#Dublin Coddle

[petermorwood]

Food on St Patrick's Day (in the USA)...

...is usually Corned Beef & Cabbage, which is the Irish-American version of the original Irish boiled bacon & cabbage, but while the celebratory Irishness is still going strong, try something a bit more authentic.

A nice warm coddle. Not cuddle, coddle, though just as comforting in its own way. (Some sources suggest it's a hangover cure, not that such a thing would ever be necessary at this time of year, oh dear me no.)

Coddle is a stew using potatoes, onions, bacon, sausages, stout-if-desired / stock-if-not, pepper, sage, thyme and Time.

You'll often see it called "Dublin Coddle", but my Mum made Lisburn Coddle lots of times, I've made West Wicklow Coddle more than once, and on one occasion in a Belgian holiday apartment I made Brugsekoddel, which is an OK spelling for something that doesn't exist in any cookbook.

*****

I do remember one amendment I made to Mum's recipe, which met with slight resistance at the time and great appreciation thereafter.

Her coddle was originally cooked on the stove-top, not in the oven, and nothing was pre-cooked. Potatoes were quartered, onions were sliced, bacon was cut into chunks and then everything went into the big iron casserole, then onto the slow back ring, and there it simmered Until Done.

However, the bacon was thick-cut back rashers, and the sausages were pork chipolatas.

Raw, they looked like this:

...and the bacon looked like this:

Cooked in the way Mum initially did, they looked pretty much the same afterwards. The sausages didn't change colour. Nor did the bacon.

While everything tasted fine, the meat parts always looked - to me, anyway - somewhat ... less than appealing. "Surgical appliance pink" is the kindest way to put it, and that's all I'm saying. This is apparently "white coddle" and Dubs can get quite defensive about This Is The Way It SHOULD Look.

I'm not a Dub, so I persuaded Mum to fry both the bacon and sausages first, just enough to get a bit of brown on, and wow! Improvement! I remember my Dad nodding in approval but - because he was Wise - not saying anything aloud until Mum gave it the green light as well.

Doing the coddle in the oven, first with lid on then with lid off, came later and met with equal approval. So did using only half of the onion raw and frying the other half lightly golden in the bacon fat.

Nobody quoted from a movie that wouldn't be made for another decade, but there was a definite feeling of...

*****

There are coddle recipes all over the Net: I've made sure that these are from Ireland to avoid the corned-beef-not-boiled-bacon "adjustment" versions which are definitely out there. I've already seen one with Bratwurst. Just wait, it'll be chorizo next.

Oh, hell's teeth, I was right. And from RTE...

Returning to relative normality, here's Donal Skehan's white coddle and his browned coddle with barley (I'm going to try that one).

Here's Dairina Allen's Frenchified with US measurements version. (I feel considerably less heretical now.)

And finally (OK, not Irish, but it references a couple of the previous ones and is a VERY comprehensive write-up, so gets a pass) Felicity Cloake's Perfect Dublin Coddle (perfect according to who, exactly...?) in The Guardian.

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Returning to the beginning, and how boiled bacon became corned beef (a question which prompted @dduane to start an entire website...!)

The traditional Irish meat animal for those who could afford it was the pig, but when Irish immigrants (even before the Great Famine) arrived in the USA, they often lived in the same urban districts as Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.

For fairly obvious reasons pork, bacon and other piggy products were unavailable in those districts, but salt beef was right there and far cheaper than any meat Irish immigrants had ever seen before.

Insist on tradition or eat what was easy to find? There'd have been contest - and do I sometimes wonder a bit if sauerkraut ever came close to replacing cabbage for the same reason.

The pre-Famine Irish palate liked sour tastes: a German (?) visitor to Ireland in the mid-1600s wrote about about what were called "the best-favoured peasantry in Europe", and mentioned that they had "seventy-several sour milks and creams*, and the sourer they be, the better they like them."

* Yogurt? Kefir? Skyr? Gosh...

Corned beef and Kraut as the immigrants' celebratory "Irish" meal for St Patrick's Day? Maybe, maybe not.

Time for "Immigrant Song" (with kittens).

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Corned beef got its name from the size of the salt grains with which the beef was prepared. They were usually bigger than kosher salt, like pinhead oats or even as large as grains of wheat, and their name derived originally from "corned (gun)powder", the large coarse grains used in cannon.

BTW, "corn" has been a generic English term for "grain" for centuries, and "but Europe didn't have corn" is an American mistake assuming the word refers to sweetcorn / maize, which it doesn't.

Lindsey Davis, author of the "Falco" series, had a couple of rants about it and other US-requested "corrections". As she points out, mistakes need corrected but "corn" is not a mistake, just a difference in vocabulary.

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In Ancient and Medieval Ireland pig would have included wild boar, the hunting of which was a suitable pastime for warriors and heroes, because Mr Boar took a very dim view of the whole proceeding and wasn't shy about showing it (see "wild boar" in my tags and learn more).

