Encapsulating the culinary traditions of a nation, especially one with such a complex history as Ireland, is not an easy task. Mr Jp McMahon, owner of the award-winning EatGalway restaurant group, which includes Michelin-starred Aniar, and director of global food convention Food On The Edge, has spent more than three years trawling library archives and family recipe books. The result is The Irish Cookbook, which sets out to establish Irish cooking as confident, varied and often sophisticated. The classics are all there – bacon and cabbage, soda bread, black pudding – but you’ll also find contemporary interpretations and home-style dishes inspired by ancient ingredients, including puddings, pies, ferments and open-fire cooking.

Mr McMahon was careful not to get “bogged down in the political landscape” of which recipes should and shouldn’t be included in the book (an objective stance that he attributes in part to his academic background; he has a PhD in art history). “The island is richer for including everything that’s on the island, no matter what the identity of the people who made it,” he says, which means dishes with French influences or unexpected spices pop up among the 480 recipes. When considering thousands of years of culinary history, he argues, you can’t stick only to ingredients that are native to a country. “You can take that as a benchmark, but then the potato [which was introduced to Ireland in the 17th century] falls away,” he says. “Debates around Irish food and tradition are quite black and white and, for me, it’s the same with any national culture or foods. It’s much more multi-dimensional than you imagine.”

There is a lot more to Irish food than colcannon and stew. Mr McMahon believes many of the misconceptions about Irish food stem from Irish-American immigrants, but there’s something to be said of the Irish people’s attitude. “In Ireland we probably haven’t spent enough time thinking about food as a culture,” he says. “I think we have bought into the stereotypes as well. A lot of the historical heritage resides in the Anglo-Irish community and to a certain degree we didn’t want to engage with that for a lot of the 20th century. But it’s important to see that as part of Irish food culture just as much as when you look at peasant dishes.”

Mr McMahon considers the influence of the internet and cheaper airfares to have broadened and diversified Ireland’s food culture. People discovered cheeses and charcuterie in other countries and realised they could be made just as well at home. “That attitude towards artisan food in Ireland has been growing in the past 40 years since the farmhouse cheese movement,” he says, “but it’s only in the past five years that it has really exploded. That element certainly wasn’t there when I was growing up, where food could be seen as a craft or a skill.” And with three restaurants gaining two Michelin stars in 2019, it’s clear that the scene in Ireland is developing. “I am part of a wider food movement,” says Mr McMahon. “But these things take a long time and I do think we’re only halfway there when it comes to the journey we’re on.”

The increased interest in Irish food, at home and abroad, is perhaps illustrative of a shift in focus for food trends more generally and an increased interest in so-called New Nordic cuisine and the food cultures of north and eastern Europe. “We’ve had an eye on the Mediterranean for probably 20 or 30 years now,” says Mr McMahon, but this is changing. “It’s given countries in northern Europe the confidence to look at their own foods and their own cuisine and, rather than see hardship and a lack of sun and rain, there’s a lot to celebrate.”

The foundations of Irish food have been developing for thousands of years. The Irish Cookbook delves deep into the country’s history, from the island’s native flora and fauna and Neolithic past to the landed gentry of the 18th century and religious conflict. In the same way that nature and nurture influence human behaviour, the ecological attributes of a place and the people who inhabit it work symbiotically to create a food culture. “We have about 1,500 years of written record, but people have been here for 10,000 years, so most of the time here is undocumented and we can only piece it together through archaeology,” says Mr McMahon. “We have different waves of immigrants, like the first farmers and then Christian monks, and Vikings and Normans, and each one of them brings a different aspect, and they’re all getting layered on top of each other. When you try to define Irish food, it’s almost like geology. It’s different layers on top of each other.

“We need to look at our own regionality and celebrate food. If that’s the west of Ireland, then shellfish or seafood, but going more inland, say in Offaly, it’s much more game and pheasants and duck. Each area has hidden food cultures within it and it could be as easy as just going back to look at your grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ recipe books.” These two ingredients – game and shellfish – typify Irish cooking in Mr McMahon’s opinion and demonstrate the quality of the waters and the land. “The use of those ingredients goes back to the very first settlers,” he says. “If you eat wild duck in Ireland, you know this bird has been eaten here for 10,000 years.”

Mr McMahon has methodically indexed the wild plants and fungi of Ireland at the back of the book. He feels they connect us not just to the natural world, but with its history. “We haven’t really been able to explore our attitudes to wild food in depth, probably because of the stigma, the attitude that if you have to go and pick foods then you’re poor,” he says. “That’s dominated Irish food since the famine. There’s an important ecological issue in terms of understanding our wild food, but there’s also an important historical legacy. I would say 90 per cent of the wild food in Ireland is native, which means it’s been here longer than people. It’s something that is outside ourselves. It's not something we grow, so in a way it’s independent of human civilisation. It’s just there. It’s probably one of the most interesting elements of contemporary Irish food.”

In The Irish Cookbook, Mr McMahon presents an Ireland that is wild and ancient, but also cosmopolitan and pragmatic. “I'd like to keep on documenting and reflecting, but also bringing in the contemporary elements of what I cook now,” he says. “I would like to keep Irish food moving forward, but keep an eye on the past, learn from that and appreciate our culinary traditions.”

“I give this classic Irish fish soup a little twist with the addition of seaweed.”

Preparation time: 25 minutes

Cooking time: 1 hour 25 minutes, plus standing time

For the stock:

• 2 tbsp rapeseed oil
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 celery stalk, diced
• 250ml dry cider
• 25g dried kelp or kombu
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled
• 2 bay leaves
• A few sprigs of thyme
• 500g mussels, scrubbed clean
• 500g clams, scrubbed clean

**For the chowder: **

• 25g butter
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 600g (about 9 medium) potatoes, cubed
• 2 leeks, diced
• Sea salt
• 250ml double cream
• 300g pollock fillet, skinned and boned, cut into small chunks
• Chopped dill, to serve
• Finely milled nori, to serve

Heat the rapeseed oil in a large pan over a medium heat. Add the onion, carrot and celery and sauté for about 10 minutes until they start to caramelise. Pour over the cider and cook for a couple of minutes. Pour in 1 litre of water and add the seaweed, garlic, bay leaves and thyme. Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for 40 minutes.

To finish, cook the mussels and clams in the stock for 3-5 minutes until they open. Remove from the stock and place them in a suitable container, discarding any that haven’t opened. When cool enough to handle, pick the meat from the shells and discard the shells. Strain the stock through a fine sieve.

For the chowder, melt half the butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Add the onion and sauté for 3-4 minutes until translucent. Add the potatoes and leeks and stir to mix. Add the seaweed stock. Season to taste. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes until the vegetables are tender. Add the cream and warm through. Add the pollock and cook for 2 minutes. Finally, add the mussel and clam meat and remove from the heat. Allow to stand for 5 minutes.

To serve, fold the chopped dill through the chowder and divide among four warmed bowls. Garnish with a sprinkle of milled nori.

The Irish Cookbook by Mr Jp McMahon (Phaidon) is published on 28 February