Hunting and Gathering: Irish Comfort Food on St. Patrick’s Day
by Lisa Barlow
My grandmother’s Irish heritage showed up in her hilariously salty sense of humor and in her cooking. As prolific as the jokes were, however, she could only cook one thing: a baked potato. But it was irresistibly delicious. Her secret was simple. She just added half a stick of butter to each potato and mashed it in its skin. Next to the overcooked meat patty and the canned wax beans, the potato shone like a pot of gold.
It wasn’t until I went to Ireland that I celebrated my own connection to the country. As a child growing up in Manhattan, St. Patrick’s Day was a little scary. We lived at the end of the parade route and the trip home from school was an obstacle course of drunken merrymakers, regurgitated green beer and invitations to “Kiss Me, I’m Irish.”
But after my honeymoon at Ashford Castle, where "The Quiet Man" was filmed, I was a committed holiday celebrant. We mark the holiday with pints of Guinness and Colcannon, a delicious mixture of cabbage, leeks and potatoes.