Last weekend, we visited Bord Bia's Bloom festival in the Phoenix Park, here in Dublin (check out our Instagram & Facebook for pictures). This is mainly a showcase of some amazing garden exhibits but over the years it has grown and now it boasts an impressive selection of flowers, gardening equipment, traditional arts & crafts, and more. The main attraction for us, of course, was the large Food Village! There were dozens of stalls selling and sampling a multitude of amazing food and drink from around the country - we were definitely in our element.
As we were exploring all the wonderful foods, we spotted a butcher selling some lovely pork sausages and bacon rashers. The sausages had 82% pork content and the bacon looked great. After trying a free sample (yum!) we were immediately inspired and decided that this week we would make a Coddle! Although, it's not really a summer dish - it's a real comfort food, ideal for a cold, winter-y evening - we still wanted to use these delicious sausages and rashers. We gathered up some fresh vegetables from various other stalls to complete the recipe.
Coddle, also know as Dublin Coddle, is a traditional Irish dish that was typically made to get rid of leftovers. It was generally eaten more regularly in the capital than the rest of the country. Like most traditional dishes, there's no fixed recipe and everyone has their own way of making it. The basic ingredients are pork sausages, bacon rashers, potato and onion, all cooked together in a broth. We'll be adding a few more ingredients to this recipe than the traditional but I'm basing it on one I received from my Dad.
For this we'll be using a leek and potato soup as the broth. Some people use vegetable stock, but I like the extra flavour the soup adds to the dish. We'll be making our own soup in this recipe, but you can use any shop bought vegetable soup if you prefer for convenience. You'll need enough to make 1.5 litres of soup. It is also not necessary to brown the sausages and bacon, this is up to your own personal preference. We think they look and taste a little better when browned, so that's what we'll do here.
This hearty dish goes very well with some fresh bread, slathered with real butter to slop up the last few mouthfuls.
 Soup: 10 minutes Coddle: 10 minutes |
 Soup: 20 minutes Coddle : 50 minutes |
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