St Patrick’s Day Recipes for your Party

St Patrick’s Day Recipe Dilemma: You want to throw the greatest St Patrick’s Day party of all time and the only green options you have are broccoli or food dye.

The shining light of The Cookery School, Lyons, County Kildare

We know your pain, reader, so we scoured the country for a little help and a few recipes. We found it at The Village at Lyons Cookery School in County Kildare. It’s here that food blogger and TV chef Clodagh McKenna waves her magic cooking wand to turn culinary frogs into gastronomic glories and, lucky for us, she’s given us a couple of quick and easy recipes to keep our St Patrick’s Day party as green as it is tasty (and – even better – you don’t have to slave over the oven for these).

But enough from us, it’s time to let the food (and Clodagh) do the talking!

Gorgeous Green Pea and Bacon Soup

Village at Lyons Cookery School

Preparation time 5 minutes / Cooking time 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 knob of butter (a tablespoon will do)
• 1 potato, peeled and sliced
• 1 onion, diced
• 3 strips of smoked bacon, diced
• 3 1/3 cups of hot chicken stock
• 2 cups frozen peas
• Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
• ½ cup of double cream
• 2 tablespoons of finely chopped fresh mint
• 1/5 of a cup of crème fraîche
• A few fresh mint leaves to garnish

Method

• Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over a medium heat and add the potato and onion.
• Reduce the heat, stir, cover and leave to sweat for 5 minutes.
• Remove the lid, turn up the heat a little and stir in two-thirds of the bacon.
• Leave to cook for a further 3 minutes.
• Pour in the chicken stock and leave to simmer for 5 minutes.
• Tip in the frozen peas and cook for 5 minutes.
• While the peas are cooking, place a frying pan over a high heat, tip in the remaining bacon, and cook for a couple of minutes or until the bacon is nice and crispy.
• Set aside in a bowl lined with kitchen paper to remove excess fat.
• Season the soup with salt and pepper, and then blend in a food processor.
• Stir in the cream and mint
• Pour the hot soup into cups/mugs. Using a teaspoon, add a few drops of crème fraîche to the soup in each cup, followed by a sprinkle of the fried bacon and a mint leaf.

Shamrock Salmon Sandwiches

Makes 2 large sandwiches or 8 party-sized bites

Preparation time 5 minutes

Green and gorgeous Smoked Salmon and Shamrock Sandwiches

Ingredients

• 3 large slices of smoked salmon
• 4 small, roughly chopped pickles
• 220g (8oz) cream cheese
• 1 lemon
• 4 slices of brown soda bread (or Guinness bread)/2 slices if serving as party-sized bites
• 1½ cups of watercress

Method

• Cut the smoked salmon into bite-sized pieces.
• In a bowl, mix together the pickles, cream cheese and a squeeze of lemon.
• Spread the salmon and pickle mixture over your bread and top liberally with watercress. If you want to serve as party-sized bits, leave as open sandwiches and cut into quarters.

Now all you have to do is serve with a smile and a big green hat.

The party doesn’t end there, we’ve also got the recipes for St Patrick’s Party drinks, from cocktails to milkshakes. If you fancy a dish that’s a little less green but just as traditionally Irish, try our Irish Stew recipe.

As you’d expect, there’s tons going on around the island in celebration of St Patrick’s Day. We’ve put together this guide for all the St Patrick’s Festivals and events in Ireland.

Interested to know who St Patrick actually was? We’ve recreated the St Patrick story with his myths and legends, Hollywood style.