The Irish Pub Cookbook [Paperback]

`The Irish Pub Cookbook' is the fourth Irish themed cookbook I have reviewed from Irish-American Margaret M. Johnson of New York. All four, including `The New Irish Table', `Irish Puddings, Tarts, Crumbles, and Fools', and `The Irish Heritage Cookbook' are of similar trade paperback format from Chronicle Books. They are also similar in that all seem to be collections of recipes from various culinary professionals in Ireland. They all also seem to repeat a lot of sidebar material, although I have yet to see any repeated recipes.

To state a perfectly obvious fact, you probably only want to buy this book if you happen to want to cook recipes prepared at Irish pubs. That is, if you already own a fairly sizable collection of cookbooks, many of the recipes in this book will simply be variations on recipes you already have in either a standard book on Irish cooking or in books on Brasserie or Trattoria cooking. This premise, however, is no little recommendation. My personal experience of pub food in England, to which most of these recipes bear a strong resemblance, is that English speaking pubs offer a quality of food at least as good as their much more widely advertised French Brasserie and Italian Trattoria cousins. Like the famous Italian and French `bar food' recipes, these also have the virtue of being very fast to prepare. Either they cook very quickly or they can be cooked up ahead and reheated very quickly. The best model for Americans of pub / brasserie / trattoria food would be the kind of thing you will find at Chili's, Bennigan's, or Appleby's, except that my experience with the three European versions is that they tend to deal in less greasy and less cliched dishes.

The seven recipe chapters are:

Starters with 10 recipes with several based on seafood such as mussels, oysters, and salmon.

Soups with 9 recipes emphasizing cream based soups, plus four recipes for homemade stocks.

Salads with 9 recipes with lots of recipes using chicken, seafood, and cheese.

Hot Pots, Meat Pies, and Savory Tarts (hot pots are rich, thick stews) with 12 recipes featuring pies, savory tarts, `Irish Stew', and brown soda bread.

Meat and Potatoes with 12 recipes for, you guessed it, meat and potatoes, including pork (bacon and ham), lamb, fowl, and steaks.

Seafood with 8 recipes featuring salmon, cod, haddock, and monkfish.

Desserts with 11 recipes for cheesecakes, apple and pear cakes, puddings, mousses and pies.

If your primary interest is Irish desserts, go for the author's, `Irish Puddings, Tarts, Crumbles, and Fools', although this book includes cheesecakes, which are not in the dessert book.

Johnson certainly writes well about her recipes, although this may not be the best book for a green amateur, as there are few tips on techniques, although a fair knowledge of common kitchen techniques should be more than enough. I do tend to be just a little annoyed at Ms. Johnson's always citing Irish staples in her ingredients list such as `Kerrygold Irish Butter'. I feel that for a `comfort food book, it would have been better not to be expected to chase down a very specific, uncommon ingredient. The book also makes an important point that to the Irish, the pig is commonly divided into `ham' and `bacon'. This can easily be the source of the `Canadian bacon' label for smoked pork loin, as the Irish call everything not part of the rear leg ham to be `bacon'. While explaining this little bit of wisdom, the author seems to be not as clear as she could be in identifying exactly what kind of pork she means when she calls for `bacon'.

A collection of Ms. Johnson's books will give you an excellent overview of contemporary Irish cooking and contemporary Irish hospitality, with a few insights into Irish culinary history. So, if all you want is the recipes, these books are quite good. If you want to go deeper into traditional cooking, start with `Irish Traditional Cooking' by leading Irish cooking school owner, Darina Allen and her husband's `The Ballymaloe Bread Book' by Tim Allen (not the comedian).

I really enjoy this book. I am by no means a cook and as a single male living on my own I don't really cook "real food" a lot. However, I find the recipes in this book not only easy to follow but really good. The soups are awesome, even if they sound bad at first, the stews are great and the book also gives a little bit of information on pubs in Ireland. There are a ton of recipes from fish to poultry and from salads to soups. I was even able to make the soda bread for my parents. Plus there are a bunch of recipes for various soda breads. This book is a great buy and totally worth your time.

My husband and I traveled to Ireland in 2002 and fell in love with the country. We ate at local pubs for almost every meal and decided that we needed to learn to replicate many of these meals. He bought me this book for Christmas several years ago and I have used many of the recipes over and over again.

We have a St. Patrick's party every year and have used this cookbook almost exclusively. We consistantly make the Blue-Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms, but have made a few changes with it. The Seafood Chowder is a crowd pleaser. I also love the Bacon, Blue-Cheese and Courgette (Zucchini) soup. The star of our cookbook, though, is the Black and White Guinness Mousse. I make this dessert 4 or 5 times a year. It is my most requested dessert and it is a wonderful presentation. My cookbook literally opens up to that page on its own.

Coming from a woman who has hundreds of cookbooks, this is one of my favorite. I am lucky enough to have Kerrigold butter sold in our local supermarket and I can also source true bangers, which makes a nice treat for our family. I would highly recommend this if you are looking for truly authentic Irish recipes. Slainte!