Roughly 44 million Americans of Irish descent, though understandably proud of their heritage, have grown up with a shocking degree of cultural deprivation with regard to the culinary traditions of their ancestors. For most, Irish cuisine means potatoes, corned beef, and cabbage. Now at last, The Irish Heritage Cookbook will set the record straight. Margaret Johnson offers a much-needed fresh perspective on what Irish cooking is all about. She tells stories about the foods of Erin and how these dishes were reinvented by Irish emigrants and their offspring, evolving to include new ingredients and to suit modern circumstances and tastes. Offering a bountiful collection of both traditional recipes and contemporary innovations from a host of chefs and cooks in the Old Country and the New, The Irish Heritage Cookbook affirms at last the place of Irish cooking among the great cuisines of the worldand one to be enjoyed by all who love Ireland.
Margaret M. Johnson has been writing professionally since 1992 when Mustang (Memphis, TN) published her first book, Festival Europe: Fairs and Celebrations Throughout Europe. She later devoted her travel and writing efforts exclusively to her ancestral home, Ireland, and followed with two cookbooks published in Dublin-- Ireland: Grand Places, Glorious Food (1992) and Cooking With Irish Spirits (1995; 1998)--and five published by Chronicle Books, San Francisco--The Irish Heritage Cookbook (1998), The New Irish Table (2003), Irish Puddings, Tarts, Crumbles and Fools (2004), The Irish Pub Cookbook (2006), and The Irish Spirit (2006), named as one of 20 noteworthy cookbooks for the holidays by nytimes.com (December 3, 2006). Tea & Crumpets, an afternoon tea cookbook, was published in May 2009.
Although her passion for Ireland remains unfailing, she continues to travel to Europe and has written countless articles for Tribune Media Services (Chicago), where she has been a regular contributor and for HOUSE Magazine (New York) on destinations including London, Edinburgh, Paris, Amsterdam, Budapest, Bologna, Milan, Venice, the south of France, Monaco, Switzerland, and Greece, to name a few. She currently writes about food and travel for www.suite101.com and contributes to Food & Wine Magazine (Dublin), CARA, the in-flight magazine of Aer Lingus, and will write a feature on Irish food for Cooking Light Magazine's March 2010 issue. From 2006 to 2009, she visited Amsterdam, Venice, Rome, Florence, Naples, Vienna, Salzburg, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Stockholm, St. Petersburg, Munich, Barcelona, Zurich, Bern, Geneva, and Luzern gathering recipes and conducting research on coffeehouse traditions for Coffee & Cake, a follow-up cookbook to Tea & Crumpets.
Margaret has appeared at many food events and book signings, was a featured presenter on a Crystal Cruise to Great Britain and Ireland (July 2005), has appeared on television both in the U.S. and in Ireland, and twice on Martha Stewart Living on Sirius Radio. She represented the Irish Dairy Board on a satellite media tour prior to St. Patrick's Day 2006 and was the featured speaker at an Irish-American dinner at Zingerman's, Ann Arbor, in 2008. She is a regular participant in Philadelphia's "The Book and the Cook" and at Massachusetts Irish Tourism's "Gaelic Gourmet" event. In 2007, she completed a series of cooking demonstrations for broadcast by Comcast Digital Cable.
She lives in Westhampton Beach, NY, with her husband. Her websites include www.irishcook.com and www.margaretmjohnson.com.
