Chasing all the snakes out of Ireland can work up an appetite. So, naturally, a list of good, traditional Irish recipes is a great way to help you celebrate St. Patrick's Day.
Boxty
These are basically potato pancakes. We got the recipe here.
You grate a couple of potatoes and combine them with mash potatoes, flour, egg, and milk. Then, drop your mixture in pancake sizes onto a griddle (or pan) and cook them on both sides just like you would a pancake.
Irish Stew
Now, when I was looking into this to see how to make it...I found that a lot of Americans "Americanize" this dish when they make it by using beef instead of lamb aka mutton. Well, I didn't want to do that so I had to set out to find lamb. Not every grocery store sells it after all. When I found it...I had to really take a beat and look at the different cut options because I had no familiarity with lamb cuts. I went with loin chops.
We used this recipe which called for barley. Barley is harder to find than lamb...at least where I live. So, we left barley out and followed the REST of the recipe.
With a couple of seasoning differences (especially the barley, dang it), this is very similar to traditional beef stew. Meat, potatoes, carrots, onions. In lieu of the barley, I'm glad I at least mixed it up a bit by definitely including the mutton.
Cottage Pie
So, the picture here looks very similar to Shepherds Pie, right?
Well, it is. There are a couple of different seasonings, like adding in thyme and bay leaves. But, otherwise, it's awfully close to being the same thing. The big difference? It contains only root vegetables. Carrots, onions, potatoes. There are no peas and other items. So, both were good, but I liked the extra variety in the Shepherds version.
We used this recipe.