[DeanRIowa]

Being from the USA and having Irish heritage, I have always wanted some traditional Irish recipes.

Maybe you could give me couple recipes that your mom always made.

thanks,
Dean

[nemo]

what exactly do you want i have a few bread recipes and recipes for jams and jelly's which have been handed down through the years.but if you are writing a cook book i would want royalties only joking.would this be of any use
regards nemo

[walltoall]

Colcannon is pretty much accepted as traditional fare. We sometimes got it as children in the early 50s. But where does the word come from. Although some people use the word "cabáiste" the real Irish word for cabbage is Cál [sounding like the English word 'call' or 'coll'].The Irish term for a white-face animal is "ceann fhionn" or "ceannán" [pronounced to rhyme, sorta, with the English word 'cannon'.]

In 19th century Ireland, cabbage (or kail) was basically grown to supplement animal rations. But when times were hard, chopped boiled 'cabbage' would be mixed into mashed potatoes (and if they were lucky maybe a bit of lard or butter) to make green and white col cannon. Now you can google "colcannon" and get maybe 250,000 recipes for the most traditional Irish dish of all.

And while you're eating it you can spout the history of the word colcannon.

EDITED (for Sal and Dean): The English "Bubble and Squeak" although similar to colcannon has an entirely different history and is a very different recipe. Wikipedia has a very good description of B+S and I bow to their superior knowledge. "Pandy" is well-known in Ireland and was frequently the earliest solid food fed to babies at weaning.

[sal]

to me colcannon is much the same as bubble and squeek,ate that first in london as a kid,and its on the menu in cafes with your breakfast fry.

[sal]

my irish mum used to give the tots mashed potato and milk ,she called it pandy,i`ve since heard it here by mums .

[DeanRIowa]

Colcannon sounds interesting and I will have to give it a try.

I did a Google search and see that an old Halloween tradition was to hide coins in it. Is that still done, and if so why on Halloween?

thanks,
Dean

[walltoall]

DeanRIowa,
Sorry for losing this thread and not coming back to you. I know your purpose is to collect traditional recipes and I'd hoped our lot would have lashed in loads of recipes based on the stuff we traditionally grow in our gardens. Maybe my re-opening the thread will buck some of them up.

For countless centuries Ireland has celebrated the solstices and equinoxes. They also had two intermediate celebrations at Bealtaine and Samhan, which nowadays are the Irish names for the months of May and November. Samhan was a spooky time, when thoughts turned to the next life, to souls that had departed and to the long Winter nights ahead.

Fast forward to the 17th and 18th century when the Irish people had been pauperised by their 'conquerers'. needs must when wealth is scarce or absent. So the barm brack was 'invented', basically a yeast bread sweetened up with a little mashed carrot ( long superceded by sugar) and cherries and damsons from gardens and hedgerows (superceded by mixed peel and currants). The barm brack was baked in a bastible (google it) and depending on custom , a ring, a twig (we used rosemary!) and a tiny rag were dropped into the mix. The eating of barm-brack on Oiche Shamhna (The Night of Souls) became custom through the 19th century and right through the 20th til people got well off.

The one who found the ring would marry first, the one who got the rag would always be well dressed and I can't remember what the stick signified. But every one went happy into the winter.

Now maybe some traditional irish reciopes will flow in and we'll get the thread back on track?