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St. Patrick's Day


qwertyy

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I'm throwing a St. Paddy's day party for about 15 people and looking for interesting, thematic foods to serve as appetizers. (My famous Guinness stew with boxty is featured as the main course.)

What say you, lads and lassies? I want Irish foods or foods that feature Guinness or whiskey as an ingredient.

My situation: no microwave, cool oven, great toaster oven.

Erin go bragh!

(Please feel free to expand this thread to include your approach to the sacred meal--corned beef and cabbage--and other topical yummies. I may not make them this year, but they'll certainly go in my file! I'll also take musical recommendations for proper atmosphere... Get creative!)

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paging Cathal Armstrong!

Um, not all Irish foods feature Guinness or whiskey, and corned beef and cabbage is an Irish-American creation.....no-one eats it in Ireland...

You could always make a Shepherds Pie, although you already have an entree so maybe you don't need it.

You could try and do something creative with black pudding.

Wild Irish Smoked Salmon can't be beat....

You can't go wrong with a cheese plate....you could get one from Cheesetique or Whole Food usually has extra Irish cheeses in for the occasion.....Cashel or Crozier Blue, Boilie (the pic in my avatar and made by a cousin of mine), Ardrahan, Durrus, Gubeen, Coolea, Cooleeny, Carrigaline.....Milleens is the grandaddy of Irish artisinal cheeses but can be hard to get around here

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I'm throwing a St. Paddy's day party for about 15 people and looking for interesting, thematic foods to serve as appetizers. (My famous Guinness stew with boxty is featured as the main course.)

What say you, lads and lassies? I want Irish foods or foods that feature Guinness or whiskey as an ingredient.

My situation: no microwave, cool oven, great toaster oven.

Erin go bragh!

(Please feel free to expand this thread to include your approach to the sacred meal--corned beef and cabbage--and other topical yummies. I may not make them this year, but they'll certainly go in my file! I'll also take musical recommendations for proper atmosphere... Get creative!)

When you say cool oven you mean as in an oven that cannot come to temperature? How about your stove top?

I don't have any of my stuff with me here at work, but I've got several sources I can check from home later on.

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When you say cool oven you mean as in an oven that cannot come to temperature? How about your stove top?

I don't have any of my stuff with me here at work, but I've got several sources I can check from home later on.

Yes--no matter how high I turn that puppy up it always takes at least 50 percent more time to cook something than it should. Really bizarre. Stove top is fine. Electric, but fine.

I'll love to hear any ideas you can dig up!

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This is about as inauthentic as it gets, but for corned-beef-based finger food you can't get any better than David Rosengarten's Reuben rolls. Lay out an egg roll wrapper, and place a slice of corned beef, a square of Swiss cheese, and a spoonful of sauerkraut in the center. Fold up into a square, brushing with water to seal. Then, fry 'em up, and serve with Russian dressing as a dipping sauce.

Only downside, aside from the aforementioned brazen inauthenticity, is that it keeps you or a volunteer partygoer at the stove for a while, frying. They are best served fresh from the fry.

If you're looking for something more low-key, I would put corned beef and Swiss on rye Triscuits and run them under the broiler. Depends just how labor-intensive you want to be on this.

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Atholl Brose is a tasty Celtic beverage. I had the pleasure of a taste or two at a local Celtic-themed dinner a while back. This recipe is from my copy of Celtic Folklore Coooking, by Joanne Asala:

3 cups uncooked oatmeal

8 oz honey

1 cup cold water

2 pints whiskey

Stire together the oatmeal, honey, and cold water. When they are thoroughly mixed, slowly add the whiskey. Stir briskly until the mixture foams. Bottle and cork tightly in sterilized containers. After a day or two remove the cork, strain the mixture, and toast your friends with a hearty slainte agus saol agat! Health and long life to you!

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Three of my Irish/Celtic cookbooks offer recipes for Brotchan Foltchep, which is a leek and oatmeal soup--looks tasty and traditional, though I haven't tried it. A parsnip soup, or leek and potato, would also fit the bill, although none contains Guinness or whiskey among the ingredients.

Oysters are popular in Ireland as they are here, and might be freshly shucked or cooked in a stew, among other preparations. Steamed mussels are also consumed in Ireland, and you could conceivably steam them in Guiness, I suppose.

My more modern cookbook has a beautiful recipe for a salad of pears with Cashel blue cream sauce and walnuts.

Click here or here for some more information and recipes.

I also highly recommend an oven thermometer. Every oven I've used has been a little bit different, and you'll get better results if you know the actual temperature and can adjust it, rather than relying on the controls.

