The Irish Pub Cookbook [Paperback]

Margaret M. Johnson (Author, Photographer), Leigh Beisch (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 2005

Talk about the luck of the Irish! One of the most beloved of Irish institutions (there are more than one thousand in Dublin alone), the traditional pub has served generations as the venue for local gossip, sporting news, a ceilidh or two, literary soirees, real estate deals, political debates, revolutionary plots, and, lest we forget, for knocking back a pint of Guinness or a "ball of malt." The food's not bad eitheras The Irish Pub Cookbook so deliciously demonstrates. It's a celebration of over 70 pub classics: thick soups and stews; savory tarts and meaty pies; big bowls of salad (times change!); and desserts of the seconds-are-always-appropriate variety. There's shepherd's pie, fish and chips, seafood chowder, and whiskey bread pudding for those with a taste for the quintessential. Contemporary specialties such as Bacon, Blue Cheese, and Courgette Soup; Salmon Cakes with Dill and Wine Sauce; Braised Lambshanks with Red Currants; and White Chocolate Terrine spotlight modern Irish cooking's richly deserved acclaim. Complete with pub photos, history, and lore, nobody leaves hungry when The Irish Pub Cookbook is in the kitchen.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Imagine walking into a 400-year-old Irish watering hole with a thatched roof and open fire, the floor strewn with timber shavings and the walls packed with bric-a-brac, sliding into a snug for a pint and a hotchpotch, and instead being served Caramelized Duck Breast with Pineapple Chutney followed by White Chocolate Terrine. As in The Irish Heritage Cookbook, Johnson continues on her mission to inform Americans that contemporary Irish cooking means not just a rustic, stick-to-your-ribs Irish Stew with Brown Soda Bread, but also Green Tomato Tarte Tatin, as original and sophisticated as one found anywhere in Europe. The book reads like a tourist itinerary for hungry pub crawlers (if only it were arranged by county and in a portable format) and shares history on favorite pubs and their famous and infamous patrons and proprietors. Leigh Beish's full-page photos deliver elegant interpretations of humble pub grub like Bacon and Cabbage, and Ploughman's Lunch. It's inevitable that the recipes cover some well-trod territory, since it's difficult to imagine an Irish cookbook omitting Shepherd's Pie, but "Blackboard Specials" like Bacon, Blue Cheese, and Courgette Soup tend toward the global gourmet, and some were even developed by Bord Bia, the Irish Food Board, to promote traditional Irish products to modern chefs and consumers. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Margaret M. Johnson writes frequently about food and travel in her ancestral home. The author of the New Irish Table (0-8118-3387-9); Irish Puddings , Tarts, Crumbles, and Fools (0-8118-4163-4); and the Irish Heritage Cookbook (0-8118-1992-2), she is an Ir

Leigh Beisch is a San Francisco based photographer. Her work has appeared in many fashion, lifestyle, and health magazines, as well as in Viva Margarita (0-8118-4022-0) and Olives, Anchovies, and Capers (0-8118-2494-2).

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (December 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811844854
• ISBN-13: 978-0811844857
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 8.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #131,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #4 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > European > Irish
  • #23 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > European > English, Scottish & Welsh

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very nice addition to Johnson's Contemporary Irish recipes, February 20, 2006

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 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).

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recipes that even Amateur Cooks Can Do, July 7, 2008

By 

RincuBuS "Cornelius" (Carbondale, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Irish Pub Cookbook (Paperback)

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.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent focus on Irish pub cooking, July 27, 2006

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Irish Pub Cookbook (Paperback)

Photos by the author blend with food photos by Leigh Beish in a lovely book which arrived too late for St. Patrick's Day feature, but which deserves ongoing mention as an excellent focus on Irish pub cooking. If you've been to Ireland in the last twenty years, you'll know there's been many changes in the nature of pub grub: just look at the tomato tarts, ham and chicken pie, spinach salad with pears and other dishes you wouldn't have identified with Irish pub foods of the past. Recipes - and photos - come from some of the most celebrated pubs in Ireland and represent a fine cross-section of modern fare home cooks will find quite easy to follow.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch