An Irish Country Cookbook Read online

  Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface. Line a deep 8-inch/20-cm pie dish with the pastry and crimp the edges. Leave covered in the refrigerator until needed (or see note here).

  FOR THE FILLING:

  Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C. Cook the potatoes in boiling water for 15 minutes or until just tender. Drain and slice them and set aside to cool. Meanwhile, melt the butter and oil in a frying pan over a low heat, add the onions, and fry until soft and golden. Add the garlic and cook gently for a couple of minutes, being careful not to let it burn. Add the onions and garlic, half of the cheese, the spinach, parsley, nutmeg, and salt and pepper to taste to the potatoes and mix everything together well. Allow to cool.

  Fill the pastry-lined tin with the vegetable and cheese mixture. Pour the cream over and sprinkle the remaining cheese on top. Place the tin on a baking sheet and bake for 40 to 45 minutes. Allow it to cool for about 5 minutes before cutting into thick wedges. As this is quite a filling pie it would be best to serve with a salad.

  Kinky’s Note:

  If you want to ensure that the pie base will be crisp, you can partially prebake it. Just prick the pastry all over with a fork, line with parchment paper and baking beans, and bake blind for about 15 minutes.

  Steak and Kidney Pudding

  Serves 6

  SUET PASTRY

  14 oz/400 g self-rising flour

  ½ tsp salt

  Freshly ground black pepper

  7 oz/200 g beef suet or vegetarian suet

  10 oz/295 ml cold water

  FILLING

  8 oz/227 g ox kidneys or lamb’s kidneys

  2 Tbsp all-purpose flour

  Salt and freshly ground black pepper

  1½ lb/680 g chuck steak, trimmed and cut into ¾-in/2-cm cubes

  1 small onion, chopped

  5 oz/150 ml beef stock

  FOR THE PASTRY:

  Sift the flour together with the salt and season with black pepper. Then add the suet and mix it in with a knife. It should appear as pea-size lumps. Gradually add the water until you have a stiff dough-like consistency. (Indeed you may need to use extra water, as some flour needs more than others.) Now with your hands, work it ’til you have a nice smooth dough. Roll about three-quarters of the dough out and fit it into a buttered pudding bowl about 1.5 L capacity.

  FOR THE FILLING:

  Prepare the kidneys by removing the outer membrane and cutting away all tubes and fat or gristle, then cut into ½-inch/12-cm pieces. Season the flour with salt and pepper in a large bowl. Add the steak and kidneys and toss to coat, then add the onion. Place the mixture in the pastry-lined pudding bowl and add enough beef stock to almost cover the meat. Now roll out the rest of the dough to make a lid, dampen the edges with water to make a good seal, and cover the pudding bowl with the dough. Cover the pudding with a double piece of buttered parchment with a pleat in the middle to allow for expansion. I use parchment paper, then foil tied on with string.

  Once the string has been tied round the top of the bowl, tie the long end of the string to the opposite side of the bowl, making a loop to use as a handle. Set the bowl in a steamer or in a saucepan that you’ve lined with a trivet or an upturned plate. Add enough water to come halfway up the side of the bowl and steam over a moderate heat for about 5 hours. (You will have to remember to keep topping this up with water or it will boil dry.) To serve, turn the pudding out on a plate and cut into wedges. I like to accompany this with peas and mashed potatoes.

  Steak and Kidney Pie

  I think this is easier and quicker than the Steak and Kidney Pudding recipe (here) and it is also good served with mashed potatoes.

  Serves 4

  2 lamb’s kidneys

  1 lb/455 g stewing beef, trimmed and cut into 1-in/2.5-cm pieces

  2 Tbsp all-purpose flour

  2 Tbsp vegetable oil

  2 onions, chopped

  30 oz/885 ml beef stock, plus extra as needed

  1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

  Salt and freshly ground black pepper

  1 package frozen puff pastry, about 1 lb/455 g, thawed, or Quick Flaky Pastry (recipe follows)

  1 egg yolk and a little milk to glaze

  Prepare the kidneys by removing the outer membrane and cutting away all tubes and fat or gristle, then slice into ⅜-inch/1-cm pieces. Dust the beef in the flour. Heat the oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the beef in several batches and brown it on all sides in the hot oil. (If you add it all at once it will not brown.) Add the kidneys and fry for 2 or 3 minutes.

