Irish Books

Irish Traditional Cooking: Over 300 Recipes from Ireland's Heritage

Darina Allen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

I can't review the product 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 9 people found this review helpful.

I have not received the product, I have found that Items not sent directly thru amazon do not arrive. I ordered many items that are shipped from Amazon and arrive with in a couple of days, on the other hand I have ordered a total of 5 items from outside vendors that never arrived.

Beautiful addition to any cookbook collection 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

If you enjoy Irish cuisine or just want to try it this is an excellent cookbook to invest in. I received this just in time for St. Patty's Day and we enjoyed an excellent, traditional meal. Wonderful read as well.

Irish Traditional Cooking 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Even if I never make a single recipe from this cookbook, I'm thrilled I made this purchase. There is a story with each recipe that is just pure enjoyment! I'm very happy I made this purchase!

The Irish do it up right! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I first had Irish food (identified as such) two weeks ago at a local "imported" pub. It was wonderful, so I decided to explore further. I purchased this book because so many reviewers identified it as authentic. I can't speak to that, as I've never yet been to Ireland, but I can say it is well-organized, full of anecdotes, well-written, and bewitchingly charming. This weekend I cooked from it for Saturday's dinner. We had beef and Guinness stew, champ (similar to mashed potatoes, but with green onions), fluffy lemon pudding, and Gaelic coffee. HEAVEN.

A bit of warning: a small percentage of the recipes are similar to those in older cookbooks in that the ingredients are embedded in the explanation. Also, there are some ingredients listed that I think may be hard to get. Still, there are plenty of recipes we can easily make here in the US, and what I have made so far is so amazingly good that I know I will pull this book out again and again.

Editorial Review:

More than 300 traditional dishes, each recipe is complemented by tips, tales, historical insights and common Irish customs, many of which have been passed down from one generation to the next through the greatest of oral traditions.

The Irish Pub Cookbook

Margaret Johnson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Talk about the luck of the Irish! One of the most beloved of Irish institutions (there are more than one thousand in Dublin alone), the traditional pub has served generations as the venue for local gossip, sporting news, a ceilidh or two, literary soirees, real estate deals, political debates, revolutionary plots, and, lest we forget, for knocking back a pint of Guinness or a "ball of malt." The food's not bad either—as The Irish Pub Cookbook so deliciously demonstrates. It's a celebration of over 70 pub classics: thick soups and stews; savory tarts and meaty pies; big bowls of salad (times change!); and desserts of the seconds-are-always-appropriate variety. There's shepherd’s pie, fish and chips, seafood chowder, and whiskey bread pudding for those with a taste for the quintessential. Contemporary specialties such as Bacon, Blue Cheese, and Courgette Soup; Salmon Cakes with Dill and Wine Sauce; Braised Lambshanks with Red Currants; and White Chocolate Terrine spotlight modern Irish cooking's richly deserved acclaim. Complete with pub photos, history, and lore, nobody leaves hungry when The Irish Pub Cookbook is in the kitchen.

McGuire's Irish Pub Cookbook

Jessie Tirsch

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great cookbook, but missing a few essential favorites 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I admit that I was really excited to find this book. We ate at McGuire's in Pensacola a couple of times, and I desperately wanted their Shepard's Pie recipe. It's not in the book! It's one of the most popular dishes at the restaurant. Furthermore, the recipe for that incredible brown bread that they serve at the table is not in the book either!
I was planning a special birthday party for my very-Irish mother, and really wanted to make both of these for her. It was pretty disappointing. However, the dessert choices were amazing.
If you are buying this to be able to have recipes from your favorite dishes from the restaurant, you may be disappointed!

