Local Traditions
Spud Sunday: Life Before Spuds
Ireland before the potato – what we ate then and what we can learn from it now: some thoughts on ‘A Study of Irish Food Culture before the Arrival of the Potato’ by CIT culinary arts students
Spud Sunday: Winter Buttermilk
Introducing winter buttermilk, made by fermenting flour with cooked & raw potatoes, and used in times past in Ireland as a substitute for buttermilk when making soda bread, that most iconic of Irish foods
Spud Sunday: Lithuanian Spuds
Having found Lithuanian potatoes for sale, there was nothing else for it but to try them out
Spud Sunday: Poitín Old, Poitín New
The launch of a new poitín from the Teeling Whiskey Company signals a shiny new look for a spirit which sports a storied and mostly illicit past – that includes a recipe for same from my Da
Spud Sunday: Danish Potatoes
Joanna Schaffalitzky’s Foodcamp presentation urges us Irish to look to Denmark for culinary inspiration; we share a love of potatoes and bread and – from kartoffelmad to chip butties – a tendency to combine the two
Spud Sunday: Forty Shades Of Potato
My thoughts on Frank Bruni’s New York Times piece on visiting Ireland and the cliché that is the ubiquity of potatoes here, plus a recipe for some less-than-ubiquitous caramelised apple mashed potato.
Spud Sunday: Still Full And Plenty
Potato drop scones – fat little pancakes, really – a recipe from my mother’s 50-year old copy of Maura Laverty’s Irish classic, Full and Plenty – a book still worth reading today
Spud Sunday: Welcome To Hamburg
A trip to Hamburg brings me into contact with labskaus, a colourful potato dish with an interesting background and a (tenuous) connection to The Beatles
