I have no special knowledge of Irish cooking, so I suppose I should have anticipated the inclusion of recipes not typically found in the contemporary North American kitchen. But I was delighted to find that Darina Allen goes beyond the unexpected and evokes a nostalgic recollection of yesteryear. Nettle soup, buttered eggs, eels with scallions and parsley sauce, turnip soup. Pigeon, squab, rabbit—and many more. I doubt I will prepare any of the esoteric recipes, but reading them was a delightful bonus as the favored Irish dishes I expected to see are also here.

The book uses an unusual format with ingredients in a sidebar. My only complaint is that my old eyes found the font used to list ingredients was too small for comfort. The primary text for most recipes consists of a narrative describing some historical or other noteworthy aspects. Many of these are a single paragraph, but some provide an entire page of information. Instructions for preparing the recipe follow the description. Many are surprisingly simple and should be easy to prepare.

Irish Traditional Cooking is one of the most enjoyable cookbooks I have encountered in a long time. ( )

From the cover: "Darina Allen's beautiful and unpretentious vision of cooking is connected to the land, its seasons, and to the artisan producers. I find this book important and irresistible." --Alice Waters, Chez Panisse

I honestly wonder if people get paid for their endorsements....... The book is printed on semi-slick paper, with a smattering of pictures of the actual dishes, full two page color photos for each chapter's title page (an introduction printed over the center faded-out portion of the photo. There are several recipes per page, divided by triple lines, in small difficult to read print.

Not all recipes have a list of ingredients and those that do, do not all have measurements..... Each recipe contains a short to medium length story above the instructions so it is difficult to tell which part is which. There are a lot of (personal) stories intermingled w/ the recipes..... This is a difficult book to read and cook from.

Contents include: Introduction; Forward; Broths & soups; Eggs; Fish; Game; Poultry; Lamb; Beef; Pork (you get a partial lesson on how to dress a pig); Offal; Potatoes; Vegetables; Food from the wild; Dessets; Pancakes; breads; Oatmeal & other grains; Cakes & biscuits; and the irish pantry. These are followed by: Appendix 1, Cheeses & cheesemaking in Ireland; Appendix 2, the Potato & the famine; Appendix 3, Cooking pits of the Fianna; An Irish food chronology; Index; Bibliography; and Acknowledgements.

Recipes include: Potato & fresh herb soup; Potted Ballycotton shrimp; Ballymaloe hot buttered lobster; Kidney soup; Eels; Ray; Crubeens (pigs' feet); Collared head; Black pudding Galaway; Duck blood; Corned mutton; Dublin coddle; Carrigeen moss pudding; Dandelion coffee; Mead; Trish Archer's Gaelic coffee; and Apple custard pie.

As you can tell by the list of recipes, these are very "Traditional" recipes, ones that you most likely will not find elsewhere..... This is what gave the book its additional 1/2 Star. ( )

Guess who will be making ginger beer next weekend??!! ( )