Irish Culture and Cuisine

Siobhan and Kathleen, hosts of the podcast Irish Culture and Cuisine, discuss traditional Irish foods like shepherd's pie and Cadbury chocolate. They delve into the history and significance of these foods and talk about their personal experiences with them. Siobhan explains the ingredients and origin of shepherd's pie, highlighting its use of potatoes and leftover lamb. Kathleen shares the story of Cadbury, from its humble beginnings as a grocery store to its success as a renowned chocolate brand. They both express their love for Cadbury's delicious and diverse range of chocolate bars, such as Crunchy, Twirl, and Oreo-filled. They appreciate the unique flavors and textures of these bars and reminisce about their childhood memories associated with Cadbury. Hey everyone, my name is Siobhan Feeney, and I'm one of the hosts on today's podcast, Irish Culture and Cuisine. Because of my Irish background, I grew up eating foods like corned beef and cabbage and shepherd's pie, which is one of the foods we'll be discussing in this episode. We're going to take a deeper look into popular Irish foods, along with chocolate, like the iconic Cadbury milk and the well-known shepherd's pie. We'll also talk about the tastes and the history behind these foods, and why they're so important to Irish culture and our lives as individuals. My name is Kathleen Gardner, and I am also one of your hosts on the podcast today. I am a dual citizen of Ireland as well as the United States, and I have grown up immersed in Irish culture. My mother is an owner of two Irish restaurants. This has made me have a deeper understanding of Irish culture as a whole, and a love for my people and the food. My Irish culture is very important to me, and as a kid, my parents would always try to incorporate that culture into my life, especially when it came to the food I ate. The food I ate as a kid opened me up to the idea of different types of foods in my culture, and how they came to be. In this podcast, we're going to be digging deeper into our Irish backgrounds and discussing the foods, both savory and sweet, that are a part of our heritage. To start, the first food we will cover on this episode is shepherd's pie, a comforting and warm dish that many Irish people enjoy. This is also one of the traditional items on the menu at my mother's restaurant. She owns two, which I had mentioned before, Kathleen's Irish Pub and the Water Horse Irish Pub. The shepherd's pie that she makes is not far from traditional. The recipe is based on a cookery in Ballymalu, which is in Ireland. The full name of this school is the Ballymalu Cookery School Organic Farms and Gardens. To give a slight history, shepherd's pie originated in the early 1800s by Irish housewives. The wives threw together ingredients such as leftover lamb meat and potatoes, and lambs and sheep are very popular in Ireland, if you did not know. Many people believe that shepherd's pie is a British dish, but according to Mitchell L. Raymond, it was created to not waste food, which to poor Catholic Irish families is very significant. Let's take an even deeper look into what ingredients exactly are in this delicious dish. Of course, potatoes are a very significant aspect to shepherd's pie, specifically mashed potatoes, which are scooped on top of the ground lamb and the root vegetable base within this dish. Potatoes are a significant aspect to Irish culture in general. Though they are important to Irish culture, they actually originate from the North Indies in South America. The less wealthy indigenous Andan people were often shamed for what they ate, and potatoes were a big part of that. But as more and more research went into this food, the potatoes started to become even more popular in Europe. At first, the Spanish rejected having it in their diet, but as potatoes got to be more popular throughout Europe, they became more accepted throughout the Europeans, according to Regina Harrison. Potatoes started becoming incorporated into more people's diets and into more recipes, like shepherd's pie. But potatoes are not the only tasty ingredient in this pie. Along with potatoes, the main protein that is incorporated into the dish is lamb. This is because, as you may know now, there are many sheep and lamb in Ireland, making it an easy and cheap source of protein for the Irish. Lamb was not only used for shepherd's pie, but was also added into various stews. This was because when the dish originated, many Irish citizens were in poverty, making it hard for them to have access to certain types of proteins that others may have been able to afford. What really gives a pie its amazing flavor, besides the meat and the potatoes, are the variety of spices, herbs, and vegetables included in the shepherd's pie. Of course, there is salt and pepper, but there are also ingredients like ground lamb, thyme leaves, parsley, bay leaves, carrots, crushed tomatoes, parsnips, and a dash of garlic. All of these ingredients and more provide a savory flavor that just melts in your mouth when you eat it. I don't know about you, but after I have a savory dish, like shepherd's pie, I crave something more sweet, like chocolate for example. Which makes me wonder, do you ever crave anything sweet after you have something savory? Yeah, of course I do. I always have to have something sweet, like chocolate, after a nice, savory