Customer Reviews

Elegant Irish Cooking: Hundreds of Recipes from the World's Foremost Irish Chefs

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The recipes in this book are terrific! Anyone looking for an escape from "traditional" Irish cookery books will love these unique and tasty recipes. Well worth the price! Clear, consise directions. Even the beginner cook will be able to make these dishes tonight! (All that being said, some related books I'd like to recommend on generations-old Irish recipes are Irish Heritage Cooking, Irish Traditional Cooking, and Celtic Folklore Cooking.)

I saw a demonstration he gave using recipes from this book a few weeks ago. The samples provided were outstanding. I went home and made the smoked salmon stuffed chicken breast, and it was a hit with everyone

`Elegant Irish Cooking' by culinary scholar, teacher and professional chef, Noel C. Cullen Ed.D, CMC, AAC is a great foodie book; however it may not be the first Irish cookbook you want to get if all you want is a good cookbook with traditional Irish recipes. If that is what you need, go for `Irish Traditional Cooking' by leading Irish cooking school owner, Darina Allen or the much more ethnographic `Celtic Folklore Cooking' by culinary writer and folklorist, JoAnne Asala.

If Irish culinary traditions and cooking are major interests for you, this is an excellent second or third Irish cookbook, depending on whether you are more interested in cooking technique, fine dining and entertaining, or culinary lore. If your primary interest is in technique, get `ballymaloe cooking school cookbook' by school co-owner and Irish TV cooking show host, Darina Allen. Otherwise, go with this one.

Due to the author's dual life as both a chef and an academic, the book offers rewards for both interests. While Cullen is currently a professor in culinary and hospitality skills at Boston College, he trained and worked as a serious high end chef in many Irish and French restaurant kitchens and learned first hand the lessons of cooking to local products, at the same time unlearning his French cooking doctrines while he reached the upper levels of Irish `haute cuisine'.

The book begins with an excellent essay on the history of Irish food, including its high point during the Middle Ages monasteries and its low points during the potato famine. My only disappointment with this chapter is that it does not explain the mystery of why agronomists did not import one or more of the hundreds of other New World potatoes into Ireland when the potato blight affected only that one strain on which Irish livelyhood depended. On the other hand, this essay is very revealing about the curious fact that while Ireland is an Island, like the Greek Islands, there is a lot less seafood eaten than one may expect. Most fishing yields are sold to foreign markets or the Irish simply do not have a great taste for the fruits of the ocean, other than salmon and trout.

The title of the book and the author's background are excellent indicators of what we are given with the recipes in this book. We do not get standard recipes for traditional Irish dishes, although all the most traditional Irish produce such as milk, cream, cheese, apples, pears, potatoes, berries, lamb, pork, and game are well represented. Also represented is the one type of ingredient Ireland shares with another major Island nation Japan. This ingredient is seaweed. In fact, seaweed is historically important in that those who lived near the sea escaped the worst of the potato famine, not because they had fish, but because they had seaweed to eat.

While the book is primarily dedicated to Irish `haute cuisine', there is much here for the average cook. Opening the book at random shows me an excellent opening section in the chapter on `Salads, Dressings, & Cold Sauces' which details many variations on the classic French Vinaigrette. This may not be earthshaking for someone with 20 French cookbooks on their shelves, but for someone who only has room for a few good Irish cookbooks, this is great stuff.

I also find Cullen's plan for presenting a recipe very appealing, where each step is numbered, making it very easy to keep one's place in the procedure. It also means that each step is clearly identified, instead of being buried in a dense paragraph of text. This is especially rewarding in that the same gool schema is applied to all recipes, even those many which were contributed by `guest chefs', major chefs at restaurants and schools in Ireland. This also means that the many recipes which do not have a `guest chef' author are the creations of the book's author.

If by some chance, you have only room for a single Irish cookbook and this one appeals to you, I must say that many traditional dishes do find their way into the book; however, I cannot guarantee that the procedure is the same you would find at home in a private house in Dublin.

I especially recommend this book over `The New Irish Table' by Irish-American culinary journalist, Margaret M. Johnson, which also deals with recipes from Irish cooks, but more from the local pub than from the larger restaurants.

Last but not least, I find this an exceptionally well designed book for the average list price of $35. An excellent addition to any cookbook collection, and most especially to an Irish cookbook collection.

The book is beautiful and full of history and depth. The recipes are authentic and delicious. Highly recommended for a beautiful St. Patrick's Day dinner or night of Irish food.

I bought this cookbook as a gift for a friend and it was the perfect choice. The food selections look tasty, the book is actually "elegant" looking, and there are gorgeous color pictures throughout the book. P.S. My friend said the recipes tried so far have been yummy.

This book suprised me. It had beautiful pictures of the food you were going to attempt, and Irish scenery. Some of the recipes were well above my level of expertise and ability to aquire ingredients, but a suprising number were very do-able and ended up really pretty good! There is background on the food and lots of photos of the chefs whose recipes are listed. It could make a nice coffee table book except it is too valuable in the kitchen. There are things that I will try to make once a year, some deserts that I will never attempt, and some chicken and lamb recipes that I have made at least once a month if not more. Some friends that have come over for dinner, have commented on on how good Irish cuisine really is. Elegant Irish Cooking is'nt the only cook book that I have used to convince guests that Irish cooking is good, but it is one of my favorites to use when I am trying to impress them with the fact that Irish cooking is more than potatoes, corned beef and cabage.

Elegant Irish Cooking is an impressive compendium of 166 classic and progressive recipes in celebration of Irish cuisine and culinary traditions. Relying heavily on indigenous ingredients, these fabulous recipes showcase the techniques, excellence, and variety of Irish dining. From Pan Roasted Quail with Kildare Boxty; Cream of Watercress Soup with Warm Herbal Drop Scones; and Poached Sole Fillets in a Clonmel Cider Sauce; to Warm Salad of Emyvale Duck with Orange and Balsamic Dressing; Roasted Rack of Wicklow Lamb with an Herb Crust and Mint-Butter Sauce; and Moore Street Vegetable Tart, (and enhanced throughout with color photography by Ron Manville), Elegant Irish Cooking will grace any cookbook collection and enhance any family meal or celebratory occasion.