I’m not a cook—at all, I know—but I was pretty darned surprised by how the recipes from the Sean Cummings Irish Pub cookbook turned out last Sunday. Maybe it was the luck of the Irish?
Most people know Cummings from his eponymous Irish restaurant, located at 7028 N. May Ave—at least that’s how I know him, especially after my gal-pal Jodie and I went there for St. Patrick’s Day celebrations a few years ago, when I fell completely in love with both the vibrant food and the overall celebratory feeling of the sacred spot.
But when I heard he recently published his own cookbook, I thought that I’d put the Pioneer Woman on the backburner for a while and turn the heat up with a couple of recipes from this Irish lad and requested a copy. Featuring meals like Bangers and Mash, Onion Gravy and so on, I decided I was going to try the two easiest things, Simple Irish Beef Stew and Irish Cabbage...
(To be fair, I did want to make the Rabbit Stew, but, honestly, I have no idea where to get rabbit…any tips would be most appreciated!)
After buying the necessary groceries, when I got home, I laid out and separated what I needed, starting with the Irish beef stew. Lightly browning my stew meat in a large silver pot, I chopped the much-needed vegetables—potatoes, carrots, onions, celery and such—perhaps a bit larger than I was supposed to, but like it that way, reminding me of the homebound stews that my late father would often make in-between his violent rages.