Slainte!
Monday, March 17, 2008
Cheers and Happy St. Patrick's Day!
As I'm of Irish descent, St. Patrick's Day generally means food, drink, and friends.
But since it falls on a "school day" this year, we saved the food and drink for this weekend.
We even tried to make a St. Patrick's feast healthier this time around. First, for a traditional boiled dinner, we trimmed all visible fat off of the corned beef brisket. We then cooked this in a crock pot for a few hours and then dumped the fatty water, trimmed more fat off the brisket and rinsed it throroughly. We then put it back in the pot with fresh water, more seasonings (salt, pepper, bay leaf, parsley and coriander seeds) plus cabbage, carrots and potatoes. Not only was the dinner not "greasy," we figured we cut a good deal of the fat out of the meal and didn't miss a bit of the flavor.
For soda bread, we substituted whole wheat flour for white to make more of an Irish brown bread. But for the colcannan, a traditional Irish potato dish, the only thing we did was cut back on the butter. To make colcannon, you boil potatoes in salted water, chop and saute cabbage in butter (we used only a tablespoon compared to the 1/4 - 1/2 cup most recipes suggest) and then combine with salt and pepper (and we like a bit of parmesan) and bake for about 20 minutes. It sounds awful but it's one of the simplest and best dishes in all of Ireland. a country not known for good food.
The rest of our revelry surrounded making a leprechaun trap. Now, I don't ever recall being clever enough to trap a leprechaun and take his gold, but it's a fairly common practice today. At my children's school there are several traps laid to catch the Irish elf.
And why? Because it's a way to get a treat. The leprechaun has become like the tooth fairy or the Easter Bunny in that even if you don't catch it, you get something in return. As for our family, after the trap was set with hopes that the leprechaun would be caught and he'd hand over a pot of gold -- or at least leave something sweet. We scrounged around and found a few candy bars and left those as a treat, as well as some loose change. It was enough to keep them looking around for any clues that a leprechaun had been afoot.
Whether you're Irish or not (and 34 million Americans claim Irish ancestry), may the sun rise up to meet you, and the wind be always at your back. Slainte!