The O’Brien Press

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• Download Imbolg -- St Brigid's Day. Three recipes for 1st February celebrations

The Best of traditional Irish foods cooked with modern flair

The Irish calendar provides many days for feasting and traditional celebration: St Brigid's Day, which announces the spring; St Patrick's Day, Shrove Tuesday, Bealtaine (May), Bloomsday, Lughnasa (August), Hallowe'en, Women's Christmas (Nollaig na mBan). Then there are the newer festivals that celebrate the rich harvest of our seas and fields -- The Galway Oyster Festival, the Wexford Strawberry Festival. These sixty recipes offer a tempting selection of foods for all these occasions, as well as for christenings, weddings and wakes.

Details of customs, folklore and Irish regional food traditions provide a fascinating background to the recipes.

Biddy White Lennon was a noted cook and personality, familiar to many people as Maggie from The Riordans. She was a founder member and Chairwoman of the Irish Food Writers Guild as well as editor and food writer of Irish Home Diary and wrote regularly for Food and Wine Magazine.

As a judge on The Great Irish Bake-Off, Biddy displayed her passion for great food that can be cooked by ordinary people in their own homes. Biddy died in 2017.

The latest in the excellent 'Best of Irish' series based on traditional Irish cooking. Well researched explanations of the origin and folklore surrounding many of these ancient feast days adds to the interest of the book. This book ends up with a selection of recipes for events such as weddings, christenings and waking the dead, so just about every eventuality is covered!

The Irish Examiner