S is for St. Patrick's Day

To commemorate St. Patrick's Day last week, we made a pretty traditional feast including corned beef, cabbage, and mashed potatoes.  We asked a couple of friends over to share the meal and drink a few stout beers, and we even made Guiness ice cream floats to top off the evening.  Unlike the river in Chicago (watch this video clip!) and the beer at McGrady's Irish Pub here in C'ville, nothing served at my house was died green.  I just don't enjoy that aspect of St. Patrick's Day.  Green is my favorite color, but all the verde is a little too tacky for me.  The traditional Irish meal though?  I love it!

We decided to put the 2 1/2 lb. corned beef brisket in our slow cooker and it worked marvelously.  I just covered it with water and sprinkled in the herb pack that is included with the cut of meat.  We cooked the meat on low for about 8 hours.  Done.  Easy.  It was uniformly gray and hideous-looking on the outside, but perfectly pink and gorgeous on the inside.  Corned beef is one of those dishes that doesn't look very appetizing until you've sliced it.  The flavor of the meat?  Great!      

For the cabbage, I didn't want it to be sopping wet and soggy, but I did want it to have the flavor of the meat.  Instead of cooking the cabbage in with the meat, I roughly chopped the greens and then sauteed them for a few minutes in a high-walled skillet with a cup of the cooking water from the slow cooker.  I drained what was left of the water when the cabbage looked soft and sprinkled it with salt and pepper.

For the mashed potatoes, I tried something new.  I cut four or five yukon gold potatoes into quarters (skins on) and boiled them in a pot of salted water for about 20 minutes.  For the last few minutes of cooking time, I tossed in some cauliflower to cook with the potatoes.  I used a whole head of cauliflower and just chopped it up into smaller pieces before adding it to the water.  Once the cauliflower was soft enough to slide off a fork, I drained the water and used my masher to give the whole potato cauliflower mixture a good smashing.  I added a Tbsp. of butter, 1/2 c. lukewarm milk, 1/2 tsp. garlic powder, salt & pepper to taste.  Some people like their potatoes lumpy, but I am not one of those people.  I used my immersion blender to further smooth out the potatoes and cauliflower and it worked great.  This is one of my very favorite wedding gifts because it is so versatile and easy to use.  Just imagine quick smoothies, creamy soups, and homemade hummus.  So good!  If you don't have a "stick blender," I think you should get one.  I use it much more often than my stand-alone blender.

As a dessert, we got adventurous with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, a squeeze of Hershey's chocolate syrup, and a little bit of Guinness poured over it.  Wide-eyed and excited, we took our first bites, but we were let down.  Beer and ice cream just aren't as wonderful together as you might hope.  If you want to try Guinness floats sometime, check out this site, where they make a delicious Chantilly whipped cream  to top it.  Chantilly crème is just vanilla flavored whipped cream for the record.      

To celebrate the holiday with my class, I took vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting and green nonpareils to school.  I avoided any shamrock green food coloring because I knew I'd see it on the kids' cheeks and lips for the rest of the day.  The students ooh'ed and ahh'ed as I showed them my food blog and I let them know that they were official tasters.  They are now aware of their supremely important status and I think they want me to use them again as test subjects.  Soon!