Books

The Irish Heritage Cookbook
Healthy Eating for Busy People
Fish (Conran Octopus Cookery S.)
NEW ITALIAN COOKBOOK
Fragrance of the Earth: Lebanese Home Cooking
I'Ve Got to Have That Recipe!
La Porte Des Indes Cookbook
The Complete Cocktail Maker
"Family Circle" Recipe Encyclopedia
I'Ve Got to Have That Recipe, Too!
Homemade Jams and Preserves ("Family Circle" Step-by-step S.)
In the Kitchen: Recipes & Writings: Active Journals
THE COMPLETE QUICK SHORT RECIPE COLLECTION
Creative Celebration Cakes
Fabulous Finger Foods
Classic Vegetarian Cooking from the Middle East and North Africa
Santa Fe School of Cooking Cookbook: Spirited Southern Recipes
The Curious Cook
Southern Traditions: 100 Years of Great Recipes from Martha White Kitchens
American Heritage Cookbook: Treasured Recipes from the Family Farm (Land O'Lakes)
Rose Elliot's Complete Vegetarian Cookbook
Sod the Diet!: A Humorous Approach to Serious Cooking
The Complete Farmhouse Kitchen Cookbook
A Gallimaufry of Books and Cooks
Cooking for Beginners

Average customer rating:

Very nicely organized book of Irish recipes and Ingredients
Modern Irish Cooking
The Irish Heritage Cookbook
Great book! Authentic recipes!
Great Recipes

The Irish Heritage Cookbook
Margaret Johnson
Manufacturer: Chronicle Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

Irish Traditional Cooking: Over 300 Recipes from Ireland's Heritage
The New Irish Table: 70 Contemporary Recipes
McGuire's Irish Pub Cookbook
The Irish Pub Cookbook
Irish Puddings, Tarts, Crumbles, and Fools: 80 Glorious Desserts

ASIN: 0811819922

Book Description

Roughly 44 million Americans of Irish descent, though understandably proud of their heritage, have grown up with a shocking degree of cultural deprivation with regard to the culinary traditions of their ancestors. For most, Irish cuisine means potatoes, corned beef, and cabbage. Now at last, The Irish Heritage Cookbook will set the record straight. Margaret Johnson offers a much-needed fresh perspective on what Irish cooking is all about. She tells stories about the foods of Erin and how these dishes were reinvented by Irish emigrants and their offspring, evolving to include new ingredients and to suit modern circumstances and tastes. Offering a bountiful collection of both traditional recipes and contemporary innovations from a host of chefs and cooks in the Old Country and the New, The Irish Heritage Cookbook affirms at last the place of Irish cooking among the great cuisines of the world—and one to be enjoyed by all who love Ireland.

Customer Reviews:

Very nicely organized book of Irish recipes and Ingredients.......2006-01-26

`the Irish Heritage Cookbook' by Irish-American high school teacher and culinary writer, Margaret M. Johnson is a near-perfect reflection of how the Irish cuisine has grown up around the products of Irish farming, animal husbandry, and fishing. The chapter organization facilitates appreciating this situation with the following chapters:

From the Land with recipes for fruits and vegetables, especially root vegetables such as potatoes, carrots, turnips, parsnips and onions and tree fruit such as apples. The potato recipes are no surprise, the recipes combining potatoes with other root vegetables and with apples is new. I am especially happy to see recipes for champ and colcannon side by side, as I constantly forget what it is which distinguishes one version of these mashed potato recipes from the other.

From the Farm with recipes for meat dishes, especially beef, pork, and chicken. Like the previous chapter, one is taken, here, with the rich combination of meats with apples, beer, and whiskey. Unlike some recipes, I am happy to see that the author gives us the recipe for making the corned beef for our corned beef and cabbage dish.

From the Dairy features milk and egg recipes and recipes from milk products such as cheese and cream. While I have known that Ireland is a rich milk producing country, I was never aware that it had a very rich cheese making industry. In fact, almost all the cheese varieties used in these recipes are type made famous elsewhere such as cheddar from England, Parmesan from Italy, and Swiss style cheeses. The Irish varieties in fact mostly seem to be variations on the neighboring cheddar and the product of the Alps, `Swiss' cheeses.

From the Hillside is all about Lamb dishes. Oddly, in spite of the fact that I am weary of seeing stock recipes in virtually every cookbook I open, I do miss a good recipe for lamb stock in this book, as recipes for lamb stock are not nearly as common as for chicken, veal, beef, and fish. There is a very simple recipe for `lamb broth', but none for `homemade lamb stock', an ingredient in many of these recipes. I miss it because Deborah Madison has converted me to the notion that stocks should ideally be made to fit the dishes in which they are to be used. I also miss the fact that Ms. Johnson is not more specific in specifying the source of her stewing lamb pieces.

