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Not just potatoes and corned beef
Cullen's sophisticated cookbook elevates Irish cuisine

By David J. Craig

When Americans envision an Irish supper, most think of potatoes, cabbage, and corned beef -- all boiled too long, salty, and greasy. Noel Cullen, an SHA associate professor of hospitality administration, plans to change that.

	Noel Cullen. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

His new cookbook, Elegant Irish Cooking (Lebhar-Friedman, 2001), contains almost 200 sophisticated recipes that will shake preconceptions about Irish food, which in the United States are based on the pedestrian dishes brought here by poor immigrants fleeing the 19th-century potato famine.

"People sometimes say to me that Irish cuisine sounds like an oxymoron," says Cullen, a jovial man who speaks with the accent of his native Dublin. "To which I say, 'Lord, forgive them. They know not what they do.' In Ireland, there has been absolutely wonderful food before and since the famine."

Elegant Irish Cooking contains recipes for a wide variety of dishes that use ingredients indigenous to Ireland, such as lamb, pork, salmon, dairy products, and root vegetables, but that are informed by modern European methods of food preparation and presentation.

For instance, salmon, which Cullen says is "the king of fish" in Ireland, typically was grilled in butter or poached with simple stuffing by Irish cooks until recently. But it gets the royal treatment in Cullen's book -- being sautéed, seared, or roasted and served with delicate blends of creams, spices, and fresh vegetables.

Other seafood dishes, such as Poached Fillets of Sole and Oysters with Spinach and Gratiné Riesling Sauce and the Cullen original Mullaghmore Lobster Soufflé, sound unforgiving, but he says the recipes actually are manageable, even for the "casual weekend culinary warrior."

The book features instructions for dozens of modern salads, appetizers, soups, meat and poultry entrees, and desserts. In addition, there are recipes for more recognizably Irish dishes, such as colcanon, a potato and kale concoc- tion passed down to Cullen by his mother, and a hearty beef stew created by his aunt. About 90 percent of the recipes in Elegant Irish Cooking are Cullen's own; most of the others were contributed by leading Irish chefs.

"I think my book is unique in that it is the first to put traditional Irish dishes into a modern idiom, so they can be served alongside some of the newer dishes," says Cullen, who is president of the American Culinary Federation and is one of only 52 certified master chefs in the United States.

Culinary rebirth

The favorite cooking method of Irish immigrants in the United States, Cullen says, was a throwback to the way Irish peasants who lived in large clans cooked in ancient times -- putting everything in a big pot and boiling it.

In Ireland, he says, the famine stunted the development of cuisine until the mid-20th century. "There was a curious reaction to the famine, in Ireland and among the Irish in America, which lasted a long time, and that was that food was considered sustenance only, and not for fine dining."

Menus at high-end restaurants in Ireland, meanwhile, usually offered only tokens of Irish cuisine, such as lamb or boiled bacon. But in the 1960s, an emerging Irish tourism industry suddenly increased demand for traditional foods, the nation's restaurant industry subsequently became competitive, and Irish chefs began traveling to France for culinary training.

"Suddenly, there was a renewed confidence with using the Irish ingredients, and a sense that we didn't have to apologize for Irish food," says Cullen. "The chefs who went overseas abandoned the dishes of French cuisine when they came back, but retained the French logic. They learned that if you have really good food, the less you do with it, the better."

That culinary renaissance in Ireland continues today and is the inspiration for many of the dishes in Cullen's book.

In the United States, however, most chefs remain unaware of the quality and breadth of Irish cuisine. "They recognize no definable Irish cuisine unless it's got potato, corned beef, cabbage, or booze," says Cullen. "The reason for the stereotype is simple -- Ireland's one-pot style of cooking got frozen in time because of the famine, especially in the United States. If a by-product of my book is that that attitude begins to change, it would be wonderful."

Savory knowledge

For a cookbook, Elegant Irish Cooking is a surprisingly entertaining read, as it contains many tasty historical anecdotes. Before a chapter dedicated to soups, for instance, Cullen tells the story of the unfortunate French chef Alexis Soyer, who was hired by the British in 1845 to invent an economical broth to feed the starving Irish population, but was forced to flee Ireland to avoid being lynched when the public became enraged at the suggestion that it could subsist on a liquid diet.

Cullen says he included the historical background because it is integral to his appreciation for Irish food.

"I have a strong sense of pride in my heritage, which is often misunderstood, and a very special pride in being an Irish chef," says Cullen, who points out that Irish monks in the sixth and seventh centuries a.d. introduced garlic to much of the world, that an Irishman invented mayonnaise, and that many French wineries were established by Irish immigrants.

He is equally pleased to note that corned beef is not quintessentially Irish, and is far more popular in the United States than in Ireland. "I never had it until I came to the United States," he says.

Noel Cullen will hold a free public cooking demonstration and sign copies of Elegant Irish Cooking on Friday, March 16, at 5 p.m. at the School of Hospitality Administration, 808 Commonwealth Ave., Room 117.

Try a modern twist on a traditional Irish meal --
" Roasted Peppered Salmon with Tomato-and-Basil Relish"

9 March 2001
Boston University
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