Cattle were for milk, butter, cream and little cattle; also wealth, status, and heroic displays in their theft, defence or recovery. It's no accident that THE great Irish epic is "The Cattle-Raid of Cooley" / Táin Bó Cúailnge (tawn / toyn boh cool-nyah).

Killing a cow for meat was ostentation on a level of lighting cigars with 100-, or even 500-, currency-unit notes. Once it had been cooked and eaten there'd be no more milk, butter, cream or little cattle from that source, so eating beef was showing off And Then Some.

Also, loaning a prize bull to run with someone else's heifers was a sign of great friendship or alliance, while refusing it might be an excuse for enmity or even war. IMO that's what Maeve of Connaught intended all along, picking undiplomatic envoys who would get drunk and shoot their mouths off so the loan was refused and she, insulted, would have an excuse to...

But I digress, as usual. Or again. Or still... :->

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For the most part, "pig" mean "domestic porker", and in later periods right up to the Famine, these animals were seldom eaten.

Instead, known as "the gentleman who pays the rent", the family pig ate kitchen scraps and rooted about for other foods, none of which the tenant had to grow or buy for them. These fattened pigs would go to market twice a year, and the money from their sale would literally pay that half-year's rent.

For wealthier (less poor?) farmers, pigs had another advantage. Calves arrived singly, lambs might be a pair, but piglets popped out by the dozen. A sow with (some of) her farrow was even commemorated on the old ha'penny coin...

What with bulls, chickens, hares, horses, hounds, pigs, salmon and stags, the pre-decimal Irish coinage is a good inspiration for some sort of fantasy currency.

But that's another post, for another day.

#food and drink #St Patrick's Day #Irish cuisine #Dublin coddle #corned beef or boiled bacon #pigs and cattle in Ireland #The Cattle Raid of Cooley #Youtube

[morethansalad]

Vegan Dublin Coddle

#vegan #lunch #dinner #irish cuisine #st. patrick's day #soups #veganized #Dublin coddle #potato #vegan sausage #onion #parsley #liquid smoke #vegan butter

[askwhatsforlunch]

Saint Patrick’s Day’s Table

Saint Patrick’s Day may be a very happy one for the Irish this year, with the Ireland XV one (rugby) game away from a Six Nations Grand Slam! As I am not a sore loser, and I love good food, I may join in the craic! And with a glass of good Irish whisky and these few recipes, so can you! Cheers!

Breads, Loaves and Oatcakes

Stout Loaf

Dill Soda Bread

Cheddar and Ale Soda Bread

Donegal Oatcakes

Soda Bread II

Oatcakes

Breakfast

Boxty (Irish Potato Pancakes)

Tea

Maíre’s Potato Scones

Meat

Beer Battered Sausages

Dublin Coddle

Irish Beef and Vegetable Stew

Sides

Colcannon

Champ

Sweet and Alcoholic Drinks

Irish Hot Chocolate (Alcoholic)

Irish Coffee (Alcoholic)

#Recipes #Recipe #Recipe List #Food #Saint Patrick’s Day’s Table #Saint Patrick’s Day’s Table recipes #Saint Patrick’s Day recipes #Saint Patrick’s Day’s Table Recipe List #Irish Cuisine #Irish recipes #Irish recipe #Soda Bread #Oatcakes #Stout Loaf #Boxty #Beer Battererd Sausages #Irish Stew #Dublin Coddle #Colcannon #Champ #Irish Coffee #Irish Hot Chocolate #Winter #Winter recipes #Winter Warmers #Celebratory Food #Celebratory Drink #Happy Saint Patrick's Day #Saint Patrick's Day

[rustbeltjessie]

Tonight’s dinner: Dublin coddle. The top two photos were taken before I put it in the oven; the bottom photo was taken when I pulled it out, after it had been cooking for three and a half hours. I’ll be serving it with some of the soda bread I made yesterday.

#rust belt jessie #my photos #food #home cooking #irish coddle #dublin coddle

[askheartlift]

Dublin Coddle

#Dublin #Coddle

[leannacarr]

Dublin Coddle

#Dublin #Coddle

[woodyoukindly]

Dublin Coddle & Soda Bread

#Dublin #Coddle #Soda #Bread

[theweekendchef]

Dublin Coddle headed to the hot box #GoMeat #Dublin #coddle #GoMeat (at Buckingham, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp8yH9MrmM0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#gomeat #dublin #coddle

[petermorwood]

Words change meaning - another example.

@tartapplesauce reblogged my (long) post about Dublin coddle, which mentioned a weird version called "New World Coddle" using chorizo and squash.

TBH, my Mind Palate suggests it would taste quite good, but it's so far from traditional or even well-tweaked-traditional coddle that it's not coddle any more, and should have a different name entirely, possibly in Latin American Spanish.

Also TBH I've already amended the recipe thrice in my head, (1) chipotle powder not smoked paprika; (2) finish with a scatter of toasted pine-nuts; (3) restore the chickpeas mentioned in the Method to the Ingredients where they'd been forgotten.