meal, like shepherd's pie. You can never go wrong. You can never go wrong with a Cadbury chocolate bar, for example, especially with the variety of bars and flavors that they have. It's always had such a comforting flavor to me, that just makes me feel right at home, and it's so important that we explore those flavors. Cadbury is an amazing brand for chocolate. Although they are not traditionally an Irish-owned company, and are produced out of the village of Thornfield in England, which historically, as you may know, Ireland and England have complicated history, which we could be here all day explaining, but this isn't supposed to be some boring history podcast that may put you to sleep. Cadbury now has a factory, which is based out of Dublin, supplying chocolate to many Irish citizens, as well as myself. It's very important to know more about how Cadbury makes chocolate, It's very important to know more about how Cadbury came to be before we discuss their rich, amazing-tasting chocolate. Cadbury was founded by a father, John Cadbury, and his two sons. It first started off as a grocery store in 1824, when John Cadbury opened up the shop in Birmingham, England. In this store, drinking chocolate and cocoa were sold alongside the typical everyday groceries, such as cold cuts, cereal, and more. After much success, John Cadbury bought a warehouse in 1831 to start really getting to work. He brought his two sons, George and Richard Cadbury, along with him for some help. Later on, John Cadbury retired, and his sons took over his business. They came up with an idea to press cocoa in a different way. Instead of using cocoa butter, like most cocoa was made with at the time, they decided to use a cocoa press method, used by Van Houten, a Dutch manufacturer. This press method got all of the cocoa butter out of the cocoa beans, allowing the addition of starches to be fully avoided. This method brought the Cadbury brothers amazing success. It allowed their cocoa to be 100% pure, with no flavor add-ins. In 1866, the brothers created a company which they called Cadbury Cocoa Essence. A decade and a year later, or 11 years later, the brothers built a new factory just south of Birmingham, and named the factory Burnville. Over the years, the community grew and grew, and the factory became very popular and successful. Cadbury did not only sell chocolates locally in England, they also exported and traded chocolate and confectionery. Cadbury then continued to expand more and more, and they formed factories in Australia, Canada, the Irish Free State, and more. The Cadbury brothers had significant export sales. Their business became extremely successful, slowly but surely, because people loved their chocolate. Now let's fast forward to the post-war years, when business really started booming. People changed the way they shopped, and there was a demand for more food. Because of this, Cadbury launched a smaller range of chocolate bars in the 70s and 80s. This included Starbar, Wispup, and the Double Decker. They also designed the wrapping for their bars in a unique way, in order to make it more marketable and eye-catching. This was because their target audience would normally be the younger generation, children. Businesses became so popular that they expanded one of the locations, being in Dublin, Ireland. Although an originally British company, Cadbury chocolate is very significant in Ireland. To go back to what you said about the candy bar wrappings, not only are the wrappings designed creative, but so are the bars themselves. They have a great variety of different bars that all taste so amazing. They're rich, creamy, and overall just magnificent. We should talk about some of the chocolate bars we've eaten in the past. So, when I was growing up, one of my favorites was the Crunchy Bar from Cadbury. This chocolate bar has a honeycomb and toffee center with a milk chocolate dip on the outside. This chocolate is a perfect balance between the creamy chocolate on the outside and the texture of the honeycomb center that melts in your mouth when you eat it. Normally, in the U.S., you don't see any candies or chocolates that incorporate these different types of textures and flavors that make it unique. What do you think about the different types of chocolate? I also really love that bar. The flavor is so amazing and the crunchy honeycomb has a really unique, flavorful texture that I noticed. But also, alongside the Crunchy Bar, I also really like their Twirl Bar. The inside is really airy and flaky, but at the same time, it tastes really rich and creamy. And it's a really perfect mix of light and sweet tasteful. Cadbury is really creative when it comes to their chocolate bars and they have a really big variety to choose from so that you never get bored. The Twirl is also an amazing choice, in my opinion. It's very similar to another type of chocolate called the Flakes from Cadbury. They both have this consistency that almost falls apart once you eat it. Wow, I've never had that bar. That sounds really good. I'd love to try it. Another Cadbury chocolate bar that I really like is the one with the Oreo filling. That bar specifically reminds me of my childhood because I'd have it often and I'd always have the Cadbury brand even though there's a lot of other brands with that same flavor. I have a very significant memory with that bar because I remember one