A bit o' the Irish.

Byline: Jim Boyd The Register-Guard

Joyce and Fred Andrews of Eugene plan to eat a traditional Irish dinner tonight. No, it won't be corned beef and cabbage. That's an Irish-American dish. Joyce plans to serve authentic Dublin Coddle as their St. Patrick's Day meal.

Traditionally eaten on Saturday night, Dublin Coddle has been popular in Ireland since the 18th century. It's a savory stew of ham or bacon, pork sausages, potatoes and onions.

Joyce found the recipe in Theodora Fitzgibbon's cookbook "A Taste of Ireland in Food and in Pictures" during the year that Fred, a University of Oregon math professor, spent teaching in Cork, Ireland. The cookbook suggests the stew be served with fresh soda bread and glasses of stout.

While living in Cork, the couple found that there was lots of corned pork but no corned beef for sale. That's curious, because between the late 1680s and 1825, beef-corning was Cork City's most important industry, with the meat exported to England, Europe, North America and the Caribbean.

"At Christmastime, they had a spiced beef that they sold and everybody ate," Joyce says. "But as far as I know from looking in the markets, and I shopped all the time, I didn't see any corned beef."

Corning is a process for preserving meat with common salt, perhaps some brown sugar and spices, and the sodium nitrite that turns the meat pink. Bacon and ham is salted and then smoked and/or dried.

The Andrews' report that corned beef isn't as popular in Ireland as it is here sent me searching through Irish cookbooks, where I found a bit of a language barrier.

The Irish call the leg of the pig "ham" when it is cured and everything else that gets cured - the pork shoulder or loin, for example - is dubbed "bacon." In the United States, the term "bacon" is limited to cured pork belly and "Canadian-style bacon" is cured pork loin. "Green bacon" is the term the Irish use for pieces of pork that have been salted but not smoked - in other words, what we would call "corned."

"Corned beef has always been associated with Ireland; in fact many people (particularly in the United States) think that we live almost exclusively on corned beef and cabbage," Darina Allen says in her latest cookbook, "Darina Allen's Ballymaloe Cooking School Cookbook." "I am glad to say this is not the case, even though it can be truly delicious."

Actually, the famous Irish chef says, it's boiled cabbage and bacon made from smoked shoulder or smoked loin of pork that is "without question Ireland's national dish."

Boiled bacon and cabbage is less well known abroad but is much more widely eaten in Ireland, particularly in rural areas, than the legendary Irish stew, Allen maintains.

"Traditional Irish bacon is salty, and requires soaking in cold water overnight to remove the salt," chef Noel Cullen says in his cookbook, "Elegant Irish Cooking." "It is almost a given that at least one meal per week in Irish households will be shoulder of bacon, potatoes and cabbage, with the cabbage cooked in the water used to boil the bacon."

Allen's recipe, which serves 12 to 15, calls for a 4- to 5-pound loin or shoulder of smoked bacon with a nice covering of fat. Her recipe for bacon chop with Irish whiskey sauce calls for a 2-pound loin of "freshly cured green bacon."

Neither of those meats is readily available in Eugene, although they could be special ordered with about two weeks notice from a butcher who brines and smokes meats. Custom Meat Co., 2355 W. Seventh Place, is one likely source.

However, one of Allen's earlier cookbooks, "The Complete Book of Irish Country Cooking," uses ready-to-eat Canadian bacon for its Ballymaloe Bacon Chop with Irish Whiskey Sauce (recipe follows). Canadian bacon is readily available in Eugene. Serve the chops with a potato dish such as Traditional Ulster Champ (recipe follows).

Irish cookbooks will convince you that Irish cooking, while not as celebrated as the cuisines of France or Italy, is a wonderful cuisine to explore. It dates from the one-pot cookery of ancient times to the culinary ingenuity of modern-day chefs. It has been greatly influenced by conquests of Ireland and introduction of foodstuffs from the New World.

Many credit Sir Walter Raleigh with first planting potatoes in Ireland; however, historians disagree. In any case, Ireland became basically a one-crop country, setting the stage for the islandwide potato blight and famine of 1845 to 1847, which scattered the Irish to English-speaking countries around the world.

Readers responded to our request for Irish recipes with more recipes than we can print. However, Mary Boyle Bergfeld suggested a Web site with Irish recipes that may be of help. Use your Web browser to go to www.irishabroad.com/culture/kitchen/recipes.asp.

