Irish food and random history leading up to St. Patrick's Day

“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet still is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.


People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years.”

Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes

St. Patrick's Day is coming up and I've decided to cook some dishes inspired by Ireland. I've got an indeterminate amount of Irish in my blood and I would eventually like to learn more about the history and culture of Ireland, so that I can teach Maya at some point. I did some scattered and random research on the history of the region recently, as a way of better understanding the country.

I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't realize that Northern Ireland was part of England and that Ireland was a completely separate entity. This is an incredibly abbreviated, and probably deficient, timeline of what happened:

• In ancient times, Ireland was subdivided into 5 different provinces, which eventually became four (listed from North to South): Ulster, Connacht, Leinster & Munster.

• Ireland was then further subdivided into 32 counties.

• The Irish War of Independence occurred in 1919-1921 and was a fight between the British and the Irish, after several hundred years of English involvement in the country. The upshot was that six of nine counties in Ulster became Northern Ireland and was a country ruled by the British, while the rest of the counties became the independent sovereignty of Ireland.

• Unfortunately, the Irish Civil war occurred after the War of Independence from 1921-1922 and was a fight between supporters of the agreement with England and those who opposed it. The treaty eventually ended up standing.

• Southern Ireland was called the Irish Free State from 1922-1937 and then just Ireland after a new constitution was signed in 1937. Ireland has been relatively peaceful since this time.

• Unfortunately, Northern Ireland was not as lucky. In the early 1960s, there was a 30 year period called “The Troubles” which was a fight between Protestants that supported England and Catholics that wanted Northern Ireland to join with the rest of Ireland (which is overwhelmingly Catholic). This was a complicated struggle, but the gist is that Catholics generally felt mistreated and protested, while the Protestant government struck back with force. Some of the Catholic protests were inspired by the Civil Rights movement in the US, which were largely non-violent protests.

• “The Troubles” officially ended with the Belfast Agreement in 1998, which for the most part brought peace to the region. However, there has been some sporadic violence since the signing of this agreement.

Why is this important for understanding the food? Well, Ireland has historically had a poor reputation for food and my theory is that the political instability mentioned above is at least part of the reason.

At various times, the country has also gone through some horrific food shortages. The Irish Potato Famine, which occurred in 1845-1852 and killed over 1 million people. However, there were actually several famines over time, which was caused by the over reliance on potatoes. Before the famines, some people subsisted solely on potatoes, which helped the Irish population grow, but also struck the population hard when growing potatoes became unreliable.

Recently, the food culture in Ireland has started to flourish. To gain perspective on how much things have changed, I checked out two books from the library.

One of the books is called 'A Taste of Ireland' by Theodora FitzGibbon and was published in 1969. The book is a series of recipes accompanied by quaint black and white photographs of Ireland in the 1800s. Most of the recipes are relatively simple preparations for, say fish or potatoes, while others seemed completely unappetizing to my probably over-sensitive modern sensability. A few of these include: Kidneys in their Overcoats (pg 1), Drisheen or blood pudding (pg 79), Cruibin's or Pig's Feet (pg 83), and Pig's Liver Casserole (pg 86). Granted, my assessment of the food at this time is probably being influenced by the fact that this book is old and not very artfully illustrated compared to modern publishing techniques, however, nothing in the cookbook really looks remotely appealing.

The other book that I got, however, is called 'The Country Cooking of Ireland' by Colman Andrews and was published in 2009. This book discusses a food culture that has emerged in the last few years, which celebrates artisanal purveyors and local ingredients, much like the trend in the US and is beautifully illustrated, with a wide variety of color photographs and also a number of sidebars on a range of historical topics. Of course, the recipes and Irish food in general seems more appealing as a result.

I'm going to try a few recipes in 'The Country Cooking of Ireland', try some store bought Irish foods and research a few topics. I'm hoping to let Maya taste as much as possible. The history lesson will have to come when she is older.