St. Patty's Day Food Plans

[Robin Garr]

I ended up making Indian food.

Same here! Mary wanted colcannon, but I decided to do an Indian cabbage and potato curry instead.

Some friends ended up bringing over an excellent corned beef brisket, roasted carrots, and a sauce that involved reduced Guinness with brown sugar and some spices (rather like Guinness molasses). We added savory parmesan/garlic shortbread cookies (with cocktails), mashed potatoes, and a lemon pudding for dessert. Drinks were Jameson's and ginger to start and Guinness with supper. Not terribly Irish, but somewhat so.

So our friends did a slightly untraditional cb&c, even though Nancy is Irish-American. She said she doesn't like to deal with leftover boiled cabbage, so she cooked separately - sauteed till well browned. The cabbage was delicious, though I thought the corned beef suffered a tiny bit for its absence. I brought a "Wild Geese" wine (75 Langoa-Barton) and a Riesling (feinherb Steinmetz). Claret was pretty good, but Riesling went better with the meal than the reds.

We usually do corned beef and cabbage in the crock pot (although I see us doing more lamb stew in the future), and this year I produced my favorite to date, if I do say so myself. One flat cut corned beef brisket, drained of juice and rinsed, rubbed with "beef" grill seasoning, placed in the crock pot fat side up, pour on 1 bottle fo wheat ale, season with spice packet packaged with the brisket, top with sliced onion, throw in two smashed garlic cloves, put on low for 5 hours; put in carrots, potatoes and celery, one hour later added a small cabbage cut into wedges. The result, tender, moist, richly and roundly flavored, and the vegetables good on their own terms.

With it drank a Leffe Brown Ale (Belgian, not Irish, sorry - it's what I had on hand), and my wife made our stand by sour cream soda bread (wonderful stuff, would eat it any time of the year).

I know I'm late posting about food for St. Patty's day but it took me a long time to recover. We ended up having dinner at two different friend's homes on successive nights. I'm very fond of all the people involved but if I never eat another piece of corn beef it will be too soon. The sad part both of the parties involved are good cooks but the days of miracles have passed. One of the women involved made some fantastic soda bread + a fabulous citrus ice cream cake. On the QT she told me it was too much to bear without a fab dessert to end the evening.

I know I'm late posting about food for St. Patty's day but it took me a long time to recover.

Isn't that exactly the way it's supposed to be with St. Patrick's Day?