time I went to Amsterdam with my dad and we were just in the airport waiting for a plane and he got me that chocolate bar and on the plane ride to Amsterdam, I tasted it and it was just really good. So now every time I have it, I associate it with that memory and with flying to Amsterdam and it just fills me with a lot of nostalgia. Do you have any moments like that in your life that you remember? I think I actually do have something that I remember. When I was younger, my mom and I would take trips to an Irish butcher shop in Boston and we would always come back with different types of Irish candies and all of these fun treats and she would give them to me when I was younger when we got back home. One of these candies that was my favorite I think was called Buttons. They were kind of shaped like a circle, small little things and I enjoyed these a lot because they were just these tiny chocolates in this little package which was perfect for a little treat if you wanted it. Wow, I should try those one day. They sound really good. There are so many amazing Irish foods, savory and sweet, that have such an extant background to them. We created this podcast to show the importance behind foods and their background. In this case, Irish foods. It's so important to know how and where things like Shepherd's Pie, for example, and Cadbury chocolate came to be. And this episode just gives such a small taste of that. It's so crazy to think about how 12-year-old me on that trip to Amsterdam would have never thought that the brand of the chocolate bar I was eating had such an extensive background to it. That really just goes to show that we can love and appreciate the taste of food while not really knowing where it comes from. Which is why we wanted to create this podcast episode in the first place and just get the message out there that the food you eat is so important and always has a background to it. Yes, that is so true. Even when I was younger I would never think so in-depth into something as simple as chocolate. And that is definitely why we made this podcast. Just to overall inform people more about how important the history is. And me personally, I have always had a sweet tooth when I was growing up and even to this day, honestly. And this is because of the role that chocolate specifically made in my life. And Cadbury was a big part of it. This is like so crazy in general just to think about how significant chocolate was to me as a kid. Do you have any memories that bring you back? Yeah, I do. And I always wondered the same thing about like how if our viewers or the people who are listening to this podcast have any snacks from their childhood that just brings a memory and nostalgia because everyone grows up eating such different foods that they correlate specific parts of their life with and it's just really intriguing to think about. That's so true. It is crazy how we can have such a connection and a specific memory of a time when it comes to different snacks or food from our childhood. And when we had mentioned Shepherd's Pie in the beginning I had brought up my mom's restaurant and with my culture and food it's very important and significant as well. Cooking specifically is something that my mom would involve me in a lot because the recipes she would use were all from generations and generations of our family. Exactly. The food we brought up in this episode is just so significant to our lives and our culture and there's so many other Irish foods that we didn't even mention. For example I grew up eating a lot of corned beef and cabbage a salty flavorful dish and my family to this day always has it on St. Patrick's Day just to keep up the tradition and to stay in touch with our culture. We like to add things like carrots and potatoes and more to add a variety of flavors other than just the corned beef and the cabbage. Corned beef and cabbage is so good. We would we would eat I would always enjoy a good Irish breakfast which has eggs cooked however you choose whether that be over easy scrambled it didn't really matter French fries or baked potatoes Irish baked beans which are a little bit sweeter than the normal ones if you've ever had them black and white pudding which is basically a type of pork and then bangers which are Irish sausages and a roasted potato tomato all of this along with some toast or fresh bread is the perfect breakfast. This is something I would look forward to all the time. It was a comfort food almost and as we mentioned before in the episode it is important to know the history and the significance of the food you are eating especially if it is something that is from your childhood and if you have a cultural connection to it as well. Personally I am always interested in learning more about my own culture and other cultures. Do you enjoy learning about your heritage? Yeah I think it's really important I really love learning about my heritage and all the ins and outs of it and I really encourage whoever is listening to this episode to reflect on that as well and think about your heritage it is always important to appreciate your culture and learn from something that you may have not known. Thank you guys so much for listening and we really hope that you take what you learned about and are positive about your heritage and your culture and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your heritage and your