  Remove from the pan and fry the onions for a few minutes. Now return the meat and kidneys to the pan, sprinkle the remaining flour on top, add the beef stock and Worcestershire sauce, and simmer gently, covered, for 1½ hours. You want the gravy to reduce and thicken but watch that it does not all disappear. If it reduces too much just add some more stock. Now test for tenderness and season with salt and pepper to taste.

  Preheat the oven to 425°F/220°C. Place the steak and kidney mixture in a 7-inch pie dish and allow it to cool. Roll out the pastry to a shape that will cover the filling and crimp round the edges; trim off the surplus. Brush with the egg and milk mixture and make a cut in the centre of the lid to allow the steam to escape. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until the pastry is risen and golden brown.

  Kinky’s Note:

  When you need to coat meat in flour it is easy to do this in a plastic bag. Just put the flour in the bag, add the meat, close the top, and give it a good shake around.

  Quick Flaky Pastry

  If you prefer to make your own pastry, here is one that I like to do.

  Makes 1 pie case or 1 pie top about 7 inches/18 cm in diameter

  4 oz/113 g lard or margarine

  6½ oz/184 all-purpose flour

  ½ tsp salt

  A pinch of baking powder

  4 tsp cider vinegar

  2 oz/60 ml ice water

  Chill the fat in the freezer for several hours. In a large bowl combine the flour, salt, and baking powder. Chop the lard or grate it using a coarse cheese grater, and mix it into the flour (or you can briefly process it in a food processor). Mix the vinegar and a little water together and stir into the flour. Don’t add too much water to begin with, as you can add more later, if needed. Rest the pastry, wrapped in cling film, in the refrigerator for about 1 hour before rolling out. Then roll out on a very well-floured work surface and chill in the refrigerator until needed.

  Kinky’s Note:

  1. If you use whole-wheat flour for the rolling out, it adds a nice, crunchy texture to the pastry.

  2. If you are blind-baking a pie shell I think it is preferable to use a metal pie tin, as it gives a crisper finish than baking in a ceramic or glass dish. You can always transfer it to a ceramic or glass dish when adding the filling.

  VARIATION

  Steak and Mushroom Pie. Make as for Steak and Kidney Pie above but substitute 8 oz/227 g mushrooms for the lamb’s kidneys.

  Grave, Where Is Thy Victory?

  “Will the defendant rise and face the bench,” said the clerk of the magistrate’s court on a Friday in October 1964. “His honour will pronounce his verdict.”

  O’Reilly stood.

  It may be hard to believe, but he was here on a charge of poaching, a crime that not so very long ago had had a great deal to do with the populating of Botany Bay, Australia, by the transported guilty from Ireland. Taking a wild duck or goose out of season or nicking one of the local squire’s game birds or rabbits or salmon or trout and getting caught usually resulted in a long, relaxing sea voyage at His Majesty King George III’s expense to, and a prolonged tropical vacation in, Terra Australis, which was just then becoming a bit more cognita. A good row and a ruction, on the other hand, with black eyes and broken bones, which today would lead to charges of grievous bodily harm, was simply regarded as one of Ireland’s national pastimes.

  The present alleged (at least until judgement was passed) offence under consideration
had occurred several months ago, shortly after I’d joined his practice. O’Reilly, who I later learned was usually meticulous in observing the dates of shooting seasons, had had a great hankering for wild duck roasted as only Kinky could. He’d reasoned that Stranford Lough was a lonely place and no one would see the dirty deed.

  On his way home O’Reilly had dropped into the pub for a jar, and regrettably the long arm of the law had noticed the late bird’s tail feathers sticking out of O’Reilly’s coat pocket. With some profession of regret, Constable Mulligan had issued a summons to appear in front of the Ballybucklebo and townland resident magistrate, Mister Albert Cholmondely (pronounced Chumley), LL.B., solicitor at law, at the next magistrates’ court.

  O’Reilly’d asked me to keep him company at his short trial. He and I had sat on hard wooden chairs in the front row while Constable Mulligan, with several apologetic glances at O’Reilly, presented his evidence and was excused. Because of the eminence of the accused most of the local folks who were not at their work were crammed into the little courthouse.

  From a raised dais, the magistrate looked down his angular nose and over half-moon spectacles at O’Reilly standing in front of his chair. Mister Cholmondely spoke in a high-pitched voice that sounded as if it was so raspy because someone had used sandpaper on his vocal cords: “In the matter of Regina Versus O’Reilly before this court, the matter of taking by shooting for the purpose of capturing, keeping, and retaining for possible resale or personal use one member of the sub-family genus Anas species platyrhinchos at a time outwith those months when the taking of the aforementioned birds is legally permitted, henceforth to be known as the ‘shooting season,’ in contravention of the Game Act of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1831, this court finds on the evidence presented the defendant, one Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, medical practitioner of this village and townland, guilty as charged.”

  Any pins dropping would have dwarfed the row of the explosion of Krakatoa, so deep was the silence in the room.

  I watched the defendant’s bent nose turn pallid, a sure sign that he was enraged, and could tell he was becoming impatient because I could hear O’Reilly muttering under his breath, “For the sake of the wee man, get on with it.”

  Mister Cholmondely clearly relished his power over the defendant and, I surmised, was enjoying humbling such a locally important figure. The legal eagle probably thought he was a direct descendant of Judge Jeffreys, chief justice of the Bloody Assizes in 1685. Cholmondely probably regretted that he could not, like his forebear, sentence O’Reilly to hanging, drawing, and quartering. The RM said, waving a bony admonitory index finger, “Before passing sentence I wish to remind you, Doctor, of your position in the community. Yet instead of being the soul of righteousness, an example to all, you have sunk to the depths of a common criminal. You should be ashamed of yourself, sir. Ashamed.”

  O’Reilly was managing to look contrite, but I could see the fires of the inferno in the depths of his brown eyes.

  “For any ordinary citizen I would have levied a fine of five guineas. In your case, Doctor…” he said the word with an inflection he might have used in sentencing a mass murderer. “In your case you will pay to the clerk of this court the sum of fifteen guineas.”

  From behind came a chorus of gasps and sighs.

  “Case dismissed.” He banged his gavel and sneered at O’Reilly.

  O’Reilly dutifully coughed up the money and nodded at the little crowd of onlookers as we left. On our way home from the courthouse he said, “I don’t mind being fined. It was wrong to shoot out of season and stupid to get caught, but nobody and I mean nobody preaches at me like that in front of my patients. Half of getting them better depends on how much faith they have in their doctor. That faith was rocked today.”

  “I don’t know, Fingal,” I said. “I thought there was fair bit of sympathy for you in there.”

  “Maybe.” O’Reilly grunted and then said, “I wonder how he’d like to be humbled in his own courthouse?”

  * * *

  I confess that the entire matter slipped my mind until summer rolled around and O’Reilly said, as we were taking a pre-prandial and nibbling on gravadlax on Guinness bread in his upstairs lounge, “The next magistrate’s court will be held tomorrow and I have a petition before it. My brother Lars the solicitor helped me with the preparation. Want to come along?”

  Then I remembered O’Reilly’s exact words after his last encounter with the RM: “I wonder how he’d like to be humbled in his own courthouse?” Nothing short of a small nuclear explosion would have kept me away.

  “I just need to tell you something in advance,” he said.

  “Fire away,” I said, sipping my sherry.

  “I have,” he said, “recently been examining old gravestones. Sonny Houston has been helping me. You know he’s interested in archaelogy.”

  “I didn’t,” I said, remembering the strange old gentleman who, because of a row with a certain Councillor Bertie Bishop over an unfinished roof, had once lived in his car. And what the blazes could his helping O’Reilly with gravestones have to do with humbling an RM?

  I found out the next morning.

  Once more the courtroom was packed and Mister Albert Cholmondely sat enthroned above the common herd, the might and panoply of Lex Brittanica personified—at least, I thought, in his own mind.

  The clerk of the court announced, “The next case is a petiton by Doctor O’Reilly for an exhumation. Will the petitioner rise?”

  O’Reilly did so from his seat in the front row offset to one side so he half-faced the bench and half-faced the audience.

  There was a mumbling throughout the room.

