A feast, plain and simple
WHEN IT COMES TO cookbooks, it’s the hardest thing of all to write about simple food. Jane Grigson gave a recipe for cooking kippers which involved putting hot water on a kipper in a jug. Simple, but all you need. Elizabeth David’s Summer Cooking is a collection mostly of remarkably straightforward dishes (has there ever been anything easier or more delicious than blackcurrant fool?).
Irish cooking is, by and large, simple. Bacon and Cabbage. Soda Bread. Apple Tart. Colcannon. Barm Brack. Potato cakes. Black pudding. Irish stew. Blackberry jam. It’s all easy, given goodwill, a bit of practice and decent ingredients. That excellent thing, the full Irish breakfast, gives poor ingredients nowhere to hide.
Of course, there’s an awful lot of overlap with the rest of