From the Waters is all about fish dishes, especially salmon, trout, sole, oysters, and mussels. As wine is used in the fish poaching recipes, I assume these are more likely from restaurants than from home cooks, as I suspect wine was a real luxury item in Ireland of olden days.

From the Wild covers recipes from game such as turkey, goose, game hens, duck, quail, pheasant, venison, rabbit, and guinea fowl. Here again I'm surprised and impressed by the wide use of apples and apple cider in the recipes. It even includes a recipe for a wild duck pate. I'm a bit surprised that there is not more charcuterie recipes for things such as sausage. I guess Ireland was cold enough in the fall and winter that one could store meats in the root cellar in the cold without fancy preservation techniques.

From the Hearth is all about baking, with the famous Irish Soda Bread occupying the first two recipes. We find that even many recipes without `soda' in the title turn out to be leavened by baking soda or baking powder or both. Next to soda bread, the most famous Irish type of bread must be scones, of which there are plenty of recipes here. And, next to wheat, the most popular grain ingredient is, of course, oats prepared in one way or another.

From the Orchards and the Fields contains fruit dishes and desserts. Here again, the stars are apples, potatoes, and oats, with a welcome role for the great character actors, rhubarb and strawberries.

While this is the first full sized Irish cookbook I have reviewed, I feel safe in heartily recommending it to anyone who wants a great source of relatively simple Irish and Irish-inspired recipes in an inexpensive volume. I believe I will find more elaborate, or at least more culinarily fussy books on the subject, but this one is a keeper!

Modern Irish Cooking.......2002-11-25

I didn't particularly like this book, I'm more into traditional cooking and these recipes were a little too trendy/nouveau for my preferences. I think if you are interested in non-traditional Irish cooking you would probably enjoy this book.

The Irish Heritage Cookbook.......2002-10-14

I bought this book for some ideas for St Pat's day. Now I use it all the time. The Irish stew tastes just like it did in a pub in Ireland. My sons love the guinnes beef stew. My co-workers have borrowed it to make some of the recipes as well. And tonite I'm making the oatmeal apple crisp. Even if you are not irish, you'll wish you were after eating some of these delicious meals.

Great book! Authentic recipes!.......2002-03-03

This book is packed with recipes that are authentic and delicious. I highly recommend it not only for the food, but for the history. Great find!

Great Recipes.......2001-05-03

The Irish Heritage Cookbook is fantastic. I have made several recipes from it and they were fabulous! The instructions were easy to follow. Every Irish Kitchen should have this book.

Average customer rating:

Superb Introduction to Irish Food and Cooking. Buy It.

The Irish Heritage Cookbook
Biddy White Lennon
Manufacturer: Lorenz Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Similar Items:

Irish Traditional Cooking: Over 300 Recipes from Ireland's Heritage
The Irish Pub Cookbook
Elegant Irish Cooking: Hundreds of Recipes from the World's Foremost Irish Chefs
The Irish Heritage Cookbook
McGuire's Irish Pub Cookbook

ASIN: 0754814831

Book Description

Includes a comprehensive guide to Irish ingredients, from wild and cultivated harvest fruits to traditional meats and game.

Customer Reviews:

Superb Introduction to Irish Food and Cooking. Buy It........2006-03-02

`The Irish American Cookbook' by Biddy White Lennon and Georgina Campbell and `The Taste of Ireland In Traditional Home Cooking' by Matthew Drennan are two relatively inexpensive new books on Irish cooking with lavishly illustrated recipes done with color photographs and very nicely written procedures. Both books are excellent first books on Irish cooking with slightly different audiences. The larger, more expensive Lennon and Campbell book is great if you are really interested in a sound introduction to Irish cuisine and are quite interested in wanting to know a lot more about it. The smaller Drennan book is great if you simply want a few good authentic Irish recipes to make around St. Patrick's Day with superior guidance on how to make them, but you have no interest in studying Irish cuisine, its history, and its `terroir'.

One important word of warning. Both books were written and published for an Irish and UK audience, so there are several expressions which are familiar to residents of the British Isles, but which may not be entirely familiar to the colonies. Examples are `double cream', `rashers of bacon', `saltpetre', `black treacle', `a large swede', and `carragheen moss'. All are taken from the smaller Drennan book. Most occur in the larger book as well; however, they are much more commonly explained in the large book, as it was clearly edited for sale in the United States as well as in English speaking British Isles. I am especially happy to see that both books also give both metric and English measurements for volumes and weights. Even better, liquids are often measured in both fluid ounces and in cups. If you have no patience with unusual culinary terms, I would take a pass on the Drennan book and try `Irish Traditional Cooking' by leading Irish cooking school owner, Darina Allen or `the Irish Heritage Cookbook' by Irish-American high school teacher and culinary writer, Margaret M. Johnson, both of which are very friendly to American culinary knowledge.

