"Irish Cooking - Classic and Modern Recipes" - Beef in Guinness for St. Patrick's Day!

Date I made this recipe:  March 16, 2016 (for St. Patrick's Day)

Irish Cooking – Classic and Modern Recipes by Ethel Minogue

Published by:  Shooting Star Press

ISBN:  1-57335-488-0

Purchased at Arc's Value Village Thrift Store

Recipe:  Beef in Guinness – p. 61

For once I was prepared.  For once I got a one-day jump on St. Patrick's Day.  And then like that, it came, it went, there were parades, there was drinking, there were likely hangovers (come on – St. Patrick's Day on a Monday?  That's asking for it.) – in other words, business as usual.

And so, our Irish repast:  beef plus beer = the perfect combination?  I don't like lamb so we didn't have lamb, I can take or leave corned beef (I adore it in hash but otherwise not so much) and watery cabbage?  No.  But I have to say that although the dish as a whole was great (the beef was ridiculously tender), I had issues with the – dare I say it – Guinness.

That's right.  I had issues with the Irish national beer.  So good thing I'm not even one teeny tiny drop Irish or I'd likely be bag-piped out of my clan, right?

Here's the thing:  I am not a beer drinker.  I never was but then I have several valid reasons why, namely Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR), Hamms, Schlitz and Blatz (not to be confused with "Blitz(ed)" as in something many people were after a kegger. These were the beers of my generation and my parent's generation and they are all barley "pop" beverages with a tech of alcohol in them and they smell.  Honestly.  If any of you ever smelled a can of opened beer that was left out after a party, you know what I'm talking about.

Plus, beer can lead to beer guts and I don't do beer guts.  I do wine...or is that whine?  So college keggers were not for me (but trash can parties were) Shall I tell you though, that the popular beer substitute when I was in college – i.e. wine – was also absolute swill?  I cannot even think about a bottle of Boones Farm without shuddering.

But happily for most beer drinks, the beer landscape has now changed and not only are we importing more beers like Guinness but dark beers of all kinds are roaring to the top of the beer sales charts.  And I don't mind a sip or two of a good dark beer (like Guinness, I'll admit) but I don't want a whole glass.  My husband, on the other hand, is all about dark beers and so of course he liked this recipe a lot.  Sadly, although the meal itself was divine, all I could taste was the slightly bitter flavor of the Guinness and for that reason, and that reason alone, I had to slightly ding this recipe.  Perhaps the next time I should have the beer with the food...or just skip the food...it's unclear.

And so speaking of food, I am not a picky eater but since I have a major list of Irish food do's or don'ts, I automatically eliminated oh, a good 75% of the recipes in this book.  Also not on my dinner table this time around?  "Hare Pudding" (p. 83) – ew.  Even Andy wrinkled his nose at this one.   And what the...what?  "Seaweed Salad"? (p. 87) What am I, a mermaid?  And alright, "Seed Cake" in the dessert section (p. 111) doesn't sound that appetizing but the "seed" in question here is caraway seed, not birdseed as you might imagine.  And do not laugh, because years ago, I almost bought a cookbook intended for our friends, the birds.  The shop really needed to move that item to another section but whatever.

"Seed Cake" aside though, the dessert section was looking mighty appealing and God Bless the Irish, almost every single recipe contained booze.  Talk about my kind of cookbook! But just having made a Caramel Custard Pie for Pi Day (03.14.14), I was in the mood for something more substantial and since I like beef and Andy likes beer, we were golden with this recipe for "Beef in Guinness."

My only addition to this otherwise yummy and hearty stew (the taste of the beer aside) was potatoes and quite frankly, I was amazed that an Irish recipe didn't call for them up front – Irish Potato famine, anyone?  I added two peeled and quartered Idaho potatoes during the last 30 minutes of cooking time and they were perfect.  And the beef I bought (chuck steak) was so tender it was ridiculous.  This recipe calls for "braising" beef and a quick Google search lists many type of options for beef suitable for braising (quick sear the beef then simmer in liquid for a few hours until tender).

