Cut your beef or pork into what size you please put into salt and water for twenty four hours then take it out and drain and wipe it, make a pickle strong enough to bear one egg of soft water, bay salt, common salt and salt petre and brown sugar boil and scum it and when it is cold pour it on your meat which must not be packed too close, this does ham or tongues.
—from an 18th century Irish cookbook manuscript
An Irish butcher shop is a glorious place—there’s a huge turnover, as you might imagine in such a land of carnivores—and in country butcher shops, the proprietor very often is raising his own animals and overseeing their slaughter. It’s hard to get much more local than that, and it shows in the quality of the products. In Dublin, Cork, and larger towns, the bigger butcher shops frequently make their own sausages and cure their own rashers and bacon.
Every year at Christmas, even after my parents had moved back to Dublin from the County Meath town where I grew up, we still made the pilgrimage out to Tony Darby’s, my dad’s favorite butcher, to collect a veritable locker full of meat: The turkey (or sometimes a goose), always with the head and feet still attached to assess the quality; its twin for the Christmas table, an enormous ham; the raft of thick-cut steaks, from prime grass-fed (always) cattle; the dense and weighty spiced beef, to have for cutting sandwiches or impromptu meals; and the endless rashers, sausages, and puddings we’d require for leisurely holiday breakfasts. Once we’d laid in enough meat for any eventuality over the next couple weeks, the holidays could commence.
“Double-cut” chops are often seen in Irish butcher shops, and the term means they’re twice the thickness of regular chops. They’re intended to be stuffed with a light stuffing, not a heavy, wet one, usually a herby one made of breadcrumbs, onion, and celery. I particularly like mine with a little apple and sage. This same stuffing can be used for poultry, and if you like your stuffing a little more damp, wet it with up to a cup of chicken stock. For the chops, though, make it as below—they get too weighed down with a wet stuffing.
Makes 6 servings
For the stuffing:
¼ cup (½ stick) butter
1 small yellow onion, diced
1 celery stalk, thinly sliced
1 large tart apple, peeled, cored, and diced small
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
2 teaspoons fresh sage leaves, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves, chopped
2 cups soft breadcrumbs
Salt and pepper
6 double-cut boneless pork loin chops (about 1½ inches thick)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and lightly grease a 9 3 13-inch baking dish.
2 In a large skillet over medium heat, melt the butter and stir in the onion and celery. Cook for 5 to 6 minutes until softened and translucent. Add the apple and continue to cook for 3 to 4 minutes to soften the apple slightly. Stir in the parsley and sage. Add the breadcrumbs and toss to combine. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and spoon the stuffing into a bowl to cool slightly.
3 Wipe out the skillet with a paper towel. With a sharp paring knife, cut a large pocket inside each chop, working the knife parallel to the surface and making an opening about 2 inches wide at the side of each chop, opening the pocket wider inside the chop. With a spoon, fill each chop with about a ½ cup of stuffing, pressing and packing it in.
4 Put the wiped skillet over medium-high heat and add a tablespoon of the cooking oil. When the oil shimmers over the heat, put in the first three chops and brown the first side well, 5 to 6 minutes. Flip and brown the other side for another 3 to 4 minutes. Lay the first three chops in the prepared baking dish and repeat with the remaining three.
5 Cover the dish with aluminum foil and bake for about 45 minutes, until an instant-read thermometer in the center of the stuffing reads 150 degrees F.
STUFFED PORK
TENDERLOIN
The same apple and herb stuffing in the pork chops makes an excellent filling for pork tenderloin. Pick up a 3-pound, boneless center-cut pork loin and ask the butcher or meat department at your supermarket to butterfly it. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and prepare the stuffing as directed. Sprinkle the meat with salt and pepper and spread the stuffing over opened butterflied loin. Roll it up tightly, securing it with butcher’s string by tying knots every 1 ½ to 2 inches. As with the chops, brown the rolled loin on all sides. Place in a baking dish and roast for 50 to 60 minutes until a thermometer stuck in the center of the roast registers 150 degrees F. Let rest 10 to 15 minutes before slicing.
