St. Patrick's Day recipes: Celebrate with Irish dishes featuring modern twists, global flavors (2024)

When most American's think about Irish cooking, traditional dishes like Corned Beef and Cabbage and Colcannon Mash come to mind, all washed down with pints of Guinness.

But Irish cuisine is rapidly becoming more sophisticated than the sort of pub grub people associate with St. Patrick's Day. In the last 20 years, Emerald Isle cooking has been steadily changing to include sophisticated fare, with many traditional dishes evolving to incorporate global flavors, including spices associated with Mediterranean and Indian cooking.

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has watched this evolution from the front row. As one of Ireland's most-loved chefs, he's seen his own cooking become more modern. He's collected what he's learned in

a new cookbook featuring traditional dishes with up-to-date twists. It's part of a wave of modern Irish cookbooks that have recently been released, including

by Noel McMeel, and

by Cathal Armstrong.

We caught up with Dundon recently while he was in New York City to promote the second season of his public television cooking show, also called

(scheduled to air locally later this year on OPB Plus). He shared his thoughts on how global flavors are changing Irish cooking, and what St. Patrick's Day is like for his family.

People in this country have a very traditional view of what Irish cooking is. What, for you, is modern Irish cooking all about?

I traveled all over the world and was out of Ireland for 10 years. I think I was naïve, and I just thought of food as meat and potatoes. And then I learned all these new disciplines and how to play around with the ingredients, when I went back to Ireland, I instilled that into my cooking, and the flavors just jumped off of the plate. My emphasis now is on simple cooking, and stripping back food to its natural core. There are a lot of chefs out there who can cook complex food, but very few chefs who can cook simple food well, because there's nowhere to hide.

Have you seen Irish cooking becoming more sophisticated overall?

Definitely, the transformation of Irish cuisine has been tremendous. A lot of that has to do with how, as a nation, we all travel so much more, so when the Irish come back from vacations, they go into restaurants and expect more. So they put it back towards the chefs to created dishes that their palates need. There's been tremendous growth in the quality of food in Ireland. I think we all realized what we have with our ingredients. We're in Ireland, which is surrounded by water, for example. Our fish monger goes out in the morning, and in the afternoon the skipper calls me from the boat and tells me what he's caught. That's how we write our menu for that evening. You couldn't get fresher than that.

Your book has a large chapter on vegetarian cooking. Is that a growing trend in Irish cooking?

I have vegetarian customers in my restaurant every single night, and I actually enjoy the challenge that cooking vegetarian food presents to a chef. It's not something that naturally comes, because I'm used to working with proteins and then adding veg on the side. I eat a lot of vegetarian food myself, not for any particular reason except that I like the flavors that you can coax out of them.

How is St. Patrick's Day significant to you?

In Ireland it's a national holiday, and it's a great family day. We'll go to see a parade, and then the whole family gets together. We don't have a Thanksgiving in Ireland as you do here, so it's like our Thanksgiving. The entire family gets together and we share a special meal.

What can viewers expect from the new season of your TV show "Modern Irish Food"?

Basically, it's me traveling around Ireland looking at the natural beauty of Ireland and our ingredients, then bringing it back to our hotel, where I'll cook up contemporary Irish food showcasing those national ingredients, and taking the starchiness out of Irish cuisine so it's more of a fresh approach.

-- Grant Butler