Editorial Review:

Winner of the coveted Golden Spoon Award, listing it as one of Florida's top restaurants, and established in 1982, McGuire's Irish Pub welcomes guests from around the world to its Pensacola establishment. Traditional and not so traditional Irish pub fare can be enjoyed at home, thanks to this Celtic cookbook from the pub that invites its patrons to 'kiss the moose'. Oyster Stew, Sheep Herder's Pie, and Beery Hash Burgers on Potato Buns will delight the palate of nearly any diner at the pub. In addition to these enticing entrees, perfect desserts including Date and Irish Mist Rice Pudding with Irish Mist Whipped Cream, Tipsy Apricot Chocolate Cake, and Chocolate Eclairs with Baileys Custard will lift the spirits of just about anyone. The recipes for these and many more of the dishes and drinks served up in the world-famous McGuire's Irish Pub can be found in this easy-to-use cookbook.

Cooking With Irish Spirits

Margaret Johnson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Uniting Irish foods and drinks in a unique way, this book puts the excitement back into cooking. It is about forming new alliances, creating new marriages, and joining the best of Irish spirits and brews with the best of Irish cooking.

For centuries, the marriage of wine with food has been a happy one. Chefs, food writers and wine critics continue to extol the virtues of the two for the perfect partnership they create and for the ability to elevate ordinary recipes to extraordinary dishes with a mere splash of red or a dash of white wine.

Readers are invited to forget boiled ham and cabbage and create something far more exciting, such as Lobster in Bunratty Poteen, Avocado with Guinness Mayonnaise, Smithwicks Cheese Soufflé, Fresh Salad with Raspberry Mead Vinaigrette, Mocha Mist Mousse, with Gaelic Truffles to round it all off. Whether you glaze a duck with mead or lace a chocolate roulade with Irish Coffee Cream, the results will astound your senses and tickle your imagination.

The Cafe Paradiso Cookbook (Atrium Press) (Atrium Press)

Denis Cotter, Denis Cottev

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The best vegetarian cookbook, from the greatest vegetarian chef .

"This is not only the best vegetarian restaurant in Ireland, but one of the best restaurants of any kind." So states Frommers in their 2003 Guide to Ireland. Café Paradiso is an unassuming little restaurant in the heart of Cork City in Ireland yet it has been hailed far and wide as "the best vegetarian restaurant in Europe" and so is a contender for best vegetarian restaurant in the world. Fodors claims it "serves Mediterranean-style food, which is so tasty that even dedicated meat-eaters forget it's vegetarian". The reason for all this praise is the owner and chef, Denis Cotter, a quiet unassuming man, not unlike his restaurant, who, like all great chefs, is an obsessive. His obsession is to create the most exciting vegetarian dishes possible with the freshest possible produce, an ambition he has realized with remarkable success. In this book he serves up 140 recipes that make the very best of whatever vegetables are freshest at any given time of the year. Cotter's The Café Paradiso Cookbook has been hailed, in the Bridgestone Guide to Ireland, as "the best cookbook ever written by a working chef."

Winner of the Gourmand World Cookbooks Award for Best Vegetarian Cookbook

The Best Irish Drinks

Ray Foley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Recipes with toasts, wisdom sayings, and Irish drink history 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

There are numerous cocktail cookbooks on the market already, but several things differentiate the pocket-tote-sized THE BEST IRISH DRINKS from others. First, they come directly from Ireland and thus represent authentic flavors based on the use of Irish liquors and ingredients. Second, its focus on recipes over flash assures 300 are packed into here and not watered down by the usual color glitter of the cocktail glass. Third, it rounds out recipes with toasts, wisdom sayings, and Irish drink history. What more could you want?

Diane C. Donovan, Editor
California Bookwatch

Editorial Review:

The Best Irish Drinks delivers countless recipes of cocktails straight from the Emerald Isle. Also included is information about Irish liquors, as well as famous Irish sayings and toasts.

Ray Foley is the ultimate authority on bartending. He is the publisher of Bartender magazine, the No. 1 magazine in circulation for the bartending trade. This book is the result of his years of experience working with bartenders.