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For anyone curious, the party went off swimmingly with raves all around for the food.

By far the biggest hit was the brown bread, which I made that morning from a recipe in the Kylemore Abbey Cookbook. It was shockingly easy--no kneading or rising required; really more like a quickbread that includes white flour, wheat flour, wheat germ, wheat bran, AND oats. For appetizers I also served some sliced deli corned beef with horseradish cream, smoked salmon with caper and lemon cream, and the four terrific Irish cheeses bought from Cheesetique the weekend before accompanied by almonds, grapes, and dried apricots.

For the main course, we had Guinness stew ladled over chunky colcannon, which just hits the spot--no two ways about it. And for dessert, I made apple pontard, also from the Kylemore cookbook, for no other reason than that I had WAY too many apples in the house. It turned out to be a surpisingly good and verrrry easy baked custard with chunks of apples. A guest brought Guinness chocolate cake, which, much like the Guinness cheese I bought at Cheesetique, was much, much better than I expected it to be. Guinness really is magic.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone!

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Don't get me wrong, I love the traditional corned beef and cabbage and boiled potatoes for my St. Patrick's Day dinner. But being that I've got some more time this year, I was hoping to make something a bit more elegant. Any suggestions?

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Don't get me wrong, I love the traditional corned beef and cabbage and boiled potatoes for my St. Patrick's Day dinner. But being that I've got some more time this year, I was hoping to make something a bit more elegant. Any suggestions?
This article from the San Francisco Chronicle has some recipes at the end that might be along the lines of what you are seeking. :o
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The "sacred meal" isn't. The Irish version is boiled bacon and cabbage, not corned beef.

tell that to my great aunt nellie. (actually it's at least 30 years too late.) she would always serve this dish with corned beef when we visited her in the summer in green island, across the hudson from troy. it was a way of showing off the work of her son who was a popular butcher on the other side of albany. i didn't care for it much and finished it dutifully, but still derive some nourishment from the memory of those meals.

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Call me what you will, my parents are coming over tomorrow for my aunt's birthday and asked me to serve Corned Beef and Cabbage. So off to the mega mart I went where I decided to run a test cooking three different small pieces of beef. The pieces are a point cut ($1.30 a pound, one flat cut ($2.40 per pound) and one flat cut Mash's brand ($4.XX a pound). I just took the two less expensive cuts and put them in the Crockpot just now on low for 10 hours with two cut up onions, one cup of water, some pepper, pickling spice, bay leaves, and whole cloves. After the 10 hours, I will take the beef out, refrigerate it over night, bring it to room temperature tomorrow, and glaze it with apricot jam and horseradish under the broiler. The broth will be strained to cook the cabbage. The Mash's flat cut will prepare tomorrow in a dutch oven at 325 with a little water, potatoes, parsnips, pepper, and carrots for 3-4 hours, and then add the cabbage to cook in the broth (from both pots).

I intend to serve with brown bread, a nice salad, and another veggie.

Any suggestions to my cooking methods? Additions to the meal? I have cooked beef this way a couple of times, but am looking for alternatives.

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Call me what you will, my parents are coming over tomorrow for my aunt's birthday and asked me to serve Corned Beef and Cabbage. So off to the mega mart I went where I decided to run a test cooking three different small pieces of beef. The pieces are a point cut ($1.30 a pound, one flat cut ($2.40 per pound) and one flat cut Mash's brand ($4.XX a pound). I just took the two less expensive cuts and put them in the Crockpot just now on low for 10 hours with two cut up onions, one cup of water, some pepper, pickling spice, bay leaves, and whole cloves. After the 10 hours, I will take the beef out, refrigerate it over night, bring it to room temperature tomorrow, and glaze it with apricot jam and horseradish under the broiler. The broth will be strained to cook the cabbage. The Mash's flat cut will prepare tomorrow in a dutch oven at 325 with a little water, potatoes, parsnips, pepper, and carrots for 3-4 hours, and then add the cabbage to cook in the broth (from both pots).

I intend to serve with brown bread, a nice salad, and another veggie.

Any suggestions to my cooking methods? Additions to the meal? I have cooked beef this way a couple of times, but am looking for alternatives.

Gosh, I dunno Scott, that sounds really good.

I'm making stuffed cabbage. A Polish nod to the St. Patty day, I guess. Really, I think this is likely the last cold weekend for braising. :o

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The annual corned beef and cabbage meal at Chez Johnson. It seems that this is the only time of the year that one can find corned eye of round, which I prefer over the flabby brisket. Throw in some carrots and potatoes (cabbage cooked seperately) and make some Irish Soda Bread. Beer, not wine, for this dinner. :o Picture the youngun's getting drunk on 18th Street, while listening to "Hot Jazz Saturday Night" on WAMU. Bliss.

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It may have come a day late, but my housemates and I still managed to bring a bit of St. Paddy to Africa.

The weekend here is Friday-Saturday, so the GOAL--Irish NGO--party was on Friday, and, well, we were, you know, out of commission on March 17 itself... But tonight, we regrouped and made a pot of Claudia's famous Guinness stew. Sooo easy, and soooo good.

Dredge stew meat (half lamb, half beef) in flour mixed liberally with ground pepper. Brown in batches. Throw it all back in the pot with a pint of Guinness and water to cover (don't forget to scrape all the yummies off the bottom). Add some salt, some carrots, and some onions. Stew for a minimum of 45 minutes or however long. Serve over boxty (mashed potatoes with a bit of flour, formed and baked like biscuits in the oven) or mashed potatoes or colcannon.

No, you don't sautee the onions first; just toss them in the pot raw. And the broth ends up very thin, but it's meant to be so that when it hit the potatoes it all thickens up and the ingredients retain a surprising amount of flavor integrity. Don't be tempted to add an extra bottle of beer instead of water; one pint is enough to break down the fatty tissue, and more than that reduces and becomes bitter.

The flavors are very pure, and very simple: pepper, meat, carrot, onion. Best. Stew. Ever. Claudia, wherever you are, your stew rocks.

(As a side note, we didn't use as much lamb as usual because, while the beef here is of incredibly high quality--and cheap!--the lamb was, well, er, not so much. Grisle. Fat. SKIN. Ew. That poor little lamb should have died for that pittance of meat!)

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Well the results were quite clear, pay the extra and get a better quality cut. The cheap point cut was full of fat and frankly, I am going to cut the fat out and use it for hash. the flat cheap cut was good, not great. The Mash's flat cut was wonderful, beautiful marble, color and flavor. This is what I will serve next year.

Call me what you will, my parents are coming over tomorrow for my aunt's birthday and asked me to serve Corned Beef and Cabbage. So off to the mega mart I went where I decided to run a test cooking three different small pieces of beef. The pieces are a point cut ($1.30 a pound, one flat cut ($2.40 per pound) and one flat cut Mash's brand ($4.XX a pound). I just took the two less expensive cuts and put them in the Crockpot just now on low for 10 hours with two cut up onions, one cup of water, some pepper, pickling spice, bay leaves, and whole cloves. After the 10 hours, I will take the beef out, refrigerate it over night, bring it to room temperature tomorrow, and glaze it with apricot jam and horseradish under the broiler. The broth will be strained to cook the cabbage. The Mash's flat cut will prepare tomorrow in a dutch oven at 325 with a little water, potatoes, parsnips, pepper, and carrots for 3-4 hours, and then add the cabbage to cook in the broth (from both pots).

I intend to serve with brown bread, a nice salad, and another veggie.

Any suggestions to my cooking methods? Additions to the meal? I have cooked beef this way a couple of times, but am looking for alternatives.

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Last year I used the "mash's" brand corned beef. Anyone else have any luck with another brand? I am fixing up a irish american dinner this weekend and wondered if anyone had some new suggestions for this thread.

Well the results were quite clear, pay the extra and get a better quality cut. The cheap point cut was full of fat and frankly, I am going to cut the fat out and use it for hash. the flat cheap cut was good, not great. The Mash's flat cut was wonderful, beautiful marble, color and flavor. This is what I will serve next year.

Note... triple spacing is good for the soul!

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I know where to get some organic, but the free range is a problem, they just run under the rainbow and go to Oz. I can think of no better persons then Jake or Don about "traditional stuffing"

Does anyone know where I can find fresh leprechaun (preferably free-range organic)? I also need clover in bulk for the traditional stuffing.

Note: triple spacing is everyone's wright.

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Does anyone know where I can find fresh leprechaun (preferably free-range organic)? I also need clover in bulk for the traditional stuffing.
Watercress is a good substitute for clover. Holds up better. And while I couldn't find an online copy of a recipe from Chaun, I think you may need to go to Reading Market in Philly if Eastern can't supply you with lepre.
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I'm willing to pay the premium for certified "4-Leaf" clover too. I've never seen a whole leprechaun, just the ubiquitous canned leprechaun (Spamrock) and the occasional leprechaun loin (aka Dubloin). I'm assuming your average lep is around twenty pounds but I could be wrong.

I'll be Erin on the side of caution and cooking it all the way through because I've heard about St Patrick's Revenge and I don't want to incur my guests' Eire when they feel like their craic is being ravaged by snakes.

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