttered wax paper and continue cooking for another 1/2 hour taking off the paper for the last few minutes for browning.

Guilainn Chaoireola (Lamb Shoulder In Pastry)

http://www.elook.org/

Serve 6.

Ingredients:

• 12 oz Shortcrust or flaky pastry
• 3 lb Boned shoulder of lamb
• 6 tb Butter
• 1 tb Mixed chopped herbs

Directions:

Salt and black pepper Milk or egg to glaze Make the pastry and chill for at least 1 hour before using. See that the lamb is fairly free of fat and securely tied: put in a roasting pan and rub with about a third of the butter. Put into a very hot oven 450F for 20-30 minutes. Take out and allow to cool slightly. -- Miz the remaining butter with the herbs salt and pepper. Roll out the pastry to a piece large enough to wrap around the joint. Carefully remove the string from the lamb trying to retain the shape. Put it in the center of the pastry dampen the edges and draw the pastry up over the top: secure well by squeezing the pastry ends and edges together. Turn over so that the fold is underneath and put on a baking sheet. Prick all over the top lightly with a fork then brush with either the milk or beaten egg. Put into 400F oven and cook for about 1/2 hour or until the pastry is nicely browned. Turn the sheet once during baking to make sure the browning is even. Serve cut into fairly thick slices.