Our church has decided to have a St Patrick’s Day dinner.
What should we fix?
Honestly, as utterly un-Irish as it is, I would stick with a Boiled Dinner type thing. It’s what most people will expect. Serve it with a fabulous Irish Brown Bread (and make that one authentic), and I think you have a decent meal.
Actually, as a lowly, ignorant American, I am curious what does constitute traditional Irish food. The best we come up with over here is corned beef and cabbage, which is food that Irish immigrants ate AFTER they got to America. Sometimes shepherd’s pie is considered Irish here, too. Neither of these things actually qualify, though.
Just curious.
There are recipes all over the net. I’ll let you find one that strikes your fancy.
Here is a photostream of an Irish supermarket just in case you want to avoid the ‘traditional.’
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dianeduane/sets/72157594205473535/
Mukade
Agreed! Can’t go wrong with coddle! Though when I make it, I mess with the recipe and add cabage, beer and onions to the mix. Makes for a tasty stew!
There’s a lovely bit in the tales of Ossian about the argument Ossian got into with St. Patrick about the portions of grub that he got.
“I often saw a hawthorn leaf bigger than the pat of butter we get…”
I can’t remember what they got, but I’ll look it up when I get home.
It was along the lines of a portion of bread (soda bread, maybe!) a pat of butter, and a portion of meat. Can’t remember if vegetables were even mentioned.
Colcannon would be a good choice, or Irish Stew.
Or you could do an Ulster Fry, seeing your man was based in Armagh.
In all seriousness, I’d go with the boiled dinner approach. You have to consider the mass-catering aspect. Ulster fry for more than four people would be a logistical problem.
We are going with a chowder medley this year, mussels, seafood, potato and corn as the main dishes. This year it’s at our house. We had planned this, unfortunately, before we knew Tommy Sands was coming to town. Maybe I’ll “fake” an injury and need the ER around 7:00pm. We eat colcannon with leeks all winter long, I like to use savoy cabbage, crisper and greener.
That sounds delicious… I’m gonna have to try to do that up here soon after our new daughter arrives.. sounds like relatively minor effort.
Maybe it’s my Irish ancestry generations ago that is still coming through, but I like boiled food: some meat and lots of vegetables (carrots, cabbage, onions, celery, potatoes, etc.). Since I am at home during the day, it is convenient for me to do the cooking so that it is ready when my wife comes home for work. Recently, however, my wife takes one look in the pot and says, “I’m not eating it!” She complains to her friends, “He boils everything!”
There is an easy solution to this dilemma and that is to let me wife do the cooking when she gets home. When the whole house begins to smell like fried onions (“She loves onions and fries or sautes everything!”), I know that she is preparing dinner. Being artistic by nature, she never puts one thing away while she is in the process of cooking. Naturally, the kitchen is a mess when she is finished. She cooks, and I clean up seems to be a workable solution for us. She is happy with that and I am learning to be. The easiest thing is for me to leave the kitchen so that I don’t have to watch the process.
Ya’ll know boiled dish meals actually originated in Wisconsin. The Irish and the Scandinavians appropriated it for their own evil means. Boiled bison with potatoes, parsnips, carrots, onions served with a horse radish sauce, can’t get much more American than that. Substitute some Irish Elk for the Bison to make it more traditional…
And Oisín stopped with St. Patrick, but it was not very well content he was with the way he was treated. And one time he said, “They say I am getting food, but God knows I am not, nor drink; and I am Oisín, son of Finn, under a yoke, drawing stones.”
“It is my opinion you are getting enough,” said St. Patrick then, “And you getting a quarter of beef, and a churn of butter and a griddle of bread every day.”
“I often saw a quarter of a blackbird bigger than your quarter of beef,” said Oisín, “and a rowan berry as big as your churn of butter, and an ivy leaf as big as your griddle of bread.”
St. Patrick was vexed when he heard that, and he said to Oisín that he had told a lie…
(but he had not.) 
Great ideas folks. I’m gonna forward these suggestions to those who need to decide. 
You can never go wrong with Shepherd’s Pie or Corn beef and Cabbage. My aunt always does stuffed cabbage with mashed potatoes for her church.
Try champ and sausages, that is a real Irishman’s dinner.
To make champ, boil up 4lbs of peeled spuds (or around 2 kilos), when the spuds are ready, mash them.
Pour two cups of milk (not skimmed) into a pot and add two good handfulls of chopped (1/2 inch/10mm) scallions (oh alright, French onions for the uninitiated!!) and simmer until the scallions start to soften. You will want a little bit of crunch still left in them. Add the scallions and enough of the milk to the spuds so that the mash is still thick and creamy when it is mixed through. Serve with the sausages and place a big knob of real butter (I don’t mean that de-caff haff-caff unsalted lite crap either) on top. No gravy, nothing else but maybe some salt and pepper and there ye go.
Follow it up with Barn Brack with lashings of butter on it and a big hot mug of tay.
Not sure about the sausages part, but champ sounds pretty good.
C’mon s1m0n, what’s wrong wi’ ye?!! The millions of Irish before us can’t be wrong, get them sausages down ye, it’ll either kill ye or cure ye. 
Scalloped potatoes, mushy peas, a nice bit o’ cod.
djm
Potato boats.
Wrap a large unpeeled Murphy ( sorry, spud..no wait…potato!) in foil and place in a preheated oven at 200F for 40 minutes.
Boil another peeled potato until soft, then mash it.
Chop a scallion until you have about two tablespoons full, place in a pot with a little milk to cover the scallion and simmer until just starting to soften.
When the spud is soft through remove the foil. Cut the spud in half through it’s longest section.
Scoop the potato out of both halves, keep the skins, they are your boats.
Mix together the spud, pre-mashed potato, scallion, salt and pepper to taste, and a knob of butter.
Place the mixed ingrediants back into the skins and put enough in so that you can form a mound that would represent about half of the original size of the spud.
Place the two spuds on a baking tray that has been covered with foil then sprinkle grated cheese over the top of the spuds. Place back in the oven (which you have conveniently turned down to 180F) and wait until the cheese melts or browns nicely, which ever is your preference. Then there you have them, Irish potato boats. Deeeeeeelicious!!!
A modern variant of this is to boil up and mash some sweet potato as a substitue for the boiled spud, then add your ingrediants together and place in the skins and then add the sweet potato on top of the spud/scallion mix before adding your cheese.
What? No Irish Stew? or is that what you mean by ‘boiling’?