Celtic Cuisine

Which is your favourite cuisine? French? Italian? Indian? Chinese? Or perhaps Mexican, Thai, or Japanese? Caribbean or Korean? Or are you more a tapas or mezze type person indulging in the occasional tagine? We really are spoilt for choice, aren’t we? But what about closer to home? Welsh cuisine. Is that a thing? And what about our neighbours in the Celtic nations of Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall and Brittany, not to mention Galicia? Isn’t that just oats, potatoes and buttermilk? Or at best, broths and stews like Cawl/Lobsgows and Irish Stew, disconcerting concoctions of offal such as Haggis and Faggots, and different variations of fruit loaf (Bara Brith, Barm Brack, and Saffron Cake). Brittany has its crêpes, but who knows what Galicia has to offer? Do they all really constitute a coherent ‘cuisine’? This short collection of 33 recipes from Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Isle of Man, Cornwall, Brittany, and Galicia will guide the curious dinner-table traveller along the Atlantic seaboard from the Outer Hebrides down to Santiago de Compostela. The recipes are grouped by nation, introduced by evocative photography, and each one gets five or six recipes each, apart from the Isle of Man and Galicia who have to make do with three each. Inspiring photographs also accompany many of the recipes. There is a mixture of sweet and savoury dishes, more than half vegetarian (mainly the cakes and pastries), and only six with fish. Some might find this odd considering how much coast the Celtic nations have between them, but those of us living on this periphery (at least on the British and Irish littorals) know how little seafood is eaten on a daily basis. Galicia, however, is renowned for its seafood, especially octopus and goose barnacles, but these are not as easy to source further north as the tinned tuna required for the Empanada Gallega. As the introduction makes clear, we Celts have some fine ingredients to work with. A temperate climate with plentiful rain makes for good pasture, and so good meat and dairy produce. But only certain grains such as oats, barley and buckwheat would traditionally be able to survive the weather. Potatoes thrive, as do cabbage, root vegetables, apples, stone-fruit and berries. Along with the use of fish, seafood and sea vegetables, the similarities between the common ingredients of the dishes of the various nations make sense. There is also a commonality in the way food is prepared. Everything boiled in one pot to make Cawl, Irish Stew, the Galician Caldo Gallego or the Breton fish stew, Cotriade. Or, perhaps more rarely now, cooked on a griddle, as are Welsh Cakes, Irish Boxty Potato Pancakes, the Manx fruit cake, Bonnag, and Breton crêpes and galettes. Although the emphasis is on the traditional, iconic foods of each nation, such as the simple Manx ‘Herrings, Potatoes and Onions’, some of them are more modern reinterpretations, like the Scottish Casserole of Scottish Wild Venison in Red Wine. It was heartening to see some popular everyday recipes, e.g. Mince and Tatties with Skirlie from Scotland – a dish, according to the respondents of one survey, eaten by a third of Scots once a week in 2009. My taste buds were also drawn to the more exotic-sounding recipes, including the spicy, honey-based Pain d’Épices from Brittany and the moreish Empanada Gallega from Galicia, which I served Cornish pasty-style for a more portable and arguably doubly Celtic snack. With the nights drawing in, what better way to travel than by gathering around the dinner table to feast on some of these comforting dishes? -- Richard Crowe @ www.gwales.com