The New Irish Table: 70 Contemporary Recipes (Paperback)

~ Margaret M. Johnson (Author), Christopher Hirsheimer (Photographer) "Crackers and cheese are the quintessential party food, and homemade Cheddar crackers are snap to make in a food processor..." (more)
Key Phrases: parsnip crisps, slices black pudding, slotted metal spatula, County Cork, Cashel Blue, County Clare (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Johnson (The Irish Heritage Cookbook) returns once more to her roots and food heritage, this time presenting a volume that showcases the best of the new Irish cuisine and chefs. Based on many time-honored dishes and ingredients, recipes have been updated for the modern palate and more health-conscious diet without losing any of the wonderful flavor of the traditional elements. From the historic mainstay, the potato, used with rosemary and sea salt in the simple yet tasty Accordion Potatoes, and the more time-consuming Blue Cheese Potato Cake with its Eastern Europe influence to the robust Braised Lamb Shanks with Roasted Garden Vegetables, the recipes displays the best foods Ireland has to offer. Traditional dishes include versions of Boxty, the old favorite of both Irish and English alike, Sticky Toffee Pudding, and Black Pudding. Interspersed are wonderful full-color photos that demonstrate the finished dishes, encompass Ireland's green fields and rugged scenery and illustrate the anecdotes and explanations that round out the book. Among these are fascinating insights into Irish Cheese and Wine, Irish Stout and the Kinsale International Gourmet Festival-all of which wonderfully add color and background to this beautifully designed book.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"...Margaret Johnson champions the renaissance of Ireland's cuisine, including recipes for smoked haddock and bacon salad, and Guinness souffle." -- House Beautiful, April 2003

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (January 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811833879
• ISBN-13: 978-0811833875
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 8.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #336,507 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful!, March 19, 2003

By A Customer

Margaret Johnson has struck gold again. This book is a wonderful journey through the world of New Irish cooking. The pictures are breathtaking. These are recepies you will want to try out in your own home! Thanks again Mrs. Johnson for keeping us close to Ireland.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very nice, inexpensive Irish Family restaurnat recipes., February 13, 2006

By	B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The New Irish Table: 70 Contemporary Recipes (Paperback)

`The New Irish Table' and `Irish Puddings, Tarts, Crumbles, and Fools' by Irish-American culinary journalist, Margaret M. Johnson who seems to provide low end books covering Irish culinary practice, beginning with her `The Irish Heritage Cookbook', also from Chronicle Books. The middle ground, being the `Julia Child' for Irish cooking is Darina Allen, along with husband, Tim Allen and mother in law, Myrtle Allen, all of the Cork culinary powerhouse, Ballymaloe House and Cooking School. The high end of modern Irish cooking is held by Irish-American culinary academician and chef, Noel C. Cullen. The ethnographic corner of Irish / Celtic foodways is filled out by `Celtic Folklore Cooking' by culinary writer and folklorist, JoAnne Asala of Chicago. There are many more Irish cookbooks to cover between now and St. Patrick's Day, but this pretty much covers most major points on the culinary compass for Irish cooking.

`The New Irish Table' and Cullen's `Elegant Irish Cooking' complement one another pretty well, as they both present recipes from modern Irish hospitality centers. The difference is that where Johnson is covering pubs and `bed and breakfast' style eateries, Cullen is covering dishes from Michelin one and two star restaurants in Ireland, as well as many of his own creations as a working chef, before he took up teaching at Boston University.

Between these two featured books, Johnson's Desserts book is a much more valuable addition to your cookbook collection, as it includes a lot of fancy and holiday desserts which I have not seen in any other good book on Irish cooking. The best thing about this book and its companion is that like a lot of Chronicle Books, it seems to be on a fast track to the Bargain Book table, both real and on-line. That means that at half price, this book is a real bargain for the cookbook collector with a genuine interest in dessert baking.

On the surface, this book seems to feature four basically different kinds of baking. The six chapters are:

1. Puddings
2. Tarts
3. Crumbles and Crisps
4. Fools and Flummeries
5. Tea Breads and Cakes
6. Christmas Treats

Anyone familiar with English cooking will recognize in the first chapter a wide range of desserts which the Anglo-Irish all lump together under the name of `pudding'. Actually, most puddings remind me a lot of French Toast, more properly called `pain perdu' by the French. They are all different ways of combining day old bread, custard, dried fruits and the like into a treat for the sweet tooth. Puddings and tarts, together, form a collection of dishes very familiar to those who know English sweets.

Crumbles and Crisps and Fools and Flummeries all seem remarkably like a style of dessert which is very popular in the United States and commonly associated with both the Pennsylvania Dutch and southeastern and south central styles of cooking. In Ireland, as in the United States, they are all primarily ways of combining stewed or jellied fruit with oats, milk and perhaps some custard. The thing that distinguishes `fools' from other similar desserts is the fact that they are made with gooseberries. A gooseberry, according to my `Berry Bible' illustration, looks a lot like a current, and just a bit like a blueberry, and seem to be common in the United States only in the northern west coast.

The breads and cakes chapter visits the most widely familiar realm of Irish baking, the world of soda breads and scones. This realm is covered much better in Tim Allen's `The Ballymaloe Bread Book', but the last chapter in this book makes the whole book worth the budget price of admission.

This last chapter is a bonanza for those looking for something interesting to bake for Christmas, especially if you are fond of confections which include a bit of stout or Irish whiskey in the ingredients. This chapter brings the tired old fruitcake into a whole New World of cakes, puddings, ice creams, breads, mince pies, and cider sauces.

The second book, `The New Irish Table' has but 70 recipes, all of which seem to be high end bar food, especially since about 75% of the pages are dedicated to appetizers and side dishes. The five chapters on recipes are:

Small Bites with 9 recipes for crackers, tartlets, pates, crostini, cheese bites, and chutneys.
Starters with 15 recipes for soups, salads, souffles, charlottes, sauces, and sabayon.
Main Courses with 16 recipes for fish, duck, chicken, lots of pork, lamb, venison, rabbit, and pheasant.
Side Dishes with 13 recipes of old standards such as colcannon, champ, boxty, cabbage, turnips, and leeks.
Sweets with 17 recipes for puddings, custards, brulees, cakes, tarts, cobblers, and crumbles.

All in all, if you already have one or two books on Irish savoury dishes and you get Johnson's dessert book, this volume becomes largely redundant. A lot of the sidebars between the two books are the same and the `Irish Table' simply confirms everything I already know about the heavy Irish use of apples, pears, berries, dairy, beer, whiskey, pork, and lamb.

Since you can get this cheap, I will recommend it as a small, inexpensive addition to your Irish cookbook collection. It may, however, be the first in line for regifting if you already own a few Irish cookbooks.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must buy!!, March 3, 2003

By	Robert Schumacher (NYC, USA) - See all my reviews

I have been a fan of Margaret Johnson for many years now and her latest publication is her best yet! The beautiful pictorial presentation of this book is bested only by Margaret's poetic descriptions of Irish fare. The irish tastes described by Margaret will transform the reader (and chef) to the emerald isle. It is a journey that anyone with an ounce of irish blood cannot miss! The "irishcook" has done it again!! This book is a must have!!