The New Irish Table: 70 Contemporary Recipes

Margaret M. Johnson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Very nice, inexpensive Irish Family restaurnat recipes. 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

`The New Irish Table' and `Irish Puddings, Tarts, Crumbles, and Fools' by Irish-American culinary journalist, Margaret M. Johnson who seems to provide low end books covering Irish culinary practice, beginning with her `The Irish Heritage Cookbook', also from Chronicle Books. The middle ground, being the `Julia Child' for Irish cooking is Darina Allen, along with husband, Tim Allen and mother in law, Myrtle Allen, all of the Cork culinary powerhouse, Ballymaloe House and Cooking School. The high end of modern Irish cooking is held by Irish-American culinary academician and chef, Noel C. Cullen. The ethnographic corner of Irish / Celtic foodways is filled out by `Celtic Folklore Cooking' by culinary writer and folklorist, JoAnne Asala of Chicago. There are many more Irish cookbooks to cover between now and St. Patrick's Day, but this pretty much covers most major points on the culinary compass for Irish cooking.

`The New Irish Table' and Cullen's `Elegant Irish Cooking' complement one another pretty well, as they both present recipes from modern Irish hospitality centers. The difference is that where Johnson is covering pubs and `bed and breakfast' style eateries, Cullen is covering dishes from Michelin one and two star restaurants in Ireland, as well as many of his own creations as a working chef, before he took up teaching at Boston University.

Between these two featured books, Johnson's Desserts book is a much more valuable addition to your cookbook collection, as it includes a lot of fancy and holiday desserts which I have not seen in any other good book on Irish cooking. The best thing about this book and its companion is that like a lot of Chronicle Books, it seems to be on a fast track to the Bargain Book table, both real and on-line. That means that at half price, this book is a real bargain for the cookbook collector with a genuine interest in dessert baking.

On the surface, this book seems to feature four basically different kinds of baking. The six chapters are:

1. Puddings
2. Tarts
3. Crumbles and Crisps
4. Fools and Flummeries
5. Tea Breads and Cakes
6. Christmas Treats

Anyone familiar with English cooking will recognize in the first chapter a wide range of desserts which the Anglo-Irish all lump together under the name of `pudding'. Actually, most puddings remind me a lot of French Toast, more properly called `pain perdu' by the French. They are all different ways of combining day old bread, custard, dried fruits and the like into a treat for the sweet tooth. Puddings and tarts, together, form a collection of dishes very familiar to those who know English sweets.

Crumbles and Crisps and Fools and Flummeries all seem remarkably like a style of dessert which is very popular in the United States and commonly associated with both the Pennsylvania Dutch and southeastern and south central styles of cooking. In Ireland, as in the United States, they are all primarily ways of combining stewed or jellied fruit with oats, milk and perhaps some custard. The thing that distinguishes `fools' from other similar desserts is the fact that they are made with gooseberries. A gooseberry, according to my `Berry Bible' illustration, looks a lot like a current, and just a bit like a blueberry, and seem to be common in the United States only in the northern west coast.

The breads and cakes chapter visits the most widely familiar realm of Irish baking, the world of soda breads and scones. This realm is covered much better in Tim Allen's `The Ballymaloe Bread Book', but the last chapter in this book makes the whole book worth the budget price of admission.

This last chapter is a bonanza for those looking for something interesting to bake for Christmas, especially if you are fond of confections which include a bit of stout or Irish whiskey in the ingredients. This chapter brings the tired old fruitcake into a whole New World of cakes, puddings, ice creams, breads, mince pies, and cider sauces.

The second book, `The New Irish Table' has but 70 recipes, all of which seem to be high end bar food, especially since about 75% of the pages are dedicated to appetizers and side dishes. The five chapters on recipes are:

Small Bites with 9 recipes for crackers, tartlets, pates, crostini, cheese bites, and chutneys.
Starters with 15 recipes for soups, salads, souffles, charlottes, sauces, and sabayon.
Main Courses with 16 recipes for fish, duck, chicken, lots of pork, lamb, venison, rabbit, and pheasant.
Side Dishes with 13 recipes of old standards such as colcannon, champ, boxty, cabbage, turnips, and leeks.
Sweets with 17 recipes for puddings, custards, brulees, cakes, tarts, cobblers, and crumbles.