And so there you have it, another successful St. Patrick's Day meal made by someone with not a single, solitary drop of Irish blood in them but with perhaps a wee bit of alcohol – a happy cook makes a happy meal!

Beef in Guinness – serving size not indicated but probably 6

2-3 lb beef for braising

Seasoned flour (Ann's Note:  I used salt and pepper and that's it but you could likely season however you wanted.)

Oil or dripping

2 onions, sliced

4 garlic cloves, whole

3 carrots, sliced

1 large bunch of fresh herbs (Ann's Note:  all I had on hand was parsley)

Salt and pepper

Beef broth (see Basic recipe) (Ann's Note:  buy a large can or carton and add to the pot per the directions i.e. enough to cover the beef)

2 bottles of Guinness (Ann's Note:  or more!  Two bottles for the recipe...two bottles for the cook)

1 oyster per person (optional) (Ann's Note:  option not taken!)

Cut the beef into large chunks and dip in seasoned flour.  Fry in hot oil or dripping.  Fry and brown the onions and garlic.

Place the meat, onions and other vegetables in a casserole dish.  Add the herbs and seasoning, and cover with beef broth.  Bring to a boil, then cover and cook over low heat for 1 ½ hours.  Add the Guinness, bring to a boil and simmer for another 30 minutes.  (Ann's Note:  at this point, I added two quartered Idaho potatoes to the pot.)

Lift the meat out of the sauce with a slotted spoon and serve; reduce the sauce to half the quantity over a high heat.  Pour it over the beef again, season to taste, and add the oysters, if liked. 

Serve with wedges of white crusty bread with mustard and a pint of Guinness.

"The Ballymaloe Cookbook" & "Baking with the St. Paul Bread Club" - Potato and Fresh Herb Soup and Irish Soda Bread

Date I made these recipes: March 20, 2011

The Ballymaloe Cookbook by Myrtle Allen
Published by: Gill and Macmillan
ISBN: 0-7171-1339-6; © 1977, 1984, 1987
Recipe: Potato and Fresh Herb Soup – p. 17

Baking with the St. Paul Bread Club by Kim Ode
Published by: Minnesota Historical Society Press
ISBN: 10: 0-87351-567-6
Recipe: Irish Soda Bread – p. 85 (recipe submitted by Karen Vogel, a bread club member)

You can thank chef (and Food Network star) Bobby Flay for the fact that I cooked a belated ode to St. Patrick’s Day.

As per usual, I was up late at night, minding my own beeswax and Bobby came on with a show titled “Bobby’s Ireland.” Well that’s succinct!

One of the places Bobby visited was Ballymaloe which I gathered was a cooking school. But that name sounded familiar to me for reasons other than the cooking school so I went to my cookbook shelves to investigate. And sure and begorrah, people, I had a Ballymaloe cookbook just waiting for me! It’s like the heavens opened up and St. Patrick just pointed to the damned thing. Thanks, Paddy!

My version is by Myrtle Allen who may or may not be related to Darina Allen who currently runs the cooking school. Google and Wikipedia are usually so good about telling me these things but not this time around.

Anyway…nothing really hit me in this cookbook (certainly not lamb, a meat I loathe) until I went back to the beginning and found the soup recipe. Since potatoes are to Ireland what pasta is to Italians, I thought that would be a fine dish for a blustery day. The only issue I have with the recipe is that I could not find a definition for “creamy milk” (What the hell, Google?!) so I used whole milk. And all was well with the world.

And that completes the main course portion of our program.

As to bread, I am not a bread person but my dad and my brother and my husband (and really, most men I know) are. And since my dad just passed away, I reviewed the bread book several times over to see about making something that dad would have liked and I found some…but they all contained yeast. I don’t do yeast. The times I used yeast, my bread became a doorstop it was that hard.

