Celtic cooking

I know everyone thinks of corned beef and cabbage as a tradtional Irish dish. It is but relatively modern actually and I think probably more common among Irish Americans than those folks in Ireland. With soda bread and green beer a lot of organizations will be serving this dinner in about ten days!!

Some years back because my late hubby was Scots and I am mostly Irish and Welsh, I got cookbooks that had some old recipes from all three countries. They were from a company that did a lot of reprints of old books–senior moment here and the firm slips my mind! Anyway they had about 50 recipes in each and some neat old photos with each recipe. They were totally cool!

A dish that is common to all the Celtic countries–at least those on the British Isles–is the pasty or meat pie. That is pronounced past-ee (not paste-ee) They are also called bridies and several other names. While tradition holds that they are steak and kidney this is not always true either. They can be made of any meat that is handy. The Irish ones usually have potato too and sometimes onions. In Wales for a treat you replace onion with leak, which is a related plant and the plant badge of Wales as the Shamrock is for Ireland and the Thistle for Scotland. Thus you have ‘leaky pasties’ which do not have holes in the crust after all

They are a sturdy and easily transportable meal in a crust and were often taken by miners for their lunches. This custom came to the US with immigrants who ended working in the mines in the western US so that many of the ghost towns and tourist towns now have a cafe that features pasties as a special at least one day a week. I knew of these from early on in Jerome, AZ and my hubby in Bisbee, AZ, both mining towns with lots of Welsh, Cornish and Irish/Scots families among the mining employees! Came across them in Grass Valley, CA and in Cripple Creek, CO as well!!

I’ll do a simple recipe for y’all in a minute!