This, of course, varies widely by size and season, but none of them can touch the imported golden wonders I find at an Irish butcher up the road, also, apparently, known as “great balls of flour”. The distinction is important, because, in England at least, we don’t really do floury in the same way as they do across the water: here, the most widely available floury potatoes are roosters (22% “dry matter” – for that is the enticing way the consistency of potatoes is measured), followed by maris pipers (21.8%), desirees (20.8%) and king edwards (20.5%). Most older recipes just call for potatoes without further detail, but more modern versions are usually more discriminating, with Allen, Henry and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall calling for floury or even “very floury” varieties. PotatoesĪs food writer Niamh Shields puts it: “Irish stew without potatoes is not Irish stew – this is non-negotiable.” What sort of potatoes, however, is somewhat less straightforward. Laverty calls for best end, and Corrigan for middle neck, both of which are rather meatier than the scrag end Allen reckons would have been traditional in old-style “Irish cabins”, which, of course, makes excellent stock. The same goes for Diana Henry’s lamb shanks: they’re incredibly good, but about twice the price of the lamb neck preferred by Irish television legend Monica Sheridan, “Mammy of Irish cookery” Maura Laverty and chef Richard Corrigan. But, delicious as the results are, it seems a shame to waste such tender meat on a stew. Making this in winter, I can’t speak for spring lamb, except to say that I think the chops would probably be less fatty than the ones I use. We all thoroughly enjoy it, though it must be said that breast is a very fatty cut that makes for an incredibly rich gravy.Īt the other end of the spectrum, Darina Allen’s recipe in the Ballymaloe Cookery Course book, named after the famous East Cork cookery school she founded in 1981, is prefaced with the advice that it’s best made in early summer, “with young lamb”, cut into chops not less than an inch thick. That’s a shame, because slow cooking like this is the best way to appreciate a meat that, for all its flavour, can tend towards the tough: I try breast of mutton suggested by All in the Cooking, the official textbook of Dublin’s famous Coláiste Mhuire Cookery School first published in 1946 and widely used in domestic science classes until the 1970s. Darina Allen’s recipe calls for lamb chops, but it seems a shame to waste such tender meat on a stew.īut few modern recipes use it.
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