Americans are missing so much when it comes to roast pork, because roasts in the States are almost always sold with the skin trimmed off. They usually have a layer of fat, which is great for flavor, but it’s the unattractive skin outside the fat, like a thick rind, that roasts up into crisp crackling, sort of like those bags of fried pork rinds but infinitely better. Once in a while, I actually do see skin on a roast at the supermarket, and these days in my neighborhood I know a butcher whom I can ask when I want crackling. Try to do the same. You’ll be glad. To make proper crackling, you have to score the skin before you cook. In Ireland, the butcher does this for you. An American butcher may do so as well. The skin is really hard to cut so I find when I do the job at home that a box-cutter style knife works best.
Makes 6 to 8 servings
5-pound loin of pork with the skin still on
Salt and pepper
1 Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Using a craft knife or Stanley knife, score the skin at ½-inch intervals. Rub salt liberally all over the skin, working it into the slits with your hands. Sprinkle well with pepper.
2 Roast for 90 minutes. After the first 40 minutes, baste with the pan juices every 20 minutes or so, if you think of it. (While I do think basting helps, I’ve made other roasts where I totally forgot to baste, and it was still excellent.)
3 After 90 minutes, take the roast out of the oven and turn up the heat to 475 degrees F. Remove the roast from the roasting pan and put it on a rimmed baking sheet. Return it to the oven for 10 to 15 minutes. This will get the crackling really crisp and crunchy right at the end. If it’s not super-crisp, it’s hard and chewy and not nearly as appealing. And you have to switch to a new baking sheet so you don’t burn all the pan juices onto the roasting pan you were using.
4 Let the roast rest for 10 minutes before slicing.
Lamb in Ireland is a given. We eat it all the time, and sheep are everywhere when you’re driving through the countryside. At the butcher shop, lamb and pork definitely predominate, letting beef lag behind in a distinct third place. I think it’s because our lamb is so good, with a much more delicate flavor than you may expect if your primary experience with it is a roast leg of American lamb duly cooked in the spring and eaten with mint jelly. And here’s something important: We do not eat mint jelly in Ireland. We eat our lamb in the spring with a tangy, savory mint sauce of fresh mint and vinegar (see p. 308). Another key thing: Lamb should be well-done, nearly crisped on the outside but decidedly pink and very juicy on the inside. Overcooked lamb is gray and dry and simply won’t taste good.
Makes 8 servings
1 (7- to 8-pound) leg of lamb, bone in
4 cloves garlic, cut into slivers
½ cup (1 stick) butter, softened
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves, chopped
Mint Sauce
1 Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. With a sharp knife, cut small slits about 2 inches deep all over the leg of lamb. Poke a sliver of garlic into each slit.
2 In small bowl, cream the softened butter with the salt, pepper, and rosemary. Put lamb in a shallow roasting pan, and smear the mixture generously over the lamb.
3 Roast for about 25 minutes to sear the meat, then lower heat to 350 degrees F and roast for about 1 hour, until the internal temperature is approximately 170 degrees F. Do not overcook.
4 Let the lamb rest for 10 minutes before slicing thin. Spoon pools of mint sauce onto plates next to sliced lamb for dipping.
Since we eat so much lamb, eating it roasted with mint sauce can get old fast. Whereas a butterflied leg of lamb can be stuffed with all sorts of good things, rolled and roasted, keeping it perpetually interesting. The garlicky, herby mixture here, supplemented with a handful of golden raisins to play off the meat’s natural sweetness, was a particular favorite of my father, but it’s also very good with the bread and apple mixture used to stuff the pork chops on p. 108.
Makes 6 to 8 servings
1 boneless leg of lamb, 4 to 5 pounds, butterflied
Salt and pepper
½ cup golden raisins
4 to 6 garlic cloves, minced
¼ cup fresh rosemary leaves, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
Extra virgin olive oil
1 Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and fit a roasting rack into a roasting pan.
2 Open out the butterflied lamb, with the meaty side upward. Season it liberally with salt and pepper. Scatter the raisins, garlic, rosemary, thyme, and the lemon zest across the top, and squeeze the lemon juice over all. Drizzle with olive oil and roll the lamb up firmly, starting with the long side. Use butcher’s string to tie it off every 1 ½ inches.
3 Drizzle more olive oil into a large skillet over medium-high heat. Sprinkle the outside of the roast liberally with salt and pepper. Put the roast into the skillet and sear it on all sides to brown.