With the fact that it is available for a very reasonable price, the greatest virtue of the Drennan book is the fact that it's few recipes are all perfect archetypes of traditional Irish cooking. So, if that's all you want, this will give it to you for a pittance.

The Lennon and Campbell Book also focuses primarily on traditional recipes, but it also gives us much, much more. The book opens with a 30 page illustrated essay on a culinary history of Ireland. The very best thing about it is that it does not overlap much the two other essays on Irish culinary tradition in `Celtic Folklore Cooking' by culinary writer and folklorist, JoAnne Asala which concentrates on Irish pre-Christian folklore and religions and `Elegant Irish Cooking' by culinary scholar, teacher and professional chef, Noel C. Cullen Ed.D, CMC, AAC which focuses on a history of cooking and chefs in Ireland. Our book from Lennon and Campbell explains much more about modern Irish cuisine than the other two do. It even partially answers the question of why, when beer brewing is so popular in Ireland, the most popular types of breads are leavened with chemical leaveners. It is also much more informative of the differences in cuisine for different classes of people, so common and well known of Italy, for example.

This excellent section is followed by a second 30 page essay on `The Irish Kitchen' which outlines all the most important Irish food sources and products such as its eggs, dairy, cheeses, sausages, brewing, and distilling industries.

I am not a big one for photographs in cookbooks except when explaining a subtle or difficult technique such as pastry crust making or omelet cooking, but when the photographs are done very well, it can't help but add to the value of the book, especially when its in a genre where most other books in that genre are without superior illustrations. This is another reason this is an especially good book for a beginning cook or someone starting out with Irish cooking. Not that Irish cooking is complicated. It is generally no more complicated than Italian cooking, although it is much more similar, in general, to the cooking of northwest and western France, with its great output of dairy, apples, pears, pigs, and cattle.

The section on breads and cakes alone is worth the price of admission, as next to potato and corned beef dishes, the most distinctive thing about Irish cooking is its breads, biscuits, scones, and holiday breads and cakes with candied fruit. The most interesting recipe here for me is the `Quick barm brack', a yeasted Halloween traditional loaf whose name derives from the fact that it was originally made with leftover beer yeast.

While I have seen many excellent Irish cookbooks over the last three weeks, I can categorically recommend this as the very best `first' Irish cookbook or `only' Irish cookbook if your interest extends no further than two weeks in the middle of March. My recommendation is even safer due to the fact that the book lists for a mere $29.95, well below the average price, let alone the average price for a lavishly illustrated oversized book.

Very highly recommended.

Average customer rating:

The Irish Heritage Cookbook
Mercedes McLoughlin , and Marian McSpiritt
Manufacturer: Careers & Educational Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0906121116

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

Average customer rating:

Yummy
Recommended for the novice or the expert cook.
A wonderful cookbook!
Excellent Survey of Authentic Irish Cooking. Buy It.
Irish Traditional Cooking

Irish Traditional Cooking- Over 300 Recipes from Ireland's Heritage
Darina Allen
Manufacturer: Kyle Cathie Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

The Irish Pub Cookbook
Festive Food of Ireland
Celtic Folklore Cooking
The Irish Heritage Cookbook
McGuire's Irish Pub Cookbook

ASIN: 1856262901

Book Description

Ireland's rich culinary heritage is brought to life in this sumptuous and entertaining appreciation of more than 300 traditional dishes. The recipes, many of which have been passed down through generations, are complemented by tips, tales, historical insights, and Irish customs. A marvelous celebration of the country's culinary pleasures. Darina Allen is Ireland's foremost culinary writer and founder of the prestigious Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork, Ireland. Her cooking programs have appeared on both British and American television, including "Good Morning America." Her previous book is Ballymaloe Seasons.

Customer Reviews:

Yummy.......2006-10-31

I received this cookbook as a Christmas Gift and have used it several times. Everything I've made so far has been wonderful. The recipes are easy to follow and delicious. There are wonderful pictures and interesting tid bits through out. A great cook book for experts and novices. A wide variety of food and dishes.

Recommended for the novice or the expert cook........2006-04-02

I first checked this cookbook out from the library. I was so impressed I just had to buy it. Page 8 shows Darina Allen with Lana Pringle in a traditional Irish kitchen making Barm Brack. That image took me back to the days of my childhood and the many wonderful memories of summer days spent visiting family in Ireland. Darina Allen does a wonderful job of implementing a heartfelt dose of Irish history into the book. As for the recipes, for the most part they are simple to make, yet tastefully superb!

A wonderful cookbook!.......2006-02-19

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this cookbook and cannot wait to try many of the recipes. It has a lot of history before each section as well as descriptions before many of the recipes to tell where the recipe came from and how it fits into Irish tradition. It had the overall effect of making me feel as if I'd traveled to Ireland and visited the kitchens of chefs and housewives alike.

