Best Of The Irish

Ireland is known for it';s beautiful cliffs and country side, it's pubs and parishes. Yet it's also it's food that makes this Celtic gem stand out. Thanks to the amount of natural resources an Irish diet is full of rich, flavorful food.

One of the best Irish imports is butter. Home chefs and bakers alike rave about Kerrygold, an Irish but from grass fed cows.It is higher in butter fat than American butter, eighty-two per cent to the American eighty.The cows graze on beta carotene rich grasses which affects the butter's flavor.It also has a smoother ,creamier texture too which makes it perfect for spreading on any hot slice of toast or muffin. Aldi also sells an Irish based butter Countryside. NO matter which you wind up with  use in in sauteed or just to top veggies.Irish cream (not the whiskey of the same name) is very good as well. Whip the cream and use it as a special side to any plain cake.Do the Irish have good cheeses thanks to all these rich dairy? Yes! Most of the counties do produce good qualities of various kinds. Cheddar is big but there is also the Gouda like Wicklows Farmer's Cheese.Cashel Blue is another popular cheese, similar to Blue cheese with its' veins of mold.

Any breakfast lover knows that Irish steel cut oats make the best hot breakfast. They're made from whole oats groats which are the cats with the kernels intact. They make the oats more nutritious.They're coarsely chopped into pieces  resulting in a more chewier texture and a nutty flavor.They do cook longer than  the regular kind but are great with lush ingredients added to them. Add whole cream and stir in brown sugar or maple syrup.Yes you can bake with them. The final products will be a denser chewier product. Think using them in chocolate chip cookies. They'll pair well with the brown sugar and dark chocolate chips. Ireland has another home grown product - not of the land but of the sea.Irish sea weed is becoming a culinary must. It is used in everything from recipes to cold remedies and beauty products. There are three types, dulse, which is the most popular along with  carrageen moss, bladderwrack sea spaghetti and sugar kelp.They can be cooked, into side dishes , salads and baked into different products.

Ireland has the best products and produces the best foods. From their butter to their seaweed there's a range of flavors. Try them to experience Celtic goodness.

Doctor That Dish!

Never be afraid to doctor up  dish, whether store bought or homemade. That extra fillip of something can turn a blah dish into something more palatable. What was once bland can be tasty and exciting. Just add a dose of this or that to bring extra life into any recipe.

That happened to me today when i opened can of Bush's vegetarian chili.It looked similar to our family recipe for it so I figured the taste was also similar. Wrong!!! The sauce tasted like  the Spaghetti-os one  (which is nothing wrong if its' bathing Spaghetti-os), with a funny kind of bland sweetness. It had lost all its' appeal in a second. What to do?Throw in a large pinch of cumin and two heaping tablespoons of chili powder. I then scattered a  few pinches of flaky Celtic  sea salt (my absolute go to in making any food better) and a few good turns of the pepper mill. After stirring it all together I tasted it . Voila! The perfect chili. It had gone from being a lunch time disaster to a tasty bowl. I ladled it over crunchy tortilla chips and it turned into a  textured, flavorful , fun meal.Basically it was adding oomph to a dull can of chili. Home chefs can also do this, reconfiguring and fussing with it to achieve the taste they want. The chili is also a great way of using up leftover roasts. Cut up steak, chicken or turkey would fare well in it., making it a heartier dish.Vegans can add Morningstar Farms soy chicken strips or soy beef crumbles.

You can also doctor up established recipes to make them your own I have done this with my Mom's chili  and tomato sauce recipes. My signature ingredient in dark wild flower honey. A dollop of this mellows out the chili  and gives the sauce an earthy sweetness.My new favorite recipe chicken mole has been doctored to create a brighter,more flavorful sauce. The recipe that I took from the All Recipes site calls for a can of  tomato soup. As much as I love tomato soup, I don't like the idea of it being an ingredient in a sauce. I prefer to use tomato sauce which is purer in taste. It marries well with the cocoa powder, adding a brightness I know I wouldn't have with the soup. Also I add a smidge more cocoa powder for a slightly more intense taste. Frosting is another recipe I doctor up. The chocolate buttercream that I made yesterday got amped up. Instead of the required  3/4 th cups of cocoa powder I increased it to a cup.The result is a dark, fudgey icing that is not too sweet. This offsets any cake' s sugariness. I also sub in light cream for milk - this gives the texture a lush  mouth feel.Instead of the usual one to two tablespoons, I increase it to a glug of it, maybe four or five tablespoons, Doing such gives it the malleability and smoothness s needed for icing it across a cake's surface.

Never be afraid to tinker with a recipe. The end result is usually  delicious, flavor filled dish. Doctor it up. It's a cure for avoiding a dull recipe.

Fine irish Eating

Mention Irish cooking and most will think of gallons of beer and fatty lamb stew.Yet  Celtic cooking is actually very refined.It's full of fresh ingredients, coming directly from the sea and streams that lace through it and the farms that dot it.It is a diet , that's actually quite's elegant.

Most Irish start the day off with a hearty bowl of steel cut oats. These are different than regular oats because the whole grain or groat is used.They also healthier too, preventing such diseases as high blood pressure, heart disease and obesity. For a lusher, tastier first meal the Irish love to fry up slabs of Irish bacon, a cross between American and Canadian bacon, blood sausages and black and white pudding. This last is a marriage of oatmeal sausage or white and blood pudding, usually a sausage created from pork fat, ground beef and pork blood. Eggs are added as are vegetables such as tomatoes and mushrooms to round it out.The British aren't the only ones who serve high tea. The modern Celts are fond of the practice and many Dublin hotels offer it.The Irish have tea three times a day, the first at eleven AM, then at three PM for afternoon and six PM for high tea. Teabreads and scones along with fine jams and lemon curds are also served.

Irish dinners reflect both the sea and land. Fine dining in the Emerald Isle can feature the catch of the day. Salmon is abundant here and dinners may include the fish with leeks or made into elegant croquettes served with a cream sauce, Mackeral is another fish , popular in dining rooms.It's cooked a variety of ways, some involving local ingredients such as leek and rhubarb There is also the wildly decadent Ballymaloe Hot Buttered Lobster where the shellfish is served with a wine laced butter sauce and herbs such as parsley,watercress and fennel .Lamb and mutton are other staples , long used in Gaelic cookery. Crusty lamb shoulder is popular, as it is wrapped in a combination of breadcrumbs, pinched herbs and butter. The Irish make a rack of lamb fit for a Celtic king, with three sauces : mint chutney, onion sauce and red current sauce. This newest generation of Irish chefs are discovering a country classic, dulse seaweed that fed many of the  Irish during the Potato Famine of 1840.It's now a ubiquitous ingredient in many upscale restaurants in Dublin and Cork. Meals are finished with fruits and cheeses , products of local farms.

Irish cooking is full of lavish and rich ingredients and flavors. The Irish create magical and amazing dishes from these ad turn them into unique and elegant dishes .It is the food of kings  = Celtic ones.