I've already admitted to breaking the Dublin coddle rules by browning things, so all bets are off. :->

(BTW, this wasn't ours; @dduane's spine and hip have been rather a trial this past couple of days, so we just took things easy and let the Ibuprofen do its thing.)

Re. coffee mornings, what about various tea-breads, fruit sodas, barm brack etc.? Those could be made either trad or tweaked-trad, and though I'm not sure how they could be made "dainty" like petits-fours and so on, I bet it could be done.

*****

As for the changed-meaning word (getting there eventually) it's "notions" and @tartapplesauce added this link.

"To have notions" in Ireland is to think highly of yourself, often without justification - though if the justification is, er, justified, "begrudgery" will often follow. I've encountered "begrudgery" before, but this version of "notions" is a new one.

I have, however, experienced the Northern Ireland - or maybe just my family - version, which is "don't put yourself forward". This is a bad notion to have when thinking about author profile and book publicity and as DD can confirm, it took me far too long to shake it off.

On the flip-side, having notions can mean thinking outside the box, being imaginative, boldly going where no-one has gone before...

Um, got a bit carried away there... Right to the NYT bestseller list, in fact. Twice. ;->

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Neither of those are MY usual meaning.

Whenever I use "I have a notion", either said or written in a post, it's either "I have a thought" with the thinking-intensity dialled down a few notches, or "I have a vague memory of", otherwise known as IIRC or AFAIK.

And the other OTHER meaning of "notions", the one I first thought of (maybe with notions of food already in mind) was this:

That book was published in 1890, and the title, translated from Victorian English, is something like "Tips and Tricks" or, in more modern English, "Household Hacks".

There's nothing derogatory about it.

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DD and I have both posted about Mrs de Salis in the past; all her books are what's usually referred to as "slim volumes". Here are six of them alongside Mrs Beeton's doorstopper:

I inherited a copy of "Savouries a la Mode" from Mum, who inherited it from Granny, and we've made several things from it, all of which worked - though far and away the best so far are the Parmesan Biscuits, which are...

Well, "more-ish" is a good start, though it doesn't hint at the underlying desire to get in there with both hands...

Here:

All of Mrs de Salis's books are Public Domain, and while we intend eventually to have a full collection of the Slim Volumes, they're also available as PDFs here.

I have a notion that anyone reading this Tumblr will like them... ;->

#food and drink #linguistics #notions #word meaning changes #Dublin coddle #Mrs de Salis #Victorian cookbooks #parmesan cookies

[morethansalad]

Vegan Dublin Coddle with Irish Sausage

#vegan #lunch #dinner #irish cuisine #st. patrick's day #dublin coddle #veganized #potato #onion #parsley #liquid smoke #vegan sausage #diy #vital wheat gluten #bread #onion powder #marjoram #thyme #nutritional yeast #sage #nutmeg #ginger #garlic #cashew butter #soy sauce #flax seeds #black pepper #sea salt

[loverfromanothercover]

Dublin Coddle & Soda Bread

#Dublin Coddle Soda Bread

[rebecawolfforest]

Dublin Coddle & Soda Bread

#Dublin Coddle Soda Bread

[ghostbabypixels]

Dublin Coddle & Soda Bread

#Dublin Coddle Soda Bread

[dinosaurfucker]

desperately stretching my thin coddle with cabbage to fill it out, never felt closer to my irish family

#yes i am irish don't think i'm american #but unfortunately my father has watered down my irishness by nature of being an italian american #but i've been born and raised in ireland by my irish mother ok #and we're dubliners so coddle is life #ok

[bibliographicpoetry]

Dublin Coddle & Soda Bread

#Dublin Coddle Soda Bread

[secretariatess]

People say that northern food is bland when in reality, northern food done poorly is bland.

Northern food relies a lot on the flavor of the ingredients instead of spices to get its flavor. Just a hint of seasoning, like salt and pepper. The point of it is to let the ingredients stand out. If it's not cooked to respect the natural flavor, it's going to taste bad.

So no, we don't cover or laden or dishes with spices. It stems from the fact that the north doesn't provide a great environment for spices. But we found how to make our food taste good without it.

Case in point:

I made a clam chowder earlier this year with a recipe that was more orientated for my state. Salt and pepper were the only seasonings- the flavor came from the clam juice and bacon. It was good.

I've made Dublin coddle several times, which is an Irish dish. Salt and pepper are the main seasonings. It gets its flavor from the sausage and bacon, and the vegetables. It makes a delicious gravy to mop up with the right kind of bread.

Northern food isn't bland. It needs to be cooked right.

#I like all kinds of food #So this isn't a dis of southern cuisine #I'm just tired of hearing about how northerners have bland food #Or that we can't handle spice and whatnot #You're right that we're not big on spicy dishes #It's just not a normal part of our cuisine so why WOULD we handle spice like you? #I think our cuisine deserves a little respect #Considering what we had to work with #We've done a fine job actually