I'm not a bit Irish myself. However, the late spouse was pretty much entirely Irish-American, and left the legacy of an Irish surname (I kept my own for the middle name I never had) and a 50% Irish child. Moreover, two of my best friends are seriously Irish. This last item has let me in on an annual St. Patrick's Day feast for quite a few years now. I love this stuff. E. makes wonderful corned beef and cabbage, with lots of yummy veg and potatoes-all briny, and some dandy soda bread to go with. There's mustard, and it's just so fine.
I said I'd bring a dessert, but when I went looking for a specifically Irish dessert, as opposed to a dessert from the British Isles in general, I came up a bit short. There are cakes made with Guinness, but I hadn't any on hand. A lot of the Irish cookbooks at the library, and websites with recipes, mention treacle tarts, which I always thought of as English, or, more recently, fictionally and specifically, as of Hogwarts. But the treacle tart choice did meet with some validation from prospective diners, so I went with it. Tangentially Irish, like yrs. truly.
If I make this again, I will use a loose-bottomed tart pan, rather than the pyrex pie pan, because the tart is a thin one- and a good thing too, as it is very sweet. Rather like a pecan pie, without the nuts-for fellow North Americans. I used the recipe from the BBC website, and sprinkled a little bit of sanding sugar over the top in orange to match the filling. Ack-orange!, on St. Patrick's Day. I don't think anyone noticed. Anyhow, the pie pan is green.
Tangentially Irish! What a great title and good story connection! Looks excellent.
Posted by: Tanna | March 18, 2007 at 12:51 PM
My family name is Ulster-Scots (or Scotch-Irish, in America). I thought of myself as Irish enough to wear green on St. Patrick's Day until my Irish Catholic college roommate informed me that, as a Protestant, I should be wearing orange. These days I usually wear anything but green or orange on St. Pat's Day.
I once read that the Irish flag is a green-white-orange tricolor to represent Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, with the hope for lasting peace between them. May not be true, but I like the idea... and your orange sugar and green pie plate.
Posted by: Kimberly | March 18, 2007 at 01:18 PM
No wonder you've got no Guinness in the house if you cooked a Keith Floyd recipe. He will have drunk it all while you weren't looking.
Posted by: Trig | March 18, 2007 at 01:37 PM
Could you please change that picture?? Your site is one of the first ones I check in the morning (from, uh...home...before I go to work, yeah, that's it) and my GOD that pie pic is making me hungry.
Posted by: LL | March 21, 2007 at 10:26 AM
When I'm in the mood for Irish or British soul food I browse The Foody site - http://www.thefoody.com/recipes.html If you've misplaced your recipe for Clapshot or Rumbledthumps it's a great resource. The tart is beautiful!
Posted by: brainpuddl3 | March 22, 2007 at 05:40 PM
You did a beautiful job with that lattice crust!
Posted by: Rebecca | March 25, 2007 at 04:27 PM
tanna-thank you
Kimberly-Peace pie? More appealing-to me- than a peace pipe.
aidan-Occasionally there are some rascals to be found around here, but I don't think it was your man Floyd, in this instance
LL Pie is the breakfast of champions.
brainpuddl3- I love the Foody, too-great resource
Rebecca- this is probably not original, but I just thught of it this time. I assembled the lattice on a piece of freezer wrap, set it on top of the pie, peeled the wrap off, and pressed and trimmed it. That helped keep the gooey filling off the lattice top during weaving. There was some falling about of strips, but less mess than usual.
Posted by: lindy | March 25, 2007 at 07:11 PM