St. Patrick's Day recipe: Chef Kevin Dundon's easy potato bread 'farls'

Triangular potato bread 'farls' from "Kevin Dundon's Modern Irish Food" Need recipes for Irish soda bread, Irish stew, scones and numerous traditional mashed potato dishes — from the easy potato bread triangles known as “farls” to Colcannon with cabbage or “champ” with onions? How about beef and Guinness pie?

If you're looking for St. Patrick's Day recipes for traditional Irish foods, you’ll find them all in “Kevin Dundon’s Modern Irish Food” (Octopus, $24.99). Of course, the chef from County Wexford puts his spin on tradition, and he includes dishes of international influence such as gratins and curries.

And one might be prompted to learn a bit about foods from the United Kingdom beyond those of Ireland. Eton Mess, for example, is a blend of meringue cookies, berries and whipped cream named for Eaton, the English boarding school where it is said to have been created in the dining hall. Dundon’s “kinky” version introduces lemon curd and basil oil to this dessert “mess,” all jumbled in a bowl.

The cookbook features numerous seafood recipes, favoring Irish ingredients such as mustard from Dalkey, a Dublin suburb, for cream sauce over  oven-baked lobster. With his recipe for smoked mackerel from Slade, he discusses the fishing crowds who gather at the pier there in mackerel season. And he says removing the bones from pike is worth the effort to enjoy its rich and meaty flesh.

Dundon notes that trout is among the best sources of Omega-3 fatty acids. But would its heart-healthy benefits be canceled out by wrapping it in bacon, then frying it in butter? His recipe for trout with streaky bacon requires more than a stick of butter to cook four 8-ounce filets, each wrapped in three bacon slices. Add two tablespoons of oil to get things started, and you have a dish weighing in at 855 calories per fillet with 53 grams of fat — and that’s not counting the butter bath. Figure that each fillet with nuts retains about 2 tablespoons of the butter, and the count is up to 1,058 calories with 76 grams of fat, 27 grams of which are saturated.

The surprisingly slim chef says bacon “makes this dish so delicious.” We liked less bacon and no added fat in a nonstick pan.

Dundon is certainly not a rarity when it comes to chefs overusing fats to make foods delicious, and he does balance things out in the mix of "100 recipes for easy comfort food." He offers a variety of lighter vegetable-based soups (zucchini and almond, curried parsnip, cherry tomato with roasted garlic). You won't find lamb in the Irish stew here. Dundon includes what he describes as a "blind" version made during impoverished times by those who didn't have meat to stew. Blind Irish stew is now considered a tasty vegetarian dish, he writes.

An especially handy feature of the book is a last chapter on sauces, savory and sweet, that are used for the cookbook's recipes. Dundon includes his signature mustard pickle there. The vegetable mix is brined then simmered in vinegar and then flavored by raisins, tarragon, English mustard, turmeric and ginger.  

Easy potato bread recipe

Last year, we made Irish "boxty" potato pancakes for the first time.  Like boxty, Dundon's potato bread cooked in a skillet begins with mashed potatoes. It's even easier than the pancakes.  

"One of the nicest breakfasts or mid-morning snacks is this bread, made into traditional triangular ‘farls’, and served with some fried eggs," he writes. And, he advises: "It is best to use mashed potato that is still warm for this potato bread recipe. Alternatively, if using cold leftover mash, pop it into the oven to warm up before mixing with the other ingredients.

Potato bread
(makes 6 farls)

1-1⁄3 cups warm mashed potato
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
4 tablespoons butter
2⁄3 cup all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting

1. Place the mashed potato into a large bowl and season with the salt and black pepper. Melt the butter and add this to the potato, then sift in the flour and mix well to make a pliable dough. Lightly dust your work surface with a little flour, then turn the potato dough onto it and roll into a circle that is roughly 1/2-inch thick and 9-1/2 inches in diameter. Now divide and cut it into 6 triangles (farls).

2. Meanwhile, heat a large, heavy-based nonstick frying pan or ridged grill pan over a moderate heat. (Traditionally, no fat or oil would be added to the pan to cook potato bread.) Cook the farls for 3–4 minutes on each side. Serve immediately.