Wild Irish Food

I grew up in a large Irish-Catholic family in the American Midwest, where boiled potatoes were our culinary anchor and butter or ketchup the sole, beloved seasonings. Our annual celebration of heritage was corned beef and cabbage — carried across the Atlantic by ancestors who left Ireland under duress.

So when I invited friends over for St. Patrick’s Day last year, I made the popular staples, but was at a loss when people asked what they could bring.  “Bruised turnips?” I suggested. What is Irish

food besides this once a year meal and boiled potatoes? 

The majority of my DNA comes from County Cork, a region hit hardest by the famine. Years later, my sister traced our roots and uncovered records suggesting our great-grandmother may have starved to death during the Great Famine — one of more than a million people who died of hunger while Ireland’s fertile land exported food to the British Empire. I’ve often tried to imagine not just the ache of hunger, but the deeper grief: what it feels like to be severed from the land that once fed you. And what about the seaweed and mussels flourishing on the coast? She may have lived in the mountains and did not have access. Many people died in what is known as the “shoulder season”, before spring greens started to sprout. Because so many people survived on seaweed during the famine, it had negative connotations in Ireland for some time, but it’s now coming back as a celebrated superfood. 

And I couldn’t help but wonder what the Irish ate before colonization. Turns out, they ate quite a bit like I do now. Tree nuts, mushroom and wild salmon in later summer and fall. Greens in the spring, along with seaweed and bi-valves. So when I made a classic colcannon- cabbage and potatoes with cream and butter, I added dried porcini and stinging nettle and those wild mushrooms elevated it into a savory, woodsy, creamy, delicious situation. So I’ve been looking into my ancestral foods, no disrespect to the potato, but wild, diverse food sources offer much more nutrients and food security when crops fail. 

I’m going to Ireland in April to learn more about wild, ancestral foods and look into the possibility of a wild food camp over there. I’m excited to meet the experts there and learn from them not just how they’re connecting to the land through wild foods, but also to their ancestral stories. 

Recipe for the Porcini-Watercress Colcannon