  O’Reilly said, “Your honour, may it please the court, in my position of local medical examiner I wish to apply under the United Kingdom’s Burial Act of 1857, which among other things covers exhumations…”

  “Do not, Doctor, try to teach your granny to suck eggs,” the RM said. “I am perfectly familiar with the relevant section. Please proceed and do not be wasting this court’s time.”

  O’Reilly produced a sheet of paper that was covered in blacking which must have been applied as the sheet lay over a tombstone. Like a brass rubbing, the inscription had been highlighted. “Will your honour please read this?”

  “Give it here.” The paper was accepted and Mister Cholmondely began to read aloud. “R.I.P Eamonn McCann 1784–1836. Here lies a Resident Magistrate and an honest man.” Cholmondely whipped off his spectacles. “I fail to see the relevance of this to an application to dig up the grave. Explain yourself, O’Reilly.”

  O’Reilly shook his head and said, looking the RM straight in the eye, “Please forgive me, your honour, but you’ve just told me that you are, may I quote you, ‘perfectly familiar with the relevant section.’”

  A subdued murmuring filled the room.

  The RM spluttered, banged his gavel, and shouted, “Silence in court. Silence in court.”

  The murmuring subsided, but before the RM could speak O’Reilly faced the crowd and, holding open a legal tome and pointing at the page, said, “The inscription your honour just read says ‘an RM and an honest man,’ and under the act, may I quote? ‘It is strictly prohibited to bury two people in one grave.’”

  Silence for a moment, then the meaning sank in and the eruption of laughter, cat calls, and stamping of boots on the wooden floor probably stopped the RM hearing O’Reilly, who bent low and stretched out both arms sideways as he said in his best TV lawyer, Perry Mason’s manner, “Your honour, I rest my case.”

  Chicken AND Duck

  Irish Country Chicken Breasts

  Serves 4

  4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

  Salt

  1 oz/28 g butter

  1 cup fresh white bread crumbs (crusts removed from the bread)

  2½ oz/75 ml white wine

  Juice of ½ lemon

  8 oz/235 ml heavy cream

  3 egg yolks

  Freshly
ground black pepper

  2½ oz/70 g cheddar cheese, grated

  Preheat the oven to 400°F/200°C. Sprinkle the chicken breasts with salt. Melt the butter in a large frying pan over a medium heat, add the chicken breasts, and cook for 10 to 15 minutes, until just lightly coloured on both sides. Put them, arranged side by side, in a greased ovenproof dish. In the butter remaining in the pan, cook the bread crumbs until they are golden but not too brown. Set to one side and deglaze the pan with the white wine and the lemon juice until it has reduced to about half its volume. Leave in the pan until you are ready to use it.

  Beat the cream and egg yolks in a bowl, season with salt and pepper, and stir in the cheese. Pour the deglazing liquid from the pan over the chicken breasts, followed by the cream mixture and finish by sprinkling the golden crumbs over the top. Bake for about 25 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the egg mixture is firm. Serve with new potatoes and green peas or beans.

  Chicken with Green Peppercorns

  Serves 4

  4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

  2 oz/56 g butter

  2 shallots, chopped

  2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

  2 garlic cloves, crushed

  1 tsp whole green peppercorns

  2 oz/60 ml brandy

  2 oz/60 ml strong chicken stock

  4 oz/120 ml heavy cream

  Salt

  Put the chicken breasts between two pieces of waxed paper and pound with a rolling pin until they are of an even thickness of about ½ inch. Melt the butter in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the shallots and fry gently for 2 to 3 minutes. Then add the chicken breasts and cook on each side for about 8 minutes, until just cooked through and lightly browned. Remove from the pan to a serving dish large enough to accommodate the breasts. Add the Worcestershire sauce, garlic, and peppercorns to the pan. Mash the peppercorns with a fork and add the brandy and chicken stock. Cook over a high heat for a minute or two until the liquid is reduced and the pan is deglazed. Reduce the heat, stir in the cream, and cook, stirring all the time until the cream begins to thicken. Season with salt to taste and pour this over the chicken and heat through in the oven. Keep covered in a warm oven until you are ready to serve it. Delicious served with rice, Champ (here), or new potatoes.