seafood

"You take a lobster about three feet long..."

Once upon a time in Ireland, this was no big deal. These days the lobsters tend to be a lot smaller, as much due to overfishing as to climate change -- the Irish coastal waters aren't as cold as they used to be. But there are still plenty of lobsters around, and they form the basis for two dishes that have been popular for the last couple of centuries.

Though no one's absolutely sure where Dublin Lawyer got its name, wags will insist that it's probably because Dublin lawyers had a rep for being rich and having a lot of whiskey in them. The dish remains simple, quick and easy to make, but requires that the lobster be alive, and cooked immediately after killing it.

The other recipe is a little more complex, but still quick to make and also unquestionably tasty. The popular magazine columnist and novelist William Makepeace Thackeray came over to Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century to tour the country and meet up with some literary connections. In his novel The Irish Sketch-Book he tells about how, along the way, he has dinner with some friends at a scenic restaurant in Salthill, south of Dublin. The star dish of the dinner is a lobster dish with a surprisingly spicy sauce, and Thackeray describes everything from the ingredients, to the cooking method, to what to drink with the final result... and how to cope with the hangover the next morning.

The salmon is described in the old poems as the "Chieftain of the Fish of Ireland", and has always been referred to down the centuries with affection and respect for its beauty, cunning, power... and good taste.

Irish salmon is unquestionably some of the best in the world, if not the best. Every day, tens of thousands of travelers passing through Irish airports for other destinations, east and west, pick up a side of smoked or cured wild Irish salmon to take home. What they unfortunately cannot take home with them (yet!) is fresh salmon, just out of the river or the sea that morning. But these recipes will enable you to get as close as you can to the taste of our unparallelled salmon as visitors here experience it, fresh from the unpolluted Irish waters.

The recipe for a whole poached salmon adds a buttery sauce with fennel, always one of Ireland's favorite herbs. The recipe for grilled salmon steaks recalls the Salmon of Knowledge that the hero Finn roasted by the mystical Pool of the Nine Hazels. There the ancient salmon of the pool fed on the magic hazelnuts dropping from the trees into the water, storing up in their flesh all the wisdom of the world...and possibly establishing for later millennia the tradition that "fish is brain food." ...Click "read more" for the recipes.