4 Transfer the seared, rolled lamb to the roasting rack in the pan and roast in the oven for 60 to 70 minutes, until an instant-read thermometer inserted in the center reads 140 degrees F for rare or 150 degrees F for medium. If you cook it past medium, you’ll have tough, gray, nearly inedible meat, and you’ll be very sorry.
The day after Christmas in Ireland is known as St. Stephen’s Day, and the done thing is to go out on a walk or a hike and try to make up for our overindulgences of the day before. My family used to go beagling, which is like hunting, except we walked after a pack of dogs instead of riding horses, and the dogs weren’t actually chasing anything but a dragged scent. It’s like Hunting Lite, but we sure worked up a fierce appetite that was then quenched by standing over the boot of the car, passing around some flasks of hot tea and others of whiskey, and eating spiced beef sandwiches. Spiced beef is a little like pastrami, but sweeter and spicier, and it wouldn’t be Christmas in Ireland without it. Many people buy theirs from a butcher, but it’s not too hard to make at home. Saltpeter is a preservative you can buy at the pharmacy in Ireland, and it helps give the beef its color. If you prefer, leave it out.
Makes 12 to 15 servings
5-pound rump of beef
¼ cup dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons ground allspice
2 teaspoons saltpeter
½ cup coarse kosher salt
1 On the first day: Rub the beef all over with brown sugar and place it in a glass or ceramic dish. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
2 On the second day: Combine the allspice and saltpeter and rub them on the sugar-coated beef. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
3 On the third day: Rub the beef with salt. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 7 days.
4 On the tenth day: put the beef in a large soup pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and simmer gently for two hours.
5 Put it in a casserole dish and cover the casserole loosely with a large sheet of plastic wrap that overhangs the edges rather than seals the top tightly. Lay a plate that’s smaller than the casserole upside down on top of the covered beef and weight the plate down with a couple heavy cans so that it really pushes down on the meat. Refrigerate for 48 hours. This compresses the meat and makes the final product more pastrami-like. Serve cold, sliced thin.
As I’ve said elsewhere, we eat sausages all the time in Ireland—for breakfast, for birthday parties, for finger food at any gathering. But for special occasions, we like to wrap our sausages in pastry. It’s like donning a suit for a party.
Makes about 2 dozen, depending on sausage size
All-purpose flour
1 pound frozen puff pastry, thawed
1 pound Irish sausages
1 egg
1 Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F and lightly grease two baking sheets. Scatter flour on a clean work surface and roll out one sheet of the thawed pastry to flatten it slightly. Lay down a raw sausage on one edge of the pastry, parallel to the side, and fold the shorter end of the pastry over it to wrap it. Unwrap and cut out that rectangle of pastry. So, assuming you have a 4-inch sausage, a 4- or 5-inch square of pastry is all you need to cover it. (It’s okay to leave the ends uncovered, but it’s also okay to wrap them.)
2 Cut the pastry and wrap all the sausages. Use a fork to press the edges down to make a tight seal. (If they’re not sealing firmly, you may need to brush a little water along the edge of the pastry before closing them over.) Lay them on the baking sheet with 2 inches in between each sausage roll.
3 When all the sausages and pastry are used (you can reroll pastry as needed, but it will get a little flattened), use a sharp knife to make several long slits on top of each roll. Beat the egg with 2 tablespoons water in a small bowl, and brush it over the surface of each sausage roll.
4 Bake until the pastry is golden and the sausages are cooked through, about 20 minutes. Serve hot or at room temperature. You can also make these the day before and reheat them for 10 minutes at 350 degrees F.
Simple is best when it comes to high-quality lamb chops, but I still can’t help gilding the lily a bit with some garlic, fresh herbs, and good olive oil. Lamb takes so well to garlic and rosemary you might think we’ve got some Italian in us in Ireland, but rosemary, in fact, grows beautifully there and we use it frequently. Despite how far north Ireland is—on the map, we’re on a par with Newfoundland—our climate remains mostly mild and temperate because we’re washed by the Gulf Stream, and rosemary bushes thrive. After parsley and thyme, it’s the most common herb in our kitchens.
