If you celebrate St. Patrick's Day in a food -or drink-related way, you are probably happy to see corned beef, cabbage and potatoes on display and on sale in your favorite grocery store.

For many years, I prepared a traditional  meal of boiled and then baked corned beef, a colcannon mash of cabbage, leeks and potatoes, a hearty whole wheat soda bread, and an apple-based dessert, either pie or cake.  Served up with Guinness or similarly full-bodied stout and concluded with a brisk Irish coffee, this meal, Americanized throughout the years, was the go-to for St. Pat's Day. 

When I visited ireland, I realized that many of these dishes and flavors were present on pub and restaurant menus, in Irish homes and b and b's, but there is much more to Irish cuisine than this meal.

There is a food renaissance going on in Ireland today that takes cooks far beyond boiled root vegetables.  Ireland is an island rich in local foods grown, caught or produced.  For example, you can enjoy small artisan cheeses, in fact, over 170 varieties, many of which you can only taste when you're in the neighborhood. 

With some of the largest inland lakes in Europe, Ireland produces amazing trout, pike and eel, salmon and perch.  The ocean surrounding the country offers up mussels, oysters, shrimp, lobsters and lingcod.  You probably get the idea by now that Irish cooking has a wealth of fresh items from which to select, and new Irish cooking today works very hard to prepare these fresh foods in  a simple, flavor-packed way.  You can certainly find underseasoned or foods fried to oblivion in some places, but more and more, Irish cooking is embracing its rich resources. 

And a word about dessert in Ireland.  Updated apple tartes with creme fraiche, a cherry and dark chocolate cheesecake, a plum compote with honey and ginger ice cream, even a rhubarb and yoghurt trifle...these are some of the ways inventive Irish cooks are ending their meals with a flourish.

So on March 17, when you think about serving an Irish feast, come to the supermarket, choose what's in season and consider cooking outside the box (maybe it's outside the perception) and deliver a meal for friends and family that celebrates all the best of Irish food today.  (As for my meal, I am strongly considering a wilted cabbage salad with some Irish cheddar, barbecued salmon with a simple shallot and white wine sauce, champ, a potato mashed with green onions, oatmeal muffins stuffed with bits of apple, and a delicious rhubarb and meringue tart...just because I adore rhubarb.)  Don't forget the stout and the whiskey, either!

For some great new Irish recipes (described above), check out "Gourmet Ireland" by Paul and Jeanne Rankin.