I have fond memories of a particularly sunny summer a year or two ago when I stayed in a farmhouse on the Dingle peninsula. As well as the good weather I remember the breakfasts.
Start off with a freshly-cut half grapefruit with a dusting of superfine sugar, followed by a bowl of smooth oatmeal porridge gently cooked in milk and served with an individual jug of cream. After that comes rashers, sausages and eggs, the lot served with scones and brown bread warm from the oven, honey, homemade preserves, fresh butter and a pot of tea.
For each person gently fry two sausages over a low heat until well cooked through and golden brown on the outside. Also fry a couple of slices each of black and white pudding. Remove from the pan and keep hot. Drain off the fat, as it is somewhat indigestible, and fry two rashers of bacon, having first cut off the rind. Now fry a couple of eggs in the bacon fat, spooning the hot fat over the yolks to set them. Fry a few mushrooms, half a tomato and a slice or two of potato cake each. Add a pat of butter if there is not sufficient bacon fat, but do not cook in butter alone as it burns at too low a temperature.
Irish cuisine can be divided into two main categories – traditional, mainly simple dishes, and more modern dishes, as served in restaurants and hotels.
Colcannon is a good dish made of potato and one of wild garlic (the earliest form), cabbage or curly kale, (compare bubble and squeak). Champ consists of mashed potato into which chopped scallions (spring onions) are mixed.
Other examples of simple Irish meals are Irish stew, and also bacon and cabbage (boiled together in water). Boxty, a type of potato pancake, is another traditional dish. A dish mostly particular to Dublin is coddle, which involves boiled pork sausages. Ireland is famous for the Irish breakfast, a fried (or grilled) meal generally comprising bacon, egg, sausage, black and white pudding, fried tomato and which may also include fried potato farls or fried potato slices.
While seafood has always been consumed by Irish people, shellfish dishes have increased in popularity in recent times, especially due to the high quality of shellfish available from Ireland's coastline, e.g. Dublin Bay Prawns, Oysters (many oyster festivals are held annually around the coast where oysters are often served with Guinness, the most notable being held in Galway every September ) as well as other crustaceans. A good example of an Irish dish for shellfish is Dublin Lawyer - Lobster cooked in whiskey and cream. Salmon and cod are perhaps the two most common types of fish used.
Traditional Irish breads include soda bread, wheaten bread, soda farls, and blaa, a doughy white bread roll particular to Waterford.
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