03/19/2007

Foodie with Family

Leftovers put to good use

By Rebecca Lindamood
Local columnist
shakeyourfoodie@
yahoo.com

Read Rebecca's past columns here

I'm a sucker for a holiday that has a particular food associated with it.

St. Patrick's Day has always been an eagerly awaited holiday in our household. My dad comes from a good Irish Catholic family from Detroit and Chicago and we've always done St. Paddy's Day right.

When I was a kid, my Mom would color everything green (i.e. green pizza dough, green soup, green macaroni and cheese, etc.) Our favorite part of the meal was always the mint and ice cream shamrock shakes. Cool, minty, creamy and green, these shakes always seemed to kick start spring into action even if the northern Michigan snow was still flying.

The shamrock shakes make their appearance on my table now, too. But as years have gone by, I've made my own family traditions. Two things my kids expect every year are daly colcannon (a recipe introduced to me by my stepmom, Val) and corned beef brisket. Colcannon is a little less widely known and more traditionally Irish than brisket, and I firmly believe that no one can have too many potato — or as my 3-year-old says it, poenano — recipes. I'd like to share our favorite version of it with you.

It doesn't need to be restricted to St. Patrick's Day, though. I think you'll find that this one has appeal year-round, er, potato peel that is.

I always double this so that I can have plenty of leftovers.

Daly Colcannon

• 3 lbs. potatoes, scrubbed
• 2 sticks butter
• 1¼ c. hot milk
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 head cabbage, cored, cut into quarters and thinly sliced
• 1 (1-lb.) piece ham or bacon, small diced, optional
• 1 large onion, peeled, halved and thinly sliced
• 1 c. shredded cheddar
• Fresh ground black pepper
• Salt to taste

Steam the potatoes in their skins for 30 minutes. Peel them using a washcloth or knife and fork. If you prefer a more rustic colcannon, you can leave the skins on the potatoes.

Chop with a knife before mashing. Put into a large mixing bowl and mash thoroughly or whip to remove the lumps. Add one stick of butter in small pieces. Gradually add hot milk, stirring all the time. Season with fresh ground black pepper.

Melt 2 T. butter in a small skillet and sweat the onions gently until they soften but do not darken. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 400° and generously butter a 9-by-12-inch baking pan. Bring a large pot of unsalted water to boil and blanch the cabbage until it darkens in color (usually about two to three minutes). Cover with lid for two minutes. Drain thoroughly and chop into small pieces.

Combine cabbage and ham with onions/butter and the mashed potatoes. Adjust the salt and pepper to taste and spread the mixture evenly through the pan without pushing down too much. Dot the top with small pieces of the remaining butter.

Cover with foil and bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until bubbly. Remove foil, increase oven temp to 425°. Sprinkle top of colcannon with cheddar cheese and return to oven for 10 to 15 more minutes or until cheese is completely melted. Serve at any temperature at all!

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I always like to experiment with old favorites and see if we can turn them into new favorites, too. I was playing with my leftovers and came up with Irish Pasties. This a great way to use up your St. Patrick's Day leftovers, but it travels well, too. These are going with us this weekend while we camp out with friends in our new house. We don't have electric or running water yet, so we have to have food that can be heated over a woodstove and consumed sans utensils. Between the two families, we have 11 kids and four adults.

The last time we camped out we were wise enough to make hand-sized Yooper pasties. Unfortunately, the foresight stopped there and I brought one of my caramel apple cheesecakes down for dessert. It is a less than tidy undertaking to have 11 kids, 10 and under, sitting on lawn chairs attempting to eat cheesecake by candlelight with plastic forks and floppy paper plates. We decided that this time it's cookies or handheld dessert pies. The cheesecake can wait.

'Irish' Pasties

• 6 c. leftover chopped corned beef brisket
• 8 c. leftover colcannon
• 6 deli slices Swiss cheese
• Grainy mustard
• Horseradish
• Pie pastry enough for six single-crust pies (I sometimes use refrigerated pie crust rounds for convenience).

Preheat oven to 375°. Mix corned beef and colcannon together until thoroughly combined. Set aside. Divide pie crust into six equal portions and roll out as if making a pie. On one half of the crust, deposit 1/6 of the corned beef/colcannon filling and spread so that it covers that half. Lay one slice of Swiss cheese top of the filling. Fold over the crust and crimp so contents will not bubble out. Make two or three small slashes across the top of each pasty.

Lay on a parchment-lined sheet pan making sure pasties are not touching. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until crusts are nicely browned and contents are steaming hot. Remove from oven and allow pasties to set for five minutes before removing from pan. Serve with grainy mustard and horseradish.

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And a little math riddle to get your brain going. You buy seven dozen fresh eggs from a local farm and put them in a brown paper bag on the passenger seat of your van. Your kids are all strapped into their seats. Question: How long will it take your 9-year-old to unstrap himself and sit on the bag of eggs, breaking most of them? Answer: Three nanoseconds.

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Rebecca Lindamood is a northern Lower Michigan native now living in New York state. A food lover and mother of five children, she writes occasionally about preparing creative, yet affordable, meals for a family. Drop Rebecca an e-mail at shakeyourfoodie@yahoo.com or write to her care of the Record-Eagle.