Craic hors d'oeurves: The new breed of Irish chefs turns simple ingredients into great food.

Knickknack Paddy Snack

Irish food is more than just spuds.

by Mara Zepeda

The problem might be we’ve stared for too long into an abyss of flavorless potatoes. Martin Doyle, chef at Trinity Irish Pub in Atlantic City, remembers when American tourists came back from Ireland saying “everything’s fantastic except the food.” Not anymore. In the past few years Irish chefs have traveled throughout Europe honing their skills, and the results have been exciting.

“It’s still one part peasant food, just with better ingredients and techniques,” says Doyle, who still believes “a meal isn’t a meal without a potato.”

Contrary to popular belief, says Doyle, “the simpler the food, the easier it is to get wrong. There’s less fuss in which you can hide your mess.”

When Brian Duffy was approached to be chef at Shanachie in Ambler, he first made sure he and the owner agreed on the concept. “Do you want to do corned beef and cabbage?” he asked. “They said, ‘no,’ and I said, ‘perfect.’” (Although the dish does make an appearance on St. Patrick’s Day: “If it wasn’t on the menu, I’d be hung.”)

Duffy also saw the potential for traditionally Irish ingredients and came up with his own riff on the classics—a cuisine he calls new Celtic that highlights the island’s coastal seafood specialties, like brown crab, and uses natural and organic meats and produce from local farms.

Crubeens—a dish typically made with pig’s trotters—now uses pork chops. And Duffy reimagines the role of root vegetables, coming up with creations like rutabaga crisps and meacandearg puree (meacan is Gaelic for carrot, and dearg is parsnip). And he enthusiastically praises Irish cheeses, which he says have lived for too long in the shadow of France and Spain.

Duffy’s “must trys” include Cahill’s Irish Monastic cheeses (blended with porter, elderberry wine and whiskey) and cashel (a mild Irish farmhouse blue cheese that goes well on salads or paired with hazelnuts and fruit). There’s also the classic Tipperary.

Duffy says his customers have caught on, and his cheese plate is the restaurant’s top-selling appetizer.

Home cooks eager to try Irish cuisine in their kitchen can stop by Shanachie’s this weekend to meet Darina Allen, author of A Year at Ballymaloe Cookery School and dubbed the Julia Child of Ireland.

The astoundingly comprehensive site www.irishphiladelphia.com will point you and your stomach toward every Irish dish imaginable, and reveal the dizzying array of cultural events in the local community. And just in case you need another reminder of Philadelphia’s strong Irish heritage, the site even supplies recipes for Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick’s grandmother’s soda bread and Councilman Jim Kenney’s hardshell crabs. So raise your glass, and have some blaa with your Guinness.

Darina Allen speaks Fri., March 16, 7-9pm. Free. Shanachie, 111 E. Butler Ave., Ambler. 215.283.4887. www.shanachiepub.com