Makes 6 servings
6 lamb loin chops, about 1½ inches thick Salt and pepper
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary leaves
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 Lay the lamb chops in a dish and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Scatter on the garlic and rosemary and drizzle with olive oil, rubbing the aromatics in with your fingers. Leave to marinate for at least 30 minutes, or as long as overnight.
2 To cook, preheat a broiler on high. Broil the chops 6 inches from the broiler for 10 minutes per side until browned and sizzling but still medium-rare inside. If you don’t have a powerful broiler, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Heat a cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat and drizzle with olive oil. Brown the chops on each side for 1 to 2 minutes, and then put the skillet in the oven. Cook for 10 minutes, until medium-rare. Let the lamb chops rest for 5 minutes before serving.
This is the thing we’re eating when you think we’re eating corned beef—which we’re not, or mostly not. As I’ve mentioned before, there are small pockets of corned beef–eaters in Ireland, mostly in Cork and around Munster, but it’s very uncommon, and I went my whole life without ever tasting it until I came to America. Those who do eat corned beef in Ireland swear by it, however; I once told a reporter at a regional American newspaper we don’t eat corned beef in Ireland, and when she mentioned that as part of a St. Patrick’s Day food story, she got an extremely irate letter from a expat Corkwoman who said the reporter and I had offended the memory of her dead mother!
So while I’m batting a thousand, I may as well offend someone else’s Irish granny by pointing out we do not boil and eat those heavy, hard heads of greeny-white cabbage you see in so many corned beef suppers in America. We make coleslaw out of those, same as Americans. The cabbage we boil is called spring cabbage, or York cabbage, and it’s a big, loose bunch of deep, dark greens, full of flavor and texture, and it doesn’t become waterlogged. The best substitute I can recommend is savoy cabbage. Some people like to boil the cabbage with the bacon at the end of cooking time, but at my house, we always cooked the cabbage separately.
The typical accompaniment is boiled potatoes. I’m partial to a bit of mustard with my bacon, but some people prefer Parsley Sauce, p. 306.
Makes 6 servings
1 4-pound piece Irish boiling bacon (see Sources, p. 21)
¼ cup (½ stick) butter
1 large head savoy cabbage, cored and sliced
Salt and pepper
1 Put the bacon in a large stewpot and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer for 1 hour, until the bacon is cooked through and tender when pierced with a knife tip.
2 Halfway through the cooking time, melt the butter in a large pot over medium heat. Add the cabbage leaves, turning to coat in the butter. Add 2 cups of water (if you like, add 2 cups of the bacon cooking water). Cover and cook for 20 minutes, stirring once or twice, until the cabbage is tender. Season with black pepper and salt as needed. Slice the bacon into thick pieces, about ¾-inch thick, and serve with the cabbage.
MIND THE SALT
Irish bacon used to be sold very salty, and you were supposed to soak it overnight to leach out the worst of it. But these days, the bacon is usually sold less salty so you can skip the soaking step. In fact, if you soak the new lower-salt bacon, you may well end up with underseasoned meat that tastes oddly bland. When you’re boiling the bacon, if a thick white scum appears on the surface, your bacon may be very salty. Let it boil for 30 minutes, then dump the water and start the bacon over in fresh water. The salt balance should be about right then.
Fondly known as “Snake and Pygmy,” in some ways the good old classic Steak and Kidney is a bit rich for today’s tastes. When I was a kid though, it was one of my family’s favorites and a frequent meal on cold, wet winter days. We would each be served a big gravy-sodden wedge of it with floury balls of potatoes and a heap of cooked cabbage. When I first left home, I regularly bought and ate the packaged variety, heating and eating it right out of the tin. But steak and kidney is still a luxurious meal, especially in winter. Ox or veal kidney is traditional, but I prefer the more delicate flavor and texture of lamb’s kidneys. If you don’t love kidneys, it’s entirely acceptable to swap in mushrooms. You can also make the Beef and Oyster Stew on p. 77 and use that for the filling under the puff pastry, a modern trend that lightens up the old versions made with dense suet pastry.