But for all you yeast-phobic cooks out there, I am happy to report that Irish Soda Bread does NOT feature yeast and therefore passes my culinary test and what the heck—it’s even Irish. What better accompaniment could there be to (Irish) potato soup than Irish Soda Bread? The gods had spoken! (That being said, one of these days I’m going to put on my big girl undies and just make the Bittersweet Chocolate – Ginger Bread (with yeast) already! Page 138 if you are interested)

In the interest of fair disclosure, I should tell you that while I have had the pleasure to meet and greet many a cookbook author in my day, I also know personally Kim Ode, author of Baking with the St. Paul Bread Company. In fact, it’s kind of hard to miss knowing Kim seeing how she plays trombone in my community band (Calhoun-Isles Community Band – www.calhounislesband.org) and could, if she wanted to, smack me upside the head with her trombone slide as she sits right behind me. I am pleased to announce that she has not yet done so, tempting as it may be for her.

Besides being an accomplished musician and our band’s librarian (Marian), Kim writes for the local newspaper, (Minneapolis) StarTribune. When I first started reading her byline, she had a column about odds and bits (for 10) of Minnesota life but then she switched to writing for the Taste section. And somewhere along the line she started breaking bread. I am in awe.

So when Kim’s book came out and I told her about my yeast-phobia, she threw her arm around me and said “Let me tell you about yeast.” She even told me I could call her with questions. Believe me, I thought about that but who wants to get a call from me on a Sunday afternoon saying “Help me! Help me! There’s yeast in my kitchen and I don’t know what to do?!”

And this is why I chickened out and made non-yeast bread. So sue me. But dang it all, it was pretty good. And it was huge. So huge that I cut the bread into four large chunks to ensure that the middle was cooked – that kind of huge. (Added bonus: Irish Soda Bread toast!!) My husband is in hog heaven and I’m pretty chuffed that I managed to bake a bread (yeast or no yeast) that I don’t have to use on a door and that was (magically) delicious!

And there you have it—St. Patrick’s Day (with a few extra days thrown in for luck) 2011! We now return to our March (Madness) programming, already in progress…..

Potato and Fresh Herb Soup – serves approximately 7 (not unless you are feeding leprechauns!)

4 tablespoons butter (55g/2 oz)
1 cup peeled diced onions (110g/4 oz)
1 cup peeled diced scallions (110g/4 oz)
3 cups peeled diced potatoes (425g/15 oz)
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly-ground pepper
Sprig of any 3 of the following: parsley, thyme, rosemary, lovage (1/2 leaf), bay-leaf (1/2 leaf) (This time Google pulled through: lovage is a leafy plant that, from what I gather, does not grow here in North America.)
5 cups stock (1.2 liters/2 pt)
1 cup creamy milk (see my note above: I used whole milk) (250 ml/8 fl oz)

Toss the potatoes and onions in hot butter and then sweat them on a gentle heat for 10 minutes, as in the Basic Soup recipe. (Not reprinted here). Add stock and herbs and cook until soft. Remove tough herb stalks. Puree the soup, taste and adjust seasoning. Thin with creamy milk. (Ann’s Note: this last direction was a puzzler. The soup wasn’t that thick to begin with and “creamy milk” suggests it is to be used as a thickening agent, not a thinking agent. But what do I know?!)

Irish Soda Bread – makes one large loaf. (The author points out that this bread is not the sweeter and softer version many of you are used to. I thought it was great)

3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup old-fashioned oatmeal
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 large eggs
2 cups buttermilk
Extra butter to grease your hands so the dough won’t stick (this not in the original instructions!)

Preheat oven to 375. In a medium bowl mix whole wheat and all-purpose flour, oatmeal, salt and soda. In a small bowl mix together eggs and buttermilk. Add to flour mixture, and mix well. This dough will be very heavy (and sticky). Turn out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead just to make sure that all flour is moistened. Shape into a round, and place on a greased baking sheet. Press additional oatmeal into top. With a sharp knife slash an X across loaf. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes.

