Customer Reviews

The Irish Pub Cookbook

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`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.

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

I've had this book for a couple of years and I can't get over how delicious the recipes are! The soups are my favorite which doesn't sound very exciting but the flavors are perfect and really easy to make. This is my go to recipe book when I want something simple and satisfying and sure to please my entire family! :)

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!

I have LOVED every recipe I've made from this book so far. I recently visited Ireland and wanted to re-experience some of the food we ate there. This book is authentic and the recipes are taken from famous pubs in Ireland. The recipes are also pretty simple. You don't need a ton of exotic stuff or tools to make them. These recipes are purely good ol' comfort food.

This cookbook was just catapulted to one of my favorites. I prepared the Wicklow Lamb with Braised Green Beans and Mashed Potatoes for dinner tonight, and it was one of the best meals I have EVER had! I am an average cook, and found the recipes to be extremely easy and tasty. I have also made some of the soups and stews with great results.

My hubby & I visited Ireland last year. We traveled about 75% around the coastal regions of the island enjoying great beauty, food and people all along the way. When we returned home I wanted to recapture some of those great memories with food. This book fit the bill. Every recipe I've tried so far has tasted very authentic to what we experienced during our visit. We especially enjoyed the Seafood Chowders and Brown Breads readily available just about everywhere we visited. Recipes for both are included in this book and taste just like the "real thing".
You don't have to be a wiz in the kitchen to prepare these delicious recipes and substitution recommendations are included for those that can't get their hands on authentic ingredients.
I highly recommend you add this book to your recipe collection! Give it a whirl before St. Patty's Day.

This is the perfect book for us to use when opening our pub. Excellent resource.

This book is a good book if you want an introduction to Irish pub food. However there is much more to Irish food, there are some really fabulous Irish farmhouse cheeses and cured meats, many of whom are featured in a great book also available on amazon called 'A Taste of Cork' which I highly recommend A Taste of Cork: A Gourmand's Tour of Its Food and Landscape in addition to this one.