Besides not finding any corned beef in Cork, Joyce Andrews' other main impression of Irish food was that all their desserts, pies and the like, seemed to be served with custard sauce. So take a look at the recipe for Tipsy Cake that Sheila Schroder faxed in.

Dublin Coddle

8 pork sausages

8 slices ham or Canadian bacon, each 1/4 inch thick

1 quart (4 cups) boiling water

4 large onions, sliced

2 pounds potatoes, peeled and sliced

4 tablespoons chopped parsley

Salt and pepper 

Boil the sausages and bacon or ham (cut into large chunks) in the boiling water for 5 minutes. Drain, but reserve the liquid.

Put the meat into a large saucepan (or an oven-proof dish) with the thinly sliced onions and potatoes and the chopped parsley. Season to taste, and add enough of the stock to barely cover.

Lay greaseproof (wax) paper on top and then put on the lid and simmer gently, or cook in a slow to moderate oven (200 degrees) for about an hour or until the liquid is reduced by half and all the ingredients are cooked but not mushy.

Serve hot with the vegetables on top and fresh soda bread and glasses of stout of Guinness.

Source: "A Taste of Ireland in Food and Pictures" by Theodora Fitzgibbon.

Ballymaloe Bacon Chop

2 pounds ready-to-eat Canadian bacon (boneless and without the fatty end)

1 cup seasoned flour

1 egg beaten with a little milk

Fresh white breadcrumbs

2 tablespoons clarified butter or 1 tablespoon butter and 1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil

Cover the piece of bacon with cold water. Bring to a boil. If the bacon is salty, discard the water and start again; you may need to do this twice or, in extreme cases, three times. Boil for about 45 minutes or until it is cooked. Remove the rind (if present) and trim away any surplus fat.

Slice into steaks 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick. Dip the steaks in seasoned flour, then in beaten egg, and finally coat with white breadcrumbs.

Heat the clarified butter and oil in a heavy frying pan. Fry the chops gently until they are cooked through and golden on both sides. Serve with Irish Whiskey Sauce (recipe follows).

Serves 4 to 5.

Irish Whiskey Sauce

1 1/4 cups superfine granulated sugar

1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon cold water

1/3 cup hot water

3 tablespoons Irish whiskey

Put the sugar into a bowl with cold water, stir over a gentle heat until the sugar dissolves, then bring the syrup to a boil. Remove the spoon. Do not stir. Continue to boil until it turns a nice chestnut-brown color.

Remove from the heat and immediately add the hot water. Allow to dissolve again and then add the Irish whiskey. Boil for a minute or two. Serve the sauce hot or cold.

Sources: "The Complete Book of Irish Country Cooking: Traditional and Wholesome Recipes from Ireland" and "Darina Allen's Ballymaloe Cooking School Cookbook," both by Darina Allen.

Traditional Ulster Champ

1 1/2 pounds potatoes

1 cup milk

8 tablespoons butter, divided

8 scallions, finely chopped

Salt and ground pepper, to taste

Peel potatoes and roughly cut into chunks. Place in a saucepan and cover with cold salted water.

Bring to a boil and simmer, 20 to 25 minutes, or until soft.

Drain and place over low heat for a few minutes to dry out.

Combine milk and 4 tablespoons of butter in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil.

Place scallions into the boiling mixture. Remove from the heat for a few minutes so that scallions can infuse their flavor.

Hand mash potatoes. Stir in milk mixture until smooth. Season with salt and pepper.

Place in a serving dish, forming a mound. Make a well in the center and fill with remaining butter.

Source: "Elegant Irish Cooking: Hundreds of Recipes from the World's Foremost Irish Chefs" by Noel Cullen.

Tipsy Cake

16 ounces cake (pound or angel)

3 tablespoons jam

1 jigger Irish whiskey

5 ounces ( 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons) sherry

2 cups warm vanilla custard (pudding)

10 ounces (1 1/4 cups) whipped cream

Break up the cake and gently mix the jam through - mixture does not have to be completely even. Place in a glass bowl. Mix sherry and whiskey and sprinkle over the cake. Press down lightly. Pour custard (pudding) over the cake and chill. Then spoon whipped cream over top and serve.

Source: Sheila Schroder, Eugene.

CAPTION(S):

Recipes vary, but traditional Dublin Coddle, an Irish comfort food, is a soup or stew of potatoes, onions, bacon and sausage.