Johnson Brings Festive Irish Dishes to Life in New Cookbook

Margaret Johnson was a high school English and journalism teacher for more than three decades. In the early 1980s, she began traveling to Ireland — a place where her grandparents immigrated from years before.

Not known for its cuisine at the time, Johnson went out on escapades searching for different dishes that would break the common thought that Irish food wasn’t the most glamorous. She’d talk to chefs, farmers and restaurateurs asking: Why did Irish food get such a bad rap?

“No one was really writing about Irish food in any positive ways,” the 80-year-old Westhampton resident said. “But at that time, in the mid-1980s to early 1990s, Irish food was coming into its own. I began following the trends — and I wanted to let everyone know they were wrong all these years.”

Early Beginnings

Johnson grew up in Massachusetts in a typical Irish-American family. Both sets of grandparents and great-grandparents were born in Ireland, so talk and tastes of “the old country” always played a major role in her life.

As she furthered her education and moved to Long Island, she took graduate courses in Irish history and literature at Hofstra University and Stony Brook University.

“My headspace was totally in Ireland as a destination because of my roots,” she said.

During her travels, she used her skills as an English and journalism teacher to start documenting what she learned in different spaces. Then, in the early 1990s, Johnson learned that Irish food was starting to be put on the map thanks to Bon Appetite magazine. “They were going to devote their whole May issue to Ireland, which was an enormous boost and catalyst to see Irish food get noticed,” she said.

Johnson networked a bit, but nothing came out of it until she was later phoned by a literary agent who got her name from the magazine writer Johnson spoke to.

“She asked, ‘Do you have a cookbook in your head?’ I said, sure, and she told me she could get an Irish cookbook published in the U.S.,” Johnson reminisced. “No American was writing about Irish food at that time.”

That’s when her first cookbook was born, which included some family recipes and new recipes she researched during her travels. Since then, she has written 14 cookbooks total, including two published solely in Ireland.

“I’m not a trained chef or anything,” she admitted, “But my love of Ireland and my interest in cooking kind of merged.”

Some of her titles include “Favorite Flavors of Ireland” (2015), “Christmas Flavors of Ireland” (2013), “Flavors of Ireland” (2012), “Tea & Crumpets” (2009), “The Irish Pub Cookbook” (2006), “Puddings, Tarts, Crumbles and Fools” (2004) and “Cooking With Irish Spirits” (1995). “I give some sort of history of the recipe, the ingredients, the place where it came from,” she said. “Each book has a different theme.”

Johnson also has contributed food and travel articles to publications in both the United States and Ireland, including Intermezzo magazine, Dublin’s Food & Wine magazine, The Irish Echo and irishabroad.com.

40 Years of Fabulous Food

Johnson’s latest book, “Delicious Ireland,” published in March, celebrates how the food of Ireland is often used in Irish literature to provide focus, punctuation and rhythm, as well as how it has evolved over the past four decades since her first visit in 1984.

“It’s a celebration of my 40 years of travel there,” she said. “My books are connected to the country, and you get a little bit of a travelogue along with the culinary history and history of the country, as well … Connection to the country is just as important as the recipes are.”

Johnson said “Delicious Ireland” even has some fun facts that she was shocked to discover, including how, while strolling through a farmers market, she found a farm in Macroom, Cork, that makes buffalo milk mozzarella.

“I met a dairy farmer who started making delicious Italian cheese in Ireland,” she said. “There’s always something new to discover.”

Johnson writes her books as a menu would be read. It starts with appetizers of soups, salads and small bites (like the Guinness and malt wheaten bread, lamb croquettes and creamy mint sauce), then moves on to main entrees, such as an Irish stew, shepherd’s pie with a cheddar crust, filet of beef with Irish whiskey sauce, cauliflower steaks and a pan-seared salmon with dill and caper sauce, along with recipes of different decadent sides, like blue cheese potato cakes, potato, parsnip and apple puree, and colcannon, a mashed potato dish flavored with kale or cabbage.

But no meal would be complete without dessert. The colorful pages of “Delicious Ireland” showcase recipes for Irish apple cake, sticky toffee pudding, a lemon loaf with rosemary drizzle, and a rhubarb and elderflower crumble, just to name a few.

’Tis the Season

Johnson said that Christmastime in Ireland always brings out the best dishes to the dining room table.

“Christmas, without a doubt, is the season in Ireland,” she said. “What we typically eat on Thanksgiving is what they make for the holiday.”

Her 2021 cookbook “Festive Flavors of Ireland” describes how the season typically begins on December 8 — a day known as Mairgead Mór (Big Fair Day) — and lasts through January 6, Nollaig na mBan (Women’s Little Christmas).

She writes how families begin to prepare for the festivities weeks in advance, as early as late October, when holiday cakes, puddings and mincemeat start to fill pantries. It’s also during this time that cooks start to soak their fruits for the holiday fruit cake, feeding it with whiskey or rum and letting it sit for up to seven or eight weeks. They then finish the cake with marzipan and decorate it accordingly.

“Fruit cakes and mincemeat tarts are absolutely the most popular during the holidays there,” Johnson said.

But other Moreish mouthfuls that are covered in the book include smoked salmon on potato cakes, sausage rolls with cranberries, red onion marmalade, different turkey roasts and several favorite stuffing recipes.

Moving Forward

Johnson said that she still tries to travel to Ireland at least twice a year, most recently celebrating her 80th birthday with friends over there.

But when she isn’t traveling, the author often visits libraries and other venues across Long Island to talk all things Ireland, with programming and book signings surrounding her latest publications.

Looking back to her mother’s and grandmother’s cooking as a child, she considered how her grandparents would feel knowing that she has now written more than a dozen books based on her heritage.

“I think they’d be flabbergasted,” she said. “And definitely very proud.”

Margaret Johnson will host festive holiday tea programs on December 7 at 1 p.m. at the Hampton Bays Public Library; on December 11 at 2 p.m. at the Quogue Library; on December 14 at 1 p.m. at the Westhampton Free Library; and on January 6 at 1 p.m. at the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor.