The approach of
St. Patrick’s Day fills me with an urge to cook Irish dishes—perhaps that
Guiness stew I saw on the TODAY show this morning or maybe colcannon, which has
always interested me. I saw a recipe today for colcannon made with kale, with
the comment that you can substitute cabbage. Heresy! Colcannon is a dish of
mashed tatties and cabbage; kale is the interloper, and I for one hope it’s
days are numbered. Unless it’s very young and tiny leaves, I am not a kale fan—and
I’m not sure even then.
Colcannon makes me
think of kalpudding—best described as meatloaf with carmelized cabbage. It’s a
Scandinavian dish, not Irish, but the recipe stares at me every time I look at
my file of recipes I want to try. I doubt anyone here would try it. Sometimes I
yearn for the days when my kids were all at home every night and were pretty
much a captive audience for my cooking experiments. I need a new audience.
Mystery author
Keenen Powell wrote a blog about the Irish breakfast she fixes for her family
every year—it began with blood sausage. I’d forego that. I dutifully tried
blood pudding when I was in Scotland, and while it was not objectionable, it
wasn’t that good either. I asked our B&B host what the point was, and he
opined it probably had to do with using every part of the animal. No, thanks.
But the rest of
the breakfast sounded wonderful, if heavy enough to be a hearty supper: rasher
(thick slice of bacon or ham, fried), fried new potatoes (skin on because that’s
where the flavor is), scrambled eggs, sautéed tomatoes, and what we in Texas
call northern or sweet beans. I could maybe get some in our family compound to
eat the rasher, eggs, and potatoes, but they’d protest at the tomatoes and claim
beans were not breakfast food. I may put a little lox in scrambled eggs and
call it Irish breakfast.
I’ve invited some old
and valued friends to join me tomorrow night. I wanted to fix them an Irish
supper, but this is the wife’s first venture out as she recuperates from
extensive surgery, so the man said he thought just wine with snacks. I’ll do a platter
with smoked salmon, cream cheese, vegetables, and some baguette slices. Foiled
again in my longing to cook Irish, but the salmon is a tip of the hat to Irish
food.
St. Patrick’s Day
is the birthday of my baby-child, the youngest of my four—note I didn’t say
which birthday. It’s not a decade-changer but she has moved into that range
where women get a little touchy about their age. I’ll cook a birthday dinner
for her Sunday. She asked what I wanted to cook, but was scornful when I
suggested corned beef and cabbage. “You know I don’t like either of those
things!” I told her the real question was what she wanted and gave her several
choices, and she chose Norwegian hamburgers, a recipe from my oldest child’s
Norwegian mother-in-law. These are delicious, and we all love them and thank Torhild
for introducing us to them, but it’s an odd choice for a half-Hispanic child
born on St. Patrick’s Day.
Green beer,
anyone?