Ann’s Note: I baked it for 45 minutes, then took a small piece out of the top and found it to be too moist. I put it back in for another 10 minutes then cut the bread into chunks and then put it back into the oven for about another 10 minutes. Perfect! But let me just say that prior to this, I was once again thinking that I was not meant to be a bread baker. I can only imagine what would have happened had I tried to make yeast bread!!

"The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book" by Fannie Merritt Farmer - Corned Beef and Cabbage

Date I made this recipe: March 15, 2009

The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer
Published by: Little, Brown and Company
© 1901; this printing 1909
Recipe: Boiled dinner – p. 206

Well St. Patrick’s Day is this Tuesday and this year, I am ahead of the curve. I made this dish on Sunday night so that we could have corned beef hash for dinner on Tuesday. I LOVE corned beef hash but when I was growing up, mom never made hash out of the leftovers. Good old canned corned beef hash was good enough for us.

This is one of the easiest recipes I’ve ever made and yet the instructions in this book were a bit vague (cookbook authors in the early 1900’s didn’t have a need to print every detail like today’s authors) and so I cheated and looked online as well as referenced other cookbooks to get a sense of cooking time. I needn’t have bothered since the corned beef brisket I purchased had instructions (although they were teeny weenie and printed at the very bottom) but I liked the research portion of my program.

I chose this particular recipe book because when I think of St. Patrick’s Day, I think of Boston and this book (actually, this famous book) is from Fannie Merritt Farmer’s Boston Cooking School. In culinary circles and among cookbook collectors, this book is still highly prized.

Although I’m sure she did not intend to be funny, Fanny’s description of corned beef cracked me up to no end: “Corned beef has but little nutritive value. It is used to give variety to our diet in the summer, when fresh meats prove too stimulating. (I had no idea that fresh meats were stimulating!) It is eaten by the workingman to give bulk to his food.”

Like most people, when my mother made corned beef, she added cabbage, potatoes and carrots although I’m fairly sure she did not do this to bulk up my dad’s food. My mom also created a special sauce for her corned beef that was made of equal parts of Miracle Whip and mustard. When I told my husband this he gave me look best described as “Ew” and got out the horseradish. I went with mom’s favorite, something she probably developed to make sure we ate the boiled cabbage and just had the best walk down memory lane.

Happy St. Paddy’s Day everyone! Erin Go Bragh! (Ireland Forever!)

Boiled Dinner a/k/a Corned Beef and Cabbage – serving size not indicated
1 corned beef brisket (mine was 2 pounds)
1-2 heads of cabbage (1 used one for two people)
Carrots
Potatoes (small Irish white potatoes are best but you can use any)
Turnips (if desired)
Beets (?? I’ve never heard of beets in a boiled dinner)

To boil the corned beef
Wipe the meat and tie securely in shape, if this has not been already done at market. (I didn’t tie my meat). Put in kettle, cover with cold water, and bring slowly to boiling point. Boil five minutes, remove scum, and cook at a lower temperature until tender.

Since “until tender” is not a good gauge of time, I looked online and found that 2-3 hours for a 2 lb brisket is about right. I also boiled mine for ½ hour, using the online instructions, rather than Fannie’s 5 minutes but I think it all comes out in the wash so do what you feel is best.

Cool slightly in water in which it was cooked, remove to a dish, cover and place on cover a weight, that meat may be well pressed.

To cook the vegetables
After removing the meat from the water, skim off the fat and cook vegetables (with exception of beets, which require a long time for cooking) in this water. Carrots require a longer time for cooking than cabbage or turnips. Carrots and turnips, if small, may be cooked whole; if large, cut in pieces. Cabbage and beets are served in separate dishes, other vegetables on the same dish with the meat.

To save time, I cooked all the vegetables separately (the carrots, potatoes and the cabbage) and then added them to the corned beef pot just before serving. If I hadn’t done so, I would have had to cook the mixture for another half hour and it was getting late.