St. Patrick’s Day

Tonight's dinner can effectively assist you in preparation for 2 holidays in 1. April is only 2 weeks away and if you save the brown foam from the brisket, you can pass it off as a latte to an unsuspecting victim on April Fool's Day. Oh, how your coffee drinking friends will love you for that one. Of course, today is St. Patrick's Day, so it seems only appropriate to make a traditional Irish meal. Having never had one, I once again have to go under the trusted guidance of the internet to not steer me wrong.

This is a "one pot" sort of dinner, an Irish Corned Beef Brisket cooked with potatoes,
carrots, onions and cabbage. You could easily add parsnips or rutabagas or another root vegetable of your choice and be just as happy with this. I've never bought or cooked a corned beef brisket before and I was actually surprised at how expensive it was; likely due to the whole brine soaking process. This is one way to actually make cabbage edible, since it completely takes all of the flavor out of it! The root vegetables soak up the beef juices and give them a stewed flavor and the corned beef was perfect and ensures us at least a week of sandwiches.

I prepared a loaf of Irish Soda Bread to go with it, but the recipe I had called for an entire tablespoon of salt, which, of course, made it really salty. Either it is supposed to be gross or there was a typo and it's supposed to be a teaspoon. I altered it in the uploaded recipe since I can't imagine it being edible otherwise. The other issue is that I made sour milk (adding vinegar to milk) instead of using buttermilk and this made the bread heavier than I would have liked. Having never had it, I can sort of judge from other pictures that I've seen in that it is supposed to be somewhat heavy, like a biscuit compared to bread, but it's not supposed to be all crust. I can only imagine that my foibles are what ruined this, so I take full responsibility for the downfall of this recipe, which is actually quite simple if you use the ingredients.

Shannon ran to the store to pick up buttermilk so we could properly make the dessert and the results were wonderful. She
made a Glazed Irish Tea Cake. It's essentially a plain cake with raisins, having the texture of a very good blueberry muffin. It is topped with a light glaze of confectioners' sugar and lemon juice which gives it just a hint of bittersweetness that, as Shannon described "Sparkles on the tongue." I couldn't describe it better myself.

I was given a bottle of Jamieson's Irish whiskey around Christmas time and I didn't particularly like it. After several
months I've now found a use for it in Irish Coffee. There's something about regular whiskey that just wouldn't have cut it here. Of course, it's topped with fresh whipped cream and the gentle sips through the cream that cools the coffee is fantastic.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Hoist a green pint for me.