Irish in the kitchen

We were up in Dublin Saturday Night and Sunday Morning for a family birthday: the perp was aged 70 not 7 so there was no cake and none of the boys ate the candles for a dare. On the way down the street to the venue we fell to talking about Dublin coddle, which we all agreed was not one of Ireland's culinary triumphs.  There are a number of variants on the theme of onion, cabbage and potatoes in Irish cooking [nobody would call this stuff cuisine]:

• champ - potatoes and scallions with butter, milk, or buttermilk
• as thick as champ = a dullard; ignorant as champ at a wedding = boorish
• boxty - a pancake of grated spuds, buttermilk, flour, egg;  fried.  Not a million miles from latkes, драники, cmunda, nálečníky,or Reiebekuchen
• boxty on the griddle
• boxty in the pan
• if you can't make boxty
• you'll never hold your man
• colcannon - spuds and kale [or cabbage] and lurry in the butter and full cream milk
• Did you ever eat Colcannon, made from lovely pickled cream?
• With the greens and scallions mingled like a picture in a dream.
• Did you ever make a hole on top to hold the melting flake
• Of the creamy, flavoured butter that your mother used to make?
• [sung with full harmonies by Mary Black and others]
• coddle - a stew made of boiled rashers, sausage, spuds and onions
• traditionally including pearl barley [glarrrk]
• it is left-over dish, traditionally served on Thursday to clear the pantry for Friday fishday; so you can lash in whatever you find in [or behind] the fridge and nobody will be any the wiser

As we strolled partywards M said that the little beige blobs of sausage that she found in coddle always made her think intestines. Even the best Irish sausage is heavily adulterated with cheaper ingredients [rusk, meal, sweepings] than the lips, hooves and wobbly-bits that go into, say, Polish sausage.  But, like the Irish Spice Burger, these sausages are designed to be tasty and they are. Me, I'd rather have my sausages [and rashers too] fried to buggery and served on the side.

One of the most extraordinary changes in fortune for a vegetable is that experienced by kale in recent years. Its huge dark green fibrous leaves were forever seen as fit only for animals to eat - or at a stretch eaten by the peasants who minded the cattle and sheep. With the Portuguese, I've had a long-time affection for kale as an essential ingredient of caldo verde - a dish which I could happily eat every day for the rest of my life. Now kale has become [€4/kg] money and is a) widely available shredded in bags from supermarkets b) featured in unlikely settings by celebrity chefs.  Google up "kale and . . ." and the big G suggests "kale and banana smoothie" . . . with almond milk.  Holy Mrs Beeton, what has the world come to?!