No Blarney Saint Patrick's Day Cooking

What are you preparing this fine Saint Patrick's Day? I just finished baking Irish Soda Bread adapted from the Minneapolis Star Tribune Taste Section recipe published this week. It turned out to be about the easiest bread one could possibly make. Recipe article and illustrative video is here...

Irish Soda Bread: No Blarney



We will also be preparing and serving corned beef and cabbage tomorrow.

Tomorrow? A little previous, don't you think?

I too, am making an Irish Soda Bread- recipe courtesey of AllRecipes.com. made it last year and it was a big hit. Our community has an Irish Celebraton BYOB party and it is one of the several prizes we give away, for the best use of Green in an appetizer, or maybe for the person wearing the  most Green.....who knows??? But the bread is always much sought after......

It looks like it'd be more than easy enough to bake a loaf on a weeknight although I think I'd probably halve the given recipe.

We'll be having corned beef cooked in the crock pot; the local Piggly Wiggly has Kneip's for about $1.79/lb.

Brad

Michael Hoffman


Tomorrow? A little previous, don't you think?

Never too early. Besides tomorrow all the relatives will be over and we'll be celebrating our grandson Jonah's first birthday.

On St. Patrick's Day we most likely will be hitting McGarry's Irish Pub and Jake O'Connor's Public House.

A grandson's first birthday is cause for a major celebration.

Davydd, Did you ever do the earth oven?

Not yet. I'm starting to think more about primarily a pizza oven with bread as a secondary consideration. Bread bakes at relatively low temperatures. Pizza needs the high temperature wood firing to be really great. So, instead of the type of oven I took a class in that was primarily a bread oven I am thinking of building a brick domed Pompeii oven. Finding the time is difficult. Winters are out in Minnesota and last year I traveled 4 months during the prime construction days.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY ROADFOOD FRIENDS ! 


SAINT PATRICK'S DAY MENU AT OUR HOUSE :)

Irish Stew With Onions , Carrots & Fresh Mushrooms
Homemade Mashed Potatoes With Heavy Cream
Steam-Sauteed Green Peas
Cabbage Salad With Apples And Walnuts
Cheddar Biscuits
Apple Crumble
HAPPY SAINT PATRICK'S DAY EVERYONE ! :)

This may be the only food & drink holiday I don't participate in - and I've been told by the family that I'm part Irish - that should be enough reason for me to celebrate.  I like all things Irish & St Patrick's Day except for the Corned Beef - just have never been able to like it - but I do like the cabbage and potatoes and Jameson Whiskey.

Tonight for dinner we had Jambalaya Pasta with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc -

I eat corned beef quite often.  I love this time of year because it's cheap.  I'd eat it once a week if I could.  That's about the limit of my Irish food. 

We had our Irish soda bread and corned beef and cabbage last weekend when family was in town. I like going out to an Irish Pub on St. Patrick's Day. I can't say I put on the green, get blasted and walk in parades, but yesterday I did walk 4.5 miles to Jake O'Connor's Public House and back just for a pint of Guinness.

http://www.everytrail.com...rip.php?trip_id=534217

baileysoriginal


  but I do like the cabbage and potatoes and Jameson Whiskey.

  sounds like a good Irish meal to me!!!!

My wife made corned beef and cabbage.I also love it and told her to start making it more often.

I cooked two corned beef briskets for St. Patrick's day, planning on having corned beef hash with nested eggs for dinner tomorrow night.  Everyone must have been in the mood for it as there was just enough meat left for two lunches for my son.  I ran out to the store and bought four more while they were still on sale at $1.29 per pound.
 
So I will be cooking up one of the large ones  and making  hash for tomorrow night's dinner.  Corned beef hash is one of my favorites.

Since I am Irish, and because my mother and father were Irish and
tracing our origins back to Adam and Eve we know that Eden was in County Clare
and their last name was Murphy----we wear the green and celebrate.. 

Other than that Corned Beef was never heard of in Ireland.  It was taught to the Irish of Boston by the Jewish Community there.  Brisket was pickled (corned) to preserve it.  In Ireland the cabbage was cooked with smoked ham.  

The Irish Soda bread, I make often, is my mother's recipe.  And, as Davy says 
is a snap to make,   For Paddy's day dinner I cooked up corned beef (cheap and good) with cabbage and boiled spuds.  Put a big soda bread on the table next to the meat, and along side that a slab of butter.  The 3 grandkids and Mary ate everything in sight (how that woman stays 120 is beyond me), leaving only the licked clean plates to put away.  

Here's to all those who are Irish on March 17th-----God Bless Us All.

Ancient,

Even the Irish soda bread is not of Irish origin. It was exported back to Ireland from America. What cannot be duplicated easily is the true Irish recipe for soda bread because the wheats are entirely different than what is grown in America.

Ancient: Corned beef goes back in Ireland as long as there was salt and cows meat  to make it - St Patrick himself most likely ate and enjoyed  the stuff. 

As to the soda bread, I don't know. But the Irish must have tamed yeast, at least soon after the  Vikings stopped harassing them , so I don't know why they would have made  bread unleavened with yeast.

In any case my wife , a Viking, makes a batch of soda bread once every year at St Patrick's day and we love it - especially toasted the next day  and slathered with butter.

My paternal grandparents were Irish and they never made soda bread, although we always had corned beef on St Patrick's day - accompanied by bread from somebody like Wonder Bread.

We had the grandchildren in for corned beef and cabbage and colcannon on the 17th. We made glasses of green and orange Jello for desert (something like the Irish flag) and they refused to eat it- they hate Jello. I call that un-American.

Cheers, John 

In my youth I knew of only one kind of bread and that was Wonder Bread. Post WWII was a great time but not for food now that I look back.

Even in 1978 when I befriended a Russian emigre I could not quite understand at the time his vehement complaint about American bread. We were not all that adventurous with good breads or whole wheat breads even in bakeries at that time. I didn't know better then.