The only disappointment was that at least one of the recipes I would like to try is written with antiquated measurements (ie. use two stones of flour).

Still, I would highly recommend it to anyone.

Excellent Survey of Authentic Irish Cooking. Buy It........2006-01-28

`Irish Traditional Cooking' by leading Irish cooking school owner, Darina Allen is the fourth Irish-centric book I have reviewed and the second which warrants attention as a sound source for genuine Irish recipes. The other worthy book on this subject is `the Irish Heritage Cookbook' by Irish-American high school teacher and culinary writer, Margaret M. Johnson. Of the two, Allen's book is the more scholarly in that it endeavors to give a relatively complete and authoritative view of the cuisine of all Ireland. While Ms. Johnson's book is very good, it is a much more personal view of both Irish and `Irish-American' cooking.

One area covered by Ms. Allen which are not covered by Ms. Johnson is the native Irish pantry with items such as homemade sausage, homemade vinegar, homemade marmalade, and the like.

It's interesting that the two books take very similar approaches to Irish cooking. Unlike the classic Italian cookbook, neither proceeds by course, but primarily by principle raw ingredient. And, unlike Ms. Allen's great `ballymaloe cooking school cookbook', this book is totally Irish.

Ms. Allen's chapter subjects are Broths & Soups, Eggs, Fish, Game, Poultry, Lamb, Beef, Pork, Offal, Potatoes, Vegetables, Food from the Wild, Desserts, Pancakes, Breads, Oatmeal & Other Grains, Cakes & Biscuits, and The Irish Pantry. In addition to all the recipes, and there are certainly a goodly number for the price, there is an excellent historical foreword by Irish culinary historian, Regina Sexton. There are also numerous heading sections on groups of recipes such as nettles, herrings, eels, and many others. There is also an excellent little Appendices on Irish cheeses and cheesemaking; The Potato and the Famine; and Cooking Pits of the Fianna (Bronze Age sites associated with Ireland's early pre-Christian heroes such as Finn McCool (Fionn Mac Cumhaill)). The number of Irish Farmhouse cheese sources, 48 in all, is truly impressive. Since I suspect almost all of these cheeses are not available at our local megamart, I wish she would have given commonly available French, Italian, or American cheese equivalents.

Almost all of Ms. Allen's recipes seem relatively short in procedure and in number of ingredients. I am very fond of how Ms. Allen has put her ingredients list in the margin rather than above the procedure, and I am also happy that all units are in purely English units, rather than both English and Metric. This is not because I disapprove of Metric. In fact, I prefer it, but in a book for an English or American audience, it is simply easier to read if all units are in our most familiar units.

One of my more interesting discoveries in this book is the almost total absence of yeast baking. In the chapter on breads, there are 23 recipes, of which only three (3) include yeast. All others are leavened with baking power or baking soda plus buttermilk or both. With the great popularity of beer in Ireland, it is odd that there is no more yeast breadmaking, especially with brewer's yeast. While I am very fond of Irish Soda Bread, I find it lacks something compared to a good yeast bread; however, if you are yeast impaired, 20 recipes for chemically leavened quickbreads is a great source for breadmaking.

I am also struck by the large number of recipes using apples in both this book and in the previously mentioned book by Ms. Johnson. The dessert chapter alone gives us 12 our of 34 recipes with apples. Oddly, the Irish notion of an apple dumpling recipe is quite different from the Pennsylvania Dutch recipe of a single peeled and cored apple encased in pastry. The Irish `dumpling' is much more like what we would call a `crumble' or `cobbler', as it is a layer of sweetened apples covered by a pastry layer. One may have to use a little local knowledge for the apple recipes as Ms. Allen recommends no apple varieties for most recipes and when she does, they appear to be varieties native to Ireland such as `Bramley Seedling cooking apples'. I guess Macintosh apples should do fine here.

This book is a real winner if you happen to love mashed potatoes. Among the champ, colcannon, and boxty recipes, there are at least 12 recipes for mashed potatoes, not counting the various recipes for making dishes from leftover mashed potatoes such as griddle potatoes and potato & caraway seed cakes.

Overall, while Ms. Johnson's book has a great selection of recipes, Ms. Allen's selection is even broader, without being more difficult. If all you want is easy recipes, Johnson is excellent. But, if you want a great lyric evocation of the foods native to Ireland, Allen's book is superior.

Irish Traditional Cooking.......2005-10-24

It's great! Recently went to Ireland, and the recipes match the food I had there. Recipes are easy to do and to make! Love it.

Average customer rating:

The Irish Heritage Cookbook
Mercedes; McSpiritt, Marian McLoughlin
Manufacturer: Careers and Educational Pub.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000LBQUES

Average customer rating:

Irish Heritage Cookbook
Georgina Campbell
Manufacturer: LORENZ BOOKS (AURU)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000K71VV0

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