Our cookbook of the week is Anna Haugh’s Irish Kitchen by Anna Haugh, head chef and owner of Myrtle Restaurant in London, England.
Jump to the recipes:boxty pancakes with ham hock and chive crème fraîche, coddle and Guinness chocolate cake.
Anna Haugh admits that opening a fine-dining Irish restaurant in England, “on paper, isn’t very clever.” People told her that if it should exist, it would already. “But there was something in me. I was like, ‘I’ve got more to give than just stuff that’s been done before.’”
In 2019, Haugh opened Myrtle Restaurant in Chelsea, London. She named it after the late chef Myrtle Allen, who is widely credited with starting a farm-to-table movement at Ballymaloe in East Cork 60 years ago. In late 2024, Haugh followed the restaurant with The Wee Sister, a wine bar centred on Irish food and wine made by Irish people around the world.
“If Myrtle Allen hadn’t done what she’d done, my restaurant would not exist,” says Haugh. “I would be trying to tell people about Irish produce in another way. I would be working it in differently because people would not be ready, I think, for an Irish restaurant.”
Originally from Tallaght in Dublin, on March 5, Haugh catered the inaugural U.K.-Ireland summit in Liverpool. “I felt like I was part of history,” she says. “They wanted Irish food and an Irish chef to be there — and it was me. Six years ago, if someone had whispered that in my ear, as I was stressing about whether I should do this Irish restaurant: ‘Yes, you should.’”
In her cookbook debut, Anna Haugh’s Irish Kitchen (Interlink Books, 2024), she features the dishes that defined her Tallaght upbringing and recipes inspired by her career cooking in restaurants, including as the first head chef at Gordon Ramsay’s London House and Dublin’s Michelin-starred l’Ecrivain.
Above all else, Haugh wanted the book to be useful. “I wanted to create a book where I told real stories and shared a slice of my life, things I’ve learned and recipes I’ve shared with people over probably 20 years.”
The idea for the book came from her sister, Sarah, who still makes her recipe for “Christmas Day soup” — even though Haugh had long forgotten it. She realized that over the years, her recipes have become part of loved ones’ repertoires. “So, perhaps they’re the recipes that I should do a book about because they’re tried and tested, and people use them.’”
From boxty pancakes to caramelized rutabaga and honey soup (a.k.a. “Christmas Day soup”), her friends and family returned copies of well-loved recipes, which formed the book’s foundation. Haugh also gives “little chef tips” along the way, such as adding water to any ground meat mixture to keep it juicy when cooked and letting honey caramelize to cut some of the sweetness and maximize flavour.
Haugh dedicated the book to her friend’s mother, Liz Dunne, “the woman who saw the chef in me before I even knew I was one.” When Haugh was 16, Dunne asked if she had ever considered being a chef, saying, “When you’re in the kitchen and you cook, something in you changes.” She hadn’t, and Haugh posed the question to her career guidance teacher.
“She laughed, and she laughed, and she said, ‘Oh, Anna, you’ve given me the greatest laugh today.’ And she goes, ‘Go on home now. You’ll be a teacher.’ And that was it. It was just dismissed as a concept.”
It wasn’t until a couple of years later, working at a holiday resort in Jersey in the Channel Islands, that the idea solidified. “Somebody asked me to open tins of fruit cocktail — empty kitchen, no action, no fun, no bustle. I walked in, and something in my belly just went, ‘I belong here.’ For the first time in my life, properly, where I knew, ‘I belong here,’” she recalls. “I could have been a teacher, and I think I would have enjoyed it. But this is my calling. This is my vocation.”
Haugh is proud to be part of the modern Irish food movement that has been building over decades. She returned to her roots for Anna Haugh’s Big Irish Food Tour, a 15-part series for the BBC that premiered in January. In it, Haugh travels around Ireland with celebrity guests, such as Canadian comedian Katherine Ryan, and meets with local producers.
Irish food was once overlooked, Haugh underscores, but no more. Irish people are embracing homegrown products in a new way, but there’s still work to be done. “What I’m looking for is more detail to what is modern Irish cuisine. For me, modern Irish cuisine is where you take a peasant dish and introduce it to other influences. So, the Irish dishes that have been brought to Canada, there will be a rippling secret Irish recipe lying somewhere that you know and you don’t know.”
Take the crossover of spiced beef through different cultures — such as corned beef or pastrami — or the life-saving yellow cornmeal the Choctaw Nation donated to Ireland during the Great Famine, which Haugh features on her menus and in her cookbook. “These things that are so Irish, and Irish people don’t know they’re Irish, and they’re buying another version of it from another culture,” says Haugh. “These things are being forgotten and lost in Ireland. I want to discover more so I can protect it for the future.”
