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Guinness

Ireland: Porter Cake (March 13, 2008)

Porter was (and is) a style of dark beer which began to be brewed in England and Ireland in the mid-1700's. The stout style now exemplified by Guinness was closely linked to it: indeed, Guinness was originally marketed as a porter before having its name changed to "Extra Stout". The only porter being brewed in Ireland now, however, is the "Plain" porter (as in the famous line from Flann O' Brien's "The Workman's Friend", A pint of plain is your only man) that comes from the Porterhouse group of brewpubs in Dublin. (For more information about the intertwined history of porter and stout, see the Porter pages at Wikipedia and the BeerAdvocate website.)

Somewhere along the line in the 1800's, it occurred to somebody in Ireland that porter would make a good addition to the robust dark flavor of the standard fruitcake: and so porter cake was born. It usually contains, at the very least, raisins or sultanas (golden raisins): often dried candied peel (orange peel, lemon peel, candied pineapple, etc.), and sometimes even glacé cherries, come into the recipe as well. All the alcohol in the porter is of course driven off during the long baking period, resulting in a darkly rich-tasting cake which is another great standby for those who like to wheel out a well-loaded tea trolley.

This cake keeps very well if stored in a cake tin.

Click "read more" for the recipe.

Ireland: Guinness and Cheddar Fondue (March 12, 2008)

Probably few nations have ever been as crazy about their dairy products as the Irish. Gaeilge has a word for the blanket concept -- banbhianna, the "white meats" -- and the ancient Irish diet was largely based on them for centuries. Back in the day, if you wanted meat, you ate pork, or game: cows were for giving milk, and only chieftains who were busy inventing the concept of conspicuous consumption ever killed a cow that could still be useful in the dairy.

The Irish hard cheeses, ancestors to Cheddar, were famous -- the great Queen Maeve herself was supposedly killed in battle by being hit in the head by a chunk of an early grating cheese called tanag which was slung at her, at fastball-or-better speeds, by one of her nephews. And about the fame of Guinness, nothing needs to be said here. It was probably only a matter of time before someone put them together. While this dish isn't strictly traditional, if the old Irish had ever heard of fondue, someone would probably have invented this in short order. As it is, the Guinness-and-cheese-fondue concept turned up in Ireland during the food renaissance of the late 80's, and can now be found in numerous Irish restaurants and pubs as a quick, easy-to-make, and delicious break from the normal meat-heavy entrees.

While Cheddar is a good place to start, if you have access to other Irish farmhouse cheeses, especially semi-hard melting cheeses like Ardrahan, adding those to the mix is a brilliant idea. Otherwise, any good aged Cheddar will work fine. Interestingly, this dish also works well with the classic Swiss fondue mix locally called moitie-moitie, or half and half, and made of equal parts Emmental and Gruyere.

Another Swiss technique that works well with this is to mix the thickening cornstarch/cornflour in a tot of Irish whiskey, and add it to the mixture in the final stages.

Click on "read more" for the recipe.

Ireland: Crubeens (Crunchy Pigs' Trotters)

Pigs' trotters for crubeens

Crubeens would be one of the relatively few dishes whose name in Ireland sounds about the same in English and as Gaeilge -- because "crubeens" comes directly from the Irish cruibíni, "trotters" or "pig's feet". All through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, crubeens were widely sold in Ireland as street food, snack food, and the quintessential bar food. Publicans would often serve big bowls of them right at the bar; they knew that the yummy, gummy, bacon-y, salty finger food would make their patrons literally thirsty for just one more pint. Indeed, the pint of stout -- Guinness in much of the country, or Beamish down south by its home in Cork -- was always the preferred accompaniment for crubeens, along with soda bread. People sometimes purposely started shops or stalls selling crubeens next to some handy pub that didn't sell them itself.

In the mid-to-late 20th century, crubeens started to get harder to find in Ireland as people grew more interested in other more exotic or less rustic kinds of snack food. But the dish is now experiencing a renaissance in popularity, turning up in high-profile competitions among European celebrity TV chefs, and on the menus of high-priced restaurants. Some of the treatments the pigs' feet receive in these places are completely unrelated to the way they would traditionally have appeared when served at a pub's bar or at an Irish country town's crubeen stall. But there are still restaurants, pubs and shops or stalls, especially in the south of the country, where fresh, hot, crunchy crubeens in the traditional style can be found. This particular food tradition -- for good reason -- seems not to be going away. Try them yourself and see why!

(Click "read more" for details and recipes...)

Ireland: Beef Pie with Guinness

Beef pie with Guinness

This hearty entree is also known in Ireland as "sailor pie" or "sailor's pie" even though it contains no fish. Presumably it was thought of as being a good hearty dish suitable to give to a man who'd just come in from the sea.

Another version of this pie appears in a series of cookbooks produced by the government of the Irish Republic for young housewives in the 1930's. Because of this, the pie is sometimes known by the name of the then-Irish Taoiseach / prime minister, and referred to as "De Valera Pie."

The oldest versions of the dish use plain pastry or puff pastry tops for the pie. This one follows the newer tradition of using a soda bread crust.

The recipe...

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