I forgot to wear green today, and I skipped the parade on Fifth Avenue, too; wasn’t up for all that St. Paddy’s Day pandemonium. But I did make my usual Monday morning pilgrimage to the Union Square Greenmarket, where I bought a lovely little head of green cabbage. Not because it’s St. Patrick’s Day (frankly, I had forgotten), but just because it looked so nice and fresh and crisp.
No, I’m not going to pair it with the obligatory corned beef; for one thing, I have no source for local, humanely raised, grass-fed corned beef. Instead, I’m going to make a delicious potato-leek-cabbage-buttermilk soup from a recipe in the only Irish cookbook we own: The New Irish Table, by Margaret M. Johnson.
Irish cuisine is often seen as bland if not downright blah, but Johnson takes heavy old-school Irish dishes and gives them an enlightened twist, incorporating classic Irish elements into contemporary comfort foods: salmon tartlets made with Cashel blue cheese and spinach; roasted apple, parsnip and ginger soup; roast belly of pork with crisp bacon, black pudding, and apples.
Yes, there’s lots of lamb and bacon, but there are plenty of excellent vegetarian recipes, too: minted pea purée, leeks au gratin; colcannon, a buttery mashed potato/cabbage blend that’s traditionally served on All Hallow’s Eve (aka Halloween); and a soup recipe that I’m addicted to, Rathcoursey Emerald Soup, which gets its green name, and hue, from lettuce, watercress, arugula and other greens. Finally, a tasty way to salvage that lettuce you bought thinking you were gonna make a salad and never did.
Best of all are the desserts: marmalade puddings with Bushmills custard sauce; chocolate and Guinness brownies; pears poached in mead, and so on. I’m not a big drinker, but this is the kind of inventive pub grub I’ll gladly drink a toast to. If you think of Irish food as heavy and ho hum, check out The New Irish Table’s imaginative interpretations of traditional Irish fare.
To learn how to make a delightful green lettuce soup, read The New Irish Table; to learn what folks are doing to keep Ireland delightfully green, visit Sustainable Ireland. 
