GROWING UP IN an Irish-American home, I ate a fair amount of corned beef. It was another form of brisket, one of our favorite Sunday dinners.

I am not sure how my family became a clan of brisket eaters, instead of salmon lovers. My maternal grandmother, who was born in Ireland and lived with my family when I was a boy, seemed to prefer fresh fish as the entree of choice when "company" -- distant relatives or acquaintances from Ireland -- would visit our house for dinner.

Once I tagged along with my grandmother when she went to the local fish market. This was in St. Joseph, Mo., a mid-size Midwestern town that was then well-known for its stockyards and meatpacking operations. Until my grandmother introduced me to the fish market, I thought fish came to the store either frozen or in cans.

The shop had a large glass tank filled with swimming fish. I watched the fish glide around the tank while Grandma questioned the shopkeeper about his merchandise. The fish in the tank were locals, such as carp, catfish and a large dark fish known as buffalo, pulled from the waters of the nearby Missouri River. I was hoping that Grandma would buy one of these fish. I thought it would be exciting to see one get caught, scooped up by the shopkeeper's net, then dispatched with a knife.

But these Missouri River fish didn't seem to measure up to Grandma's standards. She settled, as I recall, for a piece of salmon from a refrigerated case. This salmon wasn't swimming, but it also didn't come in a can, as did all of the salmon I had seen up to that point

The piece of salmon was taken home and baked, and served to the visiting dignitaries. I can't remember who the visitors were. But I remember they were important because we ate in the dining room, not the kitchen. And I remember that there was a tablecloth on the table, the good dishes were used, and that the children were excused from the table after the meal, so the adults could sit and talk.

These visitors loved to talk. Their voices were like Grandma's, whom they called "Mary," which, pronounced with their Irish accents, sounded like "Mirrory" to our American ears.

And I remember in the aftermath of the visit -- the discussion among my grandmother, mother and aunts and uncles replaying the occasion -- that my grandmother had not given the American salmon high marks. It did not, she said, have the flavor of salmon from "home." Years later, long after my grandmother died, I visited her hometown on the coast of Ireland and tasted the salmon, and knew she was right.

After my grandmother was gone, corned beef and cabbage, rather than fish, seemed to be the dish that showed up on the dining-room table when "Irish company" came to dinner.

Now, like many Irish-Americans, when St. Patrick's Day, March 17, rolls around, I think of corned beef. A few days ago, I visited Corned Beef Row, the stretch of East Lombard Street named after the pickled brisket. Years ago, there were many meat processors here corning brisket by pumping it with seasonings, then curing it in brine. Now, only the Saval Foods operation at Central Avenue and Lombard Street is still corning beef.

In the three weeks leading up to St. Patrick's Day, workers at Saval prepare about 150,000 pounds of corned beef, about four times their normal corned-beef output, said Paul Saval, who along with his brother, Jeff; his father, Al; and his uncle, Howard, run the 67-year-old business. The corned beef, some in 2-pound sealed packages, is shipped to grocery stores, delis and restaurants throughout the East Coast.

Saval is not Irish. He is Jewish. So thanks to generations of Jewish meat processors in Baltimore, I can have corned beef on St. Patrick's Day.

Usually, I try to feed my kids corned beef on St. Patrick's Day. They prefer pastrami. That is all right with me. They don't have to like the dishes of their ancestors, but they do have to know the story that goes with them.

And that is why I tell them, whether they are listening or not, about the time I went to the fish market with their great-grandmother. I remind them that while she left Ireland as a teen-ager and made a new life in America, from time to time she still longed for a taste of home.

Pub Date: 03/17/99