Makes 6 to 8 servings
2 tablespoons cooking oil
1½ pounds well-marbled chuck, trimmed into 1-inch pieces
Salt and pepper
½ pound lamb’s kidneys, cleaned and trimmed into 1-inch pieces
2 medium yellow onions, diced
2 medium carrots, diced
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons tomato paste
4 cups beef stock (chicken stock is fine, too)
1 bay leaf
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
8 ounces frozen puff pastry, thawed (one sheet from a 1-pound package)
1 egg
1 Put the oil in a large, deep skillet over medium-high heat. Sprinkle the cubed beef with salt and pepper. Fry in batches until well browned, transferring each batch to a platter.
2 Season the kidneys with salt and pepper and fry very quickly in the drippings left in the pan, just to brown them. Put them on top of the beef and set aside.
3 Melt the butter in the drippings left in the pan, and cook the onions and carrots over medium heat, stirring frequently, just until the onions are soft and lightly browned, 7 to 8 minutes.
4 Sprinkle the flour over the onion and carrot, and stir in the tomato paste. Slowly pour in the stock, stirring constantly to avoid lumps. Add the Worcestershire and the bay leaf, and return the steak and kidneys to the pan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer gently for 1 ½ hours, until the beef is completely tender. If the mixture gets too dry, top up with a little more stock or water. Taste and adjust seasoning.
5 Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and turn the mixture into a wide, shallow 2-quart baking dish. On a lightly floured surface, roll a sheet of pastry to ¼-inch thick. Trim it to be about 1 ½ inches larger all around than the dish. Lay the pastry on top, pushing it down the inside edges of the dish. With a sharp paring knife, cut several slits on top of the pastry.
6 Beat the egg with 1 tablespoon water and brush the surface of the pastry thickly with the egg. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the pastry is puffed and golden and the pie is bubbling.
Not that long ago (say, 50 to 75 years ago—not long at all in a country that lives around and among the remains of Neolithic tombs), most kitchens had a grinder so they could process leftover bits of meat or make their own sausages. And a meat pie was the standard Monday dinner, made with the minced-up remains of the Sunday roast. If you’d had lamb, it was Shepherd’s Pie. If you’d had beef, it was Cottage Pie. Happily, tastes have evolved, and nowadays we don’t love re-cooked meat, but these quick meat pies are still a common supper dish; we just begin with uncooked ground lamb or ground beef. The leftover part is more likely the mashed potatoes, saved from a previous meal or two, and perhaps the veg—use a cup or two of whatever is already cooked and hanging around in the fridge. This is a straightforward, child-friendly recipe; if you want to dress it up a bit, tip a glass of red wine into the sauce along with the Worcestershire.
Makes 6 servings
1½ pounds ground beef or ground lamb
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1 large carrot, grated
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup beef stock
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper
1 cup green peas (cooked, fresh, or frozen, all are acceptable)
6 cups mashed potatoes
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese, optional
Shepherd’s Pie with Buttered Turnip and Carrot, Kytelers Inn, Kilkenny, Ireland
1 Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F and lightly grease a 3-quart casserole dish.
2 Brown the beef in a large skillet over medium heat, 8 to 10 minutes. Spoon off and discard the excess fat. Push the meat to one side and cook the onion, carrot, and thyme for 5 to 6 minutes, until the onions are just turning translucent.
3 Push the onions and carrots to one side and melt the butter. Whisk the flour into the butter and then add in the tomato paste. Stir everything in the pan together. Add the stock and Worcestershire and cook for 5 to 7 minutes, until thickened. Season to taste with salt and a generous amount of pepper and then stir in the peas.
4 Turn the meat into the prepared dish and spoon the potatoes on top. Run the tip of a fork over the potatoes to make furrows and peaks so it will brown nicely. If desired, sprinkle cheese on top. Bake for 20 minutes, until the meat is bubbling and the potatoes are browned.
Of Mincing Machine and Majors
There’s a line I’ve always loved from the Victorian authors Somerville and Ross, who wrote the classic Irish R.M. series that’s still very funny and still very beloved in Ireland. Major Yeates, the hapless resident magistrate who has moved to Ireland from Britain and is the butt of all the locals’ jokes as he strives to get along in his adopted land, overhears the housekeeper exclaiming in tones of fury about the dog, who had poached a hunk of roast beef off the table. “Sure he has it that dhragged, that all we can do with it now is run it through the mincing machine for the Major’s sandwiches.”
