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The apple, as one of the few fruits that grows really well in the Irish climate, has been held in high regard everywhere in this island for thousands of years. Before the new religion came in from the East, apples and apple trees were considered important enough to be looked after by the mighty Celtic virgin goddess Brigit herself. And in the Brehon law-code of a millennium ago, apple trees were protected to an extraordinary extent. Whoever damaged an apple tree belonging to someone else was liable to pay a fine of several head of cattle, and a landlord whose tenant was moving on was required to compensate the tenant on departure for any apple trees the tenant had planted during his stay.

As a food and as a basis for drink, the apple remains heavily cultivated here, though naturally Ireland imports apples from many other regions when the local varieties are out of season. And it would be a rare farmyard that didn't feature a few apple trees for cooking and cider-making purposes.

Apple Amber is one of those Irish recipes that plainly involves the cook strolling out to the tree on a whim, pulling a few green cooking apples off it, and taking them back inside to quickly turn them into something unusually nice to end the meal. But the fact that the apples are cooked before baking suggests that this method was meant to work well with storage apples as well, the fruit that had been put away in straw in the cold cellar to last until the first new fruit of the next summer and fall started coming in.

Originally, apple amber was usually constructed as a crustless pie: the grated apple was briefly cooked, seasoned and sweetened (cider vinegar was probably used when lemons were hard to get) and then baked by itself in a pie dish: then meringue was piled on top and the dish returned to the oven just long enough to brown it. More recent versions of the recipe call for the addition of a pie crust. We've used a crust on this version, as it does a nice job of soaking up the juices produced by the fluffy apple mousse as it bakes.

Click on "read more" for the recipe and method.   

Leeks get a lot of play in Irish cooking, being another of the vegetables that don't mind the island's cool climate, and can grow on poor ground with relatively little preparation of the garden or field. As a result they wind up being praised in early Irish poetry as "the friend of cooks", both for their versatility and for the extra punch of flavor they gave the various savory dishes in which they were used.

One favorite approach was to put them in soups or stews, and (by extension) in pies. This pie is one of the single-crust variety that are apparently descended from the cook's eternal quandary: "what do I do with all this leftover stew?" Sooner or later, some Irish cook hit on the idea of putting a reduced soup or stew into a pie dish and covering it with a pie-dough crust (or sometimes puff pastry), thereby giving it a new lease on life.

Eventually people started bypassing the pre-pie stew stage and simply made the pie from scratch. This recipe is one of that type. The ham or smoky bacon (probably more leftovers in the original versions...) gives a nice deep note to the lighter flavor of the chicken and the sharp touch of onions and leeks.

This recipe can be made in two different ways: to eat hot -- with the savory, cream-finished chicken stock in which the meat was cooked -- or adapted slightly so that the creamy stock will become a solid, savory jelly when the pie chills down. This way it can be served as a cold entree. (The original recipe depended on the natural gelatine of homemade chicken and ham stock to do the trick, but the results in this regard were always iffy depending on how good your stock was.)

Click on "read more" for the recipe and details.    

This dish probably started being baked by Irish firesides in its present form about three hundred years ago. It's now baked on halogen and gas and convection cooktops all over the country whenever a home chef wants to make a quick and easy dessert that can with equal aplomb appear cool and demurely sliced on the tea trolley, or as the crown of a country-style supper, piping hot and drizzled with thick Irish cream.

The potato would have been a relatively late addition to the equation. "Filled bannocks" of this kind were being made with merely flour-based doughs in the time of the ancient Celts, who valued the apple not only as a gift and symbol of the Gods, but as one of the relatively few fruits that grows reliably in the Irish climate.

Please note: because of the delicacy of the potato crust, this tart sometimes resists coming out of the pan in one piece (like the example in the background of our picture, which tastefully tore itself in three during removal). The recipe suggests some ways around this problem.

Click on "read more" for the recipe.