BOXTY PANCAKES WITH HAM HOCK AND CHIVE CRÈME FRAÎCHE
Makes: 8 (serves 3-4)
For the boxty:
5 1/2 oz (150 g) raw potato, peeled and grated
1/2 tsp sea salt, plus more for the grated potato
3 1/2 oz (100 g) cold mashed potato
1 egg, lightly beaten
Generous 3/4 cup (100 g) self-rising flour (see note), plus more if needed
1/2 tsp baking powder
Scant 1/2 cup (100 mL) whole milk
Juice of1/2 lemon
Vegetable oil
For the topping:
2 tbsp crème fraîche, or good-quality thick Greek-style yogurt
3 1/2 oz (100 g) shredded ham hock or good-quality ham, rolled up and sliced, to give a shredded effect
1/2 bunch of chives, sliced or snipped with scissors
Handful of arugula
Step 1
Heat a large frying pan over medium heat with a little vegetable oil. Pour a ladle of your boxty batter on top, reduce the heat under the pan to low and cook until the pancake is golden on the base, then flip it over. You should be able to fit about 4 boxty in the pan at once, depending on its size (and on the size of your boxty). Keep them warm while you continue to cook the rest.
Step 2
Repeat to make another batch, to cook all the batter. Work quickly, as the boxty are really at their best eaten hot and fresh out of the pan.
Step 3
Place your boxty on a plate, spread with the crème fraîche or yogurt, evenly sprinkle over the ham hock or shredded ham and finish with a scattering of the chives and arugula.
Note: To make self-rising flour, add 2 teaspoons of baking powder for each 1 cup (150 g) of all-purpose flour and whisk them together.
Tricks of the trade: Depending on the time of year, I wash grated potatoes. During the old crop season, which runs from September to December in the northern hemisphere, the potatoes are in great shape, their starch is strong and white and they won’t need rinsing. Come springtime, the potato starches tend to be converting into sugars and often turn brown or grey quickly. Rinsing these springtime spuds will reduce the extent of that.
CODDLE
Serves: 4 generously
1 1/2 tbsp salted butter
4 thick smoked bacon rashers, snipped with scissors into strips, or 1 1/2 oz (40 g) smoked lardons
1 garlic clove, sliced
1 onion, sliced
2 carrots, chopped
About 1 lb 12 oz (800 g) potatoes, peeled and quartered
2 thyme sprigs
8 sausages, skinned and halved
1 1/4 cups (300 mL) whole milk, plus more if needed
3 tbsp whipping cream (optional)
1 tsp sea salt
Heaped 1 cup (150 g) frozen peas
Leaves from 1/2 bunch of parsley, chopped
Step 1
Heat up a Dutch oven or heavy pot and add your butter. Sweat off (cook without colouring) your bacon and garlic for 2 minutes, then add the onion and cook for a further 5 minutes.
Step 2
Now add the carrots, potatoes and thyme and cover halfway with water (about 1 1/4 cups/300 mL, depending on the size of your dish). Cover with a lid (this helps cook the potatoes that are not covered in water) and cook at a simmer for 20 minutes. You should be able to slide a knife easily into a potato once it’s ready.
Step 3
Add your sausages and simmer for 5 minutes, then pour in the milk and cream, if using, add the salt and taste for seasoning. If your potatoes are very fluffy, they will be really absorbent and you may need more milk.
Step 4
When you are happy with the flavour, add your peas and parsley and serve, with crusty bread, if you like.
GUINNESS CHOCOLATE CAKE
Serves: 10-12
For the sponge:
2 cups (500 mL) Guinness
1 stick (125 g) unsalted butter, plus more for the pans
Generous 1 cup (140 g) all-purpose flour
1 cup (200 g) sugar
Scant 1/2 cup (35 g) cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
Pinch of fine sea salt
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup (75 mL) buttermilk
For the cream:
1 1/4 cups (300 mL) whipping cream
1/2 cup (60 g) confectioners’ sugar
3 1/2 tbsp buttermilk
2 tbsp mascarpone
1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped out
Step 1
Place a saucepan under an extraction fan, pour in the Guinness and set over high heat. Reduce to half the quantity (1 cup/250 mL). Set aside to cool. Melt the butter in a separate pan, then leave it to cool.
Step 2
Butter 2 jelly roll pans, each about 12 x 8 in (30 × 20 cm), and line with parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 350F (180C).
Step 3
Place the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a bowl, whisk to mix, then make a well in the centre. Add 1/2 cup (125 mL) of the Guinness reduction with the cooled melted butter, egg and buttermilk and whisk the batter until no lumps are left.
Step 4
Divide the mixture between the 2 prepared pans, then bake for 10 minutes. Insert a metal skewer into the centre: when it emerges, it should be clean; also the cake should bounce back to the touch. It should be just cooked, rather than overcooked. The mix is wet and you really need to use a metal skewer to check it’s done in the centre. Leave in the pans to cool, then put a rack over the pans and turn them out. Leave until cold, then chill. The cake needs to be chilled when you’re cutting it to assemble the cake. Halve both chilled cakes widthways, then trim the cakes so you have 4 matching flat layers that will sit neatly on top of each other.
Step 5
Whip together the cream, confectioners’ sugar, buttermilk, mascarpone and vanilla seeds to soft peaks (see below). Use this to sandwich the cake layers together. Serve in slices, so you see the layers.
Tricks of the trade: Adding mascarpone to whipping cream is an amazing tip given to me by a fantastic pastry chef, Rey (Hortillosa) Encarnacion from the Conrad Hotel in Dublin. When you add mascarpone to whipped cream, it never loses its air and is less likely to split.
Recipes and images excerpted from Anna Haugh’s Irish Kitchen. Text copyright ©2024 Anna Haugh. Photography copyright ©2024 Laura Edwards. Published by Interlink Books, an imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc.
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