All in all, if you already have one or two books on Irish savoury dishes and you get Johnson's dessert book, this volume becomes largely redundant. A lot of the sidebars between the two books are the same and the `Irish Table' simply confirms everything I already know about the heavy Irish use of apples, pears, berries, dairy, beer, whiskey, pork, and lamb.

Since you can get this cheap, I will recommend it as a small, inexpensive addition to your Irish cookbook collection. It may, however, be the first in line for regifting if you already own a few Irish cookbooks.

Editorial Review:

In The New Irish Table, author Margaret Johnson’s love of Ireland permeates page after glorious page of mouthwatering Irish dishes. The 75 recipes reflect the traditions of the national cuisine and also showcase the most exciting new tastes from the home cooks and professional chefs who’re part of the culinary renaissance in Ireland today. The time-honored fruits of land and sea, such as fluffy potatoes, plump fish, tender meats, and berries bursting with flavor, are interpreted anew in such dishes as Smoked Salmon Chowder, Filet of Baby Beef with Spinach-Bacon Stuffing and Guinness Mustard Sauce, and Raspberry Buttermilk Tarts. Lavish color photographs of the food, the landscapes, and the people are woven through the text, making The New Irish Table the next best thing to sitting down at a table in Ireland itself.

Irish Puddings, Tarts, Crumbles, and Fools: 80 Glorious Desserts

Margaret Johnson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Everybody loves a fool -- especially made fluffy with ripe strawberries or tangy apple. From the author of The New Irish Table comes this celebration of the Emerald Isle's classic desserts. From lemony puddings and marmalade-slathered scones to fruit-filled tarts and berry-laden crumbles, these contemporary renditions of the traditional desserts of Ireland make perfect use of common staples such as oatmeal, fruit, dairy products, and, of course, whiskey. Steel-Cut Oat Pudding is enhanced with orange zest, nutmeg, and plump golden raisins. A chocolate, walnut, and caramel tart becomes a treat for grownups with a splash of the hard stuff. A final chapter offers the most memorable of holiday delectables including mincemeat tarts, Christmas pudding, and a really good fruitcake. A glossary and source list define and locate unusual ingredients. With gorgeous painterly photographs depicting the food and countryside, this wonderful cookbook serves as a sweet reminder of the people and cuisine of Ireland.

A Taste of Ireland: Discover the essence of Irish cooking with 30 classic recipes shown in 130 stunning color photographs

Biddy White-Lennon

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Editorial Review:

This beautiful book provides an authentic taste of the country's cuisine, with a selection of more than 30 of the very best recipes. Ranging from enticing breakfasts, hearty soups and delicate appetizers to substantial main courses and mouthwatering desserts and cakes, the dishes embody the ethos at the heart of Irish cooking - good-quality seasonal ingredients cooked simply and with care.

The Scottish-Irish Pub and Hearth Cookbook: Recipes and Lore from Celtic Kitchens

Kay Shaw Nelson

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From hearty, wholesome recipes for family dinners to more sophisticated and exotic dishes for entertaining with flair, this book is the perfect source for dining the Celtic Way! In this collection of 170 recipes of the best of Scottish and Irish pub fare and home cooking, you'll find old classics like Corned Beef `N' Cabbage, Cock-A-Leekie, Avalon Apple Pie, and Fish and Chips, as well as new recipes sure to become family favorites: Tobermory Smoked Salmon Pâté, Raisin Walnut Porridge, and Skibbereen Scallop-Mushroom Pie, among others.

In addition to the recipes, each chapter begins with entertaining stories, legends and lore about Celtic peoples, their traditions and customs, and the history of their foods. Chapters include: Starters; Soups; Egg and Cheese Dishes; Barley, Oats and Cornmeal; Seafood; Poultry and Game; Meats; Vegetables and Salads; Breads; Cookies and Cakes; Desserts; and Drinks. All of these easy-to-follow, step-by-step recipes are adapted for the North American kitchen.