Irish

Irish bacon, sliced and packaged, is increasingly available at supermarkets. If you find it at the butcher counter, ask the butcher to slice it into 1/4-inch-thick slices.

Once the ingredients have been combined for this dish, use immediately. Serve the potato pancakes while crisp. These pancakes were developed at Dublin's Gresham Hotel and were featured on the "Bird Flanagan" bar menu. The "Bird" Flanagan was a celebrated Dublin character who once rode his horse into the lobby bar of Dublin's famous Gresham Hotel and requested a drink for his horse.

This recipe is based on a classic Irish dish called champ. It is typically made with onions or scallions, but we've used chives—and parsley as well. You can create simple variations with parsley or chives alone, or go all out with a combination of sautéed leeks, caramelized onions, and fresh peas.

Pudding is a term that is used interchangeably with dessert in Ireland, so not all Irish puddings are the milk-based treats Americans think of when they hear the word. Here's a fine example: a pretty dessert of bread and assorted sweetened berries are in season, but many people want to eat this delicious pudding even when fresh berries aren't available. Fortunately, frozen ones work just as well. Begin preparing this a day before serving so that it can set up overnight.

Mary Tuohy, a Cappagh, County Tyrone, native who now lives in Redbank, New Jersey, has been making this raisin tea cake for so long that she can almost do it from memory. She says, "I can't remember where the recipe came from, but we used to bake it over an open turf fire back home. It came to me on a piece of dilapidated paper, which I still have." It's a very moist cake, she says, nearly foolproof. "You can't go wrong with it."

(Bacon and Root Vegetable Stew)

These sweets are enjoyed with coffee or tea at Bewley's on Grafton Street, a Dublin institution that has long been part of the city's folklore and culture.

The best way to get warm and cozy after a day outdoors is with this drink, in Ireland known simply as "hot whiskey."

A milk pudding that dates back to the Middle Ages, syllabub was first prepared by milking the cow straight into a bowl containing "Sille," a wine that used to be made in Silléry, in France's Champagne region. "Bub" was medieval slang for a bubbly drink. There are a number of syllabub recipes in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Irish cookbooks. This modern version calls for a sweet dessert wine and whipping cream.

Here's a delicious specialty from The Gallic Kitchen in Dublin, Ireland, a small, bright pâtisserie with excellent sweet and savory goods.

Considered a luxury in the nineteenth century, this ice cream has flourished in the past decade and has become a modern classic in Irish restaurants. But it is easy to prepare at home, too, because the recipe does not require an ice cream maker. In this version of the ice cream, the breadcrumbs are turned into a praline.

There must be as many versions of this—Ireland's national dish—as there are cooks. One thing all recipes should say is that the stew is to be cooked slowly until the lamb is meltingly tender. This stew is the ideal dish to return to after a day in the open air, as it can be made ahead and reheated while cook and guests enjoy the hot punch.

Made with a mixture of cooked and raw potatoes, boxty was created as a way to use a few readily available ingredients to produce different results. It can take shape as bread, pancakes or dumplings. The recipe has been popular for so long that one traditional rhyming song goes, "Boxty on the griddle, boxty on the pan; if you can't make boxty, you'll never get a man." The households that didn't have a store-bought grater improvised by using nails to punch grating holes into a box or flattened tin can. Boxty is most often made as a griddle bread, served with bacon and eggs for a special breakfast treat.

"I have never had a better dessert than the sticky toffee pudding at Beginish Restaurant in Dingle, Ireland," writes Judith Gilbard of Forest Hills, New York. "I hadn’t heard of the restaurant before this visit, so I was pleased to stumble across such a find. Do you think the owners, John and Pat Moore, would share their recipe?" At the restaurant, this dessert is served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

The pork is marinated overnight in a salt-water brine, making it tender and flavorful. After marinating, the pork can be cooked a day ahead so that St. Patrick's Day, which falls on a Monday this year, will be stress-free.